UK workers see 2 pence an hour average wage increase, while pay of richest skyrockets

Margot Miller

As the UK faces uncharted waters post-Brexit, the outlook for millions who constitute the working poor is looking bleak. Two recent reports reveal growing wage inequality and evidence that unemployment rates have been grossly underestimated.

A Trades Union Congress (TUC) analysis of the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) annual survey of hours and earnings (covering April 2018-2019), reveals the wages of the less well-off are slipping further behind those who earn £50,000 and above.

While people in the highest 1 percent income bracket saw their pay rise by 7.6 percent between 2016 and 2018, average workers lagged far behind, seeing an increase of just 2 pence, or just 0.1 percent in the same period. This translates to an increase from £58.73 an hour to £63.18 for the top income earners, compared to a miserable increase from £12.71 to £12.73 an hour for those on average pay.

It is the lower end of the higher rate taxpayers—who are gaining the most by way of increases in pay—that Conservative leader Boris Johnson has singled out for tax cuts. Currently, the tax rate is 40 percent for income earners between £50,000 to £150,000, rising to 45 percent for those above £150,000. The Tories propose that those on £50,000 to £80,000 will be lifted out of the 40 percent bracket. Instead, they would pay the same 20 percent tax rate as those earning £12,501 to £50,000.

Johnson’s agenda is no less than completing the “Thatcher revolution” of privatization, deregulation and the destruction of wages and conditions of the working class, in order to increase the competitiveness of British capital under conditions of intensifying trade war. Former Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, beloved by the rich but universally hated by the working class, set in motion her government’s intention to dismantle the welfare state and “roll back the frontiers of socialism.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates that such tax cuts would put an extra £2,500 a year into the pockets of the top 10 percent, taking money away from the National Health Service and Social Care. The IFS calculate a shortfall to the treasury of £9.6 billion a year would result from Johnson’s tax breaks for the richest.

The NHS and other vitally needed public services are teetering on the brink of collapse due to endless budget cuts since austerity was implemented in 2008 by the Brown government and continued by successive Tory governments—in order to bail out the banks and billionaires. As services no longer become available—the NHS no longer performs minor procedures such as operations for varicose veins while affordable care homes for the elderly are nonexistent—the working class can ill afford to access alternative services privately.

The Resolution Foundation (RF), a think tank which states its mission is to advise on ways to improve the standard of living of low- to middle-income earners, said Johnson’s tax plans would put an extra £3,000 a year in the pocket of someone on an annual salary of £80,000 a year. RF Chief Executive Torsten Bell commented, “not bad going at £57 [tax cut] a week—exactly what a young unemployed person is expected to live on via Job Seeker’s Allowance at present.” He noted, “In fact, 83 percent of the gains go to the top 10 percent of households,” adding, “Someone on say an MP’s salary of £79,468 gains £2,946. One nation it is not.”

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady warned that the pay gap under Johnson would get wider. Echoing the Labour Party, which initiated the bank bailout and austerity cuts under the Brown government, she said, “We need an economy that works for everyone, not just the richest 1 percent.”

Grady’s disingenuous remarks cannot cover up the fact that for decades the trade unions, alongside Labour, have collaborated in suppressing the class struggle, sharing responsibility for turning the UK into a cheap labour economy.

Growing wage inequality is only one aspect of inequality in society. When measured against total wealth, inequality reaches almost unimaginable proportions. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, the number of billionaires residing in the UK in 2019 grew to 151, up from the 2018 figure of 145.

The richest 1,000 individuals and families hold an unprecedented total wealth of £771.3 billion, up from last year by £47.8 billion. The Sri and Gopi Hinduja family head the richest 1,000 with a fortune worth £22 billion.

According to the RF, a typical income for a family with two children in the UK is £26,400, reaching barely above the poverty line.

A second report, “Where are the missing workers?” was a product of joint research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Centre for Cities think tank. It disputes official government unemployment figures, suggesting that the real rate is three times higher than officially claimed.

While government figures garnered from the ONS sets the rate at 4.6 percent, this does not include hidden employment of those who declare themselves to government surveys as economically inactive. Including those with health or disability issues who could work with support, people who took early retirement, those caring for relatives because of the paucity of social care, and those who have given up hope of finding a job, the OECD/ Centre for Cities analysis puts unemployment at 13.2 percent of the working age population, excluding students. This translates to 4.5 million unemployed, way above the government’s figure of 1.3 million.

The Centre for Cities pinpoints unemployment hotspots in urban areas, which were once the heartland of heavy industry in the 1980s, far exceeding the national average. Hidden unemployment was found to be highest in the city of Liverpool, at 19.8 percent, in comparison with its official rate of 5.8 percent. Following Liverpool in ranking was Sunderland in the North East, Scotland’s Dundee, Blackburn and Birmingham.

The 10 cities with the highest unemployment rates, according to the OECD, are outside London and the South East.

Andrew Carter, chief executive for Centre for Cities, commented, “It is possible that the unemployment rate in Britain’s cities is far higher than official figures suggest. This research suggests that people in cities which have struggled to recover from deindustrialisation of the 20th century could be dealt a second blow as they are ill-equipped to respond to automation.”

The ONS defended its measurement criteria by saying they were based on international definitions and only included “spare employment capacity”—those looking for work or available to begin employment immediately. This methodology indicates that unemployment rates according to international definitions are likely well underestimated by official government figures in other countries as well.

