UK Conservative government proposes tax increases on workers to fund National Health Service

Ajanta Silva 

This week, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the National Health Service (NHS) will receive a further £20 billion in funding. While the funding sources remains vague, with an unspecified “Brexit dividend” being cited as one source, any such increase is not set to be implemented until 2023-2024.

What is clear is that millions of workers will face large tax increases to pay for any increase. The NHS is relied on by more than 60 million men women and children and paid for through taxation.

May announced that in order to fund the NHS, “we will all need to make a greater contribution through the tax system in a way that is fair and balanced.” The Financial Times reported that Chancellor Philip Hammond is to oversee the proposal and that “nothing is off the table” for him.

The announcement follows months of propaganda that only on the basis of a huge increase in the taxing of working people can the NHS’s long-term funding crisis be resolved.

“Solutions” mooted include introducing charges to use NHS services as standard, replacing publicly run services with an insurance-based system, and introducing a dedicated tax to fund the NHS.

The common theme of these solutions is that any necessary funding increase should fall on to the shoulders of the working class, not the wealthy elite. This, as the British super-rich have tripled their wealth in the 10 years since the global financial crash, while workers on average earn £24 less per week than they did before the 2007-2008 global financial crash and the onset of mass austerity.

More than a trillion pounds—enough to run the NHS for almost a decade—was spent to bail out the banks during the financial meltdown by the then-Labour Party government.

The richest 1,000 individuals now possess wealth, not including bank balances, of £724 billion and have increased their riches by a massive 10 percent on average in the last year alone. These hundreds of billions would pay for the NHS’s current annual budget of £116 billion more than six times over.

The demand that workers pay more tax to fund the NHS is in sharp contrast to the tax breaks for the rich, including the slashing of Corporation Tax by successive Tory governments since 2014. By 2020, it will have fallen from 20 percent to 17 percent, with the aim of reducing it to a level such as that in Ireland of 12.5 percent.

But there are no demands that the super-rich hand over any of their ill-gotten gains to fund the NHS.

Instead, a report, “Securing the future: funding health and social care to the 2030s,” authored by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Health Foundation charity—in association with the NHS Confederation, representing 240 trusts in England—demanded increasing workers’ taxes. The report proposes a massive tax increase to the tune of £1,200-£2,000 per household over the next 15 years.

The IFS/Health Foundation point to the growing demand on services and the financial crisis engulfing in the NHS. They note that “with the older population growing rapidly, along with the numbers suffering chronic health problems, and a growing pay and drugs bill, demands on the health service will only continue to grow.”

They predict that in order “to secure some modest improvements in NHS services, funding increases of nearer 4% a year would be required over the medium term, with 5% annual increases in the short run. This would allow some immediate catch-up, enable waiting time targets to be met, and tackle some of the underfunding in mental health services.”

Even to continue with something like the current funding arrangements, the report says that “adult social care spending is likely to have to rise by 3.9% a year over the next 15 years taking an extra 0.4% of national income, relative to today.”

They conclude that overall, “[H]ealth and social care spending is likely to have to rise by 2–3% of national income over the next 15 years.”

What this means is clear: If people want to retain the NHS and care system, be prepared to pay more for it. Otherwise, services will continue to be slashed to the bone.

The report was effusively welcomed by representatives of all the main parties and the corporate media and hailed as the only possible way to fund the NHS.

A number of right-wing Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs demanded May commit to increasing tax on workers to fund the NHS, claiming that there is public support for this measure.

MP Dr. Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative chair of the health and social care select committee, Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats’ former care minister, and Liz Kendall, the Blairite former shadow care minister, said, “As a cross-party group of MPs who have come together to campaign for a new settlement for the NHS and the care system, we wholeheartedly endorse this analysis.

“We call for the government to accept the case for meeting the ambitious scenario which would deliver a modernised NHS. It sets a benchmark against which to judge any announcements from the government about extra funding for the NHS and social care as we approach the 70th anniversary of this great institution.”

Writing for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf said, “Public spending on health (and grossly underfunded social care) must rise in the years ahead. Politicians must discuss higher taxation. Anything else is an evasion,” He asserted that “to help the discussion, we have the benefit of a superb new report.”

Wolf warned, “[T]he decision to fund health though taxation was a perfectly reasonable one. Political cowardice is no reason for refusing to live up to the evident consequences.”

The Guardian editorialised, “Politicians of all stripes have for too long avoided confronting hard truths about rising demand for health services and how to meet the cost”. It praised May for earlier starting a necessary conversation with her plan to reform social care financing—then dubbed as dementia tax.

Increasing the taxes of workers, many already pauperised, to fund the NHS is to continue as more avenues are opened for the big private health care, pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies to make far greater profits from the NHS—of which a substantial chunk has already been privatised.

In 2016-2017 alone, 70 percent of the £7.1 billion worth of NHS clinical contracts awarded through the market tendering process in England were scooped up by private firms. This brings the total value of contracts awarded through the market to around £25 billion, since the Health and Social Care Act (2012) came into force.

The central responsibility for the financial crisis tearing apart the NHS is its massive underfunding over the last decade. The IFS documents: “Health spending has risen by an average 3.7% a year in real terms since the NHS was founded 70 years ago. At 1.4% a year, spending growth over the last eight years has been slower than at any time in the NHS’s history.”

Since May’s predecessor David Cameron ushered in the “age of austerity” in 2009, the Tories have imposed record low levels of funding for public health care. Since 2010, tens of billions of pounds have been slashed from the NHS budget in efficiency savings as part of plans to save nearly £50 billion between 2010 and 2020. The first £20 billion in savings was drawn up at the behest of the last Labour government of Gordon Brown. These have crippled front-line services and put patient safety and care in jeopardy.

May’s proposal will see these cuts continue, with her pledge for a “plan that tackles wastes, reduces bureaucracy, and eliminates unacceptable variation, with all these efficiency savings reinvested back into patient care.”

In recent years, social care spending has fallen by 10 percent as a result of deliberate starving of funds by Tory-led governments, despite the growing demand for these services and the most vulnerable people in society not receiving the appropriate level of support and care.

Key waiting-time targets for elective surgery, cancer treatment, investigation and Accident and Emergency performance have not only been missed but gone from bad to worse. Many patients who are medically fit for discharge are compelled to languish in hospitals due to lack of social care and support in the community. Hospital bed occupancy rates have reached dangerous levels. A year earlier, the crisis engulfing the NHS was aptly described by the Red Cross as a “humanitarian crisis.”

