International Masters in Rural Development (IMRD) Scholarship 2018/2019 – Erasmus Mundus

Application Deadline: 1st March 2018

Eligible Countries: Countries labelled as Partner countries under the EMJMD Consortium agreement.

To be taken at (University): Through IMRD you can study at least one semester at the following universities:

within Europe

• Ghent University (Belgium)
• Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany)
• Agrocampus Ouest (France)
• University of Pisa (Italy)
• Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra (Slovakia)

outside Europe

• ESPOL (Ecuador)
• China Agricultural University (China)
• Nanjing Agricultural University (China)
• University of Arkansas (USA)
• University of Pretoria (South Africa)
• University of Agricultural Sciences of Bangalore (India)

About the Award: Being an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree, the IMRD programmes is entitled to – each academic year – award a limited number of Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) Student scholarships to promising nationals of Erasmus+ Partner Countries. The aim of these scholarships is for these promising students to finance their participation to the IMRD programme.

The scholarship is administrated by the IMRD Consortium which disburses the scholarship awardee with the respective payments on a timely basis which is mutually agreed upon through the signing of a Student Agreement/Contract. Payment of the scholarship only occurs upon arrival in Ghent (Belgium) and after the signing of the Student Agreement.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Applicants which have the official nationality of an Erasmus+ Partner Country, and who meet the IMRD admission requirements and have been be academically admitted by the IMRD Management Board to participate the IMRD programme. Other eligibility requirements of the program include:

• Applicants must have at least a Bachelor’s degree of min. 3 years from a university or recognized equivalent in preferably bioscience engineering or agricultural sciences, (preferably agricultural economics) with good overall scores (at least a second class or equivalent, preferably higher).

• Applicants must be able to demonstrate through their transcripts basic science training in: (i) mathematics and/or statistics; (ii) agronomy and/or biology and/or environmental sciences; and (iii) social sciences/sociology and/or rural development and/or economics.

• Language requirements:
  The English language proficiency can be met by providing a certificate (validity of 5 years) of one of the following tests:
  –    TOEFL IBT 80
  –    TOEFL PBT 550
  –    ACADEMIC IELTS 6,5 overall score
  –    CEFR B2 Issued by a European university language centre
  –    ESOL CAMBRIDGE English CAE (Advanced)
  Language of instruction is not accepted anymore, except applicants who are nationals from or have obtained a bachelor and/or master degree in a higher education institute with English as mode of instruction in USA, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland or Canada, and in the latter case a certificate that the mode of instruction was English has to be submitted.

Selection Criteria: EMJDM Student Scholarships are awarded on the basis of merit. Notwithstanding, the Selection and Award Committee takes the following 3 points into consideration:

1. a fair gender balance amongst the scholarship awardees
2. a fair geographical balance (ideally max. 2 scholarships per nationality)
3. the choice for the Thesis Partner University in order for a fair balance amongst consortium partners (max. 1 EMJMD scholarship per Thesis Partner University per intake)

Selection: The selection of awardees of these scholarships, is conducted by the IMRD Management Board. They take their decision carefully after assessing all complete application files of the academically admitted candidates for the IMRD programme who applied correctly and timely for the EMJMD Scholarships.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:  

• 2 year Programme Costs for the IMRD programme (= 2 x 9,000 => 18,000 EUR)
• 2 year full worldwide insurance coverage
• contribution to travel and installation costs (either 5,000 or 7,000 EUR)
• 24 monthly subsistence allowances (= 24 x 1,000 => 24,000 EUR)

The EMJMD Student Scholarship does not include:

• visa costs
• study material
• transportation costs from one mobility to another

Duration of Scholarship: 2 years

How to Apply: Complete the IMRD-form before 1 March 2018 to be taken into account for a scholarship!

Apply for admission to the consortium and a scholarship by registering here and completing the application form here. For all questions in relation to the scholarship procedure and other questions regarding tuition fee, accommodation, visa matters, etc. please contact applications.itc@ugent.be.

After having submitted your application file in EConsort, your academic admissibility to the programme will be assessed. In case the outcome is positive, you will have to complete your file by sending legalised copies of your Bachelor degree and Transcripts of Academic Records, as well as a valid language certificate to our offices. You will be informed throughout the application process on how to proceed.

It is important to go through the admission and scholarship requirements before applying.

Visit Scholarship Webpage   and  Program Webpage for details  

Award Provider: European Commission

Yokohama National University Masters in Infrastructure Management (IMP) Scholarships for Developing Countries 2018/2019 – Japan

Application Deadline: 9th March 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Citizens of low and middle income World Bank member countries are eligible for the scholarships.