Jobs are being shed in huge numbers throughout the economy. For the past four years jobs have been haemorrhaging in the retail sector. Head of the Retail Consortium, Helen Dickinson, told BBC Radio 4, “We’ll see this underlying trend continue.” This year alone saw 85,000 retail jobs disappear from the high street.

The latest chain to go into receivership are hairdressers Supercuts and baby/maternity retailer Mothercare. The closure of Supercuts’ 220 salons means 1,200 jobs will go. Mothercare went into administration last week and will close all its 79 stores, with the loss of more than 2,800 jobs. Other high street chains closing stores include Coast, House of Frazer and Marks and Spencer.

Latest official figures report a 56,000 drop in employment in the first three months to August. The service sector reported that many job cuts, falling sales, and cancelled or postponed projects were due to uncertainties surrounding Brexit.

Unemployment and immiseration of the masses can only intensify. The burgeoning trade war and growing antagonisms between the major imperialist powers—spearheaded by US President Trump’s America First policy, of which Brexit, as part of the break-up of the European Union, is one expression—look set to tip the world economy into recession as world economic growth slows down, raising unemployment and further depressing wages.

Fascistic Vox party surges in Spanish election as hung parliament emerges

Alex Lantier

The pro-fascist Vox party surged into third place in national elections in Spain Sunday, doubling its presence from 24 to 52 seats in the Congress as a hung parliament emerged for the fourth straight election in Spain since 2015.

Abstention rose to over 30 percent, after a reactionary election campaign oriented around calls for violent police repression of mass protests in Catalonia against the jailing of Catalan nationalists for organizing peaceful protests and a peaceful referendum on Catalan independence in 2017. With tacit support from the pseudo-left Podemos party, the caretaker Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government pledged a violent crackdown on the protests. This strengthened Vox and the right-wing Popular Party (PP).

The PSOE took 28 percent of the vote and 120 seats, the PP 21 percent (88 seats), Vox 15 percent (52 seats), Podemos 13 percent (35 seats), the right-wing Citizens party 7 percent (10 seats). The PSOE and Podemos both lost over a half-million votes, while Vox won a million more votes and the PP 600,000 more votes than in the last elections.

Resultados electorales desde 2015

The Citizens party fell 9 percent, losing 2.6 million votes. The collapse of the vote for Citizens, a right-wing party founded to oppose Catalan separatism, came as Spanish media gave wall-to-wall coverage to Vox leader Santiago Abascal. An open supporter of fascist dictator Francisco Franco’s army and its record of mass murder of left wing workers during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, Abascal outflanked Citizens on the right, calling for military repression and executions in Catalonia.

Regional nationalist parties maintained their presence in the Congress, as Catalan voters delivered a vote for Catalan nationalist parties despite the deployment of a large force of 4,500 police and Civil Guards to oversee the election in Catalonia. The Republican Left of Catalonia won 13 seats, Together for Catalonia 8, the Basque National Party 7, and the Basque-nationalist EH Bildu 5. The Catalan petty-bourgeois Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP) won 2 seats while More Country, a pro-PSOE split-off from Podemos led by Inigo Errejon, won 3.

The result is a fourth hung parliament in as many elections since 2015. Neither the PSOE nor the PP, the bourgeoisie’s two traditional parties of government since the 1978 Transition from the Francoite dictatorship to parliamentary rule, have enough seats to obtain an absolute majority of 176 in the 350-seat Congress. Even with their traditional allies, such as Podemos for the PSOE or Citizens or Vox for the PP, they would not reach the 176-seat limit.

For a time last year, amid growing public opposition to police violence in Catalonia following the October 2017 independence referendum, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez assembled an unstable governing majority with Podemos, backed by the Catalan nationalists. However, the Catalan nationalists refused to vote the PSOE’s austerity budget this year, as anger mounted in Catalonia over the show trial of Catalan nationalist political prisoners. This brought down the PSOE government this winter.

When the PSOE held new elections in April, hoping to strengthen its position, a new hung parliament emerged instead. No government ever emerged from those elections. The PSOE engaged in failed government talks with Podemos, which ultimately declined to join it, fearing that it would be discredited if it were in government with the PSOE when it handed out harsh prison sentences to the Catalan political prisoners. In September, the PSOE ultimately called these new elections, which have also produced a hung parliament.

Talks attempting to nevertheless form a government will now begin. The Spanish right-wing media are leading a campaign calling for a Grand Coalition PSOE-PP government, modeled on the ruling social-democratic/right-wing coalition government in Germany. A key feature of the “Grand Coalition” plan is that in both cases the main opposition party—the Alternative for Germany (AfD), or Vox in Spain—is a fascistic party.

The right-wing El Mundo said in an editorial last week that today, “The PSOE and the PP will be obliged to sit down at a table to address a grand coalition that allows Spain to start again and end the ungovernability.” Similarly, the right-wing El Espanol published an op-ed declaring, “My vote is for a grand coalition.”

Last night, PP leader Pablo Casado signaled he would be open to forming a grand coalition. “We will be very demanding with the PSOE. We will see what Pedro Sanchez now proposes and then we will be responsible, because Spain cannot continue any longer blocked without a government, hostage to his interests.”

Sanchez for his part responded to the PSOE’s electoral setback by issuing a call last night “to all the parties” to act with “responsibility and generosity” and end the blockage in Madrid. Similarly, last night, an op-ed in the pro-PSOE El Pais titled “Exit strategy” called for “negotiating a minimum program” with “those parties unequivocally committed to the Constitution.”

