The application deadline for the Fully Funded John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships 2025/2026 at Stanford University, USA is 1 p.m. Pacific time, Dec. 4, 2024;
Tell Me About The Fully Funded John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships:
invites journalists ready to step back from professional duties to fully immerse in a 9-month journey of leadership development and personal growth. Ideal applicants are those committed to advancing in journalism, eager for deep self-examination, and enthusiastic about being part of a diverse cohort of peers. Applicants will benefit from coaching that enhances resilience and leadership, along with webinars featuring program directors and alumni who share insights on the experience and application process.
Which Fields are Eligible?
Journalism
Type:
Fellowship
Who can Apply For The Fully Funded John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships?
Additionally, the eligibility criteria include:
Open to U.S. and international journalists, including those in news organizations, independent journalists, journalism entrepreneurs, and journalism innovators.
Applicants must have at least five years of full-time professional journalism experience (student journalism or internships do not count toward this requirement).
A college degree or experience in traditional newsrooms is not required.
Ineligible applicants include individuals working in public information or public relations, for trade or house newsletters or magazines, in government agencies, or in academic positions.
The fellowship does not fund or support book or reporting projects and is not a business accelerator.
Expectations
Being a JSK Fellow is a full-time commitment. You be asked to forgo other professional work to focus on the fellowship experience. You will receive a monthly stipend and the ability to enrol in health insurance through Stanford for you and your dependents.
You will be expected to:
Be in residence at Stanford during the academic year, from September to May.
Dedicate yourself full-time to the fellowship.
Attend weekly meetings with your cohort and biweekly meetings with your adviser as well as other occasional JSK events.
Publicly share your work and insights throughout the year.
Work collaboratively with people who offer a range of ideas, experiences and perspectives.
Which Countries Are Eligible?
All countries
Where will the Award be Taken?
USA
How Many Awards?
Not specified
What is the Benefit of the Award?
Additionally, the benefits include:
Individual coaching and customized workshops to help build the leadership resilience and mindsets needed to navigate and lead change.
A purposefully designed cohort experience that fosters opportunities for meaningful and enduring personal and professional connections.
The time and freedom to explore the intellectual offerings of a world-class university.
Access to the worldwide JSK alumni network.
A stipend of $125,000.
Stanford tuition and Stanford health insurance for fellows and a health supplement if enrolling dependents in Stanford health insurance. We also provide advice on finding rental housing.
Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic started, the ruling class campaigned vigorously against any measures that, while fighting against the virus, might interfere with their ability to accumulate profits.
The world’s governments soon decided on a vaccine-only strategy, discarding other public health measures. This has now been largely replaced by a total “let it rip” policy as even vaccines become harder to access, for those populations that ever had access to them in significant numbers on the first place.
In this Thursday, April 29, 2021, photo, Sherry Cross Child, a Canadian resident of Stand Off, Alberta, receives a COVID-19 vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing near Babb, Mont. (AP Photo/Iris Samuels)
To justify this destructive course of action, information about the virus has been withheld or misrepresented and various pseudo-scientific claims made to play down the seriousness of the disease. This has created a fertile environment for backward anti-vaccine conceptions and conspiracy theories, openly supported by some of the most deranged sections of the ruling class.
One of the arguments cited most often by “anti-vaxers” is the existence of a few cases of people developing cardiovascular complications following vaccination—a tiny number of which resulted in the tragic deaths of the vaccinated individuals. They argue that the possibility of said complications justifies the rejection of the vaccine, minimising or denying the benefits of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19, a serious disease with a significant death rate and very well-documented long-term, life-altering consequences.
A study published in the journal Nature Communications debunks this claim by analysing the incidence of cardiovascular complications across a very large population of vaccinated individuals.
Research led by the Universities of Cambridge, Bristol and Edinburgh—and enabled by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre at Health Data Research UK—analysed de-identified health records from 46 million adults in England between December 8, 2020 and January 23, 2022.
Data scientists compared the incidence of cardiovascular diseases after vaccination with the incidence before or without vaccination, during the first two years of the vaccination programme. They specifically evaluated the incidence of cardiovascular and thrombotic events following the first, second, and booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines from December 2020 to January 2022. The vaccines studied include the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer’s BNT-162b2 and Moderna’s mRNA-1273) and the adenovirus-based ChAdOx1 vaccine (AstraZeneca).
The study employed Cox regression models to calculate adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs), which compare the risk of cardiovascular events after vaccination to the risk before or in the absence of vaccination. Across all doses and vaccine types, the incidence of thrombotic events (e.g. blood clots) was lower following vaccination, for both arterial and venous events. The reduction was apparent already after the first dose, with a 10 percent lower risk for arterial thrombotic events after the administration of the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
An even more substantial reduction in cardiovascular events was observed after the second dose across all vaccine brands. For example, there was a 27 percent reduced risk for arterial thrombotic events after the second dose of AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1. The aHRs for other conditions like pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis were also lowered.
Similar trends were observed for booster doses, which helped maintain lower rates of events compared to pre-vaccination levels. The study noted that the reduction in cardiovascular events was most pronounced in the weeks immediately following vaccination.
