Nestle Nutrition Postgraduate Fellowship Program for Young Professionals – Up to 40,000CHF in Grants

Application Deadline: 1st October 2016. 

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): Any scientific institution offering a program in the fields of Maternal and/or Child Health and Nutrition

Brief description: The Nestle Nutrition Institute Fellowship Program is offering Young professionals in healthcare the opportunity to study Nutrition and Maternal and/or Child Health in leading institutions.

Eligible Field of Study: Maternal and/or Child Health, Nutrition and any related field(s)

About the Award: The Fellowship offered by Nestle Nutrition Institute regularly offers young professionals from developing countries training in research skills and knowledge on Nutrition. Since 1981, more than five hundred (5oo) doctors and scientists have benefited from this fellowship and clinical grants in different ways, which have directly impacted the health sectors of Africa and other regions.

Offered Since: 1981

Type: Postgraduate Scholarship

Eligibility: 

• Potential candidates should submit an application describing their interest in participating in the NNI Research training Fellowship.
• Priority consideration for this prestigious fellowship will be given to candidates in junior positions from emerging countries.
• The candidates’ history of previous or alternate grants will be taken into consideration.
• Candidates will be notified of their eligibility by letter.
• The application form must be accompanied by the following:
  1. Curriculum Vitae,
  2. A plan of the proposed training/activity clearly indicating its specific outcomes and
  3. Two letters of recommendation (1 from the institution where the candidate is working and 1 from the host institution*).
  4. Letter stating intent to return to the home country upon completion of the training program
  5. Details of their current level of training

Selection Criteria:

• Fellowships are available for post graduate qualifications only
• Applicant has to be affiliated with an academic/clinical institution
• Successful candidates will be required to start their training within 1 year of being notified of the fellowship award
• Duration of the support for the research training lasts for a maximum of 12 months
• Upon certification, fellowship awardees must return to their home countries.

The Panel will not accept applications, which are submitted by:

• Candidates who have already spent more than 12 months outside their home country during the 3 years preceding the application. Exceptions could be made if the applicant can justify how this additional training will supplement the one(s) already obtained
• Candidates who have already left their country at the time of applying for the fellowship
• Candidates who have completed more than one half of any training programme they may already be enrolled in
• Candidates who, at the time of submitting their application, already have a grant from any other training program
• Applications will not be entertained if the applicant’s home country law prohibits the nature of this activity.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:  The grant includes learning a specific laboratory technique, statistics, nutrition, etc. The NNI grant up to 40’000 CHF can be used to pay course registration fees, round trip travel to the host institution, lodging and living expenses and health insurance coverage for the duration of the course.The grant offer of 40’000 CHF is also given and can be used to pay course registration fees, round trip travel to the host institution, lodging and living expenses and health insurance coverage for the duration of the course.

Duration of Scholarship: Maximum of twelve (12) months

How to Apply: 

• Applications should be sent by email to NNI@nestle.com or by fax to + 41 21 924 2836.
• Applicants should plan to start their program not sooner than 3 months after the application deadline to give time for approval process and administrative arrangements with a host institution.
• Applicants are urged to submit only one application and for a single programme. If you have more than one project, decide which is your best option and submit that one.
• Applications without all documentation, including a letter of acceptance by the faculty at the hosting institution will not be considered.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Nestle Nutrition Institute

Important Notes: The NNI grant will be given to the Host Institution which will disburse it to the fellow. In no case will any money be given directly from the NNI to the fellow.

Before any money can be allocated to the research training fellowship, applicants will need to produce proof of health insurance for the country they will be visiting for the whole duration of stay.

Commonwealth Professional Fellowships for Developing Countries, 2017 UK

Application Deadline: 23.59 (GMT) on 12th September 2016.

Offered annually? Yes

Brief description: The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission is offering Research Fellowships for mid-career professionals of Developing Commonwealth Countries to study at a UK host organization.

Eligible Field of Study: Priority will be given to applications with practical relevance in the following broadly-defined areas:

Agriculture/fisheries/forestry
Economic growth
Education
Engineering/science/technology
Environment
Governance
Public health

About Scholarship: The Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan is one of the largest  and  most  prestigious  scholarships schemes for international study in the world. Since it was established  in  1959,  around  30,000  individuals  have benefited – 24,000 of them have held awards funded by the  United  Kingdom,  managed  by  the  Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom (CSC)

Commonwealth  Professional  Fellowships  support  mid-career  professionals  from  developing  Commonwealth countries  to  spend  a  period  of  time  with  a  UK  host organisation  working  in  their  field  for  a  programme  of professional development.

Scholarship Type: Research Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible for these fellowship, candidate must:

• Be a citizen of a developing Commonwealth country, refugee, or British protected person
• Be permanently resident in a developing Commonwealth country
• Have normally at least five years’ relevant work experience in a profession related to the subject of the application, by the proposed start of the fellowship
• Be available to start their fellowship within prescribed dates as stated on the CSC website
• Not have undertaken a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship in the last five years
• Not be seeking to undertake an academic programme of research or study in the UK. Academics are eligible to apply for the scheme, but only to undertake programmes of academic management, not research or courses relevant to their research subject

Organisations from any sector can apply either to host one or more Commonwealth Professional Fellows within their own organisation, or to nominate one or more Fellows to be hosted by another organisation with which they have links. To apply for these fellowships,organisations must:

• Be based in the UK
• Have set up a programme of activities for the fellowship
• Have identified a Fellow/Fellows who they wish to nominate, through existing networks or wider advertising
• Be able to demonstrate the capacity to set up and manage the fellowship(s) on a day-to-day basis

Selection Criteria: 2016 applications for Commonwealth Professional Fellowships will be judged on the following criteria:

• The extent to which the proposed Fellowship will ensure the transfer of skills relevant to the needs of a Commonwealth developing country
• The extent to which those skills will lead to practical benefits for the developing country following the Fellowship
• The extent to which the Fellowship will have a catalytic effect, either within the developing country concerned, or in establishing new relationships with the UK

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: A commonwealth Fellowship covers the living expenses for the Fellow as well as a return airfare to the UK. It also provides funding support to the host organisation, with a budget of up to £3,000 available for attendance at conferences, on short courses, and other eligible costs.