Whatever the outcome of the talks it is clear the Spanish political system as it emerged from the 1978 Transition from Francoism has suffered a deep breakdown. Discredited by decades of war and austerity since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in particular by a decade of deep European Union (EU) austerity and mass unemployment after the 2008 Wall Street crash, it is veering ever more sharply to the right. Impervious to explosive social anger among workers, it aims instead to return to authoritarian forms of rule to suppress popular opposition.

The rise of Vox is not the product of broad popular approval of the party’s fascistic anti-Catalan agitation, let alone for Vox’s statements of support for fascist coups and mass murder. In fact, polls showed 59 percent of Spaniards opposing a confrontational policy in Catalonia, despite the press campaign denouncing the Catalan protests.

As in the rest of Europe, the rise of the far right is driven from above, to justify military-police violence and continue increasing social inequality with social cuts and tax cuts for the rich, despite rising mass opposition. Madrid has endlessly stoked Spanish nationalism and resorts to police-state repression in Catalonia, building up the far right. The period since the crackdown in Catalonia in October 2017 has seen Vox go from a minor party obtaining less than 50,000 votes to Spain’s third-largest party.

Over the same period, Podemos lost over 2 million votes, as it endlessly called to form a coalition government with the PSOE, to block opposition to the PSOE on its left. Having abandoned its claims after its foundation in 2015 that it hoped to overtake and replace the PSOE, Podemos is manifestly politically bankrupt and in a state of collapse.

Despite the disastrous electoral results of orienting to the PSOE on the basis of promoting Spanish nationalism, Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias has pushed to continue this orientation. At his last campaign meeting he called Podemos “the only patriotic political force in Spain,” Iglesias said he was appealing to “the vote of the homeland, of the people, of a people who want democracy to defend themselves against the powerful.” This endless promotion of nationalism and the Spanish homeland by Podemos is handing the initiative within official politics to Vox.

India’s Supreme Court validates Hindu supremacist violence

Keith Jones

In a judgment pronounced Saturday, India’s highest court has legitimized the violent, decades-long agitation that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu supremacist allies have mounted to raze a famous mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, and erect in its stead a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram.

At the urging of the then most senior BJP leaders and in defiance of express orders from the Supreme Court, Hindu communal activists stormed the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, and demolished the centuries-old structure using axes and sledgehammers. The razing of the Babri Masjid precipitated India’s most serious communal bloodletting since the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 into an explicitly Muslim Pakistan and a mainly Hindu India. More than 2,000 people, most of them poor Muslims, were killed in communal riots and atrocities.

A police officer stands guards on a street in Mumbai, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

With its ruling Saturday, India’s Supreme Court has validated the Babri Masjid’s illegal destruction and sanctioned the construction of a temple dedicated to the worship of Lord Ram on its former site. Indeed, India’s highest court has “ordered” the BJP government to oversee the construction of the Ram Mandir (temple).

Not surprisingly Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his BJP, and the leaders of the RSS, the shadowy Hindu nationalist organization that provides most of the BJP’s leading cadre, have rejoiced at the court’s ruling.

“This verdict will further increase people’s faith in judicial processes,” tweeted Modi.

Reaching still more revolting heights of hypocrisy, India’s prime minister said of a judgment that vindicates and will further embolden the Hindu supremacist right, “It clearly illustrates everybody is equal before the law.”

From the outset, the campaign mounted by the BJP, the RSS and the RSS-offshoot the Vishwa Hindu Parishad for the building of a Ram Mandir has combined religious obscurantism—as exemplified by the claim that the site of the Babri Masjid is the birthplace of the mythical God Ram—with calculated communal political provocation. In 1990, to popularize their incendiary demand that the Babri Masjid be replaced by a Hindu temple so as to assert India’s “Hindu character,” that is, Hindu supremacy, BJP President L.K. Advani mounted a nationwide campaign of rallies. Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra campaign incited communal violence across much of north India and culminated in an initial Oct. 1990 attempt to storm and raze the Babri Masjid.

Two years later, Advani and other senior BJP leaders organized and addressed the Dec. 6, 1992, mass rally that served as the cover for the successful attack on the Babri Masjid, in what a government commission of inquiry found to have been a “pre-planned conspiracy” involving the BJP’s top leaders. While BJP-RSS-VHP activists destroyed the 16th century mosque, thousands of police stood by on the orders of Uttar Pradesh’s BJP-led state government.

Since then, the BJP and RSS have continued to promote the building of the Ram Mandir as a key step in realizing their goal of transforming India into a Hindu Raj or Hindu state.

Saturday’s Supreme Court judgment sets aside a 2010 Allahabad High Court ruling that divided the contested 2.77 acre site into three parts, allotting two-thirds to Hindu organizations and the final third to the Sunni (Muslim) Central Board of Wafqs. At the time, the World Socialist Web Site rightly called the Allahabad Court’s ruling “a shameful decision that legitimizes Hindu supremacist ideology and violence”.

The unanimous ruling issued Saturday by a five-member Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi is even more expressly tailored to the demands of the Hindu right, which resented not having been awarded title to the entire site.

The Nov. 9 Supreme Court ruling attests to the extent to which India’s state institutions have become infused with Hindu communalism and India’s ruling elite is breaking with the most elementary democratic principles, and turning toward authoritarian forms of rule.

It follows closely on from the Modi government’s constitutional coup against Kashmir. On Aug. 5, the BJP government illegally stripped Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India’s lone Muslim-majority state, of its unique semi-autonomous status and transformed it into two Union Territories, placing the region under permanent central government control. Anticipating mass opposition, New Delhi has placed J&K under an ongoing state-of-siege, including mass “preventive” arrests, severe restrictions on people’s movements, and the denial of most cellphone and all internet access.