To be taken at (country): Japan

About the Award: The Master’s Degree Program in Infrastructure Management at Yokohama National University (YNU) was established with a special fund from the Government of Japan, administered by the World Bank, for the purpose of training government officials from developing countries who have engineering backgrounds. The program focuses on such areas as economics, management, specialized engineering and law related to the development and management of infrastructure.

In a changing global situation, if the government officials who are engaged in planning and implementing their nations’ infrastructure development policies are to make decisions consistent with the welfare of the people of their countries, it is vital that those officials have advanced knowledge of and experience in management, technological fields and macro-economics.

The YNU program, which is specifically designed to meet the needs of students from developing countries under a scholarship program funded by the World Bank, offers lectures and laboratory work in the fields of engineering, economics, management and law. Students are also provided with the opportunity to learn practical Japanese, mathematics, computer techniques and other basic subjects. After the initial six months of schooling, students engage in internship programs related to their area of study.

In applying for admission to the program, applicants should note that the IMP is oriented to training government officials with present or future management responsibility and an academic background in the field of engineering. Women are encouraged to apply.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Applicants must:

• Be a national of a Bank member country that is eligible to receive Bank financing and not be a national of any country that is not eligible to receive the Bank financing;
• Be in good health with respect to the capacity to be a productive scholar for the duration of the Graduate Program, as certified by a medical doctor;
• Hold a Bachelor’s degree or its equivalent with superior academic achievement earned more than three (3) years before the Scholarship Application Deadline;
• Not have received any scholarship funding to earn a Graduate degree or its equivalent from any other sources funded by the Government of Japan;
• Be employed in a paid and fulltime position at the time of the Scholarship Application Deadline unless the applicant is from a country identified in the World Bank’s “Harmonized List of Fragile Situations”;
• Have, by the time of the Scholarship Application Deadline, at least three (3) years of recent fulltime paid professional experience acquired in development-related work after a Bachelor’s Degree or its equivalent in the applicant’s home country or in another developing country; If the applicant is from a country in “Harmonized List of Fragile Situations” at the time of the Scholarship Application Deadline, the recent professional experience does not have to be fulltime or paid; and
• Be under the age of forty-five (45) at the time of the Scholarship Application Deadline.

※ Priority Consideration will be given to applicants who:

• Are 35 years or younger;
• Can receive an official leave of absence during the period of study;
• Are planning to return to the equivalent position (including the current one) in their home country after s/he completes the program;
• Are recommended by appropriate government agencies; and
• Submit Official English proficiency Test Scores ,(TOEFL/IELTS)

Selection: Interested persons should apply for admission to the Graduate School of Urban Innovation (GSUI), Yokohama National University by 9th March 2018. After screening the records of qualified candidates, the GSUI Selection Committee will select 20 nominees for admission to the program. The 20 nominees should apply for final screening by the Word Bank (“Scholarship Application”) and 10 final passers will be accepted as IMP students and receive World Bank scholarships. Successful candidates will receive notification to that effect before July 2018 at the latest.

Value and Number of Scholarships: Approximately 10 scholarships are allocated to the YNU program by the World Bank. Each scholarship provides a monthly allowance of JPY152,000 and a round-trip air ticket to Japan plus a travel allowance of USD500. The scholarship also covers tuition fees, the entrance examination fee and the admission fee.

Duration of Scholarship: October 2018 – September 2020

How to Apply: When applying, applicants must submit the following documents listed in the Scholarship Webpage link below to the Infrastructure Management Program Office, Graduate School of Urban Innovation

It is important to go through the application requirements of this scholarship before applying.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Joint Japan/World Bank Graduate Scholarship Program (JJWBGSP)

Norwich Business School Scholarships for International Masters Students 2018/2019

Application Deadlines:

• NBS Step-Up Scholarship: 31st July 2018
• NBS Going Forward Scholarship: 30th June 2018
• NBS Open World Scholarship: 31st May 2018

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): UK

About the Award(s): Three types of awards are available for students intending to begin Msc courses. They are:

• NBS Step-Up Scholarship
• NBS Going Forward Scholarship
• NBS Open World Scholarship

There are a significant number of scholarships available to help students wishing to continue their studies to MSc level.  The School offers two strands of Master’s Programmes: Applied Career courses and Academic and Professional courses.  Applied Career Courses provide practical career relevant study for people expecting to take up management roles early in their career and are suitable for graduates of non-business related degrees.

Students who achieve a degree from Norwich Business School, who have a degree from UEA in a subject with a strong numerical content, or a Business-related degree from another institution, can apply for our Academic and Professional Courses which are designed for graduates seeking advanced level research skills, and for people considering further steps in their education such as a PHD.

There are also two specialist Master programmes available: MSc Enterprise and Business Creation prepares students considering starting a business.  MSc Brand Leadership support students seeking a career working with creative strategies to develop brands.