Duration of scholarship: Typically 3-months but could be extended to 6-months

Eligible Countries: Developing Commonwealth country

To be taken at: UK Universities

How to Apply: If you are nominated by a UK organisation for a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship, you will be asked to complete an application using the CSC’s Electronic Application System (EAS).

If your application does not include two references – one from your current employer – it will be considered ineligible. You must check with your referees that they have submitted their references via the EAS by the application deadline – further information for referees on how to submit a reference

You must liaise with your host/nominating organisation well in advance of this date to agree a deadline to complete the EAS, so that the organisation can submit the full application by the official deadline.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage details on how to apply

Sponsors: Department for International Development (DFID) UK.

$37,000 Facebook International Fellowship 2017/2018 for PhD Students

Application Deadline: 1st November 2016.
(Applications may be saved and edited up until application deadline)

Offered annually? Yes

Scholarship Name: Facebook Fellowship Award

Brief description: Facebook Fellowship Program is open to full-time PhD students (domestic and international) enrolled during the current academic year and studying computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system architecture, or a related area.

Research Areas

• Artificial Intelligence
• Connectivity Hardware
• Computer Vision
• Data Mining
• Databases
• Distributed Systems, Networking & Operating Systems
• Economics and Computation
• Electrical Engineering
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Machine Learning
• Natural Language Processing
• Programming Languages & Compilers
• Security & Privacy
• Social Computing
• Software Engineering

About Scholarship

Giving people the power to share and connect requires constant innovation. At Facebook, research permeates everything we do. We believe the most interesting research questions are derived from real-world problems. Our engineers work on cutting edge research with a practical focus and push product boundaries every day. We believe that close relationships with the academic community will enable us to address many of these problems at a fundamental level and solve them. As part of our ongoing commitment to building academic relationships, we are pleased to announce the two year Facebook Fellowship program to support PhD students in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years.

Scholarship Type: PhD Fellowship

Selection Criteria and Eligibility

• Full-time PhD students who are currently involved in on-going research.
• Students work must be related to one or more relevant disciplines.
• Students must be enrolled during the academic year(s) that the Fellowship is awarded.
• The Fellowship Program is open to PhD students globally who are enrolled in an accredited university in any country.

Number of Scholarships: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Each Facebook Fellowship includes several benefits:

• Tuition and fees will be paid for the academic year (up to two years).
• $37K grant (one-time payment during each academic year).
• Up to $5,000 in conference travel support.
• Paid visit to Facebook HQ to present research.
• Opportunity for a paid internship at Facebook.

Duration of Scholarship: Facebook Fellowship Award to cover two years!

Eligible Countries: Domestic and International Students

To be taken at (country): Any country (excluding US embargoed countries)

Required application materials:

• 1-2 page research summary which clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field, and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award. Please reference the topical areas below.
• Student’s CV (with email, phone and mailing address). Please include applicable coursework.
• 2 letters of recommendation (one must be from an academic advisor).

How to Apply: The Application is now live. Go to the application site and enter your information.

Visit scholarship webpage for details

Sponsors: Facebook

Our Deteriorating Environment: Is Anybody Listening?

Mel Gurtov

While the scientists have been doing their job in calling attention to the multiple ways in which environmental decline threatens the planet, we hear less and less from political leaders. Their focus is on the here-and-now—terrorism, jobs, immigration—and not on commitments to the future. Last year’s Paris Agreement on climate change seems like a distant memory.

Here is some of the latest scientific evidence, which points not only to the magnitude and immediacy of the problem but also to the interdependence of its parts:

*Five scientists from the Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in College Park, Maryland, give findings on the rate of climate change increase—“unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years”—and therefore the need for an accelerated response.

*To the now familiar melting of the Arctic ice packs—which the most recent study shows is likely to cause a sea level rise of “at least several meters”– should be added the equally if not more dangerous thawing of the permafrost, which means increasing emissions of methane and carbon dioxide. “Indeed,” Chris Mooney reports, “scientists have discovered a simple statistic that underscores the scale of the potential problem: There may be more than twice as much carbon contained in northern permafrost as there is in the atmosphere itself. That’s a staggering thought.” (Methane, by the way, seems to be the unsung villain: all the attention to carbon dioxide, Bill McKibben tells us in The Nation, detracts from methane’s equally potent heat trapping. Increased use of natural gas, plus fracking, are significantly increasing methane emissions in the U.S.)

*The world’s largest forest “carbon sink,” the Amazon basin, is losing its ability to soak up excess carbon dioxide, a British study reports. In a nutshell, growth—i.e., conversion of forest land to agriculture—is outpacing forest sustainability.

*Human expansion, such as in the Amazon basin, is imperiling the ecosystem itself. A study by European scientists finds that biodiversity levels have fallen below the point where the ecosystem can remain intact. Species decline of 10 percent, the scientists estimate, is dangerous; “but their study found that overall, across the globe, the average decline is already more like 15 percent. In other words, original species are only about 85 percent as abundant (84.6 percent to be precise) as they were before human land-use changes.” Climate change will add substantially to this sobering assessment.