These actions have repeatedly been greenlighted by India’s Supreme Court. As for India’s opposition parties, they have taken their cue from India’s corporate elite, which wants “strong measures” to assert India’s great-power ambitions on the world stage and to intensify the exploitation of India’s workers and toilers, and which backed Modi’s assault on Kashmir.

The opposition’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya ruling has been of a like kind. The Congress Party, till recently the India bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government, welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling and announced its support for the building of a Ram temple on the site of the razed Babri Masjid.

The Congress claims to be a bulwark of secularism, but in fact it has a long and notorious record of conniving with the Hindu right, including in enforcing the 1947 communal partition of South Asia. There is much evidence to suggest that Congress Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was forewarned of the 1992 attack on the Babri Masjid, but allowed it to proceed. Currently, the Congress is in backroom negotiations with the fascistic Shiv Sena, till recently the BJP’s closest ally, on extending support to a potential Shiv Sena-led government in Maharashtra, India’s second most populous state.

The Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist), which has been promoting the foul lie that the judiciary and the Congress Party are allies of the working class in fighting the BJP and Hindu supremacism, issued a mealy-mouthed statement signaling its support for the Supreme Court ruling. The judgment issued by India’s highest court manifestly legitimizes and rewards Hindu supremacist criminality and violence. Yet the CPM Politburo statement merely terms aspects of the ruling “questionable,” while reiterating its longstanding position that the Ayodhya dispute should be resolved by the courts, if a “negotiated settlement was not possible.”

Given its verdict, the Supreme Court ruling could only be a legal travesty. It was concocted with a predetermined outcome: to strengthen Modi, the BJP government and the Hindu right by delivering them an unequivocal victory in their violent, Hindu supremacist Ram Mandir agitation.

The judgment is steeped in hypocritical re-affirmations of India’s secular polity and the equality of all faiths. It acknowledges that the 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid was a crime. It similarly finds that the smuggling of Ram Lalla (“baby Ram”) idols into the Babri Masjid in 1949, which served as the legal pretext for local authorities working in league with the communalist Hindu Mahasabha to bar Muslim worshipers from the mosque, was a criminal act.

But none of this prevents India’s highest court from unanimously issuing an obscurantist, Hindu-supremacist ruling, and—based on the spurious claim that Muslims never exercised exclusive jurisdiction over the entire site—declaring that title over the disputed land rightfully belongs to the deity Ram Lalla or infant Lord Ram!

As for India’s 200 million Muslims, the Supreme Court expects them to be mollified for the “criminal” destruction of the Babri Masjid and the triumph of the BJP-RSS campaign to assert Hindu supremacy through the building of a Ram Lalla temple by the grant of five-acres at an unspecified site for a new mosque.

The Supreme Court, it must be added, is completely silent on the failure of India’s state authorities—governments, courts and police—to successfully prosecute Advani or any other of the principal instigators and organizers of the Babri Masjid’s demolition and the subsequent wave of communal violence that convulsed India in Dec. 1992–Jan. 1993.

Such is the state of “democratic, secular” India, and the mindset of the India’s highest court in 2019!

Injini Edtech Incubator for African Education Startups (Fully-funded to South Africa) 2020

Application Deadline: 10th December 2019

To Be Taken At (Country): South Africa

About the Award: Do you have a technology-driven or technology-enabled innovation that could improve educational outcomes in Africa? Are you looking to take your early-stage startup to the next level?

Injini is now accepting applications for our next cohort of EdTech changemakers in Africa. If you are one of the selected Cohort 4 startups, you will participate in a five-month incubation programme that will take place both in Cape Town, South Africa and in your home market, where the team will support you remotely.

During this time, you’ll get an opportunity to work with subject matter experts in education, business, technology and entrepreneurship. But that’s not all, just for participating in the programme, you’ll receive a grant of R100,000 to spend on your business. Finally, if we’re impressed with your performance and trajectory once you’ve joined our alumni startups, Injini may offer an investment of up to R1 million for equity in your business!

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: The programme is open to anyone from, based in or focused on any African country.

• Your EdTech startup is based in Africa and focused on improving educational outcomes somewhere on the continent.
• Your solution is aiming to address a key problem related to education in Africa.
• Your solution is evidence-based — meaning, you can point to research that backs up your methods or hypothesis.
• Your company is registered and a certificate of incorporation can be shared with the Injini team upon request.
• Your startup has (at least) a minimum viable product or prototype.
• Your startup has (at least) one full-time founder.
• One or more decision-making members of your startup’s founding team are able to travel to Cape Town during Phases 1 and 3 of the incubation programme.
• Participating founders from outside of South Africa must have a valid passport and eligibility to apply for a South African visa.
• Participating founders must be fluent in English.

Selection: The Cohort 4 Incubation Programme will be made up of three phases.

Phase 1 is set to begin in mid-March 2020 and will take place in Cape Town, South Africa. 1–2 decision-making members of your startup’s founding team will join us for an expenses-paid* stay in the Mother City for a period of six weeks. You’ll be expected to attend a number of business training workshops, engage with industry experts in 1:1 sessions and build a relationship with your mentor, who will support you through the duration of the programme.

Phase 2 will begin the moment you leave Cape Town and head back to your home market. During this 12-week period, you’ll be expected to apply the learnings from Phase 1 to your business on-the-ground, while the Injini team supports you remotely — we may even pop in to visit some of you on your home turf!

