TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship for African Students to Study at Leading Business Schools 2019/2020

Application Deadline: 30th June 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (University):  The Financial Times MBA Global Ranking for 2018 lists the top ten schools as; Stanford Graduate School of Business, INSEAD, University of Pennsylvania: Wharton, London Business School, Harvard Business School, University of Chicago: Booth, Columbia Business School, Ceibs, MIT: Sloan, and University of California at Berkeley: Haas. Click the link below for details.

About the Award: Launched in 2011, The TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship aims to help up to seven students a year. Since launching, scholarships have been awarded to 30 students in total attending Harvard Business School, INSEAD, London Business School, MIT: Sloan, Stanford Graduate School of Business, University of California at Berkeley: Haas, University of Chicago Booth, University of Pennsylvania: Wharton, IE Business School and University of Cambridge: Judge. Our scholars have come from Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

Type: MBA

Eligibility: 

• All successful African MBA applicants to the top ten Business Schools (as ranked by the Financial Times) are eligible to receive The TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship regardless of domicile.
• The grant is awarded to successful candidates prior to the annual intake for that Business School.

Number of Awards: 7

Value of Award: The TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship is intended to provide additional financial support to help African students bridge some of the financial burden attached to taking on MBA programmes, it will not be enough to act as the primary source of funding for these programmes.

Duration of Award: Duration of MBA programme

How to Apply: Eligible students should email mba@tyd-fo.co.uk sending the following information between 1 May and 30 June 2019:
• Full Name
• Nationality
• Full contact details
• Name of Business School where you have been accepted onto their MBA Programme
• Year of enrolment at the Business School
• Copy of offer letter from the Business School
• Copy of your CV
• Copy of your budget and funding shortfall (include all scholarship and loans information). Note, the TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship is to help support by providing additional financial aid, it will not be enough to act as the primary source of funding for the MBA.

Visit the Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers:  TY Danjuma Foundation


Important Notes: Note, the TY Danjuma MBA Scholarship is to help support by providing additional financial aid, it will not be enough to act as the primary source of funding for the MBA.

Earth Journalism Network 2019 Reporting Fellowships to the UNCCD COP14 (Fully-funded to New Delhi, India)

Application Deadline: 23rd June 2019 at 5pm IST.

Eligible Countries: African Countries and India

To Be Taken At (Country): New Delhi, India

About the Award: Internews’ Earth Journalism Network is pleased to announce a Fellowship program that will allow selected journalists to attend and cover the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP 14)  to the UN CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION (UNCCD) taking place in New Delhi, India in early September, 2019.
The UNCCD COP14 will be a key gathering to review progress made to control and reverse further loss of productive land from desertification, land degradation and drought. A mix of representatives from national, regional and local governments, science and research communities, the private sector, international and non-governmental organizations and all forms of media are expected to address these issues during the two-week event.
As part of this Fellowship program, the 2019 group will comprise five selected journalists from Africa and India. We’re putting particular emphasis on selecting reporters from arid regions, or regions impacted by drought and desertification. Fellows will attend the conference between 6-14 September, where they will engage with other participants and Fellowship program organizers in a series of specially designed activities that will include mentorship, an orientation workshop, breakfast briefings and interviews and sessions with high-level officials.

Type: Conference, Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Fellowship, applicants must:

• Be a professional journalist from or representing an established media house and reporting from a developing country;
• Fill out the application form using the link below, including answering essay questions that illustrate his/her experience reporting on desertification and degradation issues. We also ask you to describe the kinds of stories you might pursue at the conference;
• Be available to arrive in India on Friday, 6^th September and stay until departure on Saturday, 14^th
• Commit to participate in all Fellowship activities;
• Provide a letter of support from an editor, producer or supervisor who can confirm your ability to publish or broadcast your material in an established media outlet. Freelancers are welcome to apply but must provide a letter of support.