Both mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) and the adenovirus-based AstraZeneca vaccine showed reductions in arterial and venous events. However, the magnitude of risk reduction varied slightly by brand and dose, with mRNA vaccines showing slightly lower aHRs overall, particularly after booster doses.
Although the reductions were still evident up to 24 weeks post-vaccination, the degree of reduction decreased over time.
Previous research found that the incidence of rare cardiovascular complications is higher after some COVID-19 vaccines. This study supports these findings, but importantly it did not identify new adverse cardiovascular conditions associated with COVID-19 vaccination and offers further reassurance that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risk.
These uncommon complications fall into two categories: Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia (VITT) with AstraZeneca’s vaccine, and myocarditis and pericarditis with mRNA Vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna).
VITT is a rare condition characterized by blood clots accompanied by low platelet counts. It can lead to serious complications, such as intracranial venous thrombosis (ICVT), which affects blood vessels in the brain. The study found a higher-than-normal incidence of VITT following the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with the highest risk appearing within the first two weeks post-vaccination.
There was no increased risk of VITT observed after the second dose of ChAdOx1 or following any dose of the mRNA vaccines, indicating that the risk is predominantly associated with the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, while pericarditis is an inflammation of the lining surrounding the heart. Both conditions can cause chest pain, fatigue, and other cardiac symptoms but are often mild and self-limiting. The elevated risk for both myocarditis and pericarditis was highest in the first week post-vaccination for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, with risk generally returning to baseline levels within four weeks after vaccination.
While rare complications were associated with COVID-19 vaccines, they were primarily linked to the first dose and generally occurred within the initial weeks following vaccination. The study emphasizes that these risks, while present, are outweighed by the broader protective benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 and its associated cardiovascular risks.
A big strength of the study is the significant number of people examined, which enabled the researchers to assess the effects of the vaccines across a wide variety of demographics and clinical subgroups, such as age, sex, ethnicity, and prior health conditions. The broad reduction in thrombotic events was observed across all subgroups, reinforcing the vaccines’ value in preventing COVID-19-related cardiovascular complications.
The effects of the vaccines were particularly effective for older adults (over 40 years old), for whom the risk of rare complications like myocarditis was notably lower, while the benefits in terms of reduced cardiovascular events were even more pronounced.
Co-lead author Dr. Samantha Ip, Research Associate at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, told Health Data Research UK: “This research further supports the large body of evidence on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, which has been shown to provide protection against severe COVID-19 and saved millions of lives worldwide.”
Professor William Whiteley, Associate Director at the BHF Data Science Centre and Professor of Neurology and Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, added that the study “demonstrates that the benefits of second and booster doses, with fewer common cardiovascular events include heart attacks and strokes after vaccination, outweigh the very rare cardiovascular complications”.
The results show the enormous potential of the creative and productive forces of society. However, while vaccines are an important tool in the fight against the pandemic, they are not enough on their own. Without a policy of complete elimination of the virus through a comprehensive regime of testing, tracing and quarantine, a vaccination programme amounts merely palliative care.
This can be seen currently with the UK’s autumn vaccine booster campaign. Firstly, the vast majority of the people are no longer eligible for a free vaccine through the National Health Service and must pay privately for one. While the NHS is offering free vaccines to old and clinically vulnerable people, those available were designed for the KP or even older variants of the virus.
The XEC variant currently leading a new surge in infections is expected to become dominant. It is unclear exactly how effective the current boosters are against it, but experience indicates that they will not be as effective as against the variant they were designed for. The ability of the virus to mutate to bypass protection conferred by vaccines or previous infections is helped immensely by the fact that COVID-19 has been allowed to roam unimpeded through society after the main mitigation measures were all lifted as long ago as March 2022.
A total of 9.3 million people in the UK, including 3 million children, currently experience levels of poverty and hunger so extreme they rely on charitable food.
Research conducted on behalf of the Trussell charity, the UK’s largest food bank network, warns that without a drastic shift away from austerity policies—entrenched by successive governments since 2009—a further 425,000 people, including 170,000 children, will experience extreme hunger and hardship by 2027.
Footprints in the Community food bank in northern England receives donations [Photo: Twitter/Footprints UK]
Trussell, formerly the Trussel Trust, operates more than 1,400 food banks around the UK and distributed 3.1 million food parcels last year. The charity was founded in 1997 initially to feed children in Bulgaria, but opened their first food bank in Wiltshire, England a quarter century ago, such was the developing hunger crisis in the country.
Trussell’s interim report, “The Cost of Hunger and Hardship”, is based on analysis of government data and their final report on the need for emergency food in the UK s due to be published spring 2025.
The report predicts that the incoming Labour government will fail to deliver their election manifesto promise to end the “moral scar” of food banks unless they raise the household incomes of the poorest.
This is approximately one in seven of the UK population, struggling in a state of deep and extreme poverty Trussell terms “hunger and hardship”. The term was created by the charity to define the almost 9.5 million people whose low household income and extreme financial vulnerability makes them most likely to rely on using food banks or at risk of needing them.