Phase 3 will commence back in Cape Town in July 2020, marking the final leg of the incubation programme. This four-week stretch will give us the chance to tie up loose ends and make sure your EdTech startup is ready for post-programme growth and possible investment.

Number of Awards: 20

Value of Award: 

• Everyone in the program will be covered for flights to and from Cape Town, for accommodation , and receive a small allowance for extra living costs incurred while in Cape Town.
•  As part of this revised programme, each start-up will be eligible for a ZAR 100k grant (ca. $7.5k), after which the cohort will compete for follow-on equity investment of up to $75k per startup.

How to Apply: Apply here

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit the Program Webpage for Details 

VLIR-UOS Masters Scholarships (ICP) 2020/2021 by Belgium Government for Developing Countries

Application Deadline: Application Deadlines depend on candidate’s chosen programme (See ‘How to Apply’ link below); deadlines generally between November 2019 – March 2020

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries:

• Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Niger
• Asia: Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Palestinian Territories, Vietnam
• Latin America: Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru

To be taken at (country): Belgium

Accepted Subject Areas: Only the following English taught courses at Belgian Flemish universities or university colleges are eligible for scholarships:

• Master of Human Settlements – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Development Evaluation and Management – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Governance and Development – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Globalization and Development – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020

Two-year programmes

• Master of Science in Food Technology – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Science in Marine and Lacustrine Science and Management – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Aquaculture (IMAQUA) – Deadline for applications: 1 March 2020
• Master of Epidemiology – Deadline for applications: 1 March 2020
• Master of Agro-and Environmental Nematology – Deadline online copies: 3 January 2020. Please note you have to send a hard copy of your application and all requested documents to the programme coordinator before 16 January 2020!
• Master of Rural Development – Deadline online application: 1 February 2020 – deadline hard copies: 1 March 2020
• Master of Statistics – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Water Resources Engineering – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Sustainable Development – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020
• Master of Transportation Sciences – Deadline for applications: 1 February 2020

About the Award: VLIR-UOS awards scholarships to students from developing countries to study for a master or training programme in Flanders, Belgium. VLIR-UOS funds and facilitates academic cooperation and exchange between higher education institutions in Flanders (Belgium) and those in developing countries, which aims at building capacity, knowledge and experience for a sustainable development.

The master programmes focus on specific problems of developing countries. These are designed to enable graduates to share and apply acquired knowledge in the home institution and country. In the shorter training programmes the focus is on transferring skills rather than knowledge, thus creating opportunities for cooperation and networking.

Selection Criteria: The following criteria will be taken into account for the selection of candidates for a scholarship:

• Motivation. The candidate who is not able to convincingly motivate his application, is unlikely to be selected for a scholarship.
• Professional experience: Preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate a higher possibility of implementing and/or transferring the newly gained knowledge upon return to the home country.
• Gender. In case of two equally qualified candidates of different sexes, preference will be given to the female candidate.
• Regional balance. The selection commission tries to ensure that 50% of a programme’s scholarships are granted to candidates from Sub-Saharan Africa, provided there is a sufficient number of qualifying candidates from this region.
• Social background. In case of two equally qualified candidates, preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate that they belong to a disadvantaged group or area within their country or an ethnic or social minority group, especially when these candidates can provide proof of leadership potential.
• Previously awarded scholarships: Preference will be given to candidates who have never received a scholarship to study in a developed country (bachelor or master).

Eligibility: You can only apply for a scholarship if you meet the following requisites.

1. Fungibility with other VLIR-UOS funding: A scholarship within the VLIR-UOS scholarship programme is not compatible with financial support within an IUC- or TEAM-project. Candidates working in a university where such projects are being organized, should submit a declaration of the project leader stating that the department where the candidate is employed is not involved in the project.
2. Age: The maximum age for an ICP candidate is 35 years for an initial masters and 40 years for an advanced masters. The maximum age for an ITP candidate is 45 years. The candidate cannot succeed this age on January 1 of the intake year.
3. Nationality and Country of Residence: A candidate should be a national and resident of one of the 31 countries of the VLIR-UOS country list for scholarships (not necessarily the same country) at the time of application.
4. Professional background and experience: VLIR-UOS gives priority to candidates who are employed in academic institutions, research institutes, governments, social economy or NGO’s, or aim a career in one of these sectors. However, also candidates employed in the profit sector (ICP and ITP) or newly graduated candidates without any work experience (ICP) can be eligible for the scholarship. The ITP candidate should have relevant professional experience and a support letter confirming (re)integration in a professional context where the acquired knowledge and skills will be immediately applicable.
5. Former VLIR-UOS scholarship applications and previously awarded scholarships: A candidate can only submit one VLIR-UOS scholarship application per year, irrespectively of the scholarship type. As a consequence, a candidate can only be selected for one VLIR-UOS scholarship per year.
6. The ICP candidate has never received a scholarship from the Belgian government to attend a master programme or equivalent or was never enrolled in a Flemish higher education institution to attend a master programme or equivalent before January 1 of the intake year

Number of Awardees: VLIR-UOS will award up to 180 scholarships.

Value of Scholarship: The scholarship covers ALL related expenses (full cost).

Duration of Scholarship: The master programmes will last for one or two academic years.