*A new UN Environment Programme report covering all parts of the globe found that well-known problems are intensifying. Two problems in particular: “One was worsening air pollution problems, driven, again, by large populations and the swelling of urban cores. Another was widespread water scarcity problems, exacerbated by climate change but also greater demand in growing cities.” More than 1,200 scientists from 160 countries participated in the study.

*The first-ever international report on declining populations of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators underscores the looming threat to world food supplies and the agricultural system that supports it. The causes of pollinator extinction are well known: global warming, pesticides, and overuse of agricultural land.

*New studies of flooding confirm that rising sea levels as the result of global warming are occurring at a faster rate than ever before. The coastal flooding witnessed in recent years in Miami, Charleston, and Norfolk is likely to be more frequent and prolonged in the future. Ocean levels may rise up three to four feet by 2100.

*China, while promising to draw 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources, is, in fact, continuing to construct coal-fired plants—on average, one plant a week until 2020, according to the latest Greenpeace report. The extraordinary fact about this new construction is that it creates huge excess capacity, the result not of central government dictates but rather of permits for investment in coal-fired plants by leaders in distant provinces. Unless this trend stops, as much as $200 billion will be wasted, and water availability will dramatically decline.

Two pieces of good news: nuclear power is in trouble everywhere, and the ozone “hole” over the Antarctic is starting to heal. The latest “World Nuclear Industry Status Report” details the numerous nuclear power plants that have been or in a short time will be shut down. Financing problems, aging plants, and technical breakdowns are a big part of the reason; but competition from renewable energy sources is becoming the most important factor. The future energy picture is captured in this notation: “Globally, wind power output grew by 17 percent, solar by 33 percent, nuclear by 1.3 percent” in the past year, and “Brazil, China, India, Japan and the Netherlands now all generate more electricity from wind turbines alone than from nuclear power plants.” Meantime, thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that phased out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone layer is growing back—a sign that international agreements backed by a coalition of scientists do work.

Public opinion trails behind scientific findings on climate change, according to Pew Research Center polls. The urgency of climate change is felt more strongly in Europe and Latin America than in the U.S. and China. That fact is worrisome: Americans and Chinese, who live in the biggest carbon producing societies, should be the most concerned about climate change. On the other hand, Americans’ concern is rising again: the percentage of Americans polled by Gallup in 2016 who believe climate change is a worrisome problem stands at 64 percent. On the other end of the spectrum, only 10 percent of U.S. adults now discount global warming as a major problem. But before we celebrate, we need to remind ourselves that expressions of concern don’t equate to what people are willing to do to combat the problem, even at the polls. And if many of them are inclined to “let the politicians figure it out,” or hide behind “I’m not a scientist” disclaimers, we’re in great trouble.

Sadly, climate change is barely on the election-year agenda. That’s hardly surprising in the case of Donald Trump, a climate change denier. His comeuppance will be when his prize Florida hotel, Mar-a-Lago, goes under water in perhaps thirty years, along with many other coastal properties as mentioned above. Beaches and streets are already flooding in Miami. As for Hillary Clinton, she has mentioned global warming of course, but it’s clearly not a high priority in her campaign. Whether or not that changes in her presidency remains to be seen.

A final thought, which comes from an opinion piece by William Gail, former president of the American Meteorological Society: Future generations may have to start from scratch in grappling with the “new dark age” of climate-altering changes. Their learning process will have been disrupted. Models, technologies, and other resources used to identify patterns, and predict and act on Earth’s dramatic changes, will be largely useless. Our children and grandchildren have no idea what they are inheriting.

Amid Zika Scare, FDA Clears Way For GMO Mosquito Trial In Florida

 Lauren McCauley

In a move that public health advocates are calling “irresponsible and frightening,” the U.S. Food and Drug Association on Friday cleared the experimental release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Key Haven, Florida.

Pivoting off of the recent news that there is an outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus that has infected over a dozen people in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, the UK-based developers of the genetically modified organism (GMO) reportedly also called on the FDA to grant emergency authorization to release the insects in Miami.

Oxitec, which produces other GMO products like “Arctic” apples and “AquaBounty” salmon, has developed what they describe as “self-limiting mosquitoes,” genetically engineered to die before reaching adulthood.

As the company explains, Oxitec has genetically engineered male mosquitoes—known as OX513A males—which it will release into the wild to mate with native female Aedes aegypti, which bite and can potentially spread disease. Their offspring die off, reducing the population.

“Releasing GMO mosquitoes into the environment without long term environmental impact studies is irresponsible and frightening,” said Zen Honeycutt, director of the anti-GMO group Moms Across America, in a statement on Saturday. “What about the creatures who eat the mosquitoes and all the life forms up the food chain? The impact could be irreversible… Allowing uncontrollable genetically altered life forms into the wild is not justified.”

The Key Haven trial would run for between six and 22 months and the company said it could release anywhere from 20 to 100 mosquitoes per person on the island.

However, they must contend with strong local opposition first.

Residents of Key Haven will have the chance to vote in November on a non-binding ballot measure on the GMO trial, and a majority of the community’s commissioners said they would abide by the will of the voters. And over 168,000 people have signed a petition calling on government officials to reject the trial.

Israel and The World Vision Crime Sham

Vacy Vlazna

The crackpot Israeli Hasbara* Circus featuring the four clowns of the truth apocalypse, Shin Bet, the Israel government, Shurat HaDin and the mainstream media fools, has, yet again, hit the world stage with the usual lame show of fact contortions, tight rope slander  and smoke and mirrors fantasies.

Taking a leaf from the Bush-Blair weapons of mass destruction hoax, Israel is going all out to divert anti-Israel opinion on its monumental humanitarian disaster to a fictitious crime  allegedly perpetrated by the very victims of said humanitarian  disaster- Israel’s wars on Gaza -by concocting an elaborate false crime of embezzlement and terrorism by Mohammed el-Halabi, the dedicated  zonal manager for World Vision in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza.