Staff shortages are becoming more acute and dangerous for patient safety despite bogus government claims that they have increased staffing levels. In England alone, there is a shortage of 40,000 nurses. The UK has fewer practising doctors per 1,000 people than many other European Union countries.

Trump administration plans sweeping government restructure to cut social programs

Matthew Taylor

The Trump administration announced on Thursday its intention to restructure the federal government as part of a reactionary initiative to eliminate food stamps, housing aid and other forms of social assistance that millions of Americans rely upon.

The proposed reorganization of federal agencies and cabinet departments includes the merger of the Department of Labor and the Department of Education (ED) into a single entity to be called the Department of Education and the Workforce. This would allow the administration to reduce or eliminate many job training programs, workplace protections and student aid programs.

Established in 1980 at the end of the Carter administration, the ED has long been a target of conservative politicians. President Ronald Reagan attempted to eliminate the agency in the 1980s but was blocked by Congress. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry famously called for the elimination of the department during the 2012 presidential campaign along with the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy, which he now leads.

With only 4,000 employees and a budget of some $70 billion dollars, ED is one of the smallest cabinet-level agencies in the federal government. Upon taking office Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to head the agency. The billionaire DeVos, whose husband is heir to the Amway fortune and whose brother, Eric Prince, is the founder of the notorious Blackwater mercenary group, has made a career of attacking public education.

Before taking office, DeVos, along with her family, spearheaded the attack on public education in the state of Michigan, where she hails from, and nationwide. They have spent tens of millions sponsoring legislation which would enable the privatization of public schools, eliminate protections for teachers—including the right to strike—and enable religious organizations to play a prominent role in public education.

Trump’s appointment of DeVos to head the agency at the outset of his administration was a clear signal to the various billionaire-funded think tanks and political action committees that he endorses their agenda of privatization. Now with his attempt to merge the Departments of Labor and Education, he is indicating to those same forces his intent to eliminate public assistance altogether.

The Department of Labor, with a budget of $12.2 billion and 14,400 employees, currently oversees a host of programs, including federal Unemployment Insurance, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, as well as programs covering workers’ compensation, veterans’ employment, workplace protections for the disabled, and other worker protection agencies.

All of these programs, however ineffective they may be, represent an obstacle to the more efficient exploitation of workers by big business.

Also set to be shifted from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to the Department of Commerce is the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant Program, which funds various housing programs for low-income people. The rationale behind this move, according to an anonymous Republican advisor quoted by the New York Times, is that career bureaucrats within HUD may be too sympathetic to the recipients of this funding and that Department of Commerce officials would be more likely to effect its elimination.

Most significantly, the administration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, would be moved from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Health and Human Services, which would be renamed the Department of Health and Public Welfare, paving the way for the elimination of SNAP benefits.

The elimination or reduction of SNAP benefits is a long-held ambition of Republican lawmakers, who have been foiled in past attempts to destroy the program due to the fact that its funding is provided through the Food Bill, legislation passed by Congress every five years which in addition to providing SNAP benefits to low income citizens also authorizes the vast subsidies upon which the US agricultural sector relies upon to remain competitive in the global market.

Because many Republican lawmakers have traditionally relied upon the vote of farmworkers in so-called “red states” it has been necessary to preserve the SNAP program in order to maintain the provision of subsidies to farmers. Trump’s proposed change would eliminate that obstacle.

Food assistance benefits have already been heavily eroded by various state legislatures which administer the federal program—especially over the past decade. This typically includes setting income thresholds so low that only the poorest workers are eligible, placing a time limit on how long an individual can collect benefits, and most recently instituting work requirements on beneficiaries of the program.

The branding of the new agency as the Department of Health and Public Welfare is in itself an attempt to make the programs the agency administers more vulnerable to elimination. For decades politicians from both capitalist parties have used the term “welfare,” which refers to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, as an epithet. Insofar as they have been successful in attacking welfare, it is due to the fact that TANF, like SNAP and other social assistance programs, is only available to the very poorest citizens. This deprives millions of struggling workers of benefiting from these programs and creates a political wedge upon which the ruling class can divide workers who share a common class interest.

Just as with Trump’s moves last year to render Medicaid ineffective by allowing the states to institute work requirements, charge premiums for coverage,and institute other measures to prevent Americans from benefiting from the social programs that were conceded to them through decades of struggle, his latest attempt at social regression is of a similar character.

Where social programs can be eliminated, they will be. Where they cannot, onerous work requirements will be attached to them to make them inaccessible to the majority of the population and ineffective for the few who do qualify. All of these actions are a prelude to the ultimate goal, the liquidation of Social Security and Medicare and the transfer of the assets of these programs into the hands of the Wall Street parasites in whose interests the US political system operates.

Trump’s proposed restructuring would require the approval of Congress, a tall order in an election year. Though Trump’s plan is in keeping with the long-held aims of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the political blowback may prevent enough Republican legislators from supporting it to prevent its passage. Just as with Bill Clinton’s destruction of “welfare as we know it” and Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act—perhaps the two most reactionary pieces of domestic legislation passed in recent decades—Trump’s plan may ultimately require a Democratic politician to push it through.

Trade war and the eruption of economic nationalism

Nick Beams

One year ago, there was a conflict in major international economic bodies over the refusal of the United States to include a commitment to “resist protectionism” in communiqués and statements.

The phrase had been regularly invoked by international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the G20 in response to the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008. Indeed, the leaders of the major capitalist powers regularly congratulated themselves over the following years that, in response to the most significant economic breakdown since the Great Depression, they were not going down the path of the 1930s.

The lessons of history had been learned, they claimed, and there would be no repeat of the trade war and other protectionist measures that played a key role both in deepening the Depression and creating the conditions for the eruption of World War II.

Twelve months after the outbreak of the war of words, what is the situation?

The United States, invoking “national security,” has imposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on steel and aluminium imports from the European Union, Canada, and Japan. The EU will today impose retaliatory tariffs, and Canada is likewise preparing to impose tariffs on the United States.

Next month the US will start to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, directed at high-tech products, with threats to impose imposts on a further $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, and the possibility of tariffs on an additional $200 billion after that if China goes ahead with its threat to retaliate.

The key issue in the conflict with China is not primarily the US trade deficit—the US has rejected moves by China to increase its imports from America—but the moves by Beijing to enhance its industrial and technological capacities under its Made in China 2025 plan. The US regards this perspective as a threat to both its economic and military supremacy.