How to Apply: 

• To apply for a scholarship, you first need to apply for the Master programme.
• To apply for the Masters programme, visit the website of the Master programme of your interest. Follow the guidelines for application for the programme as mentioned on its website.
• In the programme application, you can mention whether you wish to apply for a scholarship. In case you do,  the programme coordinator forwards your application to VLIR-UOS.
• Applications submitted by the candidates to VLIR-UOS directly will not be considered!

Visit Scholarship Webpage for more details

Why is Latin America Burning?

Cesar Chelala

In Latin America several countries are under turmoil, as people cannot even meet their most basics needs. The last few months have seen a remarkable spectacle: hundreds of thousands of citizens are taking to the streets to protest to what they perceive is their governments’ attack on their well-being, and the governments’ responses have been late and inadequate.

A reason for these failures can be found in an anecdote related by Jean Cocteau. A couple of drivers suffer a car malfunction in a small Chinese town: there is a hole in the gas tank. They find a mechanic that can repair it; he can do an exact replica of the tank in a couple of hours. When they pick up the car they restart the trip when, in the dark hours of the night, they face the same problem. The reason: the mechanic had also copied the hole in the gas tank. Governments, and alas, not only those in Latin America, are trying to solve problems facing them using the same recipe, the one that hadn’t succeeded before.

What is happening now is important not only in its dimension, but also in the possibility of a generalized continental chaos with unpredictable consequences. And this is happening after Latin America seemed to be a on a path to sustained development, based on years of high commodity prices. However, governments, rather than taking advantage of this situation, have instead used the remarkable financial resources obtained for their own spurious aims.

The citizenry, tired of false promises, resorts to voting for populist governments that, although they increase the countries’ external debt, have at least a policy of redistribution of resources that solves immediate problems and gives people a false sense of security. This has been starkly seen now in Argentina, where Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (they are not related) won the country’s presidential election although she has more than a dozen criminal cases against her.

Present economic and social crises have special characteristics according to what countries are considered. The common denominator to all is the profound economic inequality which, according to the United Nations, is greater in Latin America than in any other part of the world. The Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean states that, although in Chile poverty levels went down three percentage points between 2016 and 2019, one percent of the country’s population still owns 26.5 percent of its wealth.

David Konzevik, an Argentine economist and advisor to many governments, has developed the theory called “The revolution of expectations”. According to Konzevik, the degree of knowledge and information that exists today makes people aware of possibilities for better living that are unfulfilled. Governments by and large remain deaf to people’s demands. “The poor today are rich in information and millionaires in expectations,” Konzevik told me recently in New York.

In addition, in almost all countries judicial institutions are weak and as a result widespread corruption remains unpunished. As the worldwide economy has slowed down, governments lack resources to pay for social programs. As a result, the public has become increasingly more vocal in its demands for better services and salaries, and less willing to accept great levels of social inequality.

However, today not only the poor participate in the protests against the governments. Protesting as well are vast sectors of the middle class who also see their quality of life considerably lowered by government policies that favor mainly the rich.

Is there a way out of this morass? The answer may be in the following story told by the
Spanish-Mexican historian Juan María Alponte. “A man, passing a quarry, saw three stone cutters. He asked the first: ‘What do you do?’ ‘You see, cutting these stones.’ The second said: ‘I prepare a cornerstone.’ The third one simply said, unaffected. ‘I build a cathedral.’” We need politicians who want to build a cathedral.

Middle East: a Complex Re-alignment

Conn Hallinan

The fallout from the September attack on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities is continuing to reverberate throughout the Middle East, sidelining old enmities—sometimes for new ones—and re-drawing traditional alliances. While Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Syria is grabbing the headlines, the bigger story may be that major regional players are contemplating some historic re-alignments.

After years of bitter rivalry, the Saudis and the Iranians are considering how they can dial down their mutual animosity. The formerly powerful Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of Persian Gulf monarchs is atomizing because Saudi Arabia is losing its grip. And Washington’s former domination of the region appears to be in decline.

Some of these developments are long-standing, pre-dating the cruise missile and drone assault that knocked out 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production. But the double shock—Turkey’s lunge into Syria and the September missile attack—is accelerating these changes.

Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, recently flew to Iran and then on to Saudi Arabia to lobby for détente between Teheran and Riyadh and to head off any possibility of hostilities between the two countries. “What should never happen is a war,” Khan said, “because this will not just affect the whole region…this will cause poverty in the world. Oil prices will go up.”

According to Khan, both sides have agreed to talk, although the Yemen War is a stumbling block. But there are straws in the wind on that front, too. A partial ceasefire seems to be holding, and there are back channel talks going on between the Houthis and the Saudis.

The Saudi intervention in Yemen’s civil war was supposed to last three months, but it has dragged on for over four years. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) was to supply the ground troops and the Saudis the airpower. But the Saudi-UAE alliance has made little progress against the battle-hardened Houthis, who have been strengthened by defections from the regular Yemeni army.

Air wars without supporting ground troops are almost always a failure, and they are very expensive. The drain on the Saudi treasury is significant, and the country’s wealth is not bottomless.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to shift the Saudi economy from its overreliance on petroleum, but he needs outside money to do that and he is not getting it. The Yemen War—which, according to the United Nations is the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet—and the Prince’s involvement with the murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has spooked many investors.

Without outside investment, the Saudi’s have to use their oil revenues, but the price per barrel is below what the Kingdom needs to fulfill its budget goals, and world demand is falling off. The Chinese economy is slowing— the trade war with the US has had an impact—and European growth is sluggish. There is a whiff of recession in the air, and that’s bad news for oil producers.