Type: Masters

£4000 NBS Step-Up Scholarship: This scholarship is for current UEA final year undergraduate students who wish to continue their studies to MSc level in Norwich Business School in September 2018.

Eligibility:

• UEA graduates completing their undergraduate degree in any subject in summer 2018 and progressing directly to an MSc in Norwich Business School in September 2018
• Degree with a classification of 2:1
• Complete application for the MSc course submitted by 31st July 2018

Value of Scholarship:

• The value of the award will be £4000 and is payable as a reduction of tuition fee.
• The duration of the award is one year
• This scholarship cannot be held alongside any other scholarship

Selection Process:

• Awarded automatically to students meeting the eligibility criteria.  Awards will be confirmed after the degree results are released

£4000 NBS Going Forward Scholarship: This scholarship is for students graduating from anyUK or EU institutions wishing to take an MSc in Norwich Business School in September 2018.

Eligibility:

• Graduates of any UK / EU institution
• Degree with a classification of 2:1 (or equivalent)
• Complete application for the MSc course submitted by 30th June 2018
• Scholarship statement submitted by 30th June 2018

Value of Scholarship:

• The value of the award will be £4000 and is payable as a reduction of tuition fee.
• The duration of the award is one year.
• This scholarship cannot be held alongside any other scholarship

Selection Process:

• To be considered, eligible applicants should submit a 250 word statement to nbs.pgt.admiss@uea.ac.uk by the 30th June 2018 answering the following question:

How does the course you have applied for help you achieve your career goals and how would your experiences and interests aid the learning of the cohort as a whole?

• There are a significant number of scholarships available and these will be awarded on the basis of academic merit, the overall strength of the application, and the strength of the scholarship statement.

£4000 NBS Open World Scholarship: This scholarship is for students graduating from any overseas institution wishing to take an MSc in Norwich Business School in September 2018.

Eligibility:

• Graduates of any international (non-EU) institution
• Degree with a classification of 2:1 (or international equivalent)
• Complete application for the MSc course submitted by 31st May 2018
• Scholarship statement submitted by 31st May 2018

Value of Scholarship:

• The value of the award will be £4000 and is payable as a reduction of tuition fee.
• The duration of the award is one year
• This scholarship cannot be held alongside any other scholarship

Selection Process:

• To be considered, eligible applicants should submit a 250 word statement to nbs.pgt.admiss@uea.ac.uk by the 31st May 2018 answering the following question:

How does the course you have applied for help you achieve your career goals and how would your experiences and interests aid the learning of the cohort as a whole?

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Norwich Business School (NBS)

RUFORUM MasterCard Undergraduate & Masters Scholarships for African Students 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 31st March 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries. 70% will be for Kenya and Uganda nationals.

To be taken at (Universities): Gulu University and Egerton University.

Fields of Study: The RUFORUM Technical Committee (RTC) has identified the following priority programs for the academic year 2018/2019 as eligible for application and to be supported:

Gulu University

1. Bachelor of Science in AgriManagement
2. Bachelor of Science in Food and Agribusiness
3. Master of Science in Biosystems Engineering
4. Master of Science in Agri-Enterprises Development
5. Bachelor of Science Education (Agriculture)
6. Master of Science in Food Security and Egerton University

Egerton University

1. Bachelor of Agribusiness Management
2. Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Education and Extension
3. Bachelor of Science in Horticulture
4. Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources Management
5. Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Technology
6. Master of Science in Agronomy

About the Award: The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, Gulu University and Egerton University are implementing an eight year program aimed at transforming African agricultural universities and their graduates to better respond to developmental challenges through enhanced application of science, technology, business and innovation for rural agricultural transformation. This is eight year program (2016-2024) and will be supporting students that are economically disadvantaged, those from post-conflict and conflict affected areas of Africa.

Students who are economically disadvantaged, and students from post-conflict and conflict-affected areas of Africa, are welcome to apply for admission and financial support at Gulu University (Uganda) or Egerton University (Kenya). The announcements lists the available academic programs at each university.

Type: Undergraduate, Masters

Eligibility: 

• This scholarship opportunity is open to African students of all race, colour, dissent and who in particular are economically disadvantaged and those coming from conflict and post-conflict areas of Africa.
• The applicant has to be in position to qualify for admission into undergraduate and/or postgraduate programs at Gulu University and/or Egerton University as listed above.
• Students already having a scholarship of any kind are not eligible to benefit this scholarship opportunity anyone with a double scholarship if found will automatically be discontinued.