Those typically suffering “hunger and hardship”, explain Trussell, are on low incomes, have zero or negligible savings and may also have crippling financial debts including money owed to the state. Typically, these households struggle and frequently fail to make ends meet. They cannot afford enough food, pay their energy bills nor afford basics like new clothes and shoes. A single unexpected financial crisis, like a job loss, a large bill or the replacement of a cooker or freezer, can tip limited budgets over into crisis and trigger reliance on food banks.
The new terminology, incorporating “absolute poverty” is designed by Trussell, in part, to hold the Labour government to account over their election manifesto pledge to “end mass dependence on emergency food parcels”.
However, those suffering from “hunger and hardship” are a growing section of a more numerous group of almost 14.5 million who are experiencing relative poverty. A family is said to be in relative poverty, i.e., relative to the prevailing standards of living in society, if their income is below the poverty line of 60 percent of median income. Those facing “hunger and hardship” are typically to be found more than 25 percent below the poverty line.
Mass poverty in the UK today is increasingly not relative but absolute, not about falling behind prevailing living standards but not having the essentials required to maintain human life. Hence their reliance upon food banks to maintain their caloric intake. Many of these same working class families live in substandard housing in the poorest neighbourhoods with the poorest public services.
One in five UK children fall into the “hunger and hardship” cohort, including fully one in four of those children in their first four years of life. More than half of the numbers suffering “hunger and hardship” (approximately 5 million) are from a household where one or more adults is disabled. A third of larger families, with three or more children, were also at high risk of dependency on food banks, particularly because of the two-child benefit cap first imposed by the Tories and maintained by Sir Keir Starmer’s government.
Trussell contends that cuts to welfare benefits by successive governments over decades have seriously damaged the “social safety net” meant to be provided by the welfare state. Recent decades, especially since the austerity cuts following the 2008 global economic crash, have witnessed a rapid rise in food bank use. The rise is being driven by poor wages that fail to maintain families above the poverty line and the decreasing value of already paltry benefit levels, including completely inadequate disabled and pensioner benefits. Trussell estimates that almost four in 10 people receiving the universal credit (UC)—the main benefit—face hunger and hardship.
In January, there were 6.4 million people on UC in England, Scotland and Wales, according to official government statistics. Revealing the prevalence of low pay in Britain, nearly 40 percent of claimants have jobs.
The Trussell study found there were 1 million more people suffering from “hunger and hardship” than five years ago, and nearly 3 million more than there were in the mid-2000s when then Trussell Trust began providing food packages.
To mark the publication of the Trussell findings chief executive Emma Revie, said, “It’s 2024 and we’re facing historically high levels of food bank demand. As a society, we cannot allow this to continue. We must not let food banks become the new norm.”
Whilst Revie’s sentiment is well meaning, reality has already outstripped such wishes—food banks are a well-established fixture of working class life because searing, mass poverty have been normalised by governments over decades.
Trussell calls for the abolition of the two-child benefit cap to make inroads into reducing child poverty levels in larger families. Scrapping the two child benefit cap would reduce the number of people facing hunger and hardship by 9 percent, or 825,000 people.
But the charity notes that this move would do nothing to address the needs of most people at high risk of “hunger and hardship”, including many disabled people and their unpaid carers. “We know that removing the two-child limit would be a positive step for larger families… but, as indicated by this research, the majority of people who are facing hunger and hardship would not benefit from that one change alone,” stated Helen Barnard, Trussell’s director of policy.
The report states “Scrapping the household benefit cap and the two-child limit in combination would lift 620,000 children out of absolute poverty, compared with 540,000 from reversing the two-child limit alone.”
Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has no plans to reverse the Tory enacted two child benefit cap. The Treasury claims the relatively insignificant figure of the £3 billion cost of abolishing the cap is unaffordable given other demands for investment. Meanwhile the government is pledged to handing 2.5 percent of GDP to military spending as soon as conditions allow, with Reeves making a high profile trip ahead of next week’s budget to visit Ukrainian troops being trained in Britain.
Other calls made by Trussell are for government to bolster the incomes of 2.2 million people whose universal credit income is reduced by monthly deductions for historic loans and debts.
This, Trussell claims, can be achieved by introducing a legal minimum income floor on the standard allowance for universal credit, limiting the amount claimed back by the state each month from claimants’ payments. Another recommendation is for the lifting of housing benefit rates in accordance with rent increases, and protection for disability benefits.
In response to the Trussell findings a government spokesperson could only piously respond “No child should be in poverty”—which is meaningless because children cannot be lifted out of poverty without their parents or guardians incomes being substantially raised first, which won’t happen under the “most pro-business government in history”.
Labour’s 2024 election manifesto promised to “end mass dependence on emergency food parcels”, adding they have no place in a “just and compassionate society”. But Starmer has restated his Thatcherite beliefs that “handouts from the state do not nurture the same sense of self-reliant dignity as a fair wage”—a policy which will see welfare benefits cut by up to £3 billion in the budget.