Mohammed el-Halabi

El-Halabi, a family man and ‘trusted colleague’  has worked tirelessly for World Vision for a decade. On World Humanitarian Day 2014, celebrating aid workers, el-Halabi was profiled by the UN as  a Humanitarian Hero- a truly well deserved honour when one considers the horrors Palestinian families face, and particularly aid workers at the emergency front of the carnage, destruction,  and suffering.

El-Halabi’s decades of  humanitarian care includes Israel’s war crimes in Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defence and the 51 day monstrous war on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge.

This good man of remarkable humanitarian calibre, who like all Gazans, is shadowed by PTSD and the daily incessant stress of the Zionist siege was arrested on June 15 returning to Gaza from World Vision business in the West Bank and held incognito without charge and rights to a lawyer for 25 days by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA)  known as Shin Bet.

Greatly concerned, World Vision’s statement on June 21 states,

“To date, World Vision is not aware of his whereabouts and of what (if anything) he is being accused. World Vision is extremely concerned about the safety of Mohammad, and is working closely with its lawyer, diplomatic and government contacts to get more information on the situation, push for fair legal representation, and ultimately get him released as soon as possible.”

World Visions statement on 29 July affirms el-Halabi’s moral stature,

“World Vision stands by Mohammad who is a widely respected and well regarded humanitarian, field manager and trusted colleague of over a decade.  He has displayed compassionate leadership on behalf of the children and communities of Gaza through difficult and challenging times, and has always worked diligently and professionally in fulfilling his duties.”

and significantly called for his release and called

“on authorities to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and proceed fairly and objectively on the presumption of innocence.”

The presumption of innocence, a precious democratic value that stands at the core of the rule of law was instantly ignored by western mainstream  Pavlovian presstitutes who salivated guilt headlines at the ring of the Zionist bell,

• World Vision Palestinian funds suspended over Hamas charges -The Australian
• Australia suspends World Vision’s Palestine aid after allegations funds were diverted- The Guardian (Australia)
• British donations to Christian charity World Vision were ‘used to build a Hamas military base in Gaza’ – The Telegraph, UK
• World Vision’s Gaza Manager Funneled Millions to Hamas: Israel – NBC News
• Israel: World Vision Gaza boss diverted cash to Hamas – BBC News
• Australia suspends World Vision aid after Hamas stole Gaza charity – Jerusalem Post
• Israel Charges Aid Group’s Gaza Branch Manager With Funneling Funds to Hamas – New York Times

Compare these to

• Christian charity rejects Israeli claim funds went to Hamas – Electronic Intifada
• World Vision says Gaza aid is audited, doubts Hamas pocketed millions – Times of Israel
• World Vision: Al-Halabi is a ‘trusted colleague’ – Days of Palestine

World Vision’s scrupulous audits

Along with the presumption of innocence, the lackey press blithely overrode World Vision’s assertion that its operations in Palestine were ‘absolutely clean’ due to meticulous regular audits. Tim Costello, CEO World Vision Australia,  emphasised,

“We have nothing to do with terror, with diverting funds, and other donor governments, besides the Australian government, that fund us, have done audits too, without ever any suggestion of this impropriety.”

This was affirmed by World Vision International, “Programs in Gaza have been subject to regular internal and independent audits, independent evaluations, and a broad range of internal controls aimed at ensuring that assets reach their intended beneficiaries and are used in compliance with applicable laws and donor requirements.”

Shin Bet fabrications

Furthermore, without a second of research or corroboration, the press duly regurgitated the false information  of a fictional thriller , mediocre at that, fabricated by Shin Bet and disseminated by the Israeli government oblivious to the blatant inconsistencies such as,

“It said the aid money he funnelled to Hamas, and to its military wing the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, amounted to about $7.2m (£5.4m) a year.” (BBC) and “divert up to $50 million over the years to the militant group, which rules Gaza, creating fictitious humanitarian projects and doctoring inflated receipts in order to get the funds to Hamas, said the Shin Bet”  (Washington Post 4-8-16)

These hyperbolic figures far exceed World Vision’s conservative budget for Palestine.

Any journalist with integrity would meticulously question every comma and full stop presented by Shin Bet, let alone el-Halabi’s so-called confession and all confessions extracted under duress  i.e. torture by Shin Bet.

“Arutz Sheva reported that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein “personally and concretely” approved torture” by Shin Bet against the Duma  arson Jewish suspects. Furthermore, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)“ demanded that the Justice Ministry  investigate  the illegal brutal torture, denied by Shin Bet, “that included sleep deprivation for days, the beating of a minor’s sensitive organs until he could not feel kicks and slaps, and one suspect whose head was pulled backwards until he violently vomited.”

And on November 14, 2014,  Shin Bet was accused by the IDF Chief of Staff , Benny Gantz ( the Butcher of Gaza) of presenting a ‘false narrative ahead of potential investigative committee into Operation Protective Edge.”

If Shin Bet can torture and /or falsely accuse their own, imagine what they did to el-Halabi during the 25 days he was held incognito by Shin Bet.

Richard Silverstein  reveals that while the futile military search in April 2015 was conducted for the kidnapping (hoax) of Israeli soldier Niv Asraf, Shin Bet arrested a Palestinian journalist in Al-Khalil and extracted a ‘confession for a crime that never was’.

