Chinese Intellectual Property Theft: The Indictment of Huawei Is an Embarrassment

Moshe Adler

With its criminal indictment at the beginning of the year  the US government has successfully made Huawei the poster child for technology theft by China.  But the indictment is an embarrassment.  Huawei is not a thief.

Huawei is charged with stealing technology for a robot that T-Mobile-USA uses to test phones. The robot, “Tappy,” taps phones repeatedly to determine their durability.  Huawei wanted T-Mobile to offer its phones to its subscribers, and eager for its phone to pass the test, sent engineers to T-Mobile’s lab to learn how Tappy works. One of the conditions T-Mobile set for permitting Huawei to examine Tappy was that the robot would not be photographed.   But a Huawei engineer did photograph it, and the indictment alleges that this was a breach of a trade secret.  It first tells to what length T-Mobile went to keep Tappy a secret, and then it recounts how the Huawei engineer went about photographing it secretly. Reporting about the indictment NPR told its readers “[w]e would like to include a photo here of Tappy, but photographing the robot is expressly prohibited by T-Mobile, and Tappy is kept under very tight security in a lab at T-Mobile headquarters in Bellevue, Wash.”  What the indictment does not say is that Tappy is not a secret but a sales-prop.  T-Mobile invites customers to “Say Hello to T-Mobile Tap Happy” in a video that displays it in operation. Huawei did sign a confidentiality agreement that prohibited it from photographing Tappy, but when it did, it was not photographing a secret.

The indictment also misleads when it claims that a Huawei employee removed an arm of the robot from the lab in order to take its measurements.  T-Mobile’s video shows that Tappy is an Epson robot (M.S.R.P. $7,495) with an arm that operates a short rod.  T-mobile covers the tip of the rod with a rubber cup, and the cup taps the screen of the phone that is being tested.  Huawei did not remove the arm of the robot (it did not need to, all it had to do is buy an Epson robot); it removed the rubber cup.  Huawei was concerned because it was unable to replicate T-Mobile’s test results, and suspected that the discrepancy was due either to the dimensions or degree of softness of the tip.  Huawei did this without permission, but describing Huawei’s action as removing an arm of a robot so secret that no photographs of it exist is dishonest because it makes it appear to be a lot more sinister than the actual removal not of an arm but of a rubber tip.

All of this, and more, is known, because T-Mobile has already sued Huawei for the theft in civil court, and a verdict was reached in 2017.  In the civil trial, the jury heard evidence from experts of both sides.  One of Huawei’s  expert’s testified that Tappy simply did not work.  It did not trigger the touch threshold unless it used so much force, it overly bent the screen.  T-Mobile’s inventor of Tappy acknowledged this problem when he testified in court that Huawei’s expert testimony “reinforces the need for a rubber tip redesign.”  Another expert for Huawei, using T-Mobile’s own data, showed that Tappy had no effect on the rate that phones were returned to T-Mobile.  It is perhaps understandable why Huawei’s engineers became desperate:   The problem was not that they did not understand how Tappy works, the problem was that Tappy did not work and that T-Mobile was reluctant to acknowledge it because it did not want to lose this prop.   It appears that the jury suspected as much.  It found Huawei guilty of breaching a confidentiality agreement it signed with T-Mobile and fined it $4.8 million for it, but it also found that T-Mobile suffered no damage at all ($0) from the breach, and that the breach was neither willful nor malicious.  It must also be noted that the civil suit notwithstanding, T-Mobile wanted to offer its customers Huawei phones when the US government intervened to ban its sale not only by T-Mobile, but also to AT&T and Sprint.

Huawei did not steal technology and there has so far been no evidence presented that demonstrates that it is a thief.  Is the US losing its technological dominance, then?  Huawei’s success suggests that it is.  But for American workers, this is something to celebrate. As I explained in a previous article, when other countries are technologically backwards, American workers lose jobs.  An even spread of scientific knowledge is not our enemy; it is our hope.

Human Rights, The Expelled Chagos Islanders, and Britain’s Hypocrisy

Brian Cloughley

On May 20 the United Kingdom appointed its first human rights ambassador to the United Nations and two days later the General Assembly of the United Nations overwhelmingly condemned the UK for its continuing colonial treatment of the Chagos Islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, whose inhabitants it expelled fifty years ago.

The irony escaped the UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who announced that the new ambassador “will be central to our work in defending human rights across the globe.” 

Hunt was spouting some of the most hypocritical garbage ever uttered by a representative of the present British government, which says a mouthful (as it were), because Britain’s conduct when it evicted the Chagos Islanders from their homes was brutal, and its continuing denial of their human rights is despicable.

The Chagos Archipelago of some sixty islets was “depopulated” in the 1960s because Britain had agreed with America that there should be a US military airfield on the main island, Diego Garcia. As revealed in 2004, the head of Britain’s Colonial Office in 1966 wrote that “The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. Unfortunately along with the Birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius etc.”