Work will set you free, according to the Labour mantra, but workers are not receiving a “fair wage”. The Trussell findings revealed that approaching two thirds of those facing hunger and hardship were members of a household where at least one adult is in paid employment.
Trussell figures show how over two thirds, 68 percent, of working households in receipt of universal credit have gone without essentials like basic toiletries and prescriptions, over the last six months—only a little lower than the level among people receiving universal credit who are not in paid employment of 79 percent.
The continued surge in the price of gold—it hit a record high of more than $2,700 per ounce last week and has risen 40 percent in the past year—has raised issues about what this signifies for the future of the dollar-based international monetary system.
Gold bars [AP Photo/Seth Wenig]
The role of the dollar as the global currency gives the US “exorbitant privilege” as it allows the running up of government debt in a way not possible for any other country.
Donald Trump, for one, recently pointed to the significance of dollar dominance, saying that losing it would be the equivalent of losing a war. These views are shared no less in the Democratic Party.
In a comment published in the Financial Times last week, well-known financial analyst and commentator Mohammed El-Erian indicated that there were deeper forces at work than market fluctuations and immediate geo-political issues.
“Something strange has happened to the price of gold over the past year,” he wrote. “In setting one record level after the other, it seems to have decoupled from its traditional historical influencers, such as interest rates, inflation and the dollar. Moreover, the consistency of its rise stands in contrast to fluctuations in pivotal geopolitical situations.”
El-Erian listed a number of factors which are raised as explanations for the continued rise in the price of gold over the past year.
These include: the general rise in asset prices; increased purchases of gold by central banks; loss of confidence in US management of the global order; the US weaponisation of tariffs together with its progressive abandonment of a cooperative rules-based system, and the search for a payments system outside the dollar arising out of the ejection of Russia from the Swift international payments system at the start of the Ukraine war.
The search for an alternative system of payments was a key agenda item at the three-day summit of the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) coalition held in Kazan, Russia last week at which representatives of some 36 countries were present. Whether by accident or design, the BRICS summit was held at the same time as the IMF-World Bank gathering in Washington.
The level of attendance at the BRICS conference reflected the fear in many countries that the freezing of Russian dollar assets by the US and its European allies could be used against any country that crosses their path.
The summit endorsed the use of “local currencies in financial transactions between BRICS countries and their trading partners” and decided to “study the feasibility of establishing an independent cross-border settlement and depositary infrastructure, BRICS Clear.”
How far such an initiative can go remains to be seen—there are significant divisions among the countries involved, but the fact that alternatives to the dollar-based system are even being discussed is significant.
There is also recognition of the shift in financial circles. Last Thursday at a conference in Beijing, the Hong Kong unit of the global bank HSBC announced it was “formally joining” China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payments System (CIPS). David Liao, the co-chief executive of the bank’s China territory business, said the dominant role of the dollar was being “diluted.”
Commenting on the attempts to shift away from the dollar, El-Erian noted, correctly, that “no other currency or payment system is able and willing to displace the dollar at the core of the system.
“But an increasing number of little pipes are being built to go around this core; and a growing number of countries are interested and increasingly involved.”
In this context what was happening to the gold prices was not just unusual in terms of traditional economic and financial influences. It was the expression of a “broader phenomenon which is building secular momentum.”
As a defender of the present financial and political order, this is what led El-Erian to his central concern, to which he said western governments should pay more attention.
“As it develops deeper roots, this risks materially fragmenting the global system and eroding the influence of the dollar and the US financial system. That would have an impact on the US’s ability to inform and influence outcomes and undermine its national security.”
There is also an even deeper significance to the gold price surge going beyond the position of the US as the dominant imperialist power, decisive as that question is.
It is an initial expression of an emerging crisis in the whole monetary and value system of global capitalism which can only be grasped when placed in its historical context.
At the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, the leaders of the soon to be victorious imperialist powers came together to fashion a new international monetary system, acutely aware that a return to the chaos of the 1930s marked by tariffs, currency blocs and the lack of an international payments system would lead to a crisis and spark social revolution by a resurgent working class.
In media commentary on its 80th anniversary, the Bretton Woods gathering is being lauded as a model of global cooperation to which there should be a return in the face of the present deepening economic and political crises.
In fact, it was far from that. The US used its dominant economic might to fashion an international monetary system based on the dollar. It rejected a proposal by the chief British negotiator, John Maynard Keynes, for the establishment of an international currency, bancor. Just as the US fought to advance its interests, Keynes’ proposal was intended to defend the position of a declining British empire and curb the dominance of the US.
The overwhelming economic might of the US ensured that it prevailed, but at the same time it had to make concessions in the form of a guarantee that US dollar holdings could be converted to gold as an ultimate store of value at the rate of $35 per ounce.
The Bretton Woods system, however, was based on a profound contradiction. The dollar became the international currency and to ensure sufficient liquidity there had to be an outflow of dollars from the US.
Moreover, to prevent the world economy, and ultimately the US, from plunging back into depression, with the revolutionary upheavals that would have produced, the defeated imperialist powers had to be revived. This was the basis of the US Marhsall Plan of 1947 through which it reconstructed the war-torn economics of Western Europe
The new system was able to operate for barely a quarter of a century.