The  state of Israel everyday cries ‘wolf’ falsehoods that play on its fantasy victimhood. There are far too many examples to list, but here are some-  Israel the fourth largest  nuclear military power  has a right to defend itself- against a Palestinian resistance armed  with stones and piddly home-made rockets. Since October 2015, Israel  has perpetrated  extrajudicial killings against over 200 Palestinians  most of whom were  carrying invisible knives.  Remember how the Israeli commandoes were defending themselves as they massacred nine unarmed humanitarian workers on the Mavi Marmara.

The Hamas factor

A major Israeli hasbara success is the branding of Hamas as terrorist so that mention of Hamas rings alarm bells in the press and public. Consequently,  Shin Bet’s accusation that Mr  el-Halabi is an Hamas operative rendered readers irrationally comatosed to the truth.

Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement. It has the right to resist Israel’s occupation  and oppression  which are illegal under international law. Israel with it war crimes, crimes against humanity, apartheid polices,  colonial expansionism and acts of genocide against the people of Palestine is a state terrorist and should be expelled from the UN.

Shurat HaDin

Shin Bet’s  yappy sidekick Shurat HaDin, is an Israeli law firm that demeans the law profession. It has a sorry record for falsely accusing BDS activists, such as Professor Jake Lynch of Sydney University of anti-semitism. It has joined the attack on World Vision after having failed  its previous case against the charity in 2012 for allegedly providing “financial aid to a Gaza-based terrorist group”, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which is simply a humanitarian non-profit company. The charge was investigated by AusAID and the Australian Federal Police which concluded there was no evidence to support Shurat HaDin’s absurd claims.

Israeli Government motives

Ali Abunimah has comprehensively sets out the  hidden agendas behind the attack on World Vision: “Israel has launched a major crackdown on domestic and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations through intimidation campaigns and repressive legislation.”; “by spreading sensational allegations that a group as well-known as World Vision is “funding terrorism,” Israel may seek to put other organizations and the Israel-friendly Western governments that fund them on notice that all their operations, especially in Gaza, are at its mercy.”; “It may also be an effort to break growing solidarity for Palestinians in churches, where there has been a strong push to hold Israel accountable through boycott, divestment and sanctions.” and  ensuring it “controls entry of reconstruction supplies into the territory.”

While Shurat HaDin’s, ShinBet’s and the zionist government’s campaign against World Vision and Mr el-Halabi is blatantly bogus, the sunny side, yes, there is a sunny side, these clowns are trashing the fake moral reputation that Israel is desperate to protect.

*Hasbara: propaganda, misinformation, lies.

Detained For Terror: Proposed Indefinite Detention Laws In Australia

Binoy Kampmark

The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted.  Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived.  The pure evidentiary dimension is neglected in favour of procedural fluff and unmeasurable contingencies. The box-ticking bureaucrat takes precedence over the judicial officer.

The Turnbull government has come down rather heavily in its response to a spate of attacks in France and Germany, deciding that it is time that something be done in the face of this supposed global madness.  The prime minister Malcolm Turnbull decided to press the issue in a letter to state leaders urging for the creation of a national regime to indefinitely detain terrorists even after the point of serving their sentence.

Civil liberties lawyer Greg Barnes has made the point that such assessments are fundamentally specious. They lack coherence, dimension and remain presumptuous.  The chances, therefore, of a person locked up for years on terrorist charges then engaging in acts of murderous mayhem on leaving, did not compute.

The point is an ominous one for at least 13 prisoners convicted over what has been said to be Australia’s largest terrorism plot in New South Wales and Victoria.  After concluding their sentences, the individuals involved in the Pendennis network, led by Melbourne cleric Abdul Benbrika, would have little guarantee of release.

Buttering in the face of such extralegal nonsense is always deemed necessary.  The Commonwealth Attorney-General George Brandis explained over the weekend that, “All of the attorneys, as the first law officers of our respective jurisdictions, understand the gravity of the threat that terrorism poses to Australia and its people.”

What Brandis fails to mention is that such officers also owe it to the legal profession, its servants and the citizens of a country, to reassuringly ensure that liberties are not unduly tarnished, let alone entirely abandoned, as is being suggested by these measures.  The insolence of office, one so gleefully embraced, comes to mind.

With that merry insolence, the views of such officers are indifferent to habeas corpus, and the notion that a person who does time has (and here is a novelty), actually discharged the burdens placed upon him for such offences. Terrorism is simply being rendered, rather nonsensically, exceptional, an offence that demands special treatment.

If detention were to be infinite, the hierarchy of punishment would have to be abandoned in favour of an arbitrary notion of convict and permanently incarcerate if you can.  This would effectively eliminate the notion of sentencing as having any value bringing, instead, the fictional notion of a hypothetical terrorist attack to the fray.

Instead of expressing outrage at the heavy-handed, not to mention clumsy approach of the Commonwealth government, the NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton, congratulated Turnbull “on this initiative.  The stakes are high for NSW: make no mistake.  We have more people in our prisons than any other state that would be subject to these laws. All the more reason, one would have thought, for not endorsing such regulations.

Upton’s shoddy reasoning pivots on mere words: “terrorism” qualifies for blanket imprisonment and detention.  Terrorism posed such a risk to the community it meant that no one could be “complacent”.

The situation becomes even more peculiar given the observations by such individuals a Greg Moriarty, national counter-terrorism coordinator and evidently self-proclaimed amateur penologist.  All agencies in the business of “national counter-terrorism” were “committed to preventing people from becoming terrorists; to disrupting and diverting people who are heading down a path towards violent extremism; and to rehabilitating people who are convicted for terrorism offences.”

But for all such noble ventures, there would always be those eggs that would stay rotten, where it was “not possible, or where there are significant areas of doubt”.  This mealy-mouthed assertion is a neat illustration about executive paranoia, enabling people to be detained at the pleasure of the sovereign.