The sneering condescension so evident in that display of racist bigotry encapsulated the attitude of the British government which had refused to contribute troops to America’s war in Vietnam and was seeking to make up for this in some fashion. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, knew that sending British troops to Vietnam would be politically suicidal — but nobody cared about the fate of a couple of thousand “Tarzans or Men Fridays”, so he curried favor with Washington by handing over Diego Garcia.

By various subterfuges, the people of the entire Chagos Archipelago were expelled, in the course of which the colonial governor Sir Bruce Greatbatch, “ordered all pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles.” As one evicted Islander, Lizette Tallatte, said in a 2004 documentary “when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried,” and then the remaining islanders “were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives.”

Boris Johnson, the likely next prime minister of Britain, could relate to all this, as he too has a condescending attitude to the colored peoples of Britain’s former empire, having written that “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.”  In his column in Britain’s ultra-right wing Daily Telegraph he also mentioned that the then prime minister Tony Blair was “shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”

This is the probable next prime minister of Britain, folks!  Don’t be a piccaninny with a watermelon smile!   

When he was foreign secretary Johnson was notorious for his blunders, insensitivity and arrogant rudeness. In 2017, when visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar, the country’s most sacred Buddhist site, he attempted to recite a colonial era poem by Rudyard Kipling that includes the lines “the temple-bells they say: Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!” The British ambassador stopped him in mid-verse, which was just as well, because watermelons are a major product in Mandalay, and who knows what Johnson might have said or sung if he had seen some.

His boorishness and vulgarity extend to Russia, which he frequently berates, and he especially objects to the status of Crimea. As reported by the Daily Telegraph (which gives him £275,000 ($350,000) a year for a weekly column) he likened the situation “to the occupation of the Sudetenland by Hitler’s forces in 1938.”  (The statement is ludicrous, but it is notable that thousands of people were expelled from Sudetenland, albeit it more brutally than the citizens of the Chagos Islands were thrown out of their lifelong homes.)

Even the New York Times reported that “an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted on Sunday [March 16, 2014] to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, resolutely carrying out a public referendum that Western leaders had declared illegal and vowed to punish with economic sanctions . . . The outcome, in a region that shares a language and centuries of history with Russia, was a foregone conclusion.”

But the Chagos islanders were not given an opportunity to vote in a referendum before being expelled from their homes, and continue to be denied any voice in their future.

At the UN General Assembly on May 22 there was an overwhelming vote for a resolution requiring that Britain should withdraw its “colonial administration” from the Chagos Islands. 121 countries voted in favor, against the US, Australia, Hungary, Israel, Australia and the Maldives which joined Britain in defending its manifestly illegal conduct, which it was judged to be by the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

One of Boris Johnson’s lucrative Daily Telegraph pieces is carried on a British Government website (one wonders if he received any further cash for what the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society defines as “secondary uses of work”), and in it he refers to the Crimea referendum as “bogus”.  He then declares that Britain must “redouble our determination to stand up for our values and uphold international law”.

In May 2018, when Johnson was foreign secretary, he was asked in Parliament “Will the Foreign Office review its current position on the plight of the Chagos islanders, who should be granted immediately the right to repatriation in their home in the Indian ocean territories?”  He replied :  “we are currently in dispute with Mauritius about the Chagossian islanders and Diego Garcia. I have personally met the representative of the Chagossian community here in this country, and we are doing our absolute best to deal with its justified complaints and to ensure that we are as humane as we can possibly be.”

The people who deny the Islanders their rights are poisonous scum, as is made clear in a British 2009 diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks (no wonder the Brit establishment detests Julian Assange) which noted that the government “would like to establish a ‘marine park’ or ‘reserve’ providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory . . . [which]  would in no way impinge on US use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes . . . [and ensure] that former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.”  What a great idea!

The particular piece of perambulating filth who thought up this dinky little piece of devious malevolence was the Director, Overseas Territories in the Foreign Office, Mr Colin Roberts, who was duly rewarded by the granting of honours and governorship of the Falkland Islands.

Politicians and mandarins in London consider the Chagos Islanders to be inconsequential pawns and will never allow them to have a vote about their future, as took place in Crimea.  The Tarzans and Man Fridays of Chagos will never be able to display one of Mr Johnson’s watermelon smiles.

The Chagos saga is a despicable charade of double-talk, spite and downright evil and makes mockery of Britain’s new-found desire to “defend human rights across the globe.” The only sure thing about hypocrites is that they’ll continue to be hypocritical.

Why the US is Persecuting Assange

Patrick Cockburn

I was in Kabul a decade ago when WikiLeaks released a massive tranche of US government documents about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. On the day of the release, I was arranging by phone to meet an American official for an unattributable briefing. I told him in the course of our conversation what I had just learned from the news wires.

He was intensely interested and asked me what was known about the degree of classification of the files. When I told him, he said in a relieved tone: “No real secrets, then.”

When we met later in my hotel I asked him why he was so dismissive of the revelations that were causing such uproar in the world.