Riyadh is also losing allies. The UAE is negotiating with the Houthis and withdrawing their troops, in part because the Abu Dhabi has different goals in Yemen than Saudi Arabia, and because in any dustup with Iran, the UAE would be ground zero. US generals are fond of calling the UAE “little Sparta” because of its well trained army, but the operational word for Abu Dhabi is “little”: the Emirate’s army can muster 20,000 troops, Iran can field more than 800,000 soldiers.

Saudi Arabia’s goals in Yemen are to support the government-in-exile of President Rabho Mansour Hadi, control its southern border and challenge Iran’s support of the Houthis. The UAE, on the other hand, is less concerned with the Houthis but quite focused on backing the anti-Hadi Southern Transitional Council, which is trying to re-create south Yemen as a separate country. North and south Yemen were merged in 1990, largely as a result of Saudi pressure, and it has never been a comfortable marriage.

Riyadh has also lost its grip on the Gulf Cooperation Council. Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar continue to trade with Iran in spite of efforts by the Saudis to isolate Teheran,

The UAE and Saudi Arabia recently hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin, who pressed for the 22-member Arab League to re-admit Syria. GCC member Bahrain has already re-established diplomatic relations with Damascus. Putin is pushing for a multilateral security umbrella for the Middle East, which includes China.

“While Russia is a reliable ally, the US is not,” Middle East scholar Mark Katz told the South Asia Journal. And while many in the region have no love for Syria’s Assad, “they respect Vladimir Putin for sticking by Russia’s ally.”

The Arab League—with the exception of Qatar—denounced the Turkish invasion and called for a withdrawal of Ankara’s troops. Qatar is currently being blockaded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE for pursuing an independent foreign policy and backing a different horse in the Libyan civil war. Turkey is Qatar’s main ally.

Russia’s 10-point agreement with Turkey on Syria has generally gone down well with Arab League members, largely because the Turks agreed to respect Damascus’s sovereignty and eventually withdraw all troops. Of course, “eventually” is a shifty word, especially because Turkey’s goals are hardly clear.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to drive the Syrian Kurds away from the Turkish border and move millions of Syrian refugees into a strip of land some 19 miles deep and 275 miles wide. The Kurds may move out, but the Russian and Syrian military—filling in the vacuum left by President Trump’s withdrawal of American forces—have blocked the Turks from holding more than the border and one deep enclave, certainly not one big enough to house millions of refugees.

Erdogan’s invasion is popular at home—nationalism plays well with the Turkish population and most Turks are unhappy with the Syrian refugees—but for how long? The Turkish economy is in trouble and invasions cost a lot of money. Ankara is using proxies for much of the fighting, but without lots of Turkish support those proxies are no match for the Kurds—let alone the Syrian and Russian military.

That would mainly mean airpower, and Turkish airpower is restrained by the threat of Syrian anti-aircraft and Russian fighters, not to mention the fact that the Americans still control the airspace. The Russians have deployed their latest fifth-generation stealth fighter, the SU-57, and a number of MiG-29s and SU-27s, not planes the Turks would wish to tangle with. The Russians also have their new mobile S-400 anti-aircraft system, and the Syrians have the older, but still effective, S-300s.

In short, things could get really messy if Turkey decided to push their proxies or their army into areas occupied by Russian or Syrian troops. There are reports of clashes in Syria’s northeast and casualties among the Kurds and Syrian Army, but a serious attempt to push the Russians and the Syrians out seems questionable.

The goal of resettling refugees is unlikely to go anywhere. It will cost some $53 billion to build an infrastructure and move two million refugees into Syria, money that Turkey doesn’t have. The European Union has made it clear it won’t offer a nickel, and the UN can’t step in because the invasion is a violation of international law.

When those facts sink in, Erdogan might find that Turkish nationalism will not be enough to support his Syrian adventure if it turns into an occupation.

The Middle East that is emerging from the current crisis may be very different than the one that existed before those cruise missiles and drones tipped over the chessboard. The Yemen War might finally end. Iran may, at least partly, break out of the political and economic blockade that Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel has imposed on it. Syria’s civil war will recede.  And the Americans, who have dominated the Middle East since 1945, will become simply one of several international players in the region, along with China, Russia, India and the European Union.

Growing Ecological Civilization in China

Evaggelos Vallianatos

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences invited me to an international ecological conference in Jinan, Shandong Province. The Academy gave the conference a provocative and insightful title: a Paradigm Shift: Towards Ecological Civilization: China and the World.

I listened to several Chinese and non-Chinese experts talk about a variety of issues (political, economic and ecological) touching on our present world crisis.

The discussion tool place during the  last two days of October 2019. Chinese speakers had reasons for being exuberant. They merged their ecological dreams with their celebration of the 70^th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution.

Chinese forum speakers stressed their ideological victories of having institutions dedicated to the exploration of ecological civilization in all its complexity. In such pioneering task, they have the blessings of Xi Jinping, president of China. A section of the forum examined “the world significance of Xi Jinping’s thought on ecological civilization and Chinese traditional ecological wisdom.”

Western participants like me brought out the looming threats industrialized civilization poses to human health and the health and very survival of the natural world.

Theory

The picture that emerged was by no means pretty: the world is upside down. Politicians, scholars and scientists spoke, sometimes passionately, about how to make China and the world better places, especially how to avoid the worst effects of climate change. A former German politician, Hans-Josef Fell, warned us of existential threats, even cataclysmic consequences of business as usual. Fell is right. American and UN climate scientists give world leaders no more than ten years to get their house in order: primarily banning fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable and non-polluting energy.

