UK: Review of Investigatory Powers Bill gives all-clear to mass surveillance

Trevor Johnson

A report commissioned by the UK Conservative government to review the “bulk” powers proposed in the Investigatory Powers Bill aims to bolster its argument in favour of mass spying and indiscriminate collection of personal data. It is nothing more than a cover for the real aim of the ruling elite—to increase the power of the state to monitor the population for any signs of potential threats to their interests.

The “Report of the Bulk Powers Review” by David Anderson QC, who is designated the “Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation,” was published August 19.

Together with his previous 2015 report, “A Question of Trust: Report of the Investigatory Powers Review,” the Bulk Powers Review was commissioned to ease the passage of the Bill (known as the “Snoopers’ Charter) into law. To facilitate this, Anderson is portrayed as an expert who is independent of both the government and state apparatus.

With virtually no media coverage, MPs in the House of Commons voted in June by 444 to 69 in favour of the Bill. It will now be discussed in the House of Lords and is likely to come into effect in January 2017.

Anderson is a Queens Counsel (senior barrister appointed on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor) and appointed “Independent Reviewer” in 2011 by then home secretary and now prime minister Theresa May.

Anderson came to public prominence earlier this year when he played a key role in a BBC Panorama documentary, Edward Snowden: Spies and the Law, which served as propaganda in favour of the spying carried out by the Government Communications Headquarters’ (GCHQ) on millions of people. Anderson spoke in favour of bulk data collection because there was “no way of predicting in advance in which packet of data, in which cable contains the incriminating information.”

In the documentary, Andersen also set the tone for his review, arguing that Internet service providers ought to retain Internet records for a year, so that they could be trawled through by the secret services. He declared that this was not itself a bulk power and would therefore not be investigated.

The team he picked to carry out the review speaks volumes about his role. To help him investigate the activities of the secret services were none other than former members of the secret services, including Robert Nowill, GCHQ’s former director of technology and engineering, and Gordon Meldrum, the National Crime Agency’s former director of intelligence.

The report is based on evidence given to these trusted establishment figures by GCHQ and the other spying agencies, MI5 and MI6. Case studies were clearly selected in order to strengthen the case for the bulk powers. For instance, one concerns a terrorist group in Syria responsible for hostage-taking and attempted attacks on UK nationals, which GCHQ claims could only be countered by “bulk equipment interference” (EI)—the hacking straight into the devices and systems of large numbers of innocent people, bypassing encryption measures, on the off chance unknown individuals or data are discovered. The device and data it contains can be remotely monitored, changed, infected or destroyed.

Unsurprisingly, their conclusion is that there is a “proven operational case” for three of the four bulk powers examined, and a distinct “though not yet proven” operational case for the fourth bulk power.

Anderson’s report claims bulk powers “play an important part in identifying, understanding and averting threats in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and further afield” including cyber-attacks, espionage and terrorism, child sexual abuse and organised crime.

His argument is that while mass surveillance represents a lessening of privacy, it is necessary for the sake of increased security. This flies in the face of the countless revelations that state spying is aimed at the general population that Anderson claims it should be protecting.

Anderson nowhere addresses why GCHQ and the domestic spying agency MI5 should be trusted to gather and handle private information on millions of people, when there is so much evidence of their existing powers being misused. Nor does he refer to the issue of police infiltration of political, environmental and campaign groups, including the family of murder victim Stephen Lawrence.

The strengthening of the military and intelligence arms of the ruling class is intensifying. Last September an anonymous serving general threatened a mutiny, within days of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, should a Labour government come to power with Corbyn at the helm, citing his unreliability to rule due to his declared opposition to the use of nuclear weapons.

The claim in Anderson’s previous report, and in the Panorama documentary, that the new powers in the Investigatory Powers Bill cannot be misused because they require a warrant providing judicial “independent oversight,” is worthy only of contempt. Such oversight was claimed to have existed in the years when GCHQ and other intelligence agencies carried out mass surveillance outside of the law as revealed by Snowden.

Even Anderson in his previous report “A Question of Trust” was forced to admit that “RIPA [Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000], obscure since its inception, has been patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible to all but a tiny band of initiates. A multitude of alternative powers, some of them without statutory safeguards, confuse the picture further.”

What is described here—“a tiny band of initiates” using laws only they understood to run state spying activities without statutory safeguards—is utterly damning. The “patching up” of the law was done after the fact in order to justify what GCHQ were either already doing or actively developing.

That the security services are a law unto themselves was shown in June by Edward Snowden, who revealed that, beginning in 2009, GCHQ had already embarked on “bulk powers” spying under its MILKWHITE programme. One leaked document described MILKWHITE as a “support system” for Home Office plans to modernise its domestic interception (spying) capabilities.

As part of MILKWHITE, the agency provided access to vast amounts of metadata—logs of telephone conversations, emails and other communications—to MI5, the Metropolitan Police, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Serious Organized Crime Agency (now the National Crime Agency) and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, as well as the eight former Scottish police forces. GCHQ was seeking an additional £20.8 million to update its “advanced analytics” section in 2011/12 due to “increasing customer demand” for the service.