Females are particularly encouraged to apply

Number of Awardees: 45 Bachelor and 15 Master scholarships

Value of Scholarship: Fully-funded

How to Apply: Applicants should obtain application forms for both the scholarships and admission from the university of choice. Applicants shall only apply to one university of choice. Application forms can also be downloaded from the Scholarship Webpage link below.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: MasterCard Foundation, Egerton University, Gulu University

In Words and Deeds: The Genesis of Israeli Violence

Ramzy Baroud

Not a day passes without a prominent Israeli politician or intellectual making an outrageous statement against Palestinians. Many of these statements tend to garner little attention or evoke rightly deserved outrage.

Just recently, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, called for more death and injuries on Palestinians in Gaza.

“What is this special weapon we have that we fire and see pillars of smoke and fire, but nobody gets hurt? It is time for there to be injuries and deaths as well,” he said.

Ariel’s calling for the killing of more Palestinians came on the heels of other repugnant statements concerning a 16-year-old teenager girl, Ahed Tamimi. Ahed was arrested in a violent Israeli army raid at her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.

A video recording showed her slapping an Israeli soldier a day after the Israeli army shot her cousin in the head, placing him in a coma.

Israeli Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, known for his extremist political views, demanded that Ahed and other Palestinian girls should “spend the rest of their days in prison”.

A prominent Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, sought yet more punishment. He suggested that Ahed and girls like her should be raped in jail.

“In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras”, he wrote in Hebrew.

This violent and revolting mindset, however, is not new. It is an extension of an old, entrenched belief system that is predicated on a long history of violence.

Undeniably, the views of Ariel, Bennett and Caspit are not angry statements uttered in a moment of rage. They are all reflections of real policies that have been carried out for over 70 years. Indeed, killing, raping and imprisoning for life are features that have accompanied the state of Israel since the very beginning.

This violent legacy continues to define Israel to this day, through the use of what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes as ‘incremental genocide.’

Throughout this long legacy, little has changed except for names and titles. The Zionist militias that orchestrated the genocide of the Palestinians prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948 merged together to form the Israeli army; and the leaders of these groups became Israel’s leaders.

Israel’s violent birth in 1947- 48 was the culmination of the violent discourse that preceded it for many years. It was the time when Zionist teachings of prior years were put into practice and the outcome was simply horrifying.

“The tactic of isolating and attacking a certain village or town and executing its population in a horrible, indiscriminate massacre was a strategy employed, time and again, by Zionist bands to compel the population of surrounding villages and towns to flee,” Ahmad Al-Haaj told me when I asked him to reflect on Israel’s past and present.

Al-Haaj is a Palestinian historian and an expert on the Nakba, the ‘Catastrophe’ that had befallen Palestinians in 1948.

The 85-year-old intellectual’s proficiency in the subject began 70 years ago, when, as a 15-year-old, he witnessed the massacre of Beit Daras at the hands of Jewish Haganah militia.

The destruction of the southern Palestinian village and the killing of dozens of its inhabitants resulted in the depopulation of many adjacent villages, including al-Sawafir, Al-Haaj’s home village.

“The notorious Deir Yasin massacre was the first example of such wanton killing, a model that was duplicated in other parts of Palestine,” Al-Haaj said.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the time was orchestrated by several Zionist militias. The mainstream Jewish militia was the Haganah which belonged to the Jewish Agency.

The latter functioned as a semi-government, under the auspices of the British Mandate Government, while the Haganah served as its army.

However, other breakaway groups also operated according to their own agenda. Two leading bands amongst them were the Irgun (National Military Organization) and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang). These groups carried out numerous terrorist attacks, including bus bombings and targeted assassinations.

Russian-born Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun which, along with the Stern Gang and other Jewish militants, massacred hundreds of civilians in Deir Yassin.

‘Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest,” Begin wrote at the time. He described the massacre as a “splendid act of conquest.”

The intrinsic link between words and actions remain unchanged.

Nearly 30 years later, a once wanted terrorist, Begin became Prime Minister of Israel. He accelerated land theft of the newly-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, launched a war on Lebanon, annexed Occupied Jerusalem to Israel and carried out the massacre of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982.

Some of the other terrorists-turned-politicians and top army brass include Begin, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Rafael Eitan and Yitzhak Shamir. Each one of these leaders has a record dotted with violence.

Shamir served as the Prime Minister of Israel from 1986 – 1992. In 1941, Shamir was imprisoned by the British for his role in the Stern Gang. Later, as Prime Minister, he ordered a violent crackdown against a mostly non-violent Palestinian uprising in 1987, purposely breaking the limbs of kids accused of throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.

So, when government ministers like Ariel and Bennett call for wanton violence against Palestinians, they are simply carrying on with a bloody legacy that has defined every single Israeli leader in the past. It is the violent mindset that continues to control the Israeli government and its relationship with Palestinians; in fact, with all of its neighbors.