In a comment published in the Wall Street Journal this week, Peter Navarro, Trump’s White House economic adviser, made clear that what he called “Beijing’s audacious plan to dominate emerging technology industries” would not be tolerated, that China’s investment in “strategic technologies” posed “the gravest risk to “America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base” and that “economic security is national security.”

In other words, the economic warfare being conducted by the United States is bound up with the drive to reduce China to the status of an economic semi-colony and this agenda will be imposed by military means if necessary.

The trade war measures being imposed by the US against both its “strategic allies” and what it calls its “strategic competitor,” China, are, from the standpoint of the development of man’s productive forces, totally irrational.

In the more than eight decades since the disastrous tariff and currency wars of the 1930s, the global economy has become a far more profoundly integrated organism with virtually every commodity the product of a vast and complex international division of labour in which many components of products cross international border several times before emerging in their final form.

But the very irrationality of the US measures, imposed under the banner of “Make America Great Again,” does not mean there will be some pull back.

On the contrary, as Trotsky observed some 80 years ago, while the prospect of harmonious economic development on a nationalist foundation was completely impossible, the economic nationalism of an authoritarian or fascist state was a “menacing reality insofar as it is a question of concentration all the economic forces of the nation for the preparation of a new war.” These measures signified that a new world war was “knocking at the gates.”

Trotsky’s warnings resonate in the current international political situation. In every country, the precepts of liberal democracy are being torn apart amid the re-emergence of the authoritarian and fascist forms of rule that characterised the 1930s. Today, as in that period, “Everyone defends himself against everybody else, protecting himself by a customs wall and a hedge of bayonets.”

As the WSWS outlined in yesterday’s perspective, there is now a global war against immigrants. In the United States, Gestapo-like raids are being launched with the use of language against immigrants that recalls that of the Nazi regime in Germany. European politics is being dominated by the rise of increasingly right-wing and fascistic movements—in Germany, Italy, Hungary and elsewhere—speaking with the voice of those who carried out the worst crimes of the 20th century.

The fact that the breakdown of the entire economic order and its attendant political consequences is being spearheaded by the United States—the supposed guarantor of international stability—is of the most profound historical significance.

The launching of trade war and the return to economic nationalism is the outcome of deep and irresolvable contradictions within the global capitalist system above all that between the global character of the economy and the division of the world into rival nation-states and great powers, struggling against each other for markets and profits.

In the final years of the 1930s and into the war years, key sections of the US political establishment drew the conclusion that any return to the nationalist policies of that decade would bring about an economic disaster and create the conditions for socialist revolution. This understanding was the basis for the construction of the post-war order based on the promotion of free trade and the renunciation of protectionist and beggar-thy-neighbour economic measures.

Rather than seeking to crush its former economic and strategic rivals, the US sought to promote their economic growth through measures such as the Bretton Woods monetary agreement, the Marshall Plan and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. These policies were not carried out on the basis of any US benevolence but were grounded in calculated self-interest—the recognition that the economic advance of the US depended on the expansion of the world economy as a whole.

These conceptions formed the basis of the post-war economic order. But the very growth of the world economy steadily undermined the dominant position of the US within the world economy. In the past 30 years, the globalisation of production has accelerated this tendency. Now the US is confronted not only with the increasing economic power of its old rivals, Europe and Japan, but the emergence of a new “strategic competitor” in the form of China.

Sections of the US ruling elite came to conclude that rather than enhancing the position of the United States, the very post-war system it had constructed was now undermining it. This assessment did not begin with the Trump administration but formed the centre of the international economic policies of the Obama administration. It insisted that a new system had to be constructed, based not on multilateralism, but on the establishment of a new regime which placed the US at the centre of a network of global economic relations.

This was the nationalist core of the Obama administration’s proposal for a Trans-Pacific Partnership, excluding China and Obama’s corresponding plans for Europe.

While Trump scrapped both these plans, the economic nationalism which formed their essential content, has now been developed and expanded in even more virulent form. The aim is to re-establish the economic dominance of the US by any means necessary: the prosecution of trade war, economic nationalism, accompanied necessarily by increasingly authoritarian measures, and the assertion of American military might in every corner of the world.

Even as they criticise Trump’s imposition of tariffs on the United States’ NATO allies, the Democrats have loudly praised the US president’s trade war measures against China, and even demanded their expansion. The bipartisan support for these policies makes clear that trade war and protectionism is not merely a product of Trump, but of American capitalism.

There are those who vainly hope that somehow, in some way, in the face of the madness of trade war and economic nationalism the US can be made to see reason and at least undertake a course correction, if not a reversal. This is an illusion. There can be no return to the past because the economic foundations on which it was based have been shattered.

The only way out of the breakdown of the global capitalist system and all the attendant horrors it is producing, is the unified struggle of the international working class for political power and the socialist transformation of the world.

Living by One’s Own Truth: Capitalism equals Corruption

Anandi Sharan

Small and marginal farmers, sharecroppers, landless labourers and other farm and forest workers in India are the single largest natural resource being exploited for capitalist accumulation in India.

The market pays the manual work of those who produce their own food and that of others at below social reproduction cost.

This is a fundamental market failure in relation to the majority of human beings in India. The manual labourer in India is given rations in the form of Public Distribution Service food by the State in order that capital is free to take everything from the land and people and grow at the cost of everything else.

The growth of capital is at the cost of the humans who work with their hands, as well as at the cost of animals and plant biodiversity.

100% of biota today is appropriated by capital. There is no wilderness. The number of mammals has reduced by 70% in the last 50 years. What remains are workers, the last bio-mass of any mass other than ants on earth, to be exploited for capital in its latest avatar of globally networked electronic-financial-exploitation-machines run on algorithms to maximise the financial income of the capitalists sitting at the centre of the web.

An association of independent producers generally has a vision of a market that serves the producer, allowing her to retain at least enough from her surplus production of food, wood, etc to earn money and save wood enough build an own home within five years of starting work. She rightly should be able to expect to contribute to a network of such producers in her region to allow her to buy the services of transport systems that allows her to visit relatives and friends within India and abroad from the income earned from her productive work at least a few times a year. Other basic needs can be added to the list of minimum expectations any producer should be able to work towards in her life and work. This matriarchal vision is that all human beings should, according to the paradigm of the unilateral drawing from the world that a mother does when she nurtures her children, be able to draw what she needs from the world to create the world anew everyday in full harmony with others and her surroundings. But the vision is the opposite of the reality.