This whole intrusive, illegal system of mass surveillance was planned and operated in secret without any trace of a “public debate” on “bulk powers.” Anderson’s review gives a backdated seal of approval to these activities, justifies their continued deployment and paves the way for the next step.

Deteriorating Australian economy adds to pressure on Turnbull

Mike Head

Economic data released over the past week highlights how far the economic situation in Australia has continued to worsen since Malcolm Turnbull was installed as prime minister last September 14—a year ago next week. The impact of the 2008 global financial breakdown is deepening after Australian capitalism was initially cushioned by huge Chinese stimulus packages that resulted in high demand for Australian mineral exports.

When Turnbull ousted his predecessor Tony Abbott he justified the Liberal Party room coup by declaring that Abbott failed to provide the necessary “economic leadership” for the country. But the statistics show sharply falling business investment, stagnant retail sales, declining real wages and destruction of full-time jobs over the past year.

This deterioration, driven by China’s slowdown, global slump and further falls in export commodity prices, is intensifying the demands of the financial elite for the ruling Liberal-National Coalition, which barely survived the July 2 election, to move swiftly to impose far deeper cuts to social spending, corporate taxes and working conditions.

Corporate discontent with Turnbull’s performance is feeding into the pressure being applied by Washington for the government to militarily challenge China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and the media campaign calling into question Turnbull’s commitment to a confrontation with China, which is Australia’s largest export market.

Gross domestic product figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show the quarterly pace of growth halved to 0.5 percent in the June quarter from 1.0 percent in the first three months of 2016. While the headline annual figure was 2.9 percent for 2015-16, that is deceptive. The growth consisted mostly of larger export volumes as the major mining companies pumped up production to try to offset lower prices, while much of the domestic economy was close to recession.

According to ABS data released last week, business investment declined by 15.2 percent last year. This is an ominous statistic because it foreshadows further major job losses in the period ahead. Mining investment fell 34.5 percent in the past year, and manufacturing investment declined 7 percent. While total non-mining investment grew by 2.8 percent, it was nowhere near enough to offset the overall drop.

Investment in mining has fallen by 56 percent since its peak of September 2012. By contrast, non-mining investment since then has risen by just 5.9 percent. In total, investment has dropped continuously since December 2012, with the size of the quarterly falls growing since mid-2015, just before Turnbull ousted Abbott.

These results point to the fraud of Turnbull’s claims, initially backed by the corporate media, of making a “transition” to a new “exciting” economy based on “innovation” and higher-value services exports to China and other Asian markets.

The ABS forecasts for 2016–17 are even worse. Total private capital expenditure just exceeded $50 billion in 2015-16, but is expected to fall below $45 billion in 2016–17. This is the lowest such estimate since 2009–10, and that is in nominal terms, not accounting for inflation.

Although prices for Australia’s main mining exports rose marginally in recent months, they are predicted to fall again, resuming a devastating slide over the past five years.

* Coal prices have halved from their peak of $US132.5 per metric tonne in January 2011 to $67.3 in August 2016.

* Iron ore prices have been cut by two-thirds, from a peak of $187.2 per dry metric tonne unit in March 2011 to $61 in August 2016.

* Prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG), once touted as the new saviour of Australian capitalism, are also now just a third of the July 2012 peak of $18.1 per million British Thermal Units, sitting at $6.3 in August 2016.

These falls have cut government royalty and tax revenues, both federal and state, helping to push the annual federal budget deficit to around $40 billion, which is higher than it was in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crash.

ABS figures released last week reported that total Australian retail turnover, in current prices, remained virtually flat for the past three months. Turnover was unchanged in July, seasonally adjusted, following virtual zero growth since January. For six consecutive months, growth has not exceeded 0.1 percent per month. This is well below the 20-year average of 5 percent annual growth in retail sales.

The depressed trend is the result of ongoing job losses and lower wages, which are forcing working class households to cut back on spending, with the worst results in household goods and department stores.

Even according to under-stated ABS unemployment estimates, the number of full-time jobs actually fell by more than 60,000 during the past year, while growing numbers of workers were pushed into lower-paid and less secure part-time or casual employment.

On average, real wages have increased by only 0.3 percent since 2013, and that figure is distorted by the widening gulf between the highest-paid executives, on millions of dollars per year, and the vast majority of workers, whose incomes are falling.

Except for a property bubble since 2012 in the three eastern capitals of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the economy would already be in recession. While business investment dried up, speculative funds poured into real estate, sending housing prices and rents soaring, adding enormously to the burdens on working class people.

However, analysts are warning that this bubble could burst. Prices have been falling for some time in the cities most exposed to the collapse of the mining boom, such as Perth and Darwin. Now there are clear signs of a glut in apartment construction in the eastern centres, which will soon throw thousands of building workers onto the dole queues.

AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver yesterday said apartment prices will fall by 15 to 20 percent in Sydney and Melbourne over the next two years. This could trigger defaults, especially among “off-the-plan” buyers who paid deposits on the expectation of ever-rising prices.