Selection Criteria: Criteria for evaluating applicants will include the prospective Fellow’s demonstrated experience covering desertification, climate change and other environmental topics, their interest in continued coverage of these issues and their audience and outlet’s reach.

Number of Awards: 15-20

Value of Award: Amongst costs covered will be

• nonrefundable economy-class airfare, hotel, meals, and transportation both in-location and in transit.
• We will also assist with the press accreditation process and provide other support services relating to travel.
• Please note that the process of obtaining any necessary visas is a Fellow’s responsibility; however, visa costs can be reimbursed.

The Earth Journalism Network fully respects the editorial independence of all journalists. Throughout the conference, Fellows are free to report as they see fit. As well as the requirements above, we ask that journalists agree to cross-post all stories they file during the UNCCD COP14 on the Earth Journalism Network website and local and regional partner sites (we expect the stories will first be published or broadcast by a Fellow’s home media outlet).

Duration of Program: September 6^th – Sept 14th 2019.

How to Apply: As part of the application process, journalists will be asked to submit examples of their work. These can be uploaded as text pasted into a Word document or as links. Stories can be sent in a native language as long as they are accompanied by a short English synopsis. A good command of English, however, will be needed to answer the essay questions and will also be important to participate in Fellowship activities.

Apply Now

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Short Story Day Africa Prize for African Writers 2019

Application Deadline: 31st October 2019.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Online

Offered Since: 2013

About the Award: The Short Story Day Africa Prize is an African writing prize open to African citizens, permanent residents of African countries, or second generation Africans living in the diaspora only. Unpublished works between 3000-5000 words in response to the theme are eligible for the prize.

Type: Essay writing contest

Eligibility: 

1. Any African citizen or African person living in the diaspora(Citizens of African countries or former citizens who have given up citizenship for whatever reason, and second generation Africans whose parents are/were African citizens), as well as persons residing permanently (granted permanent residence or similar) in any African country, may enter.
2. Writers may only submit one story for the competition. Repeat entries by the same writer will be disqualified.
3. Writers are welcome to submit stories in any fiction genre.
4. Stories must be between 3000 and 5000 words in length.
5. Stories must be submitted in English. While you are free to incorporate other languages into your story, the story must be able to be understood fully by its English content.
6. To facilitate easy reading and judging, please format your stories according to the format stipulated below. Stories not formatted in this way are at the risk of being disqualified.
7. Stories must not have been previously published in any form or any format.
8. Simultaneous submissions are not welcome. Any story entered or published elsewhere during the course of judging or publication will be disqualified.
9. You are welcome to enter under a pseudonym or nom de plume, as long as you also include your real name along with your entry.
10. All entries will be judged anonymously. Please DO NOT put your name or any other identifying details anywhere on your manuscript.
11. The judges’ decision is final.
12. By submitting a story the author attests that it is their own original work and grants exclusive global print and digital rights to Short Story Day Africa for one year, and thereafter agrees to seek permission to republish and when published elsewhere attributes first publication to Short Story Day Africa; non-exclusive digital rights to Worldreader to publish individual stories on Worldreader Mobile; and non-exclusive digital rights to BooksLive for publicity purposes.
13. By entering, the author agrees to allowing Short Short Story Day Africa to include their entry in an anthology should it be selected by the judges; and to working with editors to get their story publication ready.
14. We will not share your personal information with anyone. We will, however, add you to Short Story Day Africa mailing list for the sole purpose of informing you of next year’s even, or of other Short Story Day Africa events that may be of interest to you.

Submission Criteria: Candidates should:

• Type their document, using a single, clear font, 12-point size, double-spaced. The easiest font to use is Times New Roman, or a similar serif font.
• Put the title of their story halfway down the cover page. Please DO NOT title your story Migrations. Start your story immediately below the title.
• Put an accurate word count at the top right.
• Please number the pages.
• Left-justify their paragraphs.
• Ensure there is at least a 1 inch or 2 centimetre margin all the way around your text. This is to allow annotation to be written onto a printed copy.
• Indent each new paragraph by about 1/2 inch or 1 centimetre, except for the first line of the story or the first line of a new scene.
• Don’t insert extra lines between your paragraphs. A blank line indicates a new scene.
• Put the word “End” after the end of their text, centred, on its own line.