The exploitative nature of the Indian State is illustrated by the plethora of laws passed by the Indian Parliament that protect banks rather than agriculturists. Instead of protecting the market for the work product of Indian agricultural and forest workers, the State protects the profit of banks. To avoid mass starvation deaths as a consequence of this capitalist legal framework, the majority of Indians are given food rations by the State in order to keep us as a reserve army of labour for global capital. Indian capital itself is created by commercial banks owned majorly but not exclusively by the State for the benefit of global capital. Indian capitalists must pay 12% to borrow money to hire workers. Indian agriculturists must pay the same interest rate for working capital, or more in case they are not “bankable”. And the solution to this totally anti-worker money system of high interest and debt in India according to the United Nations, the Group of Seven, the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, and all the other institutions of the Washington consensus, including the Indian Finance Ministry, Niti Aayog, and the Reserve Bank of India, is for India to borrow part of the 76 trillion US dollars swirling around in the global economy at interests rates lower than Indian ones. And this is what is going on. The Modi Government like the Manmohan Singh Government before it has an economic policy based on the import of capital into India, with the attendant outflow of repayments and interest and loss of monetary sovereignty of India. Fascist Governments such as these are in the ascendant across the world.

To conclude: the struggle for justice by agricultural workers and unemployed labourers in India in our demands for economic and political arrangements that meets our needs within the framework of the Indian constitution, is the sine qua non of the survival of the human species and most other higher living organisms on earth.

Trees will survive and thrive when capitalism ends no matter what. But unless we humans overthrow capitalism and put the peace, happiness and harmony of each and everyone of us at the heart of our economic and political actions, most of us will die very unhappy, and ill, and malnourished in the coming decades.

The Catholic Church in Resistance: Priests, Child Abuse, and Breaking the Seal of the Confessional

Binoy Kampmark

The tradition is represented as noble, the confiding link between confessor and penitent, a bridge never to be broken, even under pain of death.  Taken that way, the confessional is brandished as the Catholic Church’s great weapon against the wiles and predations of secular power.  The State shall have no say where the priest’s confidence is concerned, for all may go to him to seek amends.  “The sacramental seal,” goes the relevant code of canon law, “is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for the confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.”

Those points certainly have merits, even if these seem a touch faded after the sex abuse imbroglio the Church has found itself in.   Confession, which functions as a barometric reading of Catholic guilt, has developed its own succour and relish, an ecosystem of ritual and understanding resistant to the prying of the criminal law.  Not merely does its ironclad protection provide a dispensation from the laws of the land in certain troubling cases; the confession, in effect, serves as an economy of ordered guilt, reassurance for the next binge of sin. To remove it, or at the very least heavily qualify it, would be an unsettling challenge to a distinct Weltanschauung.

The process effectively permits all – including erring priests – to engage the process from either side of the grille. Historically, the process also imperilled children.  Pope Pius X, in decreeing in 1910 that confession should commence at the tender age of seven, permitted an army of celibates access to vulnerable, an in certain instances titillating flesh.

Legislators troubled by the enduring force and fascination with the seal of the confessional have gotten busy, most notably in Australia.  This was prompted, in no small part, by the findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. “We are satisfied,” went the Australian report, “that confession is a forum where Catholic children have disclosed their sexual abuse and where clergy have disclosed their abusive behaviour in order to deal with their own guilt.”

One recommendation specifies that institutions “which have a religious confession for children should implement a policy that requires the rite only to be conducted in an open space within the clear line of sight of another adult.” But the members of the Royal Commission went beyond the spatial logistics of the confessional.  Institutional jolting was required.

Each state and territory government, argued Commission members, should pass legislation creating “a criminal offence of failure to report targeted at child sexual abuse in an institutional context”.  This, it was suggested, would extend to “knowledge gained or suspicions that are or should have been formed, in whole or in part, on the basis of information disclosed in or in connection with a religious confession.”  The law would also exclude existing excuses, protections or privileges.

Despite treading delicately, such recommendations were not merely matters for demurral by the Church, but considerations to be sneered at from the summit of spiritual snobbery.  President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart reduced the matter to one of neat sophistry veiled by religious freedom.  “Confession in the Catholic Church,” he reasoned in August last year, “is a spiritual encounter with God through the priest” being “a fundamental part of the freedom of religion”.

Hart’s protestations did not go heeded in the South Australian legislature, making it the first in Australia to legally oblige priests to report confessions of child abuse from October 1.  Omitting to do so will result in a fine of $10,000.  Bishop of Port Pirie and acting Adelaide Archbishop Greg O’Kelly, much in Hart’s vein, saw the move as having “much wider implications for the Catholic Church and the practice of the faith.” Such comments could only come across as archaic and insensitive, given the conviction of his predecessor, Archbishop Philip Wilson, for concealing child sex abuse.

More to the point, the remarks by Bishop O’Kelly are brazenly selfish, permitting the priest an all-exclusive gold card for reasons of amendment, “that the penitent actually is sincere about wanting forgiveness, is sincere about anting reparation”.  The conspicuous absentee here is the victim, always abstracted, if not totally hidden, by matters of the spirit.

While accounts such as John Cornwell’s, whose stingingly personal The Dark Box makes the sensible point that abolishing the confession and its lusty pull would essentially address the problem, the Church is already finding fewer penitents.  In a sense, it is already losing the appeal, the allure, and even the danger, of the confessional.  Musty physical convention has given way to digital releases and outpouring.  Social media, crowned by the confessional fetish that is Facebook, takes the disturbed soul and expresses it to the globe.

From the vacuity of the Kardashian phenomenon to the newly enlisted grandparent keen to reflect on banal deeds, these platforms have stolen an irresistible march on those in the land of Catholicity.  Such confessions of sin or achievement – the distinctions are not always clear – have become the preserve of Mark Zuckerberg and his technicians, rather than a local priest desperate to remain relevant. But that age old resistance against the laws of the civic secular domain remains the Church of Rome’s stubborn, practised specialty. The elusive spirit, in dialogue with an unverified Sky God, continues to be its invaluable alibi for crimes of the flesh.

Outrage in Russia over pension reform

Clara Weiss

Last Thursday, the Russian Labor Ministry submitted a bill to the Duma (parliament) that raises the retirement age for men to 65 from 60 and women to 63 from 55. The bill was intentionally submitted the first day of the FIFA World Cup, when Russia played against Saudi Arabia at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. The law, which still has several legislative processes to go through, is widely expected to be adopted in the fall. Ninety-two percent of the population oppose the measure, according to polls.