Earlier, global banking giant Citi made a similar prediction, saying housing starts reached a record 230,000 over the past 12 months, but the number was expected to fall to 172,000 in 2018. According to Citi’s equity analysts, risks are already rising for banks and developers.

The recessionary trends have continued despite the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cutting official interest rates twice since last August, down to a record low of 1.5 percent. In its latest statement on monetary policy, issued yesterday, the RBA described the decline in business investment as “very large.”

Last month, as the parliament was about to reopen following the July 2 election, RBA governor Glenn Stevens delivered a warning to the Turnbull government and the political establishment as a whole: you must slash social spending, despite popular opposition, or the budget cuts will be imposed via a “moment of crisis.”

Syrian war threatens to escalate as Obama-Putin talks fail

Jordan Shilton

A 90-minute meeting between US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China Monday produced no results on an agreement between the two countries over the civil war in Syria.

Reports on the meeting spoke of the tense atmosphere between the two leaders. For his part, Obama absurdly sought to strike a pose of deep concern for the humanitarian situation in Syria and pinned the blame on Moscow and its allies in the Assad government in Damascus for the ongoing violence.

The failure of the previous ceasefire had enabled Assad to bomb “rebel” opposition groups “with impunity,” Obama intoned, creating a “very dangerous dynamic.”

Yesterday, Western media outlets fueled this narrative by widely reporting as fact unconfirmed allegations that the Assad government had launched a chlorine gas attack in Aleppo. The claims were based on a video posted online by the Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue team which operates in areas controlled by government opponents. They alleged that four barrel bombs containing poison gas were dropped, injuring 80.

In the past, the US has repeatedly seized on such allegations to prepare the ground for direct military intervention. On each occasion, the claims have turned out to be fraudulent, including most famously in 2013 when Obama pulled back from an all-out war with the Assad regime.

The allegations came in the wake of significant government advances at the expense of opposition forces around Aleppo. Indicating the potential for a rapid escalation of the conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government is currently leading an invasion in the north of Syria to clear Kurdish militants and Islamic State forces from the Turkish-Syrian border, responded to the fighting by suggesting that Turkish troops could clear a humanitarian corridor to Aleppo. He reiterated his call for a “safe zone” between the towns of Jarabulus and Azaz, a move which would create a justification for the deployment of NATO troops, including from the European imperialist powers, to Syria.

According to a Reuters report, Turkish officials are appealing for international support to establish control over an area stretching 40 kilometres into Syria so as to break up two Kurdish-controlled areas to the east and west. An anonymous Turkish official commented that only the initial stages of this plan had been accomplished, before adding ominously, “What will be done now will depend on coordination with coalition powers and the support they will provide.”

The attempt by Obama and the corporate media to cloak US machinations in Syria in human rights propaganda should fool no one. Washington has waged virtually unending war over the past quarter century throughout the Middle East, laying waste to entire societies and claiming the lives of millions in the process. The calls for humanitarian aid and safe zones are transparent pretexts to legitimise a vast intensification of the imperialist intervention in Syria.

Even during the course of the past two weeks, since Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva to discuss Syria, it has been the US and its Turkish allies which have brought about the most significant escalation in violence with an all-out invasion of the north of the country. The Turkish troops and their Sunni Islamist allies made no secret of the fact that they intended to target Kurdish forces and drive them east of the Euphrates River. The US has been backing these same Kurdish forces with arms, funding and training for them to serve as proxies in Washington’s campaign against Islamic State.

The Turkish army reported its first fatalities yesterday, when two soldiers were killed in a rocket attack by ISIS forces. On Sunday, Turkish troops reportedly forced ISIS fighters out of their last stronghold on the Turkish border.

Despite Washington’s backing for Ankara’s open-ended intervention with air power and military “advisers” on the ground, Obama persisted after his meeting with Putin in casting Russia as the aggressor.

“We have had some productive conversations about what a real cessation of violence would look like to allow us to both focus our energies on common enemies,” Obama told a press conference afterwards. “But given the gaps of trust that exist, that’s a tough negotiation. We haven’t yet closed the gap.”

An unnamed White House official later told the Washington Post that Obama had been unwilling to strike a deal with Putin that would not secure the “long-term goals” of the US in Syria.

References to Washington’s “long-term goals” in Syria is code for the implementation of a long-planned regime change operation in Damascus that would replace Assad’s government with a pro-Western puppet regime. This has been the aim of US imperialism ever since it began fomenting the Syrian civil war five years ago by funding and arming Islamist extremist forces, including groups with ties to Al Qaida. Its intervention in Syria is part of a broader regional agenda of securing US dominance over the most important oil-producing region in the world and establishing an unchallengeable position on the Eurasian land mass by weakening its geo-strategic rivals, above all Russia and China.

This reality was summed up in a comment published by Anthony Cordesman, a veteran strategist of US imperialism, on the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank’s web site yesterday. Cordesman blasted the Obama administration’s strategy of seeking a deal with Russia, writing, “Russia has steadily used its military intervention to promote its own interest in Syria and the Middle East, attack the Arab rebels, and support the Assad regime. Russia has also built new ties to Iran, shipped Iran advanced S300 surface-to-air missiles, and managed to reach out Saudi Arabia in spite of this—seriously discussing agreed limits on their petroleum production and exports.”