Leaving fossil fuels in the ground would be a boon to public health. Moreover, stopping burning them would put a break to global warming. Healthy alternatives exist. We can get the energy we need from the inexhaustible Sun and other non-polluting sources like wind, geothermal energy and water.

There’s little doubt in my mind we better act now (in the next ten years) to make the fundamental changes necessary in slowing down the awaken climate monster. Yes, no more petroleum, natural gas and coal. But we also need to change our mentality: the ways of seeing the world, both that of the Earth and that of the cosmos.

The ancient Greeks worshipped the Sun god Helios for millennia. Did they know something about the cosmos that, in our hubris, we ignore? That the Sun is forever? That the Sun is life-giving and light-giving? The Greeks called the Sun Helios because Helios means the gathering of people observing the rise and setting of this magnificent star.

The Greeks put the Earth (Gaia) at the center of the universe. We describe that cosmological design as the geocentric universe. This shows the immense respect Greeks had for the Earth as a living being, even the oldest of the gods, according to Plato. But then in the third century BCE, another natural philosopher, Aristarchos of Samos, put the Sun at the center of the cosmos. Aristarchos’ heliocentric cosmology best explains how the universe works. It’s our cosmology.

However, the rulers of the planet and most scientists look at the Earth as a mine for resources, not a living world. That explains the hunting and killing of wildlife and the ruthless treatment of our terrestrial home: perpetual clearcutting of forests, exploitation and pollution of the seas, and the transformation of ancient and gentle and ecological practices of growing food to mechanical factories that poison the land and the very food people eat.

I focused my remarks at the Jenin conference on the so-called industrialized agriculture. I tried to convey the fact that making farming a mechanical factory was no less a grave error than becoming addicted to petroleum, natural gas, and coal: we have been undermining our health and the health and survival of the natural world.

Here’s how it happens.

America, Europe, China and the affluent classes of most other nations have embraced giant farms growing a few selected crops. These large pieces of land are the 2019 version of medieval plantations and state farms of the twentieth century. Their corporate, state or private owners manage these farms like factories. They employ machines, genetic engineering for the modification of crops, and neurotoxic pesticides.

The toxic cover of such large agricultural territories and the crops themselves are often fatal to pollinating honeybees, other insects, birds and wildlife. Poisons sip into the land and devastate microorganisms responsible for carrying nutrients to the crops. In addition, spayed neurotoxins become airborne and travel with the winds. They contaminate the environment, including organic farms.

The conversion of forests to industrial farms and the concentration of thousands of animals in gigantic animal factories make a substantial contribution to greenhouse gases warming the planet.

I urged China to take the initiative in sponsoring a World Environment Organization for collective international activities for the transition of the world economy away from fossil fuels. Such actions and policies must be compatible to the awesome emergency of climate change and over-industrialization of farms and food production.

Praxis

The second part of my visit to Jinan was praxis. I spent a day visiting a distinguished Chinese scientist by the name of Jiang Gaoming. He works in the Hongyi Organic Farm, his land in the village that gave him birth.

Vegetable garden. Hongyi organic Farm. Jiang Family Village. Photo: EV.

A Dutch colleague, Harris Tiddens, and I went from Jinan to Qufu, the hometown of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius who flourished in late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. From Qufu we traveled to the Jiang Family Village located in Pingyi County, Linyi City.

Jiang Gaoming is a man of knowledge and passion for organic food and ecological civilization. He is associated with the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shandong Province that funds his research. He is a prolific botanist interested in public health and the health of natural world. He grows organic food and tests plants for their food and medicinal virtues.

Jiang Gaoming showing off his vegetables. EV.

Jiang Gaoming, his two graduate students, the farm manager, Harris Tiddens, Gao Yuan, a graduate student in the philosophy of science at Beijing Normal University, and I sat on a round wooden table for dinner. Five bowls included delicious vegetables, noodles, and rice. Each of us had two wooden chopsticks for taking food from the bowls. In addition, Jiang Gaoming kept filling our tiny glasses with a drink from sorghum and sweet wine.

This memorable symposium led to extensive talk. I listened to him describing his work and marveled at the breadth of interest and deep knowledge he possesses. He is a professor of plant ecological physiology. In other words, he is inventing the natural history of plants that make life possible. Ecology is his mission. He and his graduate students are paving the path for China to enter the scientific and political realms of ecological civilization.

The next half a day Gaoming gave us a tour of the various strips of land where he and his graduate students are testing plants. His German shepherd dog, Tiger, followed us everywhere. We even went to the center of his village where a small store holds his books for sale.

I departed China with the botany professor in mind.

Talk about ecological civilization is sweet. No one knows what ecological civilization was, is or if it is possible among humans. But we know traditional Greek and Chinese wisdom and institutions are the closest possible models of ecological civilization.

Yet it’s great to have gigantic dreams of one day converting semi-barbarian humans hooked on petroleum and pollution to caring for the Earth like ancient Greeks and ancient Chinese did.

It’s never too late, except basic questions for survival must be resolved in the next ten years. In November 5, 2019, in the journal BioScience, 11,000 scientists from 150 countries issued a warning to the leaders of the world:

“Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament… The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected… It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity… Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature’s reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic “hothouse Earth,” well beyond the control of humans… These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.”

President Xi Jinping would do well to heed the advice of these scientists and dramatically cut China’s gigantic carbon emissions. Start the conversation with our hospitable, friendly, and ingenious professor Jiang Gaoming. He is growing a new species of ecological civilization.