He explained that the US government was not so naive that it did not realise that making these documents available to such a wide range of civilian and military officials meant that they were likely to leak. Any information really damaging to US security had been weeded out.

In any case, he said: “We are not going to learn the biggest secrets from WikiLeaks because these have already been leaked by the White House, Pentagon or State Department.”

I found his argument persuasive and later wrote a piece saying that the WikiLeaks secrets were not all that secret.

However, it was the friendly US official and I who were being naive, forgetting that the real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished.

We have had two good examples of the lengths to which a government – in this case that of the US – will go to protect its own tainted version of events. The first is the charging of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for leaking 750,000 confidential military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

The second example has happened in the last few days. The international media may not have always covered itself in glory in the war in Yemen, but there are brave journalists and news organisations who have done just that. One of them is Yemeni reporter Maad al-Zikry who, along with Maggie Michael and Nariman El-Mofty, is part of an Associated Press (AP) team that won the international reporting Pulitzer prize this year for superb on-the-ground coverage of the war in Yemen. Their stories included revelations about the US drone strikes in Yemen and about the prisons maintained there by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The US government clearly did not like this type of critical journalism. When the Pulitzer was awarded last Tuesday in New York, Zikry was not there because he had been denied a visa to enter the US. There is no longer a US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but two months ago he made his way to the US embassy in Cairo where his visa application, though fully supported by AP and many other prestigious institutions, was rejected.

After AP had exerted further pressure, Zikry made a second application for a visa and this time he was seen by a counsellor at the embassy. He reports himself as asking: “Does the US embassy think that a Yemeni investigative journalist doing reporting for AP is a terrorist? Are you saying I am a terrorist?”

The counsellor said that they would “work” on his visa or, in other words, ask the powers-that-be in Washington what to do. “So, I waited and waited – and waited,” he says. “And, until now I heard nothing from them.”

Of course, Washington is fully capable of waiving any prohibition on the granting of a visa to a Yemeni in a case like this, but it chose not to.

Can what Assange and WikiLeaks did in 2010 be compared with what Zikry and AP did in 2019? Some commentators, to their shame, claim that the pursuit of Assange, and his current imprisonment pending possible extradition to the US or Sweden, has nothing to with freedom of expression.

In fact, he was doing what every journalist ought to do and doing it very successfully.

Take Yemen as an example of this. It is a story of great current significance because in recent days senior US officials have denounced Iran for allegedly directing and arming the Houthi rebels who are fighting Saudi and UAE-backed forces. Action by these supposed Iranian proxies could be a casus belli in the confrontation between the US and Iran.

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, says that Iran has provided the Houthis “with the missile system, the hardware, the military capability” that they have acquired.

John Bolton, the national security adviser, said on Wednesday that Iran risked a “very strong response” from the US for, among other things, drone attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia for which he holds the Iranians responsible.

These accusations by the US, Saudi Arabia and whoever is their Yemeni ally of the day that the Houthis are stooges of Iran armed with Iranian-supplied weapons have a long history. But what do we know about what Washington really thinks of these allegations which have not changed much over the years?

This is where Wikileaks comes to the rescue.

The US embassy in Sanaa may be closed today, but it was open on 9 December 2009 when Stephen Seche, the US ambassador, sent a detailed report to the State Department titled: “Who are the Houthis? How are they fighting?” Citing numerous sources, it says that the Houthis “obtain their weapons from the Yemeni black market” and by corrupt deals with government military commanders. A senior Yemeni intelligence officer is quoted as saying: “The Iranians are not arming the Houthis. The weapons they use are Yemeni.” Another senior official says that the anti-Houthi military “covers up its failures by saying that the weapons [of the Houthis] come from Iran.”

Yemeni experts on the conflict say that Houthi arms acquisition today has likewise little to do with Iran. Yemen has always had a flourishing arms black market in which weapons, large and small, can be obtained in almost any quantity if the money is right. Anti-Houthi forces, copiously supplied by Saudi Arabia and UAE, are happy to profit by selling on weapons to the Houthis or anybody else.

In an earlier period, the embassy study cites “sensitive reporting” – presumably the CIA or another intelligence organisation – as saying that extremists from Somalia, who wanted Katyusha rockets, had simply crossed the Red Sea and bought them in the Yemeni black market.

Revealing important information about the Yemen war – in which at least 70,000 people have been killed – is the reason why the US government is persecuting both Assange and Zikry.

The defiant Yemeni journalist says that “one of the key reasons why this land is so impoverished in that tragic condition it has reached today is the US administration’s mass punishment of Yemen”. This is demonstrably true, but doubtless somebody in Washington considers it a secret.

Walmart: A Study in Wretched Excess

David Macaray

“The dogs bark, but the caravan passes.”
—Arab proverb

Years ago, when I first began writing indignant and wildly emotional polemics about Walmart, Inc., attacking the mega-retailer for its virulent, unethical and borderline illegal anti-union policies, the corporation (with headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas) had roughly 8,500 stores in 15 countries, a figure that, even then, seemed not only overly ambitious but near pathological.