Cordesman went on to declare that ISIS was not the main problem in Syria or Iraq. After describing the ethnic partition of the country and the conflicts this has produced as if the US was a passive bystander, he noted in a revealing passage that the Obama administration “has never addressed the fact that the real fight for Syria is taking place where ISIS isn’t.”

Cordesman’s comment reflects growing concern among ruling circles about the lack of a US strategy in the region. Substantial sections of the political establishment, including leading Republicans, have rallied behind presidential candidate Hillary Clinton because she has pledged to intensify US military aggression abroad following November’s election.

However, Obama’s overtures to Russia for an agreement in Syria are in no sense a sign of decreasing tensions and a retreat by the US. The immediate impulse for a new ceasefire is the advances that have been made by government troops around the city of Aleppo. While US-backed rebels made substantial gains in early August, Assad’s forces have pushed back the Islamists with the help of Russian air support. A supply route to the north of Aleppo has been cut off by government soldiers and Assad’s troops also broke through a rebel-controlled corridor to the south of the city.

The US-backed, Turkish-led intervention into northern Syria, which brings troops from NATO countries in to close proximity with Russian forces, has heightened the potential for a clash between NATO allies and Moscow that could quickly spiral out of control into a broader war. Even if a deal is reached, it will not end the pursuit by Russia and the United States of opposed strategies in Syria that pose an ever increasing risk of direct military conflict between two nuclear-armed powers.

This is made all the more probable given the deep contradictions in Washington’s Syria policy. It has leant its full backing to the Turkish incursion, which is explicitly seeking to establish a zone free of Kurdish control in northern Syria to prevent the emergence of a unified area of Kurdish control, while at the same time it continues to support the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)–the forces now coming under Turkish bombardment.

Obama also had a bilateral meeting with Erdogan at the G20. Obama sought to paper over divisions by reassuring Erdogan that Washington would support Ankara’s efforts to bring those behind the 15 July abortive coup against Erdogan to justice, even though it is widely acknowledged that the US at the very least tacitly supported it.

Erdogan pointedly told the press afterwards, with reference to Syrian Kurdish organisations considered by Ankara to be terrorist, “All forms of terrorism are bad. All forms of terrorism are evil.”

White House to maintain nuclear “first strike” policy

Andre Damon

On Tuesday, the New York Times published as its front-page lead article a piece, written by longtime military/intelligence insider David Sanger, reporting internal White House discussions that the Obama administration is planning on maintaining the United States’ “first strike” nuclear weapons policy.

In recent months, the Washington Post and Times had published reports that President Obama had considered formally adopting a policy of not using nuclear weapons unless the US was attacked by such weapons first.

On July 10, The Washington Post reported, “The Obama administration is determined to use its final six months in office to take a series of executive actions to advance the nuclear agenda the president has advocated since his college days,” including the possible adoption of a “no first use” policy.

But Tuesday’s report in the Times declared that Obama “appears likely to abandon the proposal after top national security advisers argued” that it would “embolden Russia and China.”

The move takes place amidst a series of US provocations against both countries, including the deployment of thousands of troops on Russia’s border in Eastern Europe and ongoing “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea. In their statements to the Times, White House and military officials were sending a clear signal that it will abide no scaling back of the US threat to kill millions of people to facilitate its geopolitical aims.

The White House decided ultimately to agree to the demands of Commander of Strategic Command Admiral Haney, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Secretary of State John Kerry and others who declared, according to the Times, that “new moves by Russia and China, from the Baltic to the South China Sea, made it the wrong time to issue the declaration.”

Both before and during his presidency, Obama had postured as a proponent of nuclear non-proliferation. In his April 2009 speech in Prague, Obama declared that “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon,” the US is committed “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” and that “to put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons.”

Earlier this year, Obama visited Hiroshima, Japan, becoming the first sitting US president to do so since President Truman made the decision to incinerate the city with an atomic weapon at the end of the Second World War. Despite ruling out any apology for this war crime, Obama hypocritically called on countries that possess nuclear weapons to “have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”

Yet Obama’s real “nuclear legacy” is something else entirely. Over his eight years in office, the White House has initiated one of the most sweeping expansions of its nuclear capabilities in US history.

The Pentagon has embarked upon a $1 trillion nuclear modernization program, seeking to make US nuclear weapons smaller, faster, more maneuverable and easier to use on the battlefield. The effect of this program is, as General James E. Cartwright, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Times earlier this year, “to make the weapon more thinkable.”

At a cost of some $97 billion, the Navy is on track to replace its Ohio-class submarines, each of which is by itself equivalent to the world’s fifth-ranking nuclear power, with a new generation of ballistic missile submarines.

The Air Force, meanwhile, has contracted Northrop Grumman to build up to 100 next-generation B-21 nuclear-capable bombers, at a cost of nearly $60 billion. It is also in the midst of developing, at the cost of $20 billion, the so-called Long-Range Stand-Off Missile, which is capable of maneuvering at high speeds to deliver a nuclear payload behind enemy air defenses.