Because of low life expectancy for substantial segments of the population, the increase in the retirement age will mean that large numbers of Russia’s workers will not live long enough to see a pension. Although life expectancy, which dropped dramatically during capitalist restoration in the 1990s, has been rising over the past 18 years and now stands at 72.5 years, only 57 percent of Russian men live until the age of 65.

In 62 out of 85 regions of the Russian Federation, the average life expectancy for men is below 65 years. In 3 of them it is below 60. It is particularly low in many industrial jobs, including coal mining and the metallurgical and chemical industries. Women in Russia, whose life expectancy stands at 77.06 years, outlive their male counterparts by more than 10 years.

The pension reform bill will jack up the retirement age for a number of special-category workers who have hitherto been able to stop working sooner. This includes those employed in the far north, for whom the retirement age will increase from 50 for women and 55 for men to 58 and 60 years, respectively.

The average pension in Russia, 13,300 rubles ($210), is so low that 17 million out of the 47 million pensioners in Russia at this point are still working, the majority of them in low-paying jobs. However, in many professions it is close to impossible to find employment after one’s mid-50s. The pension reform will mean that many older people, unable to find work and ineligible to receive a pension, will become unemployed and entirely dependent on their family and friends helping them financially. The unemployed receive virtually no state support in Russia.

The average salary in Russia is currently around 35,900 rubles ($567), with real incomes having declined some 11 percent over the past 4 years. To support an additional family member on such poverty wages will push already poor families into destitution. According to official statistics, some 19.6 million Russians, about 13.4 percent of the population, now live in extreme poverty. They have to survive on 9,828 rubles (less than $174) a month. Millions more are living on the brink of extreme poverty, cannot afford to travel for vacation, or buy new clothes.

The raising of the retirement age, discussed for years within the ruling elites, is the most far-reaching assault on the living standards of the population since the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s. Part of the ongoing reshuffling of wealth from the population to the country’s super-rich oligarchy, the move is also part of the Kremlin’s overtures to international finance capital, which has long demanded that the government ax social expenditures.

The Russian government has remained markedly vague about its precise plans. However, it is widely believed that the measure is based on the proposal of the Center for Strategic Research, headed by former finance minister Alexei Kudrin. Kudrin is a close confidant of President Putin. He is an important link between the Presidential administration and more openly pro-imperialist forces actively working for a negotiated settlement between imperialism and Russian big business.

It remains unclear whether the retirement age will be raised gradually over the next 15 years, or all at once, as one deputy of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation recently argued.

Experts have called the increase in the retirement age a blatant act of “confiscation” of the population’s wealth. According to calculations by Maksim Krivelevich, who teaches at the School of Economics and Management of the Far-Eastern Federal State University, the state will effectively steal 1 million rubles ($16,000) from every working woman and 1.5 million rubles ($24,000) from every working man. The money, earned by workers over decades and paid into the government-run pension system, is being re-directed into the state budget, which is regularly used to bailout oligarchs and banks hit by the recent Western sanctions and economic crisis.

As of this writing, over 2.15 million people have signed a petition initiated by the Confederation of Labor of Russia (KRT) at the end of last week and addressed to the President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, and the Federal Assembly demanding that the pension “reform” not be enacted.

In comments on the petition, many workers expressed their outrage and hatred of the ruling oligarchy and the government. To quote just a few comments:

•  “I was robbed by this country in 1991, in 1997, in 2008, I will not bear it any longer.”
  
•  “There is money for war, soccer, and “Mercedes” cars for officials, but not for pensions?”
  
•  “People will go on the barricades.”
  
•  “This is a genocide of the population. Let’s first introduce an average pension of 13,000 rubles for the government and State Duma, let them live on it for just half a year…Where will this army of 60-year olds work? People will just drop out of life without any help…”
  
•  “10 years remain before I retire. After this reform I won’t see my pension at all. And this after all the defaults, denominations, restructuring, liberalization of prices and other experiments that were done on us?”
  
•  “I would like to see who any of you and the president would survive just one year on our miserable salaries, at age 65!!!!!”
  
•  “We need a law on the complete confiscation [of wealth] from the nouveau riches.”
  
•  “We are already giving the state too much of our salaries, we’re paying taxes, heat is getting more expensive and so on and so forth, and now they also want to raise the retirement age, that is after you retire there will be even less time to manage to experience some joy and satisfaction…We have natural resources after all, and receive billions by selling them!!! But everything is going into the hands of a few dozen oligarchs, Putin’s “friends”!!! Let’s oppose this outrage!!!!”

The petition sponsored by the KRT is an attempt to control popular anger, as the Russian ruling elite fears a social explosion over the effects of the pension reform. For similar reasons, the right-wing leader of the so called liberal opposition, Alexei Navalny, announced that he would organize rallies against the reform starting July 1. In reality, Navalny’s program is entirely hostile to the working class. He speaks for political and social forces that are responsible for capitalist restoration and are now seeking closer collaboration with US imperialism.

Rolls-Royce to shed nearly 5,000 jobs in the UK

Barry Mason

Rolls-Royce, the UK-based aero engine manufacturer, is to reduce its worldwide workforce by around 10 percent, cutting 4,600 jobs over the next two years. The firm said it would not be able to avoid compulsory redundancies.

It is the biggest round of redundancies announced by the company since 2001. The company, which has been in existence more than 110 years, said job losses will take place across its international operations, with the majority in the UK.

The UK losses, approximately 3,000, will be concentrated at its headquarters in Derby, which currently employs around 15,700 people. Other jobs, particularly in corporate and support roles, will take place at the company’s second-biggest UK site in Bristol.

Instead of a campaign to mobilise its 22,000 members employed by Rolls-Royce to fight the cuts, Unite will facilitate whatever restructuring the company demands, as it has in the auto industry.

The Unite union is pledged to doing nothing to prevent the job losses, only stating its main concern was to prevent any damage to the functioning of Rolls-Royce: “There is a real danger that Rolls-Royce will cut deep and too fast with these job cuts, which could ultimately damage the smooth running of the company and see vital skills and experience lost.”

In its press release, Unite explained, “As part of a recent collective agreement with Rolls-Royce, Unite secured a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies. Unite said it would be seeking similar guarantees for its members affected by today’s announcement who were not covered by that collective agreement.”

Unite Assistant General Secretary for Aerospace Steve Turner said, “Over the coming days Unite will be working with Rolls-Royce, relevant agencies and other employers to find people affected alternative employment and to retain skills in the aerospace sector.”