It got worse. As of last month, Walmart has 11,368 stores worldwide. Spread over 27 countries, they conduct their business under 55 different names. There are more than 4,700 stores right here in the U.S., the hourly employees of which are underpaid and under-benefitted, yet terrified of seeking to improve their lot because any talk of joining a labor union is likely to get them fired.

For the record, Walmart, Inc. is the largest private employer in the United States, the largest private employer in Mexico (as Walmex), and the third largest private employer in Canada. Indeed, the company is not only the largest private employer in the world, it is the largest private employer in the history of the world, and the largest private employer the world will ever know. No retailer will ever be bigger. We are watching history being made.

In order for the next statistic to make any sense, we need to be reminded of the Bob Dylan song lyric, “The times they are a-changin.” We might also take note of counterculture hero Paul Krassner’s sobering observation, “If life isn’t a mystery, then what the fuck is it?” Consider: Walmart—the epitome of unbridled capitalism—now has, count ‘em, 443 stores in what was once quaintly referred to as “Communist China.”

If the irony of that doesn’t make your eyes water, you’re either blind and deaf, or a presidential candidate. Chairman Mao himself has gone from being the country’s venerated political and sociological prophet to having his likeness mass-produced as a bobble-head. The Law of the Marketplace: If it can be made of plastic, China will produce it, Walmart will sell it, and the world will buy it. Buy it, use it, then throw it away.

Still, despite Walmart’s conspicuous success, its record isn’t unblemished. After having set up shop in Germany in 1997, the retailing juggernaut was forced to withdraw in 2006, abandoning the country’s lucrative $370 billion retail market.

Even though this happened thirteen years ago, the German debacle still reverberates. After all, as anyone who’s been paying attention can tell you, Walmart rarely fails in these endeavors. Yet, the record will show that while the nominal Communist regime of the People’s Republic of China embraced Walmart’s corporate philosophy, the Germans rejected it. Though no one can say precisely why the venture failed, there’s no shortage of theories.

One theory is that Germany was simply too “green” for a slash-and-burn outfit like Walmart, with its plastic bags and plastic junk Another is that Walmart could never get comfortable with the pro-labor culture of Germany. Unions are respected in Germany. Another is that because German consumers prefer small neighborhood stores rather than the sprawling, impersonal chains, it was a bad fit from the get-go.

While there is probably some validity to all of these explanations, three additional cross-cultural idiosyncrasies have been identified as determining factors.

One issue was the chanting. Walmart employees are required to start their shifts by engaging in group chants and stretching exercises, a practice intended to build morale and instill loyalty. Fiendish as it sounds, Walmart employees are required to stand in formation and chant, “WALMART! WALMART! WALMART!” while performing synchronized calisthenics.

This symbolic display of corporate fascism didn’t go over well with the Germans. Maybe they found it embarrassing or silly for adults to behave in this manner; or maybe they resented it being mandatory. Or maybe they found this oddly aggressive descent into group-think too reminiscent of other rallies…like the one in Nuremberg several decades earlier.

Another issue was the smiling. Walmart requires its checkout people to flash smiles at customers after bagging their purchases. Plastic bags, plastic junk, plastic smiles. But because the German people don’t usually smile at total strangers, the phenomenon of Walmart employees grinning like jackasses not only didn’t impress consumers, it unnerved them. One German consumer reported that he found these phony smiles “disturbing.”

The third issue was the “ethics problem.” As hard as it is to believe, back in 1997, Walmart not only required its employees to spy on fellow workers (and report any misconduct), but it prohibited sexual intimacy among its employees.

Apparently, while the folks in Bentonville had no problem with screwing the environment, they couldn’t abide employees doing it to each other. Alas, in 2005, a German court struck down Walmart’s “ethics code.” It was deemed illegal. And Walmart abandoned the country a year later. Coincidence?

In any event, while the failed German experiment was a blow to the company’s pocketbook and pride, it didn’t hold them back. Walmart is constantly trolling for new markets. Onward! Call me a sentimental fool, but I can visualize the day when Kim Jong-Un bobble-heads are being sold in Pyongyang.

50 years of failure of the Organization of Islamic Conference

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The 14th Islamic Summit Conference ended Friday Night (May 31) in Mecca. A final statement accused Iran of supporting Yemen’s Houthi rebel group; illegally occupying three islands in the Persian Gulf; and “interfering” in the domestic affairs of both Syria and Bahrain.

Not surprisingly, the Mecca summit reiterated support for Saudi/western-backed Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabuh Mansour Hadi which is fighting the Houthi rebels.

The OIC summit condemned a “terrorist attack” on Saudi Arabia’s oil pumping stations which targeted global oil supplies. The summit statement also condemned “sabotage operations” against four vessels near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates, which it said threatened international maritime traffic safety.

Tehran rejects OIC statement

Iran on Friday rejected a final communique issued following a Mecca-hosted summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), saying it did not reflect the views of all OIC member-states, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi accused summit host Saudi Arabia of “exploiting the holy month of Ramadan, and the holy city of Mecca, to level allegations against Iran.”