Experts have warned that the development of such a “dual use” nuclear-capable cruise missile makes the potential for a catastrophic miscalculation substantially greater, as countries attacked by these weapons, in addition to having little time to respond, have no way of knowing whether their payload is “conventional” or nuclear.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the Air Force also plans to spend another $85 billion to develop a set of new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Pentagon is moving ahead with plans to buy some 642 of the new ICBMs “at an average cost of $66.4 million each to support a deployed force of 400 weapons.”

The dizzying pace of the US nuclear modernization program comes in the context of a deepening global geopolitical crisis, at the center of which is the ever expanding war drive of American imperialism.

Beginning with economic crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the American ruling class sought to offset the economic decline of US capitalism through the naked use of military force. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this process went into overdrive, kicking off a quarter century of intensifying war around the globe. Now, US-led regional wars and proxy conflicts, particularly in Syria, are metastasizing into ever-more direct conflicts with larger competitors, including Russia and China.

With the crisis-ridden US election dominated by allegations from the Clinton campaign of Russian cyberattacks and political subversion, together with ongoing and deepening tensions with China, the United States is sending a clear signal that it is thinking about the “unthinkable.”

Eighty years ago, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky warned, “In the period of crisis the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly, and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom.” Anyone who believes that the US would never again use nuclear weapons is underestimating not only the extent of the internal and external crisis confronting American imperialism, but the level of violence and criminality of which the American ruling class is capable.

Gates Cambridge Scholarships (Masters & PhD) in UK for International Students 2017/2018

Brief description: Gates Cambridge Trust offers full fee postgraduate (Masters and PhD) Scholarships for outstanding International students to study any course at the University of Cambridge, UK 2017

Application Timeline:

Applications Open : 5th September, 2016

Applications Close: 7th December, 2016

Accepted Subject Areas: Masters and PhD Courses offered by the university

About Scholarship: Gates Cambridge Scholarships are highly competitive full-cost scholarships. They are awarded to outstanding applicants from countries outside the UK to pursue a full-time postgraduate degree in any subject available at the University of Cambridge. The programme aims to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.

Scholarship Offered Since: Not Specified

Scholarship Type: Full-cost Masters and PhD scholarship

Selection Criteria

• outstanding intellectual ability
• leadership potential
• a commitment to improving the lives of others
• a good fit between the applicant’s qualifications and aspirations and the postgraduate programme at Cambridge for which they are applying

Eligibility

• a citizen of any country outside the United Kingdom.
• applying to pursue one of the following full-time residential courses of study: PhD (three year research-only degree); MSc or MLitt (two year research-only degree); or a one year postgraduate course (e.g. MPhil, LLM, MASt, Diploma, MBA etc.)
• already a student at Cambridge and want to apply for a new postgraduate course. For example, if you are studying for an MPhil you can apply for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to do a PhD. However, if you have already started a course, you cannot apply for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to fund the rest of it.
• already a Gates Cambridge Scholar and want to apply for a second Scholarship. You must apply by the second, international deadline and go through the same process of departmental ranking, shortlisting and interviewing as all other candidates.

Number of Scholarship: Several

Value of Scholarship

Scholarship will cover the full cost of study

• the University Composition Fee and College fees at the appropriate rate
• a maintenance allowance for a single student
• one economy single airfare at both the beginning and end of the course

Duration of Scholarship: For the duration of the programme

Eligible Countries: For international students

To be taken at (country): Cambridge University UK

How to Apply

Visit the Scholarship Webpage

Sponsors

Gates Cambridge Trust

Important Notes:

Gates Cambridge Scholarships are extremely competitive: over 4,000 applicants apply for 90 Scholarships each year.

Given the intense competition, the Trust has a four stage selection process:

• Departmental ranking – the very best applicants to each department are ranked on academic merit only
• Shortlisting – Gates Cambridge committees review the applications of ranked candidates using all four Gates Cambridge criteria and put forward a list for interview
• Interview – all shortlisted candidates have a short interview to assess how they meet all four Gates Cambridge criteria
• Selection – chairs of interview panels meet to decide the final list of Scholars
• A good fit between the applicant’s qualifications and aspirations and the postgraduate programme at Cambridge for which they are applying

UK: Clarendon Fund Scholarships for International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Applications for entry in 2017-18 can be submitted from 1 September 2016. The closing date is 6th or 20th January 2017 depending on the course of study.

Offered annually? Yes

Scholarship Name: Clarendon Fund Scholarship

Brief description: The Clarendon Fund scholarships open to all graduate (Masters, MBA and Doctoral degree) applicants regardless of Nationality for entry in 2017/2018 at University of Oxford UK

Accepted Subject Areas: All subjects can be funded by a Clarendon Scholarship. There is no quota by subject or preference for any particular course type. This encompasses all full-time and part-time Master’s courses (MSt, MSc, BCL/MJur, MBA, MFE, MPhil, BPhil, MSc by Research, MTh) and all DPhil programmes. A list of the all the graduate courses offered by the University of Oxford can be found on the Graduate Course Guide (from link below).