It broke down when the US balance of trade turned negative because of the increased competition on world markets from its rivals, whose revival it organised. US gold holdings became vastly outweighed by the dollars circulating in the rest of the world. This led to the decision by President Nixon on August 15, 1971 to remove the gold backing from the US dollar.
The dollar continued to function as the global currency, but it now operated as a fiat currency, no longer backed by gold as a store of value but by the power of the US state.
The theoretical issue which arose was what was the nature of this money, and could this system continue indefinitely. Bourgeois political economy generally ignored these questions so long as the system continued to function—money was simple a technical device.
Such conceptions had been refuted by Karl Marx in the opening chapters of his masterwork Capital. There he explained that money had not somehow been invented but was an objective product of the commodity system of production, that is, production for a market upon which the capitalist system was based.
In a system of social production, of which capitalism was the most highly developed form, the value of each commodity was ultimately determined by the amount of socially necessary labour contained in it. And this value had to find independent material expression in the form of another commodity, the money commodity, which for historical reasons and its physical properties was gold.
In the wake of the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, various critics of Marx, including some self-styled Marxists, maintained that the continued operation of the monetary system on the basis of a fiat currency and credit, not backed by gold, had refuted his analysis.
Insofar as they even considered the question of the value represented by this paper money, created by a printing press or in today’s conditions by the press of a computer button, it took the form of a circular argument.
The dollar was a store of value and the basis of the financial system because it was sought after in order to conduct trade and other transactions, and it was sought after to perform these functions because it was a store of value.
Marx’s analysis did not stop at the opening chapters of Capital. He later explained that credit, being similarly a social form of wealth, could displace gold and usurp its position. It was “confidence in the social character of production that makes the money form of products [that is the expression of their value in gold] appear as something merely evanescent and ideal, as mere notion.” (Marx, Capital Volume 3, Penguin, 707-708)
No doubt this usurpation has lasted far longer than Marx anticipated.
The mounting storms in the financial system, especially since the 2008 crisis, show that fundamental contradictions in the capitalist mode of production and its monetary system are coming to the surface.
The rise in the price of gold reveals that a fiat currency, based on the economic and financial power of a state, cannot continue to function as world money indefinitely. Not when that state, the US, has lost the economic power it once had, is in debt to the tune of $36 trillion, must raise more debt simply to pay the interest on past debt (now around $1 trillion a year) and is now the most indebted nation in history.
Amid claims by Ukraine and South Korea that North Korean soldiers had been sent to Russia to fight Ukrainian forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin indirectly acknowledged their presence in comments to the media last Thursday.
North Korean soldiers march during a mass military parade in Pyongyang in 2012 [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File]
When questioned about a video released by South Korean intelligence purportedly showing North Korean soldiers training in the Russian far east, Putin stated that “he never doubted at all that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously.”
Putin was referring to the “comprehensive strategic partnership” agreed during his visit to North Korea in June that provides for “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties.” An article in the treaty obligates North Korea and Russia to provide “military and other assistance without delay by mobilizing all means in its possession” in the event that the other is invaded.
The agreement was ratified on Thursday by Russian lawmakers. Commenting on the mutual assistance clause, Putin said: “What and how we will do is our business within the framework of this article.”
The terms of the treaty have led to speculation that North Korea troops will be deployed to the Kursk region of Russia as part of a counter-offensive effort to dislodge Ukrainian forces that seized a part of the region in an offensive beginning in August.
Putin provided no details concerning the presence of North Korean troops in Russia, nor did he attempt to refute the various claims by South Korea, Ukraine and the US that up to 12,000 North Korean special forces troops have been shipped to the Russian far east for training and that several thousand have already been moved to the battle zone in Kursk.
On Friday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that the North Korean soldiers were expected to be sent to “combat zones” as soon as October 27 or 28. He branded the move as “a clear escalation by Russia” and called on Ukraine’s backers to put pressure on Moscow and Pyongyang with a “strong response” to “North Korea’s actual involvement in combat.”
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin weighed in, declaring the involvement of North Korean troops was “a very, very serious issue” if they are co-belligerents, “if their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf.” He warned that “it will have impacts not only in Europe, it will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific.”
John Kirby, White House national security spokesman, commenting on the dispatch of North Korean soldiers, declared: “We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military, but this is certainly a highly concerning probability.” He then warned, however, that North Korean troops were “fair game” if deployed in fighting against Ukrainian forces.
The condemnations of North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia are entirely hypocritical. Over the past two years, the US and its NATO allies have been waging war against Russia, supplying Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of increasingly sophisticated and deadly military hardware along with training and intelligence. The Ukrainian invasion of Kursk was undoubtedly planned and prepared with the direct assistance of NATO and the US in particular.
While there is nothing progressive in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the primary responsibility for the war rests with US imperialism that deliberately goaded the Putin regime into acting by threatening to incorporate Ukraine into the NATO military pact. Washington has recklessly proceeded to escalate the war, crossing all of its own “red lines,” as it seeks to fracture and subordinate the Russian Federation to its economic and strategic interests.