Mousavi also reportedly accused Riyadh of “missing the opportunity provided by International Quds Day and the OIC summit to press for the rights of the Palestinian people… and choosing instead to sow discord among Muslim and regional countries”.

Saudi Arabia’s behavior at Thursday’s summit, he added, “are in line with the futile efforts of the U.S. and the Zionist regime against… Iran”.

Mousavi went on to voice hope that leaders of OIC member-states “will not allow the Palestinian issue to be overshadowed by divisive policies”.

Syria also rejects OIC statement

Syria is rejecting the final statement of the Arab emergency summit held in Saudi Arabia, which criticizes what it calls Iranian intervention into Syrian affairs.

Syria says the statement is an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Syria.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said the Iranian presence is “legitimate because it came at the request of the Syrian government and contributed to support Syria’s efforts in combating terrorism supported by some of the participants in this summit.”

The Syrian statement said the summit should instead condemn the involvement of other countries in Syrian affairs, “which lacked legitimacy and legality” and provided “unlimited support in various forms  to terrorist groups and prolonging the crisis in Syria.”

The leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group told supporters in Lebanon on Friday the Mecca summits are a Saudi call for help from Arab countries after Saudi Arabia failed to win in Yemen, where the kingdom and its allies have been at war since 2015 against Iranian-allied Yemeni rebels.

“It is a sign of failure,” Hassan Nasrallah said. “These summits are calls for help …that express the failure and the inabilities in confronting the Yemeni army, popular resistance and people.”

OIC summit condemns any decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

The OIC summit condemned any position adopted by an international body that supports prolonging occupation, including a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it said on Saturday.

The Mecca summit also refused all illegal Israeli measures aimed at changing facts in occupied Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, and undermining the two-state solution, it said in a statement.

The summit urged member countries to take “appropriate measures” against countries that move their embassies to Jerusalem, it added.

The summit refused any proposal for peaceful settlement that did not accord with Palestinians’ legitimate inalienable rights, the statement said.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had his own message for OIC leaders ahead of the summit, urging them to stay focused on the rights of Palestinians.

In a letter published online Friday, Rouhani said Muslim leaders should not let the importance of Palestinian statehood be “marginalized” in the face of the Trump administration’s forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian plan.

Rouhani also noted in the letter he was not invited to the Islamic summit, but expressed Iran’s readiness to work with all Muslim leaders to confront the White House’s so-called “Deal of the Century.”

Syrian Golan Heights

The Islamic summit condemned President Trump’s decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan Heights into Israeli territory. Paragraph 17 of the joint communiqué said:

“The conference called for Israel’s full withdrawal from the Occupied Syrian Golan to the borders of 4 June 1967, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions Nos. 242 (1967)  and  338 (1973), the  principle of ‘land for peace, the terms of reference of  the Madrid Peace Conference and the Arab Peace Initiative adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002. It also affirmed non-recognition of any decision or action aiming to change the legal and demographic status of the Golan. The Conference specifically rejected and condemned the American President’s decision to annex the Golan into Israeli territory, dismissing it as null and void and of no legal effect.”

Tellingly, the US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus confirmed Thursday that the State Department has changed its maps to show the disputed Golan Heights as Israeli territory. Ortugas statement came after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had received one of the updated versions.

“I know we have for sure we updated the maps,” Ortagus said when asked whether the State Department had taken such steps after President Donald Trump in March officially recognised the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

Fifty years on

The Islamic summit convenes every three years to make decisions about how to confront and contain conflicts and crises in Muslim-majority countries. This year it coincides with two emergency summits – The Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council summits- called for by Saudi King Salman Ben Abdulaziz amid heightened tensions with Iran.

On September 25, 1969, representatives from 24 Muslim-majority countries held a summit in Rabat, Morocco, in response to the burning of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Fifty years later, the summit still regularly convenes, with the latest set to take place in Mecca on May 31, 2019.

The historic Rabat meeting resulted in a decision to establish the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which was designated to handle the Islamic Summit, turning it into a permanent and fundamental executive body.

At the 13th Summit, held in Istanbul in 2016, a statement was issued stressing the need for “cooperative relations” between Iran and Islamic countries, including “abstaining from the use or threat of force.”

The OIC is the second largest intergovernmental institution, just after the UN, with 57 member states from four continents. It is the voice of 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.

OIC members represent 22 per cent of the world population, have 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, 1.3 per cent of the world trade and only 1.5 per cent of the investments. Twenty five per cent of OIC population does not have access to medical facilities or safe drinking water.

Half of the population lives below the poverty line classified as the most poor. No Muslim country is in the top list of the Human Development Index or in any other global economic indicators.

This depressing picture of the Islamic countries is not limited to the economic and social spheres, in the realm of education and technology the facts are equally disappointing.

The OIC member countries possess 70 per cent of the world’s energy resources and 40 per cent of available raw material but their GDP is only 5 per cent of the world GDP. Muslim countries miserably lag behind in education and technology.