Corporate Sickness in May’s Britain

Binoy Kampmark 

Britain is ill, and even as the opportunists and populists scramble before the hardened negotiators of the European Union over imminent exit, revising optimistic forecasts and notions of sovereign greatness has begun.  Within Theresa May’s decaying state comes yet another economic disaster, and one that has prompted a revival of government assistance before the vicissitudes of the market. This, from a Tory government extolling the divine nature of free market enterprise.

Carillion, the UK’s second biggest construction company, is in a mammoth pickle, one to the tune of £1.5 billion.  It has gone into liquidation after the weekend failure to reach agreement with lenders and the government, a fact that literally threatens up to 20,000 jobs within the country, not to mention pension funds to the value of £600m.

Things get even more interesting when one sees where these jobs are, located across a range of industries from defence, health, transport (the HS2 high-speed rail line comes to mind) and education (notable here is the provision of dinners and cleaning for hundreds of schools).  In short, the company was something of a poster boy in the outsourcing agenda of government, golden boy of the competitive, tendering process.

The situation for the company has been so notably stricken as to prompt an emergency Cobra meeting by May’s Cabinet lasting for up to two hours.  Cabinet Office minister David Lidington suggested with usual understatement in the face of imminent catastrophe that matters had gone “pretty well” given that “people were turning up to work” and no “reports of serious interruption to service delivery” had been received.

Lidington’s language is that of a session at your MP’s surgery: dull, medicated, non-committal. Most of all, there is no sense of alarm.  The meeting, he continues, provided an “opportunity for ministers to test what sort of concerns are being expressed and decide how we should best address them”.

To date, the government has committed its first notable transgression against its self proclaimed free market ideology: covering the dues for small businesses and employees connected with Carillion’s public contracts.  The disastrous conduct of the golden boy must be somehow addressed.

Lidington’s point is to dress the assistance to those connected with the provision of public services in a different costume: avoid, for instance, any reference to a bailout, which reeks of the socialist hand and state-directed philosophy. “The action we have taken is designed to keep vital public services running rather than to provide a bailout on the failure of a commercial company.”

The consequences of such a patchy approach are already evident.  Given the web of contracts and commitments other companies have with Carillion, jobs are already being lost, the devastation starting to bite.  As a worker for the Midland Metropolitan Hospital Building told the BBC, “Everyone on the site told: ‘That’s it, go home.’  My company said, ‘You’ve been laid of.’”

Did anybody see this coming?  The situation last summer was already providing smoke signals of danger that all was not prudent on the financial side of Carillion.  The books were simply not tallying.  The company had issued profit warnings, largely triggered by overrunning costs regarding the Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Sandwell, the Royal Liverpool Hospital, and the Aberdeen bypass.

Notwithstanding these concerns, ideology prevailed: the company still received £2bn worth of contracts.  It was too big not to, being the fundamental face of outsourcing.  An export guarantee issued on July 6 even went so far as to put £130m of taxpayer funds at risk.

Frank Field MP, chair of the Work and Pensions select committee, was unflattering: “Carillion took on mega borrowings while its pension deficit ballooned. We called over a year ago [The Pensions Regulator] to have mandatory clearance powers for corporate activities like these that put pension schemes at risk, and powers to impose truly deterrent fines that would focus boardroom minds.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been, predictably, the first to take the hammer to government policies on privatisation, most notably what he terms the “out-source first dogma”.  “In the wake of the collapse of the contractor Carillion, it is time to put an end to the rip-off privatisation policies that have done serious damage to our public services and fleeced billions of pounds.”

Showing that this was not merely a concern on the left of politics, the traditional gristle of progressive concern for market forces, Bernard Jenkin, Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, made a rather damning admission.  Carillion’s collapse “really shakes public confidence in the ability of the private sector to deliver public services and infrastructure.”

This is the Thatcherite sin of Britain, government prostrate before the private provision of services, the state indifferent to accountability.  In May’s declining Britain, even receiving a half-credible, resourced public service from any sector, is a doomed challenge.

Japan’s working poor

Kurt Brown

The social gulf between rich and poor in Japan is widening. Two decades of economic stagnation and pro-market restructuring have severely undermined the previous system of life-long employment that provided a relatively secure livelihood for significant sections of the workforce.

There has been a staggering rise in the proportion of the workforce engaged in poorly-paid, part-time work, on which many young people and women, in particular, are forced to depend.

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) categorises workers into two broad classes: regular and non-regular. The former generally work full-time. The latter are mainly part-time, contract, temporary (e.g., daily or very short term), employment agency and rehired retired workers.

In 1994, based on Statistics Bureau data, there were 9.71 million non-regular workers out of a total of 47.76 million, or 20 percent of the labour force, not counting those self-employed or company executives. In the September quarter of 2017, their numbers had increased to 20.5 million out of 54.86 million, or 37 percent of the total.