Rolls-Royce said the cuts were “the next stage in our drive for pace and simplicity with a proposed restructuring that will deliver improved returns, higher margins and increased cash flow.” It would “support our long-term ambition to be the world’s leading industrial technology company.”

The cuts will “simplify the Group into three customer-focused business units,” and the “proposed restructuring will create smaller and more cost effective corporate and support functions and reduce management layers and complexity, including within engineering.”

This would allow a “healthier and dynamic organisation with clearer accountabilities, greater productivity and quicker decision-making.”

The company said that about a third of the announced job cuts will go by the end of 2018, and the jobs cull will “gain further momentum through 2019, with full implementation of headcount reductions and structural changes by mid-2020.”

The job cuts are the latest in a series at Rolls-Royce that have seen the loss of around 5,000 jobs in recent years.

In line with recent announcements by other companies, particularly in retail, the job losses will mainly hit middle management and support roles. In May, UK telecom company BT announced it would cut its workforce by around 12 percent, slashing 13,000 jobs in management and back office roles. A third of the losses will be overseas in BT’s Global Services division. Retail supermarket giants Tesco and Sainsbury’s, among others, are pushing through cuts in middle management to slim down their operations.

Warren East, on a £1.7 million salary, was appointed as Rolls-Royce CEO in April 2015 to reverse the company’s fortunes. He brought in turnaround specialists Alvarez and Marsal to carry out a six-month appraisal of the company. They examined every single part of the firm’s labour force productivity. The Financial Times quoted East saying, “Out of 18,000 job functions examined, 2,000 could simply be stopped. And there were 4,500 posts in a corporate centre that had ‘almost endless . . . rights’ to meddle in the business divisions, imposing extra cost for services they neither needed nor wanted.”

The restructuring plan, according to JPMorgan analysts, is expected to cost around £400 million to implement over three years but is projected to bring annual savings of around £200 million by 2020. It is also expected to allow a near £2 billion cash flow over the next five years to be able to invest in leading technology. Following the assessment, East confirmed the restructuring, first mooted in March, including the job losses.

Speaking to reporters, East said, “Rolls-Royce is at a pivotal moment in its history. We are poised to become the world leader in large aircraft engines. But we want to make the business as world class as our engineering and technology. We are proposing the creation of a much more streamlined organisation. We have to significantly reduce the size of our corporate centre, removing complexity and duplication that makes us too slow, uncompetitive and too expensive.”

The company’s job loss announcement immediately boosted its share price, with the stock market recording a 14 percent increase the day after. Share prices increased to over 1,000 pence a share, a level not reached since May 2015.

The UK aerospace industry is the fourth largest in the world, while Rolls-Royce is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of defence aero engines. Rolls-Royce faces stiff competition on an international scale, with America’s General Electric being one of its major competitors.

Rolls-Royce has had problems with its Trent 1000 engines manufactured for Boeings 787 Dreamliner planes, with turbine blades cracking and corroding, and other issues with compressors. This has forced airlines to ground the aircraft for checks to be carried out. With the busy summer holiday season beginning, some airlines have had to resort to leasing planes to make up the shortfall.

The problems with the Trent 1000 engines cut across the business model employed by Rolls-Royce. As Rolls-Royce has never made a profit on the sale of engines, it is forced to rely on long-term maintenance contracts to generate returns. It has poured massive resources into building reliable, highly technically efficient aero engines with the prospect of being able to earn an ongoing regular income through the monitoring and maintenance.

The Fina n cial Times noted that the restructuring is aimed at facilitating this strategy by “bringing down the costs of engine production and servicing by eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy.”

An Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) news article of November 14, 2017, featured an analysis by IMechE’s vice president, Ian Joesbury, explaining how the aerospace industry has become much more complex and competitive. He explained: “You’ve got to be leading edge in terms of your technology and really strong in terms of cost base and ability to deliver high quality, on time and in a cost-effective way.”

The article continued: “Another major change was the increasing focus on the aftermarket, with companies increasingly selling maintenance support as well as parts. Rolls-Royce was one of the first companies to explore this business model—rather than selling engines, its sells ‘time on wing’, with customers paying for the number of hours engines are actually operational.”

Joesbury added: “A lot of profit sits in the aftermarket, and a number of players are going aggressively after that. … [The] whole market has become much more dynamic. … It’s a much more complex environment now, which is much more challenging in terms of the margins that are available. …”

While not citing the problems with the Trent 1000 engines as part of the rationale behind the latest job cuts, it is obviously part of the mix.

Commenting on the record £4.6 billion loss announced by the company in 2017, the BBC reported in February 2017, “Many of Rolls-Royce’s older engines are being taken out service faster than its new engines are being taken up by newer planes. … [T]he newer engines will take longer to make a profit as the costs of development, testing and launch overshadow the early years of an engine’s life. The real gravy is the money to service them, which comes rolling in for many years at little additional cost. With several new engines launched recently those days are some way off.”

Fox accepts Disney takeover bid

Barry Grey

Control of the media and telecommunications industries by a handful of mega-monopolies received fresh impetus Wednesday with 21st Century Fox’s announcement that it had agreed to a revamped takeover offer from Walt Disney Company.

Disney, which already owns a film studio, the Disney Channel, ABC television, the ESPN sports network and other media holdings, upped its previous offer from $52.4 billion in stock to $71.3 billion in stock and cash, in response to a counter-offer by the cable TV giant Comcast estimated at $65 billion, all in cash.

21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch (net worth $15.9 billion) said Wednesday morning that Disney’s proposal was “superior” to that of Comcast, while making it clear that he would still consider bids from other companies, including a revised Comcast proposal.

Under the Disney-Fox agreement, Disney would acquire Fox’s 20th Century Fox film and TV studios, Fox’s FX cable channels and regional news stations, Fox’s stakes in international networks such as the UK’s Sky broadcaster and the Star India TV channel, and Fox’s one-third stake in Hulu, making Disney the majority owner of the streaming service.

Fox would retain Fox News, the Fox Sports national cable channels and the Fox broadcasting network. Those would be spun off into a company called “New Fox.”

Disney has $98.5 billion in total assets and a market value of $159.48 billion. It made $8.98 billion in profits in 2017. Its CEO, Bob Iger, received $36.3 million in compensation.

21st Century Fox has a market value of $89.7 billion. It made a $2.95 billion profit in 2017.

Comcast has a market capitalization of $151 billion. It took in $22.7 billion in profits and its chairman and CEO Brian Roberts received $32.5 million in compensation in 2017.