US and NATO advisers, intelligence agents and special forces troops are undoubtedly already present in Ukraine. In his comments, Putin declared that NATO officers and instructors were directly involved in the Ukraine war. “We know who is present there, from which European NATO countries, and how they carry out this work,” Putin said.
The presence of North Korean troops in Russia is already being used as the pretext to push ahead with plans to openly deploy NATO troops to Ukraine. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told the POLITICO website on Sunday that it was time for European countries to revisit French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of sending troops to Ukraine first mooted in February.
“If information about Russia’s killing squads being equipped with North Korean ammunition and military personnel is confirmed, we have to get back to ‘boots on the ground’ and other ideas proposed by Macron,” Landsbergis declared.
In an interview published on October 1 in the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, Benjamin Haddad, the French minister for European affairs, declared: “President Macron has said on several occasions that we must not exclude anything.” Asked if “the French position remains that the deployment of ground troops to Ukraine is not ruled out,” Haddad replied “Yes.”
The condemnation of North Korea’s deployment of troops is accompanied by denunciations of its provision of weaponry for Russian forces. South Korean intelligence claims that North Korea had sent 13,000 containers worth of artillery shells, antitank rockets and missiles to Russia as the war has dragged on.
Even if true, North Korean munitions pale alongside the provision of not only munitions, but main battle tanks, long range missiles, drones and fighter aircraft by the US and NATO to Ukraine. As part of his recent European trip, US Defence Secretary Austin make an unannounced visit to Kyiv, his fourth, where he announced another $400 million package of US weapons for Ukraine.
It should also be noted that while South Korean intelligence tracks North Korean military assistance to Russia, South Korea itself is providing large quantities of munitions indirectly to Ukraine via the US. Last December, South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper reported that Seoul had sent at least 500,000 155mm shells to the US to restock Washington’s supplies that had been seriously depleted as a result of shells sent to Ukraine. A Washington Post article reported that the Pentagon was seeking a further 330,000 shells as Ukraine was expending around “90,000 or more a month.”
The potential involvement of North Korean troops in fighting against Ukrainian forces again underscores the fact that the US/NATO war against Russia, as well as the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and widening war in the Middle East, are two fronts in what is rapidly emerging as a world war between nuclear armed powers.
Austin’s warning that the North Korean deployment will not only affect Europe, but “impact things in the Indo-Pacific,” simply reflects the growing discussion in US strategic and military circles of the global character of the unfolding wars. Indeed, US imperialism is seeking to bring Russia to its knees as it wages an economic war against China and escalates its military provocations and preparations for conflict with what it regards as the chief threat to its global hegemony.
The adoption of the so-called “migration pact” in April has prompted the European Union and leading EU states to escalate their anti-refugee and anti-migrant policies and attack the democratic rights of workers across the board. While the Italian government under the fascist Giorgia Meloni is acting as a spearhead in some respects, a race has long since broken out among the European powers to see who is taking the toughest and most criminal actions against migrants.
A general view of a migrant processing center at the port of Shengjin, northwestern Albania, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, as the first group of migrants intercepted in international waters arrived Wednesday. [AP Photo/Vlasov Sulaj]
At an extraordinary special meeting on Tuesday evening in Rome, the Italian cabinet issued a decree that enshrines in law the government’s definition of “safe” countries of origin and which comes into force immediately. The Meloni government is thus overruling a court judgement that declared the transfer of refugees to Albania to be unlawful. In future, Italy will operate two large detention centres on Albanian territory where asylum seekers will be held under inhumane conditions.
In this way, Italian officials are to decide on up to 36,000 asylum applications per year “in a fast-track procedure” outside the EU. Those who are rejected are to be deported from Albania. An article in Der Spiegel describes the project as “Meloni’s mini-Guantánamo” and states that many EU states regard the measure as a “role model.” Alongside the US torture prison in Cuba, the concentration camp-like conditions of refugee centres such as Moria (Greece) are likely to serve as a model that could soon prevail everywhere at Europe’s external borders.
A few days earlier, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (Christian Democrat, CDU), who works closely with Meloni at EU level, announced a new draft law on the deportation of migrants. According to Der Spiegel, the planned proposal from Brussels is intended to “effectively streamline the return process” and aims to “ensure that every EU country recognises the decision on deportation in another member state.” This requires a “new legal framework in the EU to improve our ability to act.” Von der Leyen went on to explain that, in addition to existing migration agreements with Tunisia, Libya and Turkey, the EU was seeking further similar “partnerships” with West African states such as Mauritania, Mali and Senegal.
Meanwhile, European governments are outdoing each other with reactionary moves against refugees and democratic rights. According to an article in Le Monde, the far-right French government recently appointed by President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a new law that would allow refugees to be detained for up to 210 days instead of the current 90 days. The government under Prime Minister Michel Barnier and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau also announced this week that border controls with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Switzerland would be extended until at least April 30, 2025. Similar border controls within the Schengen area were recently reintroduced by Germany, Austria, Norway and Denmark.