They produce only 500 PhDs each year as compared to 3,000 in India and 5,000 in the United Kingdom. None of their educational or research institutions or centres of excellence find place in the top 100 in the world.

The OIC today has 57 Muslim member-states and has held 14 summits in response to the challenges confronting the Muslim world. Since its establishment, the Islamic world has suffered several major catastrophes which have reduced it to almost a non-factor in international politics.

The breakup of Pakistan through armed intervention by India in 1971, the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the US invasion of Iraq 2003, recent US attempts for regimes change in Iran and Syria have dealt a mortal blow to the unity, dignity and sovereignty of the Muslim world.

The OIC has failed to respond meaningfully to any of these crises or demonstrate any unity of thought and action apart from issuing high-sounding declarations at the end of each summit. Nothing was done to contain the crises or avert the tragedies. The OIC remained merely a silent spectator.

Limited influence

While the OIC has been known for its cultural and social projects, its political influence has been relatively limited.

“Typically, in the past, the OIC has been effective in promoting cultural and educational projects across the Muslim world,” Sami Hamdi, a Middle East expert, told Al Jazeera. “However, its political capabilities remain severely limited.”

According to Mamoon Alabbasi, a political analyst focusing on the Middle East and North Africa region, while the OIC has relative political weight, its rhetoric does not always translate into action on the ground.

“With 57 member states… the OIC carries a [relatively] heavy political weight… [and] impact. But how much change that makes on the ground is not always clear,” said Alabbasi.

Adding to its political limitations is its inability to unify its stance on issues, say experts.

“Like other international organizations, such as the UN General Assembly, the OIC is supposed to have a unified voice but it does not because policies of the individual countries greatly differ,” said Alabbasi.

“Most importantly, the OIC doesn’t have a unified voice because most of its member countries are not democracies. So, while their populations may be in agreement [over an issue] they do not always represent the views of their populations.”

Hamdi agrees: “The OIC has a broad spectrum of different cultures. This means that on the political front, even if there is a united stance, it means very little, practically.” 

Final Analysis

The Palestinian cause and support for Somalia, Djibouti, poor Islamic countries, and oppressed minorities have been permanent points in the Islamic Summit’s resolutions during its 50 years history. The 14th Islamic summit issued three documents: A joint communiqué of 18 pages with 102 paragraph, a special resolution on the Cause of Palestine and Al-Quds and a three page Mecca Declaration.

Among other issues, the Mecca Declaration stressed “the importance of standing by those Muslims in non-Islamic countries who suffer persecution, injustice, coercion and aggression; extending full support to them and adopting their causes in international forums to ensure the realization of their political and social rights in their countries and develop programs and mechanisms that would guarantee their integration in their societies without any discrimination.”

Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar

The Conference condemned the inhumane situation in which the Rohingya Muslim community lives and called for urgent action to end acts of violence and all brutal practices targeting this minority and give it all its rights without any discrimination or racial profiling. It emphasized that the Government of Myanmar is fully responsible for the protection of its citizens and underscored the need to stop the use of military power in Rakhine State immediately.

The Conference urged the Government of Myanmar to take practical, time bound and concrete steps to restore the citizenship of Rohingya IDPs and forcibly displaced Rohingya Muslim Minority Community who were deprived of their nationality, with all associated rights, especially the right to full citizenship, and to allow and facilitate the return in safely, security and dignity of all Rohingyas internally and externally displaced, including those forced into taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Conference condemned the inhumane situation in which the Rohingya Muslim community lives and called for urgent action to end acts of violence and all brutal practices targeting this minority and give it all its rights without any discrimination or racial profiling. It emphasized that the Government of Myanmar is fully responsible for the protection of its citizens and underscored the need to stop the use of military power in Rakhine State immediately.

The Conference urged the Government of Myanmar to take practical, time bound and concrete steps to restore the citizenship of Rohingya IDPs and forcibly displaced Rohingya Muslim Minority Community who were deprived of their nationality, with all associated rights, especially the right to full citizenship, and to allow and facilitate the return in safely, security and dignity of all Rohingyas internally and externally displaced, including those forced into taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Conference insisted on the importance of conducting international, independent and transparent investigations into the human rights violations in Myanmar, including sexual violence and aggression against children, and to hold accountable all those responsible for these brutal acts in order to make justice to the victims. The Conference affirmed its support for the ad hoc ministerial committee on human rights violations against the Rohingyas in Myanmar, using all international legal instruments to hold accountable the perpetrators of crimes against the Rohingya. In this connection, the Conference urged upon the ad hoc Ministerial Committee led by the Gambia to take immediate measures to launch the case at the International Court of Justice on behalf of the OIC. It further called for ensuring free and unrestricted access to humanitarian assistance by affected persons and communities.

Sri Lanka

The Conference expressed deep concern and strong condemnation of the recent acts of violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka and urged the Government of this country to hold accountable to perpetrators of these acts, bring them to justice and counter firmly the spread of rhetoric of hatred and intolerance, while ensuring the security and safety of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka.