The most recent MHLW survey of employment conditions, released in December 2015, noted that reasons for hiring non-regular workers included lower wages and flexibility in hiring and firing workers. On average, non-regular workers are paid only 60 percent of the rate of regular workers for doing the same work.

An editorial last November in the Mainichi newspaper, decrying the country’s “vicious poverty cycle,” pointed out that the income gap was exacerbated because many non-regular employees have far less hours.

“There are major differences in how much a worker brings home, depending on their employment status,” the editorial reported. “The average permanent worker pocketed some 4.87 million yen [about $US44,000] in 2016, while non-permanent staff averaged 1.72 million yen [about $US15,000]—a yawning gap of about 3.15 million yen. This divide has widened every year since 2012, when the agency began monitoring permanent and non-permanent worker income separately.”

Non-regular workers are far less likely to receive insurance and other benefits. For example, more than 90 percent of regular workers have employment insurance, health insurance and employee pensions, but only 67.7 percent, 54.7 percent and 52 per cent of non-regular workers, respectively, have the equivalent coverage.

This two-tier wage system is a major contributing factor to rising levels of poverty. The Mainichi editorial noted that the relative poverty rate—those below half of median disposable income—fell slightly from 16.1 percent in 2012 to 15.6 percent in 2015. However, 50.8 percent of single-parent households were in poverty—the worst rate for all the developed OECD countries.

As 68 percent of non-regular workers are female, many of the single parent families in poverty are women responsible for raising children. In a MHLW survey of living conditions, 38 percent of single-mother households reported having no savings and 83 percent said they had difficulty making ends meet.

It is not hard to see why. A single mother living in Tokyo, for example, supporting a high school aged child and earning 2.7 million yen (approximately $24,500) annually would likely be working two jobs. That level of income would mean that she would receive no welfare support.

Public high school fees are approximately 0.4 million yen every year. Additionally, most Japanese children attend cram school outside of normal school hours to improve their marks in the country’s highly competitive educational environment. Cram school fees for two subjects might total 0.5 million yen annually.

Rent for an average two-bed room apartment would be about 1.4 million yen. Home cooked meals, with limited opportunity for eating out, would cost about 0.5 million yen. Taking just these items, the total already exceeds the single mother’s annual salary, before taking into account transport, internet, telephone, clothing and other essentials.

MHLW data released last June showed that 13.9 percent of Japanese children under 18, or one in every seven, live in poverty. An article published in the Tokyo Weekender last May pointed out that non-profit organisations have sprung up in response to the growing hardships facing children.

Hiroko Kondo opened Japan’s first children’s cafe in 2012 when she heard about a student who was not eating properly because of a sick mother. “She wasn’t able to cook so there were days when the child would eat school lunch and a banana, and that was it,” she told the magazine. “You see so much food around, it shocked me that there were people not getting enough.” Kondo estimated that about 400 such cafeterias provided cheap or free food to children in need.

Hayato Hanaoka, author of the book “Child poverty may destroy Japan,” told the Tokyo Weekender: “It’s the kind of poverty that’s difficult to identify. Kids from poor backgrounds often have cellphones and computer games, so on the surface everything looks fine, yet dig deeper and you see families struggling with the cost of education.”

The Mainichi concluded its editorial with a plea for a plan to tackle poverty but no concrete proposals. Neither the government nor the opposition parties has any intention of addressing the social crisis, apart from mouthing platitudes and making empty promises. Confronting a huge and mounting public debt, successive governments have made deep inroads into the country’s limited welfare system.

In 2016, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe simply denied that poverty existed in Japan. He told a parliamentary committee: “There is no way Japan is in poverty … By global standards, we’re definitely one of the wealthiest [countries].”

The widening chasm between rich and poor is already leading to social tensions and opposition. Last April, some 1,500 young people took to the streets in Tokyo to demand a minimum wage of 1,500 yen ($US13.50) an hour across the country—up from the current 823 yen an hour.

Rie Fujikawa, a 25-year-old member of the student-led Aequitas organising group, told the media: “We want to eat something other than bean sprouts and poultry. We want to buy children what they want.”

Another bonanza year for highest paid UK CEOs

Dennis Moore

New research on the pay gap between the highest paid Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 bosses and average worker pay shows that the UK’s superrich continue to accumulate wealth.

Carried out by two organisations, the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the research shows that chief executives of these companies were paid at the end of 2016 a median average wage of £3.45 million a year—equating to 120 times the £28,758 earned by full-time workers.

The High Pay Centre is a non-partisan think tank that focuses on “pay at the top of the income scale” and monitors “pay at the top of the income distribution.” The CIPD is a professional association for human resource management workers.