Meanwhile, the Polish government under former EU Council President Donald Tusk is taking even tougher action against immigrants than its predecessor government of the PiS party. It recently authorised the use of firearms in certain cases of “irregular” border crossings. Tusk also announced a “temporary territorial suspension of the right of asylum,” particularly with regard to Belarus and Russia. The plans are a clear violation of international and European treaties and the Polish constitution.
In the style of an exemplary fascist, Tusk declared, “We are fortifying the border and when it comes to illegal migration, I will be absolutely tough and ruthless, even if I get beaten up for it, and will not recognise and implement any European ideas that endanger our security. I am talking about the migration pact here, no one will force me to do so.”
In fact, brutal and illegal measures such as those announced by Tusk form the very essence of the so-called migration pact and are its desired outcome. In an article on the adoption of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the World Socialist Web Sitewrote:
With the final adoption of the CEAS on April 10, the European Parliament has effectively suspended the right to asylum and turned the immigration policies of the extreme right into law. The measures adopted provide for Europe’s external borders to be hermetically sealed off. This means that refugees will have to undergo their asylum procedure outside the EU in closed, militarily guarded detention centres.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democrat, SPD) boasted that Germany would lead the way in implementing the migration pact and announced a “security package” of new legislative proposals, including additional powers for security authorities and stricter rules on residency rights. In addition, refugees who are required to leave the country and have already been registered in another EU country will have their social benefits cancelled in the future.
At the weekend, Chancellor Olaf Scholz travelled to Istanbul to negotiate accelerated returns with Turkish President Recip Erdoğan in exchange for further arms deliveries. Since 2016, there has been an informal agreement between the EU and Turkey to prevent refugees in Turkey from travelling to Europe. Most recently, the Turkish government deported 50,000 refugees back to Syria. Following the meeting, Erdoğan signaled that he was “open” to shielding the EU states from refugees from Lebanon as well.
Back in September, Scholz and Kenyan President William Ruto signed another comprehensive migration deal in Berlin, which offers Germany access to “qualified labour” but is also intended to speed up deportations and support Ruto’s government. For months, the corrupt Kenyan government has been bloodily suppressing mass protests demanding Ruto’s resignation and the cancellation of austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Ruto, whose police have killed at least 39 protesters and have been notorious for years for extrajudicial killings, spoke to the press about the deal with Germany as a “win-win result.”
In July 2023, the EU concluded an agreement with the right-wing Tunisian government of Kais Saied, which, among other things, provided for the Tunisian border regime to be financed with €105 million to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean.
Since summer 2022, the Moroccan government of King Mohammed VI has been acting as Europe’s brutal “gatekeeper” at Spain’s external EU border in agreement with the PSOE-Podemos government in Madrid. The agreement includes Spain recognising Morocco’s sovereignty over the formerly Spanish-occupied territory of Western Sahara. According to the Moroccan armed forces, around 87,000 migrants were stopped in 2023, a sharp increase compared to around 56,000 between January and August 2022. The EU provided Morocco with €1.2 billion between 2014 and 2022, including hundreds of millions for the purpose of taking action against migrants.
In June 2022, Moroccan “security forces” drove refugees from the war-torn regions of the Sahel and Sudan from the Spanish border at gunpoint, killing at least 23 people. In 2023, more people than ever before died in the Atlantic Ocean trying to reach Spanish territory. As the Austrian Kronen Zeitung reports, citing high-ranking EU representatives, the previous agreement was nevertheless to be deepened this year by a “migration pact,” the main features of which were agreed between the EU and Morocco in December last year. In January of this year, Spain’s Supreme Court condemned the authorities’ decision to send dozens of unaccompanied minors from the Spanish exclave of Ceuta back to Morocco in May 2021 as “illegals.”
The EU has also been working closely with authorities and paramilitary forces in Libya for years, overseeing a system of serious human rights violations. For example, a recent EU communication boasts of operationally training border guards from the Libyan Ministry of the Interior as part of the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Libya (EUBAM Libya). The so-called “Libyan Coast Guard” has been supported by the EU for years with equipment and funding worth millions of euros.
The InfoMigrants website has compiled eyewitness reports according to which refugees in Libya are “confronted daily with physical and sexualised violence, forced labour, exploitation, arbitrary detention and extortion.” Even the spokesperson for the United Nations Human Rights Office, Liz Throssell, spoke to Deutsche Welle in July of “widespread human rights violations against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Libya,” including torture, forced labour, extortion, starvation under intolerable detention conditions, mass displacement and human trafficking. This happened “on a large scale and with impunity, with both state and non-state actors often working together.”
Following the migration deals with Turkey, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco, the EU also signed an agreement with Lebanon in May this year, which stipulates that the country will prevent Syrian refugees from travelling to Europe in return for a financial injection of €1 billion. Amidst Israel’s escalating military strikes against Lebanon, aid organisations are warning that this agreement was also paving the way for further human rights violations.
Last week, a so-called Hospital Reform program was adopted in the Bundestag. The bill will facilitate the widespread closure of clinics and significantly worsen the provision of general healthcare.