Number of Awardees: Three

Value of Award: 

• 1st prize  US$800
• 2nd prize US$200
• 3rd prize  US$100

addition three emerging writers will receive a 20 week online creative writing course. These will be selected from the long list or slush pile.

How to Apply: Candidates should go here to apply

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Short Story Day Africa

Important Notes: Due to a lack of funding submissions will incur a small fee which pays for the Submittalbe platform. The fee is in dollars HOWEVER you do not need a dollar account to pay. All currencies are accepted and your bank will convert the amount taken off your account into local currency. Thank you for your understanding.

DAAD Postgraduate Scholarships for Development-Related Courses 2020 – Germany

Application Deadline: Each chosen course has its deadline (Sept-Dec).  Please consult scholarship brochure for more information (See link below).
Only exception is Cameroon. Students are to apply before 31st July 2019 through the German embassy.

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): Germany

Fields of Study: Individual scholarships exclusively for Postgraduate courses in Germany that are listed on the “List of all Postgraduate courses with application deadlines”.

About the Award: With its development-oriented postgraduate study programmes, the DAAD promotes the training of specialists from development and newly industrialised countries. Well-trained local experts, who are networked with international partners, play an important part in the sustainable development of their countries. They are the best guarantee for a better future with less poverty, more education and health for all.

Type: Master’s, PhD

Eligibility: 

• Candidates fulfil the necessary academic requirements and can be expected to successfully complete a study programme in Germany (above-average result for first academic exam – top performance third, language skills)
• Candidates have a Bachelor degree (usually a four-year course) in an appropriate subject
• Candidates have at least two years’ professional experience
• Candidates can prove their motivation is development-related and be expected to take on social responsibility and initiate and support processes of change in their personal and professional environment after their training/scholarship

Selection Criteria: 

• The last academic degree (usually a Bachelor’s degree) should have been completed no longer than six years previously
• At least two years’ relevant professional experience
• Language skills: Depending on chosen study programme; please check scholarship brochure or the website of your chosen study programme.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: 

• Depending on academic level, monthly payments of 750 euros for graduates or 1,000 euros for doctoral candidates
• Payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance cover
• Travel allowance, unless these expenses are covered by the home country or another source of funding

Duration of Program: 12 to 36 months (dependent on study programme)

How to Apply: It is important to check for your desired course HERE and go through the Program Webpage before applying.

Visit Program Webpage for details


Award Provider: German Exchange Education Services (DAAD)

Society Is In Decay – When the Worst is First and the Best is Last

Ralph Nader

Plutocrats like to control the range of permissible public dialogue. Plutocrats also like to shape what society values. If you want to see where a country’s priorities lie, look at how it allocates its money. While teachers and nurses earn comparatively little for performing critical jobs, corporate bosses including those who pollute our planet and bankrupt defenseless families, make millions more. Wells Fargo executives are cases in point. The vastly overpaid CEO of General Electric left his teetering company in shambles. In 2019, Boeing’s CEO got a bonus (despite the Lion Air Flight 610 737 Max 8 crash in 2018). Just days before a second deadly 737 Max 8 crash in Ethiopia.

This disparity is on full display in my profession. Public interest lawyers and public defenders, who fight daily for a more just and lawful society, are paid modest salaries. On the other hand, the most well compensated lawyers are corporate lawyers who regularly aid and abet corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. Many corporate lawyers line their pockets by shielding the powerful violators from accountability under the rule of law.

Physicians who minister to the needy poor and go to the risky regions, where Ebola or other deadly infectious diseases are prevalent, are paid far less than cosmetic surgeons catering to human vanities. Does any rational observer believe that the best movies and books are also the most rewarded? Too often the opposite is true. Stunningly gripping documentaries earn less than 1 percent of what is garnered by the violent, pornographic, and crude movies at the top of the ratings each week.