The Disney-Fox announcement comes a week after a federal judge in Washington rejected a suit by the Justice Department’s Anti-Trust Division to block or substantially pare back the takeover of Time Warner by AT&T. The judge refused to place any conditions on the $85 billion merger of the world’s largest telecommunications company with the owner of TV networks CNN, HBO, TBS and TNT, creating the largest vertically integrated content and distribution company on the planet.

The two firms closed the deal later in the week and the Justice Department has not indicated that it intends to appeal the ruling.

These massive moves toward consolidating control over every aspect of communications, entertainment and news—including the Internet, social media, film, TV and radio—and fusing control of content and distribution, have come in the wake of the termination of net neutrality. That sweeping attack on democratic rights enables Internet providers such as AT&T to legally discriminate against certain communications and websites.

These gigantic monopolies are closely integrated with the government, including the military and intelligence agencies. Their increasing stranglehold on communications heralds a vast intensification of the corporate-state censoring of the Internet that is already well underway.

The AT&T-Time Warner merger is a so-called “vertical merger,” involving firms that do not directly compete against one another, as opposed to the merger of Disney and 21st Century Fox, which is called a “horizontal merger.” Comcast, like AT&T a distribution company, made its bid for 21st Century Fox the day after the AT&T-Time Warner ruling, which is seen as a green light for similar vertical mergers in the telecom/media sector as well as other sectors.

Telecom giants and traditional cable companies are scrambling to acquire content producers to ward off a growing challenge from digital companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Netflix, which are increasingly producing their own programming.

The AT&T-Time Warner merger and the pending takeover of 21st Century Fox are the latest of a wave of telecom/media mergers in recent years. Comcast acquired NBC Universal in 2011. In recent months, Verizon has purchased the digital media companies AOL and Yahoo. T-Mobile and Sprint have announced a merger.

Together with a further monopolization of communications, the wave of mergers is increasing the control of the banks over the industry. In taking over Time Warner, AT&T incurred a huge debt, raising its total debt load to more than $180 billion. Last Friday, the ratings firm Moody’s announced that it would lower its rating on the merged company.

Comcast, which is widely expected to sweeten its offer for 21st Century Fox following Wednesday’s announcement, was already prepared to raise its debt burden to $170 billion to pay $65 billion in cash for the company.

This level of leveraging increases the dependence of the corporations on Wall Street and accelerates the process of financialization of the US and world economy, bringing with it a growth of parasitism and financial swindling. Wall Street banks are expected to take in $200 billion from the AT&T-Time Warner merger alone.

The entire process inevitably leads to major job cuts and intensified exploitation of the working class. Disney said Wednesday that it expected to realize “at least $2 billion in cost synergies by 2021 from operating efficiencies” resulting from the planned merger.

The wave of mergers in telecommunications and entertainment is part of a much broader process. The first quarter of this year set a quarterly record for mergers and acquisitions, and 2018 as a whole is expected to outstrip all previous years. Reuters reported Wednesday that so far this year up to and including June 15, M&A “mega deals,” those worth $5 billion or more, totaled $1.22 trillion, up 64 percent on the same period last year. They comprised a record 76 deals.

A huge vertical merger on the horizon is the takeover of insurance giant Aetna by the drug store chain CVS.

This rush of mergers is being fueled in part by the multi-trillion-dollar Trump administration tax cut for corporations and the rich passed last December. The increased profits flowing to US corporations are being used not to create good-paying jobs, raise wages or rebuild infrastructure, as promised, but rather to finance an explosion in stock buybacks, dividend increases and mergers and acquisitions. These parasitic operations increase the private wealth of the corporate-financial oligarchs at the expense of society’s productive forces and the living standards of the working class.

India-Indonesia and Sabang Port: A Game Changer?

Angshuman Choudhury


During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s May 2018 visit to Indonesia, New Delhi and Jakarta announced that they would set up a Joint Task Force to “undertake projects for port related infrastructure in and around” the Sabang island, located off the northern tip of the Sumatran islands at the northwestern entry point to the Malacca Strait. This came two weeks after Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs, Luhut Pandjaitan, who, during his official visit to New Delhi, stated that the port is fit to dock both shipping vessels and submarines. Pandjaitan’s statement, viewed in the context of Modi's Indonesia visit, has spurred well-founded speculations that India’s ‘acquisition’ of the Sabang port is driven not just by geoeconomic motivations as New Delhi has argued in its statements, but also from geostrategic ones.

The port, owing to its inherent geo-strategic location, cargo handling infrastructure, and the regional maritime trade setup, is better poised to be a strategic port than a full-fledged commercial one. Nonetheless, while the port is a crucial addition to India’s expanding footprint in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), but it cannot be viewed as a game changer yet. 

Strategic or Economic?
According to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, collaboration vis-a-vis the Sabang port flows from the primary impetus of “enhancing tourism, addressing issues of the blue economy including fisheries sector and [...] in terms of connectivity.” These are critical sectors of cooperation that could, theoretically, facilitate India's efforts to develop durable partnerships not just in the IOR but also in the Indo-Pacific region. 

However, it would be smarter for India to use the Sabang port for strategic objectives than mere commercial ones. The port, owing to its small size and distance from the core Indonesian hinterland and ASEAN economic powerhouses, is not conducive for long-haul maritime trade. On the other hand, Sabang’s distinct location, merely 90 nautical miles below the southernmost tip of India's Andaman & Nicobar (A&N) islands, gives it a critical strategic advantage of facilitating broader maritime reconnaissance in and around the Andaman Sea during peace time; preemptive blockading of the Malacca Strait during war time; and as a proximate base for additional strategic maneuvering in the eastern IOR flank. 

New Delhi would have to invest heavily to develop the current port into a full-fledged commercial port (than into a naval base) for heavy tonnage vessels. Moreover, the costs of transporting offloaded goods to high-value markets in the Indonesian and ASEAN hinterlands would be high. Developing Sabang into a transshipment node for Indian ships too would be a redundant venture as India already transships its goods in Colombo and Singapore, both of which collectively cover this trading sector optimally. However, the island already has an operational airport, which could simply be upgraded to allow military aircraft to land and refuel, thus ensuring functional strategic linkages with the Indonesian mainland. 