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach prior to the weekly cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, February 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Michael Sohn]
The ruling coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP) prevailed in the vote. Voting in favor of the bill were 374 deputies, with 285 against and one abstention. The opposition parties—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Left Party and deputies of the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW)—had announced their intention to oppose the bill prior to the vote.
All the opposition parties basically agree on the need to reduce the number of hospitals and care services. Disagreements about the issue mainly concern financing, with some of the parties of the opinion that the new measures do not go far enough. The reform still has to pass Germany’s second house, the Bundesrat. Although it does not require approval in principle, it can be delayed in the Bundesrat mediation committee.
Germany’s Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) left no doubt about the objective of the reform. In an interview with Bild am Sonntag, he stated, “It is quite clear that in ten years at the latest we will have a few hundred hospitals less.” Allegedly, there is “no medical need” for these clinics. According to Lauterbach, one in three beds already lie empty, and there are not enough staff.
In fact, the vacancy rate is not due to a lack of medical demand. It is due to the disastrous austerity policies of recent decades, which have ensured that many clinics today suffer from an acute shortage of staff and serious financial problems. According to current estimates, there could be around 80 clinic insolvencies by the end of the year. This has been a long time coming and could have been prevented with appropriate public funding.
The reform that has now been adopted is accelerating the process of closure. The key points of the law are flat-rate fees and service groups. The flat-rate fees supplement expands the flat-rate payments that continue to apply. In the future, up to 60 percent of hospital financing will be based on these flat rates, the exact amount of which is determined by the hospital’s facilities. For this purpose, 65 service groups (such as cardiology, oncology) have been defined. Treatments can only be billed if the clinic has been assigned to the corresponding service group and has the prescribed, usually very expensive, equipment and appropriately qualified personnel.
Cost pressure and chronic underfunding remain and are being enshrined in law because flat rates per case will continue to exist and, in addition, the conditions for reserve funding must be met. Furthermore, the years 2023 and 2024 have been set as index years for the reserve budget. This means that the budget will not be adjusted even if the number of cases increases.
Numerous experts point out that the combination of flat rates per case and reserve financing is insufficient to finance the number of hospitals necessary to meet demand. The chairman of the German Hospital Federation (DKG), Gerald Gaß, noted that “neither the basic care hospitals in rural areas are stabilized, nor the concentration of highly specialized treatments in centers” are being supported.
Large parts of the reform’s financing remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that a large share of the costs will be covered directly by statutory health insurance contributions, i.e., by the insured. It is assumed that the compulsory contribution rate will increase by at least 0.8 percent in the coming year. However, depending on the health insurance company, the increase could be much higher.
At the same time, the reform increases pressure on hospitals to make cuts. To this end, the hospital reform allows different hospitals to merge by the end of 2030 without any proper legal review. This is stated in the final amendments to the law proposed by the government. Around 50 changes were made to the law right up to the end.
In future, an exception to merger control under the Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB) is to be regulated for the merger of clinics. This is intended to achieve the goals of the hospital reform program more quickly. In the past, mergers have enabled providers to close or merge individual areas and thus save on personnel. However, some mergers were rejected for antitrust reasons. Mergers in the hospital sector are now being fully deregulated.
This will further increase the number of layoffs at hospitals. Already, the tense financial situation is leading to more and more layoffs at hospitals, while doctors and nursing staff are already working at their limits.
Recently, the Jewish Hospital Berlin (JKB) laid off 74 nursing assistants, some of whom have been employed there for over 30 years and make up almost 20 percent of the nursing staff. The management of the JKB justified this step with a deteriorating economic situation.
With the entry into force of the GKV Stabilization Act, which was passed in 2022, the financing of nursing staff is to be reorganized. Nursing assistants without appropriate training are no longer to be retained, although they carry out important tasks such as providing meals, cleaning and relieving the workload of nursing professionals.
According to press releases, the JKB wants to compensate for these services in part by external providers whose employees are not subject to JKB contracts. Cynically, management recommended that the dismissed employees apply to the external service provider. However, the majority of the work will certainly be passed on to the remaining nursing staff.
This is an example of the role played by the Verdi public service trade union. In January, Verdi announced that it had “fought” for a contract that would improve working conditions for employees. It allegedly included significantly improved staffing levels and a compensation system offering compensation in the form of compensatory days off or bonus payments. In fact, as in other clinics, this is nothing more than window dressing to pacify the employees at JKB.
The Regioned clinics in Bavaria are another example. Here, redundancies are pending after three sites are taken over by the Sana clinic group. The exact number of redundancies has not yet been officially announced, but it is estimated to be between 150 and 200.
At Gesundheit Nord, a municipal hospital group, 120 physician posts are to be cut—80 of them at the Bremen-Mitte clinic and 40 at the Bremen-Ost clinic. Once again the poor economic situation was cited as the reason. Bremen’s senator for health, Claudia Bernhard (Left Party), is considered a strict advocate of radical austerity measures in the healthcare sector and explicitly supports Lauterbach’s hospital reform.