Jammu and Kashmir

The Conference reaffirmed its principled support for the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the realization of their legitimate right to self-determination, in accordance with relevant UN resolutions. It condemned the recent outbreaks of violence in the region and invited India to implement the relevant Security Council resolutions to settle its protracted conflict with its neighbor. It further welcomed the recommendations included in the UN report on Kashmir issued in June 2018; called for the expedited establishment of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate into the grave human rights violations in Kashmir, and called on India to allow this proposed commission and international human rights organizations to access Indian-administered Kashmir.

Islamophobia is a form of racism

The Conference noted with concern that Islamophobia, as a form of racism and religious discrimination today, has spread across the world, as evidenced by the increase in religious intolerance, negative stereotyping, hatred and violence against Muslims. In this connection, the Conference encouraged the United Nations and other regional and international organizations to declare 15 March an international day to combat Islamophobia.

It condemned roundly the horribly appalling terrorist attack, perpetrated out of hatred for Islam, against innocent worshipers at Al-Noor and Linwood mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch on 15 March 2019. In the meantime, it expressed appreciation to the Government of New Zealand for its unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist attacks, hailing the firm and clear position of the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who displayed compassion toward and sympathy with the Muslim community in their bereavement. The Conference equally paid tribute to the wider New Zealand society for showing such a deep empathy with the families of the victims and the Muslim community.

The Conference urged all countries with Muslim minorities, communities and migrants to refrain from all policies, statements and practices associating Islam with terrorism, extremism or dangers posing a threat to society.

The Conference called upon all Member States, in coordination with the General Secretariat, to adopt a comprehensive OIC Strategy on Combating Islamophobia, in order to establish a legally binding international instrument to prevent the growing trend of intolerance, discrimination and hatred on the grounds of religion and faith.

The Conference welcomed the establishment of the OIC Contact Group on Peace and Dialogue and called on the Contact Group to develop a Plan of Action on Combating Islamophobia in preparation to the Contact Group meeting at the ministerial level at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2019.

From Glyphosate to Front Groups: Fraud, Deception and Toxic Tactics

Colin Todhunter

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and the British Medical Association Council Chairman, Chaand Nagpaul.

Her purpose is to not only draw attention to the impact of biocides, not least that of glyphosate, on health and the environment but also to bring attention to the corruption that allows this to continue.

Along with her letter, she enclosed a 13-page document. Readers can access the fully referenced document here: European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. It is worth reading in full to appreciate the conflicts of interest and the corruption that has led to the rise in certain illnesses and the destruction of the natural environment.

By way of a brief summary, the key points raised by Dr Mason and her claims include the following.

• The European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. There has been a massive increase in the use of glyphosate in recent years. An increase in cataracts has been verified by epidemiological studies in England and by a 2016 WHO report.
• There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said: “These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”
• The amount of glyphosate in tap water in South Wales has increased tenfold in a very short period.
• Glyphosate is largely responsible for the destruction of biodiversity and an increase in the prevalence of many serious health conditions.
• There are massive conflicts of interest throughout various agencies in the EU that ensure harmful agrochemicals like glyphosate come to market and remain there.
• In fact, a global industry has emerged to give ‘advice’ on biocides regulation. This results in regulatory bodies effectively working to further the commercial interests of the pesticide industry.
• The European Food Safety Authority sanctioned increased maximum pesticide residue levels (MRL) at the request of industry (Monsanto in this case, to 100 times the previously authorised MRL).
• The Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is used by corporate backers to counter public health policies. Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity. The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan, and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.
• ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT) (2015-2021). He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as glyphosate, chlorothalonil, clothianidin and chlorpyrifos that are destroying human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.
• Jean-Claude Juncker the President of the European Commission who, against a petition from more than 1.5 million European citizens, re-authorised glyphosate in December 2017 for a further five years. He set up the Science Advisory Mechanism, aiming to put industry-friendly personnel on various committees.

There are many more claims presented by Rosemary Mason in her report. But the take-home point is that the reality of the agrochemical industry is masked by well-funded public relations machinery (which includes bodies like the UK’s Science Media Centre). The industry also subverts official agencies and regulatory bodies and supports prolific lobby organisations and (‘public scientists’) which masquerade as objective institutions.

When such organisations or figures are exposed, they frequently cry foul and attempt to portray any exposure of their lack of integrity as constituting an attack on science itself; no doubt many readers will be familiar with the ‘anti-science’ epithet.

The industry resorts to such measures as it knows its products are harmful and cannot stand up to proper public scrutiny. And under a system of sustainable agroecology that can produce plentiful, nutritious food, it also knows its markets would disappear.

Motivated by fraud and fear of the truth emerging, it therefore tries to persuade politicians and the public that the world would starve without it and its products. It co-opts agencies and officials by various means and embeds itself within the policy agenda, both nationally and internationally.