A Critical Maritime Node
The Sabang port venture is a timely boost to New Delhi’s geostrategic posturing across the IOR, and can serve as a crucial node for India’s geostrategic interests both in the IOR and the wider Indo-Pacific region. The 'acquisition' coheres with the joint blueprint that New Delhi and Jakarta have proposed, based on the idea of building a rules-based maritime order of regional security and stability. It also fits with Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR)–New Delhi's initiative aimed at turning India into the prime multilateral facilitator and security guarantor in the IOR.

Needless to say, Sabang is also aimed at counterbalancing the rapidly growing Chinese influence in the IOR, at least along the eastern sectors. Beijing's acknowledgement of Sabang's strategic value was reflected in a Global Times editorial, which reiterated the significance of the Malacca Strait to China’s “economic and energy security” and warned of “disastrous consequences” if India develops Sabang into a strategic base. China's presence in the IOR has rapidly proliferated over the past five years in the form of strategic and dual-use port deals in Djibouti, Tanzania, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and the Maldives. India’s deal with Oman for military use of Duqm port does not compare with similar deals China has with other countries. However, Sabang port can particularly complement India's A&N Command's capabilities in deterring Beijing’s power projections (through potential dual-use of ports in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, and Kyauk Phyu, Myanmar) across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman sea sectors. 

A Game Changer?
At present, Sabang is not posited as an anti-China entity in the IOR and its stated purpose is restricted to connectivity and trade. In that sense, the Sabang port deal is hardly antithetical to Beijing’s own stated idea of “reciprocity and mutual benefit” in the IOR.

Nonetheless, the port's real strategic value would depend on the level of cooperation other South and Southeast Asian IOR littoral states like Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia provide to India during times of crises. In this context, New Delhi has made some headway by promoting a nascent framework of strategic convergence in the IOR through inter-force coordination, joint maritime patrols, naval exercises, and real-time intelligence sharing with littoral states. Yet, New Delhi must not presume that smaller littoral countries would unconditionally back India in an event of confrontation with Beijing in the IOR. 

Moreover, given the absence of any extraterritoriality component in the port deal, India’s wartime activities from Sabang would be contingent on Jakarta’s sovereign oversight. Indonesia has already demonstrated its cautious geopolitical balancing act between New Delhi and Beijing, evident through overtures to both sides; and in terms of political, military, and economic leverage, the balance of power is tilted against India’s favour.

Finally, Sabang does have the potential to serve as a key nodal point for strategic collaboration within the India-US-Australia-Japan ‘Quad’ grouping. However, not much can be expected from this quasi-alliance in the near future. India’s interest in the Quad seems to be waning rapidly, and differences in views between other members on how to maintain status quo in the Indo-Pacific have hampered full-spectrum collaboration. 

Overall, it is too early to flag the Sabang port deal as a game changer in the current geostrategic landscape. However, it is a good start that could pave the way for a more constructive Indian presence in the IOR and by extension, in the Indo-Pacific. 

OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) Internship Programme for International Students 2018

Application Deadline: 1st October 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Austria

About the Award: In-line with the particular activities of the departments/units/group within OFID, the area of the program will include developmental economy; project financing; grants; financial management (investment/treasury and accounting/control); human resource; administration and protocol; public relation and information; legal; as well as information technology.

Type: Internship

Eligibility: The program is open to all applicants, between 20 and 30 years of age, university students who are about to graduate or who have just graduated from  university (undergraduate program), with preference given to citizens of OFID’s Member Countries (Please see the full list of OFID Member Countries).

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: As the program is intended to be a learning experience, the interns will not receive any remuneration whatsoever, including reimbursement of costs of visas, travel, accommodation and living expenses, as well as any transportation costs incurred in connection with their commuting to OFID’s Headquarters during the program.

Duration of Program: 3 months.

How to Apply: The selected candidate must be able to present a valid health or medical insurance policy in Austria or a similar arrangement under or in accordance with which the candidate will be fully medically covered during the duration of the program. S/he must also be requested to supply the following documents to be sent to personnel[at]ofid.org:

• An up-to-date curriculum vitae
• Copy of University Degree or equivalent OR an original letter of confirmation from a university/school certifying the enrolment of the applicant as an undergraduate student at the said university/school
• Copy of up-to-date university transcripts showing the cumulative GPA
•  A short essay in English (about 150-250 words) outlining the applicant’s motivation for seeking internship under the Program.

For the purpose of effectiveness, OFID will only accept applications from qualified candidates who complete the official online Internship Application Form.
You may find it helpful to print out a copy of the relevant Instructions for Completing the Internship Application before proceeding.
Complete and submit the online Internship Application.
All applications must be completed in English.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID)

U Revolution Media Fellowships for Health Journalists 2018

Application Deadline: 15th July, 2018 (11.59pm New York time).

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Fellowships can be done from anywhere in the world.

About the Award: U Revolution Media Fellowships are meant to support up-and-coming media talent, giving them a launchpad for their future careers. Pitch your ideas for raw, authentic stories about any health condition: from cancer, HIV/AIDS, and heart disease; mental illness, addiction or eating disorders; to MS and other mobility-affecting illnesses.

Type: Fellowship (Career)

Eligibility: A total of 4 Fellowships will be offered: one in each of the following categories.

> Revolutionary Writing Fellow: Do you just have a way with words? Can you make people laugh, cry, die slowly inside, or scream when you string words together? If yes, then the Revolutionary Writing Fellowship is for you. We are looking for a budding literary artist or journalist to join our first cohort.

> Revolutionary Visual Art Fellow: You see the world in pictures, and you think an image tells the story best. Whether through photos, cartoons, illustrations, paintings or graphic design, you know how to inspire emotion in people through imagery. If that’s you, you might be our next Revolutionary Visual Art Fellow.

> Revolutionary Podcast Fellow: You were most likely labeled “chatter-box” at school. And then one day, you realized that you really have a gift for telling narratives in innovative ways. You’ve been dying to create a health podcast that’s awkward, quirky, and real. Sound like you? Welcome to the cohort as our first Revolutionary Podcast Fellow.

> Revolutionary Video Fellow: You love creating pictures that move. You probably spend hours watching movies and documentary films, and have been thinking about creating something of your own. If you’re a budding videographer, be revolutionary and apply for our Video Fellowship.

Number of Awards: 4

Value of Award: Fellows will receive a €2,000 stipend (for the full period) to develop a creative work on the theme of awkward conversations that arise from chronic illness or disability to be published on urevolution.com. Fellows are required to specify how they will use their stipend in pursuit of their stories.

Duration of Programme: Fellowships last for a total of 6 months.

How to Apply: Apply for any 4 of the categories in the Programme Webpage (see link below)

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: U Revolution