In Australia’s legal soil, noxious precedents flower that enable the Attorney-Generals at all levels of government to push for an agenda hostile to the detainee.  In mental health administration, there are those permanently kept away from trial (and hence a genuine testing of their cases) for reasons of psychic disturbance.

The High Court has also done its bit to add to the regulatory framework of indefinite detention by arguing that stateless individuals can be indefinitely kept at the discretion of the State, a sort of administrative purgatory where risk from the detainee might manifest.   The case of Ahmed Al-Kateb remains something of a nightmare in that regard, an outcome premised on the shallow notion that non-judicial detention is entirely permissible provided it be for the purposes of removal.

There was just one problem for Al-Kateb: his argument that any detention could not be lawful if it has ceased to have a valid basis for removal from Australia was dismissed with more than a bit of contempt.

There are also those deemed genuine refugees under the United Nations Refugee Convention who are not permitted out of Australia’s brutal detention regime because they have been assessed, courtesy of the domestic espionage network ASIO, as a security risk.  All that, despite having no formal charges level.  The proposed change by Turnbull, to that end, remains dangerously, and lamentably consistent with enlarged and unaccountable executive power.

US government lawsuit undermines Malaysian prime minister

John Roberts

The decision by the United States government last month to launch civil action to recover $1 billion in funds, said to have been looted from Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund, 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), has compounded pressure on Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to step down.

Justice Department lawyers and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials joined US Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a press conference on July 20, the day the case was filed. Officials highlighted hundreds of millions of dollars spent on gambling at US casinos, buying hotels and luxury real estate in the US and Britain, purchasing high-priced works of art and producing the motion picture The Wolf of Wall Street.

Among the allegations contained in the legal case are that members of a conspiracy, including 1MDB officials, their relatives and associates, diverted 1MDB funds using “fraudulent documents and representations” to launder “funds through a series of complex transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts located in Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the United States.” These transactions sought “to conceal the origin, source and ownership of the funds, and were ultimately processed through US financial institutions and were used to acquire and invest in assets located in the United States.”

The Justice Department statement detailed the money trails in at least three main schemes: $1 billion embezzled in 2009; $1.3 billion misappropriated from two bond offerings in 2012; and a further $1.2 billion taken from a bond offering in 2013.

Allegations were first raised just over a year ago by Malaysian news portals,The Edge and Sarawak Report , and the Wall Street Journal. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, as well as Malaysia’s political opposition, pointed the finger at Najib, who heads the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

Until now Najib has not been named in any of the official investigations in the United States, Singapore, Switzerland and Luxembourg into the money-laundering operations involving 1MDB funds.

Those named in the documents are Najib’s son-in-law Riza Aziz, Malaysian financial industry figure Jho Low, who is a close associate of Aziz and Najib, Low associate “Eric” Tan Kim Loong, Khadem Al Qubaisi, who was a managing director of an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and US citizen Mohamed Ahmed Badawy al-Husseiny.

Najib has not been identified as such but there are 36 references to “Malaysian Official 1” (MO1), who allegedly received hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from 1MDB. It is obvious that Najib, who founded 1MDB in 2009 and has since been the chairman of its board, is the unnamed MO1.

The document itself indirectly implicates Najib. Paragraph 39, for instance, states: “Upon its formation (1MDB), Malaysian Official 1 assumed a position of authority… had the authority to approve appointments to, and removals from, 1MDB Board of Directors.” Further, “[A]ny financial commitments by 1MDB, including investments, that were likely to affect a guarantee by the government of Malaysia for the benefit of 1MDB or any policy of the Malaysian government, required, the approval of Malaysian Official 1.”

To anyone with knowledge of the scandal, the identity of MO1 is clear. In one section, the complaint quotes Malaysian Attorney-General Apandi Ali at a press conference in January, claiming that $681 million had come into Najib’s account legally from the Saudi royal family. The complaint alters the quote by inserting “Malaysian Official 1” in place of Najib, effectively equating MO1 with Najib.

The document contradicts Apandi’s account, saying that the money came from an account whose beneficial owner was Low associate Tan Kim Loong. Tracing the complex path of money transfers comprises a large part of the complaint’s evidence supporting its requests to the court for forfeiture.

The day after US lawsuit was launched, authorities in Singapore announced they had frozen bank accounts holding $184 million, of which $88 million belonged to Low and his family. They cited control failings and breaches of money laundering regulations at a number of financial institutions as part of Singapore’s investigation into illicit activities involving 1MDB.

Najib issued a statement saying the US Justice Department lawsuit “must be given space and opportunity for the judicial process to be carried out.” He added that “any individual who has been named must clear their own names,” implying that others would take the blame.

Najib and the UMNO leadership have attempted to defuse the 1MDB scandal by issuing blanket denials, purging UMNO critics, closing down Malaysian investigations into 1MDB, exercising tight control over the mainstream media and cracking down on the opposition. On June 29, Lim Guan Eng, chief minister of Penang state and secretary-general of the ethnic Chinese-based opposition Democracy Action Party, was arrested on dubious corruption charges.

The US lawsuit, however, is a blow to Najib and indicates that he is losing support in American ruling circles. Najib has enjoyed political support from President Barack Obama in return for tilting foreign policy toward Washington’s anti-China “pivot to Asia,” strengthening ties between the Malaysian and American militaries and backing the US-led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

In July last year, Time magazine published an article urging Obama to “steer clear” of Najib in his search for “dependable allies in Southeast Asia.” It listed as harmful to US interests the potential growth of the 1MDB scandal, the continued jailing of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Najib’s overreliance on the Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia, the potential of French investigations into corruption involving submarine acquisition to bring Najib down, and the government’s increasing turn to police-state measures to maintain its rule.