The joint report noted that January 4 was “Fat Cat Thursday,” marking the day when some of the UK's top bosses had already made as much money by lunch time in 2018 as the average UK worker will make in the entire year.

The date of January 4 was calculated by the High Pay Centre/CIPD based on their assumption that “FTSE 100 CEOs work 12 hours a day, including three out of every four weekends, and take only 19 days holiday per year—i.e. 320 days of work a year, or 3,840 hours. This works out at pay of £898 per hour, meaning that it would take around 32 hours’ work to reach the UK median earnings figure of £28,758.”

Announcing their latest findings, the High Pay Centre explains, “The CEO to average worker ratio of 120:1 is based on figures from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2017.” It notes that the 120:1 ratio is the latest figure available, adding, “The 122:1 figure CIPD and the High Pay Centre referenced quoted in its August 2017 report [“Executive pay: Review of FTSE 100 executive pay packages”] was based on 2016 data.”

The highest paid FTSE 100 CEO was Sir Martin Sorrell, who is employed by advertising firm, WPP. He was paid £48 million—down on the £70 million WPP paid him in 2015—though there will no doubt be various non-salary payments involved.

It is expected that this year’s top paid listed company boss will be Jeff Fairburn, the CEO of York-based house builder Persimmon. He is expected to collect a bonus of £110 million, and Persimmon is sharing out a further £400 million to 150 executives and middle managers. Using government figures, the Guardian calculated that this bonus would enable the building of 1,375 council houses—enough to provide for every homeless family in Yorkshire.

Persimmon shares have doubled in value since the introduction of the government’s “help to buy” scheme in 2013. This involves the Treasury providing a loan worth 20 percent towards the overall value of a property, with the prospective buyer providing an initial deposit of 5 percent.

The help to buy scheme was heralded as a way of enabling young people to get onto the housing ladder, while at the same time increasing demand for houses. It has been a massive boon for the corporations in the housing sector, with £10 billion of tax payers’ money spent. A report by Morgan Stanley last year showed that rather than increasing opportunities for first-time buyers to own a home of their own, money has gone into boosting the profits of companies such as Persimmon, Barratt, and Taylor Wimpey.

The introduction of the scheme has also pushed up house prices, making them more unaffordable for first time buyers. Yet the government is proposing to hand over another £10 billion of taxpayers’ money to this scheme. In 2016, half of all Persimmon homes sold were via the help to buy scheme.

Greg Beales of the Shelter housing charity said, “It is hard not to see this as profiteering from a housing crisis which is getting worse, at a time when more than 300,000 people have spent Christmas without a place to call home.”

The gap between corporate executive pay and that of the rest of society is enormous.

Denise Coates, the founder of the Bet365 online gambling site—not a FTSE 100 company—was paid a staggering £199,305,000 along with dividend payments of £18 million for the year 2016. This equates to a weekly income of £3.8 million, or 7,000 times the average full-time worker.

Even before she received the £217 million plus, she and her family were worth £5 billion. Coates is now Britain's richest female, with a personal fortune estimated at £3.06 billion—paid for by untold human suffering. Those gambling on the site wagered £47 billion for the year 2016, and revenues from gambling for 2016/17 increased by 39 percent, to a record £2.15 billion. Profits resulting from gambling shot up by 15 percent to £514 million.

The Gambling Commission industry regulator estimates there are now 2 million people who have problems with gambling, or are at risk of addiction. In 2016, the entire gambling industry donated just £8 million to research, education, and treatment.

The increase in income inequality has a direct correlation to overall levels of poverty. The day-to-day lives of millions of people are fraught with worry as to how they will pay for basic utilities, while shouldering ever-increasing levels of accumulating personal debt.

The biggest ever survey of households carried out in the UK—by the Financial Conduct Authority last year—found that half of all UK adults are financially vulnerable, with one in six people not being able to cope with a £50 increase in monthly bills, including mortgage repayments.

The figures include 4.1 million people who are facing serious difficulty and are not able to meet credit card and bill payments. The most over-indebted are 25-34-year-olds, with 19 percent having no savings and a further 30 percent only having £1,000 saved.

The wealth of the super-rich is predicated on the exploitation of workers, many of whom are paid low wages, are on zero-hour contracts, or defined as apprentices. A survey of 500 apprentices last year found that two in five were spending more money completing their apprenticeships than they were earning. They were paid as little as £3.50 an hour, and after paying for work clothes, travel and childcare costs, have little if anything to live on. Between 2014 and 2016, the number of apprentices paid less than the legal minimum wage increased from 15 to 18 percent.