And now, with increasingly saturated markets in the West, from Africa to India the industry seeks to colonise new regions and countries where it attempts to roll out its business model. Whether, say, through trade agreements, the WTO or strings-attached loans, this again involves capturing the policy ground and then trapping farmers on a financially lucrative chemical(-GMO)-treadmill, regardless of the consequences for farmers’ livelihoods, food, public health and the environment.

Australian government forces refugees back to face repression in Sri Lanka

Max Newman

Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton landed in Colombo on Monday for a two-day visit to reinforce the collaboration between the two countries’ governments to stop refugees fleeing Sri Lanka’s latest violent outbreak of communal violence and the government’s military crackdown.

His trip came just after the Australian navy seized a vessel carrying 20 asylum seekers, including at least one baby, from Sri Lanka. Under tight military secrecy, they were reportedly transferred to Christmas Island, an Indian Ocean outpost, and quickly removed to Sri Lanka, where they could face imprisonment and torture.

This was the latest illegal boat “turnback” conducted under “Operation Sovereign Borders,” which utilises the armed forces to intercept and block all refugee boats attempting to reach Australia. The entire operation is a direct violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which prohibits the removal of asylum seekers to face a risk of death, harm or persecution.

Dutton was due to meet Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday. Dutton would “prosecute Operation Sovereign Borders’ interests,” Dutton’s spokeswoman told News Corp Australia. “We greatly value the ongoing cooperation on regional maritime security.”

Operation Sovereign Borders’ aircraft this week began three days of patrols over the waters near Christmas Island. Dutton’s office would not confirm reports that up to six boats might have set out from Sri Lanka for Australia, with a spokeswoman again refusing to comment on “operational matters.”

These desperate voyages follow the bombings of three churches and three hotels on April 21 by Islamist extremists, leaving more than 250 people dead. Due to the operation’s police-state secrecy, little is known about the latest asylum seekers, including their background and ethnicity. However, the Sri Lankan media and political establishment are whipping up communal tensions and violence, blaming the country’s Muslims for the terrorist attacks.

Dutton seized upon the boat’s interception to reiterate Australia’s brutal anti-refugee policy. “The prime minister and I are absolutely resolute in making sure that we can never allow people to come here by boat,” he told 2GB radio.

Dutton blamed the May 18 Australian election, which the Labor Party expected to win, for the arrival of the boat, claiming that asylum seekers had anticipated a softening of the anti-refugee policy.

In reality, with more than 60 million asylum seekers now fleeing wars and oppression around the world, refugee boats have not stopped trying to reach Australia. As of mid-January, Operation Sovereign Borders officially had “disrupted” 80 refugee ventures since its inception in September 2013, including 17 last year.

Because of the government’s secrecy, however, there is no way of knowing how many more boats have been intercepted, or sank at sea trying to escape detection. There is also clear evidence that both Labor and Liberal-National Coalition governments have bribed so-called “people smugglers” to take the asylum seekers back to the country they fled.

The return of a Labor government would not have changed the policy. Since the election, Labor has reiterated its support for “Operation Sovereign Borders” and for the detention of refugees in “offshore” Pacific island camps.

In fact, Labor’s new shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally, who previously feigned sympathy for refugees, has accused Dutton of letting too many into Australia. She demanded to know why Dutton had earlier “stopped these crucial border patrols” by the air force before resuming them in February.

Keneally further condemned Dutton for allegedly permitting about 80,000 asylum seekers to arrive by plane over the past four years. “Peter Dutton has in fact allowed people smugglers to evolve their business model from using boats to using planes,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

It was the Greens-backed Labor Government of Julia Gillard that instigated the illegal deportation of Sri Lankan refugees without allowing them to apply for asylum. In 2012, in a bid to strengthen geo-political ties with Sri Lanka, it struck a deal with then President Mahinda Rajapakse, which led to the mass deportation of nearly 700 asylum seekers.

In September 2017, the Australian High Court sanctioned this criminal practice, despite evidence that those deported were arrested by Sri Lanka’s police Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Returned refugees were kept in inhumane and cramped conditions, subject to violence, maltreatment and torture.

While falsely depicted in the media as less draconian than Rajapakse’s, the current Sri Lankan government has continued these arrangements. It has also exploited the April 21 bombings to impose a state of emergency and sweeping repressive measures, which include military house-to-house searches.

Within Australia, a number of Sri Lankan families languish in “community detention,” constantly monitored by Border Force, a para-military organisation, with the threat of deportation hanging over their heads.

Some families have been seized by Border Force, under the cover of darkness or in the early hours of the morning, and swiftly deported to Sri Lanka. In March 2017, the residents of Biloela, a rural town in the state of Queensland, launched a powerful and ongoing campaign to prevent a local family from being deported.

This response reflects widespread public outrage over the treatment of refugees despite the bipartisan line-up. Working-class people in Australia and internationally are appalled at the violence and cruelty inflicted on asylum seekers and immigrants. Australia’s persecution of refugees has set a global precedent. To evade detection, asylum seekers are drowning in the Mediterranean, they face police attacks and barbed wire across Europe, and thousands, including children, are being imprisoned in the United States.