A Financial Times editorial on August 2 bluntly declared that Najib had forfeited US support and should stand aside while the investigations ran their course. “Mr Obama should encourage all US agencies to pursue the 1MDB case to the full extent of American and international law. That applies not only to potential charges against Mr Najib and his associates, but also those involving banks and companies that have abetted the alleged laundering of more than $3.5 billion stripped from 1MDB.”

Like the Wall Street Journal, which has vigorously pursued the 1MDB scandal, the Financial Times represents the interests of international finance capital, which, under conditions of worsening global economic breakdown, cannot tolerate the “cronyism” for which Malaysia’s ruling UMNO is notorious. Such practices act as an impediment to the profits of global banks and corporations.

Report documents human rights violations in Australian refugee camps

Max Newman

A report published last month highlights the fact that the Spanish-based transnational infrastructure company Ferrovial and its financial backers are profiting from human rights abuses by operating the Australian “offshore detention centres” (ODCs) on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Ferrovial currently holds the Australian government contract to run the centres, following the company’s takeover of Australian-listed Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield).

Entitled Association with Abuse, the report was authored by the Australian-based Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) in conjunction with No Business in Abuse (NBIA), a non-government organisation. The report asserts that Ferrovial is complicit in the numerous violations of basic democratic and legal rights of the more than 1,500 men, women and children forcibly detained indefinitely on these remote islands. Most of the detainees are from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or are stateless.

The report documents the violation of 47 international laws, in five main categories: rights to liberty; freedom from arbitrary detention and freedom of movement; cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and inhumane conditions; right to the highest attainable standard of health; child abuse and other violations of the children’s rights and the right to security of the person.

Ferrovial, the report states, had “full, prior knowledge of the scale and severity of the human rights abuses at the core of the offshore detention regime” when it took over Broadspectrum. Ferrovial has said it will not bid for a new contract when the current one expires in February 2017. But the report urges Ferrovial, together with the Australian government, to “find an immediate alternative” with “humane” conditions for the detainees.

Ferrovial, with a market capitalisation of almost 14 billion euros, operates London’s Heathrow Airport, toll roads in North America and security services in various countries. The report calls on Ferrovial and its investors and financiers to end all involvement with the detention centres. It argues that the company is in breach of its “corporate responsibility to respect human rights” under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which Ferrovial and its financial stakeholders have agreed to honour.

The report details that during the company’s takeover of Broadspectrum, the NBIA gave Ferrovial its 2015 report on the human rights abuses in the centres, which it had previously presented to Broadspectrum. Despite this information, and the extensive amount of public documentation of abuses at the camps, the company proceeded with its May 2016 takeover.

Though the profits that Ferrovial receives from the contract are not known, Ferrovial itself assessed that most of Broadspectrum’s earnings came from the contract. According to the Australian government’s AusTender web site, Broadspectrum (now Ferrovial) receives an average of $1.4 million a day to run the camps.

Operating the centres involves Ferrovial, as the lead contractor, “making decisions about detainee welfare, movement, communication, behaviour, accommodation, food, clothing, water, security and general conditions.” Under the contract, Ferrovial can decide whether detainees are put into solitary “managed accommodation” and authorise the use of force against detainees. This means that Ferrovial is directly responsible for the daily violations of international law.

The report highlights the arbitrary imprisonment of asylum seekers. Despite the camps being declared “open centres” in a bid to stymie an Australian High Court challenge to the legality of the camps, the detainees are still highly restricted in movement. Moreover, they have significant concerns for their safety, with reports of assaults and violence toward refugees.Association with Abuse cites indictments of the centres by medical experts and UN officials who say the detainees are intentionally subjected to degrading, cruel and inhumane treatment tantamount to torture. One cited report referred to “the deliberate provision of only extremely basic conditions as part of a systematic policy in order to deter others, and the severity of suffering caused to detainees.”

Another report by Dr. Isaacs concluded that the imprisonment of children in the centres, making Australia the only country in the world to do so, constitutes child abuse. Also proven is that the medical facilitates on the islands are substandard, referencing the death of Hamid Kehazaei who died after contracting septicaemia from a cut in his foot due to inadequate healthcare on Manus Island.

According to the report, these practices place the company at risk of a law suit under international law for crimes against humanity. In a media statement accompanying the report, HRLC advocacy director Rachel Ball said: “Any association with abuse on this scale brings with it significant operational instability, legal liability and reputational damage. It’s time for the financial sector to take immediate action and end support of human rights abuse.”

In April, moreover, the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Supreme Court found that the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island breached the right to personal liberty in the PNG constitution, rendering their incarceration unlawful. Australia’s Liberal-National government, backed by the Labor Party, has continued the detention in defiance of the ruling.

While acknowledging that the “Australian government is the architect” of the detention regime, the report argues that the abuses would not be possible without the participation of private companies. This reflects the limited perspective of NBIA and its partner GetUp, which is to pressure companies, in their own profit interests, not to take on the lucrative contracts offered by the Australian government.

NBIA executive director and GetUp campaign director Shen Narayanasamy said: “The Turnbull government promised to keep the camps open, but it is facing an emerging global corporate consensus that no respectable business can associate itself with the gross human rights abuses in these camps.”

The political responsibility for the abuses occurring at Nauru and Manus does not lie just with the present government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. It also rests with the previous Labor government, propped up by the Greens, which reopened the camps in 2012 for the specific purpose of cruelly punishing asylum seekers in order to stop refugees trying to find protection in Australia.

The reality is that governments across the globe are scapegoating refugees and promoting xenophobia in order to divert the mounting hostility among youth and working people to the deteriorating social conditions imposed by the corporate elite. The stripping of basic democratic and legal rights from refugees by successive Australian governments is setting a precedent to be used against asylum seekers and the working class more broadly as these conditions worsen.