About Scholarship: The Clarendon Fund offers around 140 full scholarships every year to academically excellent graduate students from all around the world. Clarendon Scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence and potential across all degree-bearing subjects at graduate level at the University of Oxford. The scholarships cover tuition and college fees as well as a generous grant for living expenses, and all graduate applicants who apply for study at the University by the January deadline, in their respective year of entry, will be automatically considered for this prestigious scholarship funding.

Scholarship Offered Since: 2001

Selection Criteria: Selection criteria vary slightly depending on the subject area and whether applicants apply for a taught or research degree, but include:

• An excellent academic record is essential:
• A high first class honours degree or its equivalent (a GPA score of at least 3.7 if the mark is out of 4, noting that most successful candidates achieve a score higher than 3.7) or an outstanding academic record at Master’s level is necessary (noting that an outstanding Master’s degree can compensate for a moderate first degree performance).
• Other indicators of high academic achievement may include individual marks on student transcripts; evidence of previous university prizes or awards;
• information on your overall position within your cohort; and publications (if applicable).
• Aptitude for the proposed course of study: This may be assessed by reviewing academic references, the research proposal, demonstrated evidence of aptitude for research, and the likelihood the scholar will contribute significantly to their field of study.
• Student motivation: This is assessed through evidence of the applicant’s commitment to their proposed course, evaluated by the personal statement and referees’ reports.

Who is qualified to apply?

• Candidates applying to start a new graduate course at Oxford are eligible. This includes students who are currently studying for a Master’s degree at Oxford but who will be re-applying for a DPhil (you would be eligible for funding for the DPhil).
• Scholarships are tenable in all subject areas and open to candidates who will be starting a new course.

How Many Scholarships are available? Not Specified (Several)

What are the benefits?

• All Clarendon Scholarships cover tuition and college fees in full and a generous grant for living expenses.
• The grant for living expenses for scholars on a full-time in 2010-11 is GBP£13,590, which is normally sufficient to cover the living expenses of a single student living in Oxford.

Duration: Clarendon Scholarships are offered for the full period that you are liable to pay tuition fees to the University, which is usually the same as the length of your course

Eligible African Countries

Clarendon scholars come from all continents in the world: from Africa, North America, Australia, South America, Asia, the Middle East to Europe

To be taken at (country): University of Oxford, UK

How to Apply: If you apply for a full- or part-time master’s or DPhil course at Oxford by the January deadline for your course, you will automatically be considered for a Clarendon Scholarship.

You do not need to submit any additional documents specifically for the Clarendon Scholarships and there is no separate scholarship application form.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for details

Sponsors: The Clarendon Fund with donations from partners within and outside the University

Important Notes: Scholarships are subject to an annual renewal process based on satisfactory academic progress.

Subsidizing Nuclear Power: From Cradle to Grave

Peter Bradford

Since the 1950s, US nuclear power has commanded immense taxpayer and customer subsidy based on promises of economic and environmental benefits. Many of these promises are unfulfilled, but new ones take their place. More subsidies follow.

Today the nuclear industry claims that keeping all operating reactors running for many years, no matter how uneconomic they become, is essential in order to reach US climate change targets.

Economics have always challenged US reactors. After more than 100 construction cancellations and cost overruns costing up to US$5 billion apiece, Forbes Magazine in 1985 called nuclear power “the greatest managerial disaster in business history…only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money [$265 billion by 1990] has been well spent.”

US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chair Lewis Strauss’ 1954 promise that electric power would be “too cheap to meter” is today used to mock nuclear economics, not commend them.

As late as 1972 the AEC forecast that the United States would have 1,000 power reactors by the year 2000. Today we have 100 operating power reactors, down from a peak of 112 in 1990. Since 2012 US power plant owners have retired five units and announced plans to close nine more. Four new reactors are likely to come on line.

Without strenuous government intervention, almost all of the rest will close by mid-century. Because these recent closures have been abrupt and unplanned, the replacement power has come in substantial part from natural gas, causing a dismaying uptick in greenhouse gas emissions.

The nuclear industry, led by the forlornly named lobbying group Nuclear Matters, still obtains large subsidies for new reactor designs that cannot possibly compete at today’s prices. But its main function now is to save operating reactors from closure brought on by their own rising costs, by the absence of a US policy on greenhouse gas emissions and by competition from less expensive natural gas, carbon-free renewables and more efficient energy use.

Only billions more dollars in subsidies and the retarding of rapid deployment of cheaper technologies can save these reactors. Only fresh claims of unique social benefit can justify such steps.

When I served on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from 1977 through 1982, the NRC issued more licenses than in any comparable period since. Arguments that the US couldn’t avoid dependence on Middle Eastern oil and keep the lights on without a vast increase in nuclear power were standard fare then and throughout my 20 years chairing the New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions.

In fact, we attained these goals without the additional reactors, a lesson to remember in the face of claims that all of today’s nuclear plants are needed to ward off climate change.

