5 Mins Read After months of debate, France has approved a new climate law to slash its carbon emissions. Here, we take a closer look.
The post France Just Passed a New Climate Law. Here’s the Good and the Bad. appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Citoyen Chouette Archive
Liberte-Egalite-Fraternite: under Macron’s pass sanitaire guillotine?
For the few of us who are students of history, and its aficionado travelers, meaning those who muse and wonder at times about how significant figures of the past would view our often dire predicament, it is rather obvious that, for example, the founding fathers of the French Revolution such as Danton, Mirabeau, St Just, and Robespierre would be shocked and angry by what has recently happened to their Republic. Even France’s last great statesman General de Gaulle, if alive today, would have likely been deeply enraged by the state of affairs in a country he loved and fought for with his heart and soul.
In the era of President Emmanuel Macron, who is merely a cynical actor, figurehead, and France’s public relation person-in-chief passing for a statesman, but who truly is a loyal servant of global corporatism, our revolution’s founders, as well as the subsequent republics’ principles, like the one of the Fifth Republic of de Gaulle, have been insulted, slapped in the face, and assaulted by some sort of insidious and limp dictatorship, under the cover of a health crisis. A complex authoritarian strategy using the pretense of shielding French citizens, often against their will, in this new lucrative conceptual war.
Citoyen Chouette Archive
This war on a virus is even more advantageous than the previous conceptual one: the war on terror. In General Macron’s war, syringes are the weapons delivery system of choice, needles like billions of little worker bees at the ready to jab you for an invitation to control freedom, and a moderate slice of happiness: the joy once you have obtained the French COVID pass Sanitaire to go to museums, movie theaters, inside restaurants, and avoid wearing masks outdoors.
French citizens should be aware that the very motto of our dear Republic, Liberte-Egalite-Fraternite is under the assault of king Ubu Macron and could, without a strong popular resistance, be decapitated by the cold blade of Macron’s virtual guillotine. In a form of dictatorial grab of power for the benefit of big biotech and big pharmaceutical companies. Macron’s pernicious pass sanitaire, just approved by France Assemblee Nationale, is a power grab by global corporate imperialism. Of course, all of it done with a wink, a tan and a smile! All of it done for the greater good of ungrateful “Gaullois refractaire” French citizens, in the continuity of the pesky Gilets Jaunes. Science lover poseur Macron, an enlightened modern day Julius Caesar, is bent on defeating obscurantism armed only with syringes to deliver his brand of salvation through vaccines. Those who have been in the forefront of the street protest in France to resist this hybrid neoliberal dictatorship personified by Macron are the still active Gilets Jaunes.
Photo Credit by Marco Verch
From war on terror to war on virus: maximum profit for big tech and pharma
Forget about the good old so-called war-on-terror, fading slightly since its start in September 2001 but still a nice little threat in the background, big enough to keep the military-industrial complex flush with cash. A new conceptual global war was needed: the global war on COVID virus came at the right time. This one is even more promising, as it potentially concern the entire world population or 7.5 billion people. The COVID war has also been an easy sell for the general population, as it can be viewed as a war of necessity with humans “all in it together.” It can also provide an astronomical stream of revenue by making vaccination mandatory. In terms of profit from pandemics, vaccine companies have not been the only beneficiaries of this COVID gold rush.
Citoyen Chouette Archive
Big tech companies have racked up billions of dollars at a furious pace since March 2020 and the various restrictive measures of lock-downs and curfews. The likes of Amazon, Zoom and streaming media have handsomely benefited from the imposed partial move to a virtual world. As matter of fact, worldwide stock markets have become junkies to this trend: addicted to the war on COVID benefits.
Needless to say, this vast stream of income is also potentially endless because of the virus mutation into different variants. One loses track of this Greek alphabet catalogue. It was Alpha first or the English variant, then Beta or the Brazilian one, more contagious than the rhythm of Samba, and now it is the Delta variant originally called Indian mutation. As the virus mutates, as they all do, it could potentially take us all the way to Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet. The side effect of the Delta variant’s rapid spread has been to allow Macron, and soon many others, head-of-states or figureheads, to tighten back the screw on fundamental liberties.
Rule by decree, states of emergency, arbitrary measures, absurd,or not, are a form of abuse of power that neoliberals like Macron are really enjoying. It is an insidious form of dictatorship under a benevolent disguise of the enlightened rulers forcing their citizenry’s behavior. In France a law is about to pass, in parliament, to make vaccine for healthcare workers across board mandatory. If they do not comply by September 15, 2021, they will be fired. In the case of France, this should be viewed as a prelude to mandatory vaccination for the entire population.