More than 500 UK employers and charities benefited from use of free forced labour

Barry Mason

On July 27, the UK Court of Appeal ruled by two-to-one that the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) must release the names of the companies and organisations that benefitted from the government’s Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) workfare scheme.

Some 500-plus organisations benefitted as a result of free forced labour over a six-month period between July 2011 and January 2012.

The names include well-known high street supermarkets and shops such as Tesco, Boots, WHSmith and Superdrug as well as charities including Oxfam, Age UK and the National Trust. Several local authorities also benefitted, among them Scarborough, Whitby and Essex councils, as have a number of academic institutions.

The MWA scheme was brought in by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in May 2011 and ran until November 2015 when the DWP let the programme lapse. The Blair/Brown New Labour government from 2005 to 2010 had experimented with a similar scheme, the Jobseeker Mandatory Activity, piloting it between 2006 and 2008 but did not proceed further.

Under MWA, benefit claimants were obliged to do 30 hours unpaid work a week or risk being sanctioned and losing their Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) payment of around £70 a week. The placement was for a four-week period. According to the DWP, the MWA scheme was meant to target those “lacking, or failing to demonstrate, the focus and discipline that is necessary to effectively: seek out and pursue job opportunities [or] secure and retain employment”.

In 2012, the DWP itself carried out a review of the effectiveness of the MWA programme. The findings showed that the scheme did not help unemployed people get into work and did not enhance the prospects of those seeking work to obtain a proper job. Despite the overwhelming evidence showing its ineffectiveness, the DWP decided to expand the programme, forcing around 70,000 claimants a year onto it at a cost to the state of £5 million a year.

Commenting at the time, Jonathan Portes, the director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, which researches areas of social policy, said it was difficult to see how the findings into the effectiveness of MWA could be reconciled with the decision to expand it. He said, “At a time of austerity, it is very difficult to see the justification for spending millions of pounds on a programme which isn’t working”, adding that it appeared to have been designed to enable job advisors to punish those deemed not to be sufficiently active in looking for work.

Portes should not have been so incredulous. From the beginning, the intention behind the scheme was not to assist people to get back into employment, but as a subvention to employers. It was in line with the entire ethos of governments globally since the financial crisis of 2008—to bail out the banks and enable the ruling elite to recover their losses at the expense of the working class.

When the legislation setting up MWAs was drafted, it was explicitly stated that the intention was to boost employers’ profits. Section 48 of the 2011 official guidance explained its purpose was: “working towards the profit of the host organisation, providing that the majority of the role is dedicated towards delivery of benefit to the community”.

In 2012, under a freedom of information request, the DWP was asked to name the organisations benefiting from the use of free labour under the MWA scheme. The DWP refused to divulge the information stating that to do so would “hurt the commercial interests” of the organisations involved.

The DWP continued in the same vein after a tribunal hearing in May 2013 ruled that it had to divulge the names. It was not until last month following a Supreme Court ruling that the names were finally released.

A spokesperson from Boycott Workfare, which campaigns against the use of workfare schemes, told the Independent, “Workfare provides free labour for businesses and charities, enforced by the threat of destitution through benefit sanctions, and paid for by the public—including people on workfare. Workfare doesn’t help people find jobs: it’s just an excuse for sanctions…The organisations that benefit by exploiting the forced, unpaid work of claimants have been shielded by the DWP’s secrecy for far too long. The DWP have been using this case to deny other requests for similar information.”

Without fanfare, in November of last year, the Conservative government, led at the time by David Cameron, announced its intention to scrap the MWA scheme by spring of this year.

Since its inception, the scheme has forced around 120,000 claimants to work for their unemployment benefit. At the same time, the government announced it was scrapping Community Work Placements (CWPs)—six-month long placements, where JSA claimants would be expected to work 30 hours a week, usually for a community organisation or charity. Around 28,000 JSA claimants were put on to a CWP and forced to work for their dole money under the threat of sanctions or loss of financial support.

Other claimants are still being put on cheap/free labour Work Experience and Work Academy schemes. In theory, these are not compulsory but the reality is very different.

A posting July 10 on the Boycott Workfare web page from a Work Experience participant explained that people would have their JSA slashed if they didn’t go on the scheme.

It read, “I am currently on the Work Experience scheme at B&M in Droitwich Spa, doing over 30 hours of unpaid work for four weeks. If I do not do this I will have my Job Seekers Allowance cut. There are four people, including myself, doing forced unpaid labour here. We have been told by the job centre and B&M that only one out the four of us might be given a job after the four weeks. So three of us will be working full time and won’t even get a chance at the position, and even the fourth person might not even get the job as they say it is only ‘possible’ someone will be taken on.”

The MWA and Work Programme are just two of a series of workfare pilots and programmes rolled out/supported by the Labour Party and Tories over the last decade. These include Steps to Work—the equivalent of the Work Programme in Northern Ireland, the Community Work Placements, Day One Support for Young People Trailblazer and Mandatory Youth Activity Programme.

In 2013, the vast majority of Labour MPs refused to vote against the Tory government’s jobseekers (back to work schemes) bill, dubbed the workfare bill. Their support prevented 250,000 jobseekers, who had been found by the Royal Courts of Justice to have been exploited on a workfare scheme after working for up to 780 hours unpaid, from receiving £130 million in rebates.

The MWA scandal is yet another example of how increasingly precarious work has become. Zero-hour contracts and self-employment for minimal reward are becoming the norm. With the ongoing economic crisis, transformation of the trade unions into arms of management and the Labour Party into a pro-capitalist organization, the exploitation of workers and youth can only be intensified.