Nuclear power has no place in competitive electricity markets

During nuclear power’s growth years in the 1960s and 1970s, almost all electric utility rate regulation was based on recovering the money necessary to build and run power plants and the accompanying infrastructure. But in the 1990s many states broke up the electric utility monopoly model.

Now a majority of US power generation is sold in competitive markets. Companies profit by producing the cheapest electricity or providing services that avoid the need for electricity.

To justify their current subsidy demands, nuclear advocates assert three propositions:

* First, they contend that power markets undervalue nuclear plants because they do not compensate reactors for avoiding carbon emissions, or for other attributes such as diversifying the fuel supply or running more than 90 percent of the time.

* Second, they assert that other low-carbon sources cannot fill the gap because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. So power grids will use fossil-fired generators for more hours if nuclear plants close.

* Finally, nuclear power supporters argue that these intermittent sources receive substantial subsidies while nuclear energy does not, thereby enabling renewables to underbid nuclear even if their costs are higher.

Nuclear power producers want government-mandated long-term contracts or other mechanisms that require customers to buy power from their troubled units at prices far higher than they would pay otherwise.

Providing such open-ended support will negate several major energy trends that currently benefit customers and the environment:

* Power markets have been working reliably and effectively. A large variety of cheaper, more efficient technologies for producing and saving energy, as well as managing the grid more cheaply and cleanly, have been developed.

* Energy storage, which can enhance the round-the-clock capability of some renewables is progressing faster than had been expected, and is now being bid into several power markets – notably the market serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

* Long-term subsidies for uneconomic nuclear plants also will crowd out penetration of these markets by energy efficiency and renewables. This is the path New York state has taken by committing at least $7.6 billion in above-market payments to three of its six plants to assure that they operate through 2029.


Nuclear power vs. other carbon-free fuels

While power markets do indeed undervalue low-carbon fuels, all of the other premises underlying the nuclear industry approach are flawed. In California and in Nebraska, utilities plan to replace nuclear plants that are closing early for economic reasons almost entirely with electricity from carbon-free sources. Such transitions are achievable in most systems as long as the shutdowns are planned in advance to be carbon-free.

In California these replacement resources, which include renewables, storage, transmission enhancements and energy efficiency measures, will for the most part be procured through competitive processes.

Indeed, any state where a utility threatens to close a plant can run an auction to ascertain whether there are sufficient low-carbon resources available to replace the unit within a particular time frame. Only then will regulators know whether, how much and for how long they should support the nuclear units.

If New York had taken this approach, each of the struggling nuclear units could have bid to provide power in such an auction. They might well have succeeded for the immediate future, but some or all would probably not have won after that.

Closing the noncompetitive plants would be a clear benefit to the New York economy. This is why a large coalition of big customers, alternative energy providers and environmental groups opposed the long-term subsidy plan.

The industry’s final argument – that renewables are subsidized and nuclear is not – ignores overwhelming history. All carbon-free energy sources together have not received remotely as much government support as has flowed to nuclear power.

From cradle to grave, the nuclear cycle is run at taxpayers’ expense

Nuclear energy’s essential components – reactors and enriched uranium fuel – were developed at taxpayer expense. Private utilities were paid to build nuclear reactors in the 1950s and early ‘60’s, and received subsidized fuel. According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, total subsidies paid and offered to nuclear plants between 1960 and 2024 generally exceed the value of the power that they produced.

The US government has also pledged to dispose of nuclear power’s most hazardous wastes – a promise that has never been made to any other industry. By 2020 taxpayers will have paid some $21 billion to store those wastes at power plant sites.

Furthermore, under the 1957 Price-Anderson Act, each plant owner’s accident liability is limited to some $300 million per year, even though the Fukushima disaster showed that nuclear accident costs can exceed $100 billion. If private companies that own US nuclear power plants had been responsible for accident liability, they would not have built reactors. The same is almost certainly true of responsibility for spent fuel disposal.

Finally, as part of the transition to competition in the 1990s, state governments were persuaded to make customers pay off some $70 billion in excessive nuclear costs. Today the same nuclear power providers are asking to be rescued from the same market forces for a second time.

Christopher Crane, the president and CEO of Exelon, which owns the nation’s largest nuclear fleet, preaches temperance from a bar stool when he disparages renewable energy subsidies by asserting: “I’ve talked for years about the unintended consequences of policies that incentivize technologies versus outcomes.”

However, he’s right about unintended and unfortunate consequences. We should not rely further on the unfulfilled prophesies that nuclear lobbyists have deployed so expensively for so long.

It’s time to take Crane at his word by using our power markets, adjusted to price greenhouse gas emissions, to prioritize our low carbon outcome over his technology.

Opposition plots regime change in Maldives

Wasantha Rupasinghe

The BBC reported last month that moves are underway by opposition leaders in the Maldives, including Mohammed Nasheed, former president and leader of Maldives Democratic Party (MDP), to oust President Abdulla Yameen.