On my weekly radio show, I interview some of the most dedicated authors who accurately document perils to health and safety. The authors on my program expose pernicious actions and inactions that jeopardize people’s daily lives. These guests offer brilliant, practical solutions for our widespread woes (see ralphnaderradiohour.com). Their important books, usually go unnoticed by the mass media, barely sell a few thousand copies, while the best-seller lists are dominated by celebrity biographies. Ask yourself, when preventable and foreseeable disasters occur, which books are more useful to society?

The monetary imbalance is especially jarring when it comes to hawks who beat the drums of war. For example, people who push for our government to start illegal wars (eg. John Bolton pushing for the war in Iraq) are rewarded with top appointments. Former government officials also get very rich when they take jobs in the defense industry. Do you remember anyone who opposed the catastrophic Iraq War getting such lucrative rewards?

The unknown and unrecognized people who harvest our food are on the lowest rung of the income ladder despite the critical role they play in our lives. Near the top of the income ladder are people who gamble on the prices of food via the commodities market and those who drain the nutrients out of natural foods and sell the junk food that remains, with a dose of harmful additives. Agribusiness tycoons profit from this plunder.

Those getting away with major billing fraud grow rich. While those people trying to get our government to do something about $350 billion dollars in health care billing fraud this year – like Harvard Professor Malcolm K. Sparrow – live on a college professor’s salary.

Hospital executives, who each make millions of dollars a year, preside over an industry where about 5,000 patients die every week from preventable problems in U.S. hospitals, according to physicians at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The watchdogs who call out this deadly hazard live on a fraction of that amount as they try to save lives.

Even in sports, where people think the best athletes make the most money, the reverse is more often true. Just ask a red-faced Brian Cashman, the Yankees GM, who, over twenty years, has spent massive sums on athletes who failed miserably to produce compared to far lesser-paid baseball players. Look at today’s top ranked Yankees – whose fifteen “stars” are injured, while their replacements are playing spectacularly for much smaller compensation than their high priced teammates.

A major reason why our society’s best are so often last while our worst are first is the media’s infatuation with publicizing the worst and ignoring the best. Warmongers get press. The worst politicians are most frequently on the Sunday morning TV shows – not the good politicians or civic leaders with proven records bettering our society.

Ever see Congressman Pascrell (Dem. N.J.) on the Sunday morning news shows? Probably not. He’s a leader who is trying to reform Congress so that it is open, honest, capable and represents you the people. Surely you have heard of Senator Lindsey Graham (Rep. S.C.) who is making ugly excuses for Donald Trump, always pushing for war and bloated military budgets, often hating Muslims and Arabs and championing the lawless American Empire. He is always in the news, having his say.

Take the 162 people who participated in our Superbowl of Civic Action at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. in May and September 2016. These people have and are changing America. They are working to make food, cars, drugs, air, water, medical devices, and drinking water safer. Abuses by corporations against consumers, workers and small taxpayers would be worse without them. Our knowledge of solutions and ways to treat people fairly and abolish poverty and advance public services is greater because of their courageous hard work. (see breakingthroughpower.org).

The eight days of this Civic Superbowl got far less coverage than did Tiger Woods losing another tournament that year or the dismissive nicknames given by the foul-mouth Trump to his mostly wealthy Republican opponents on just one debate stage.

All societies need play, entertainment, and frivolity. But a media obsessed with giving 100 times the TV and radio time, using our public airwaves for free, to those activities than to serious matters crucial to the most basic functioning of our society is assuring that the worst is first and the best is last. Just look at your weekly TV Guide.

If the whole rotted-out edifice comes crashing down, there won’t be enough coerced taxpayer dollars anymore to save the Plutocrats, with their limitless greed and power. Maybe then the best can have a chance to be first.

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.