The Adam Smith Institute think tank rejected criticism of the UK’s CEOs. Responding to the High Pay Centre/CIPD research, it said it was a "mistake" to be concerned about skyrocketing executive pay. Sam Dumitriu, the head of research at the institute, suggested, “Given how important the decisions a CEO makes are to the success of a firm, it would be shocking if they were not extremely well paid.”

"The High Pay Centre are wrong to link high pay at the top with low pay at the bottom," he added. "Politicians should be careful.”

Facebook and Google outline unprecedented mass censorship at US Senate hearing

Andre Damon

Behind the backs of the US and world populations, social media companies have built up a massive censorship apparatus staffed by an army of “content reviewers” capable of seamlessly monitoring, tracking, and blocking millions of pieces of content.

The character of this apparatus was detailed in testimony Wednesday from representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by South Dakota Republican John Thune.

The hearing was called to review what technology companies are doing to shut down the communications of oppositional political organizations. It represented a significant escalation of the campaign, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to establish unprecedented levels of censorship and control over the Internet.

Armed with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems, these technology companies are free to remove and block the communications of their users at the behest of the government, in a seamless alliance between Silicon Valley and the major US spy agencies.

Monika Bickert, head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, told lawmakers that the social media giant now employs a security team of 10,000 people, 7,500 of whom “assess potentially violating content,” and that, “by the end of 2018 we will more than double” the security team.

This group includes “a dedicated counterterrorism team” of “former intelligence and law-enforcement officials and prosecutors who worked in the area of counterterrorism.” In other words, there is a revolving door between the technology giants and the state intelligence and police forces, with one increasingly indistinguishable from the other.

Bickert pointed to the growing use of artificial intelligence to flag content, saying Facebook does not “wait for these… bad actors to upload content to Facebook before placing it into our detection systems,” bragging that much of the “propaganda” removed from Facebook “is content that we identify ourselves before anybody” else has a chance to view it.

She added that Facebook has partnered with over a dozen other companies to maintain a blacklist of content, based on “unique digital fingerprints.” This means that if a piece of content, whether a video, image, or written statement, is flagged by any one of these companies, it will be banned from all social media. This database now includes some 50,000 pieces of content and is constantly growing, officials said.

In other words, the technology giants have created an all-pervasive system of censorship in which machines, trained to collaborate with the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies, are able to flag and block content even before it is posted.

Juniper Downs, global head of Public Policy and Government Relations at YouTube, likewise boasted that Google uses “a mix of technology and humans to remove content,” adding that YouTube relies on a “trusted flagger program” to provide “actionable flags” based on the flaggers’ experience with “issues like hate speech and terrorism,” words that imply that these “trusted flaggers” are connected to US intelligence agencies.

“Machine learning is now helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before,” Downs said, adding that Google’s censorship machine is virtually automated. She said that this year there will be “10,000 people across Google working to address content that might violate our policies.”

Downs declared that since June YouTube has “removed 160,000 videos and terminated 30,000 channels for violent extremism.” The company has “reviewed over two million videos” in its collaboration with “law enforcement, government,” and “NGOs.”

Downs stated that Google is actively engaged in promoting what she called “counter-speech,” that is, the promotion of propaganda narratives. She also pointed to Google’s Jigsaw program as deploying “targeted ads and YouTube videos to disrupt online radicalization,” and “redirecting” users to content that Google approves of.

The hearing also featured the testimony of Clint Watts, a former FBI official, former US Army officer, fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a leading promoter of social media censorship.

Watts presented the hearing with an unhinged justification for what these massive powers might be used for, in a hypothetical scenario he dubbed “Anwar Awlaki meets PizzaGate.”

“The greatest concern moving forward,” he said, “might likely be a foreign intelligence service, posing as Americans on social media, infiltrating one or both political extremes in the US and then recruiting unwitting Americans to undertake violence against a target of the foreign power’s choosing.”

In this formulation, social opposition, what he calls the “political extremes,” including left-wing politics, is the product of foreign intervention and therefore treasonous. It is also defined as “terrorist” in content and therefore criminal.

Watts expressed extreme fear over the widespread growth of opposition to the policies of US imperialism. He arrogantly decried, “Lesser-educated populations around the world predominately arriving in cyberspace via mobile phones will be particularly vulnerable to social media manipulation.”

The content of Thursday’s testimony points the far-advanced preparations for the establishment of police state forms of rule.

The effort to control speech online is driven by a ruling elite that is immensely fearful of social opposition. Amid growing social inequality and the ever-mounting threat of world war, broad sections of the population, and in particular the working class, are increasingly disillusioned with the capitalist system. Having no social reform to offer, the ruling elites see censorship as the only means to prop up their rule.

Given the explosive content of the statements made at Thursday’s hearing, it is extraordinary that they received no significant coverage in either the print or broadcast media.