The apparent plot is being prepared amid an intensified campaign in the Western media to highlight the Yameen government’s anti-democratic methods. The US and its allies are hostile to Yameen, not because of his record of human rights abuses, but due to his ties to China.

Citing unnamed “credible sources,” the BBC reported on August 25 that Yameen’s opponents were “looking to move against him within weeks.” Few details were provided. A government spokesman denounced the ouster move but added that it was “a formal attempt to ‘legally’ overthrow the government” via a ballot.

The BBC simultaneously ran another article written by two correspondents who visited as ordinary tourists, secretly covering protests against Yameen and interviewing opposition members and media personnel critical of his rule.

The BBC report coincided with the news that Nasheed, who lives in the UK under political asylum, visited Sri Lanka on August 23. The Mihaaru website reported that Nasheed flew to Sri Lanka for “an important sit-down over the present crisis in the Maldives.”

Nasheed was accompanied by former vice president and the head of the United Opposition of Maldives (UOM), Mohamen Jameel Ahmed. The UOM was formed in June in London on the basis of a common agenda of ousting Yameen.

Sharp political infighting, involving competing capitalist cliques in the Indian Ocean archipelago, has continued for months. The Maldives, strategically located astride major sea lanes, has become a focal point for rivalry between the US and China as Washington has implemented its “pivot to Asia” and military build-up throughout the region.

While trying to maintain close diplomatic relations with the US and India, the Yameen government is heavily dependent on Chinese investment and concessionary loans. Washington and New Delhi are actively seeking to undermine Beijing and boost their own influence in the Maldives. Yameen is increasingly isolated after the resignation of key ministers.

As part of its crackdown on the opposition, the Yameen government instigated charges against Nasheed under draconian anti-terrorism laws for ordering, as president, the detention of Criminal Court Justice Abdulla Mohamed in 2012. Nasheed was jailed for 13 years in March last year. Under pressure from the US, UK and EU, he was allowed to travel to Britain, ostensibly for medical treatment. Nasheed is outspoken about his support for the US and India, and opposition to China.

The New Indian Express last week reported MDP international spokesman, Hamid Abdul Ghafoor, as saying that “India, the US and the EU are backing opposition moves to oust Yameen’s dictatorial government by legal means.” Ghafoor was in Colombo but claimed he did not know of Nasheed’s presence.

During his weekly press briefing, Sri Lankan Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne did not confirm the presence of Nasheed and other opposition leaders in Colombo but did not deny it either. He referred to Nasheed’s political activities in Sri Lanka during the previous government of President Mahinda Rajapakse and added that “he must be doing the same thing even now.”

Rajapakse, who was regarded as too close to China, was ousted in January last year in a US-backed regime-change operation in the Sri Lankan presidential election. Since Maithripala Sirisena was installed as president, the Sri Lanka government has played an increasingly active role on Washington’s behalf. It mediated Nasheed’s release and his travel last year to the UK.

Yameen clearly feels under siege. The country’s courts last week issued arrest warrants for Nasheed, Jameel and MDP senior official Akram Kamldeen, who are also in exile in the UK. Police raided Nasheed’s house in the capital of Male.

The government recently rammed a strict defamation law through the parliament that allows for jail terms and steep fines for journalists. The defence ministry has barred soldiers from meeting politicians and foreign diplomats, political party leaders and political activists without prior permission from senior officials.

The crisis surrounding Yameen has deepened in recent months, with rifts in the ruling Maldives Progressive Party (MPP). Gayoom, Yameen’s half-brother and MPP president, recently opposed land laws that allow foreign freehold ownership, following criticism in the Indian media that the legislation will pave the way for China to set up military bases.

Gayoom’s daughter, Dunya Maumoon, resigned as foreign minister in July. Several MPs are also supporting Gayoom.

The international media is ramping up the pressure on Yameen. The New York Times published a lengthy interview with Nasheed, who accused Yameen of corruption. Yameen, who was head of the State Trading Organisation, sold nearly $US300 million worth of oil to Myanmar’s military dictatorship in the early 2000s, despite sanctions by the US and the EU. “Nearly half of the money disappeared,” Nasheed said, implying Yameen siphoned off the money.

Al Jaz e era has announced that its investigative unit is getting ready to release a documentary named “Stealing Paradise” which it claims to reveal “how a president [Yameen] hijacked a nation and millions of dollars were stolen.”

The Australian has published reports about the “danger” that Maldivians are joining ISIS to fight the Syrian regime. Its report headlined, “Could a terror threat sink paradise?” noted: “The country famed for white sands and laid-back locals is teetering on the edge of a coup with unrest and the threat of Islamic State terrorism set to see paradise turn ugly.”

Some of the Indian media have written articles urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to back the opposition in the Maldives to move against Yameen. After referring to lost opportunities to reassert Indian influence on the island nation, a Times of India columnist declared: “India must assert its credentials by helping democrats to come to power.”

The opposition parties in the Maldives do not represent a democratic alternative to the Yameen regime and pose great dangers for workers and youth. Like every other country in the region, the Maldives is being drawn into the machinations of US imperialism and its allies as it intensifies its military build-up in Asia and war drive against China.