Photo Credit by Roger Jones.
Killing personal freedom and liberties
In France, government controlled mainstream media critiques rightly calling the Macron administration’s sweeping COVID policies a “dictature sanitaire” or healthcare dictatorship have been labeled conspiracy theorists. This is pure disinformation, as what defines a dictatorship, semantically speaking, is a government, elected or not, forcing policies on its citizens. It is done under the premise that it is an action for the benefit of the common good, but nonetheless it is the exercise of authoritarian power on a population.
Through the COVID-19 pandemics, governments have learned that, if fear and paranoia were prevalent enough, and they run a lot of polls in their respective population, any dictatorial measures could be implemented without risking much social turmoil. A great majority of people did, and would likely comply again to other lock-downs, wearing masks outdoors, curfews, but without much protest. Now the final frontier is mandatory vaccination from 12 years-old on, which will give you some sort of health passport. If approved. this pass would give people the right to live almost free. This new type of passport, given to you as a reward to your obedience, will give you access to a mythical promised land often called by Macron “the return of the happy days!”
Photo Credit by Marco Verch
COVID fear mongering: subterfuge to hide climate collapse threat
There is no doubt, for any rational minds, that contesting the reality of the COVID pandemic is pure conspiracy theory. More than that, it is full blown lunacy! There are two radical anti-vaxers thought processes here: firstly, deny the existence of the pandemic entirely; secondly, which might be even more disturbing, an unshakable belief that the virus was man made, and released on purpose by the like of Fauci, Bill Gates, and a hand full of mad scientists. And, of course, here’s the icing on the cake: they’re all acting on behalf of a cabal of globalist pedophiles. These are the kinds of conspiracy theories that currently get you banned on social media.
As much as they are colorfully insane, this type of COVID-19 conspiracy theory denials are not, in essence, any worse than climate change crisis denial. The difference being that your average run of the mill climate change denier won’t get banned on social media. The nature of the capitalist global corporatism system, where neoliberals like Macron are leading figures, is not to create a crisis from scratch, which is either an impossible or very challenging task, but instead to take advantage of crisis either to further general policy goals, or in most cases benefit punctually from them like an opportunistic predator. This predatory aspect is after all the very nature of capitalism.
Photo Credit by Jeanne Menjoulet
Besides the numerous advantages that Macron, his political colleagues and their patrons from the billionaire class have found in the COVID crisis, as explained above, not only huge financial gains for pharmaceutical companies, but also for tech companies involved in this sort of forced quantum leap to the virtual world. In brief, this has been a chance to brutally shock the global economy. Not to make it more equal or sustainable, but quite exactly the opposite: COVID has been an opportunity to concentrate wealth even more in fewer hands with a net result of more social inequality.
Because in today’s press one story is always used to hide another, the pandemic has been also a blessed opportunity to hide, not the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room, but instead the 10,000-ton Godzilla wrecking the planet: Godzilla, in this case, being the growing certainty of an upcoming global climate collapse.
Photo Credit by Jeanne Menjoulet
Of the “Liberte-Egalite-Fraternite motto of the French revolution, all the great values have been trampled and gutted. With lock-downs, curfews, mandatory masks and vaccine, Liberte is now gone. In the era of Macron, a former investment banker, nobody can talk about Egalite in a country which is on its way to become almost as unequal as the United States; and last but not least, how could anyone see any Fraternite left? The community sense of brotherhood died quite some time ago in France. There is no brotherhood left, no deep sense of connection within the nation, we are not “all in this together”.
In reality, there is only all of us, common men and women worldwide, against the billionaire class that controls the levers of the global corporate imperialist machines, with their political servant facilitators acting as heads of state. The specific names within the political class are of little significance since they represent the identical interests. It’s a bit like the names given to the COVID variants. The Delta variant, portrayed as the top threat right now, started more modestly as India’s mutation. Who knows, perhaps in some billionaire class circles, Emmanuel Macron is just called factor X, LV or MANU.
Citoyen Chouette Archive
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk
In the wake of this week’s revelations about the Pegasus spyware, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and two journalists with French and Moroccan dual nationality, Omar Brouksy and Maati Monjib, have filed a joint complaint with prosecutors in Paris.
They are calling on them to “identify those responsible, and their accomplices” for targeted harassment of the journalists.
The complaint does not name NSO Group, the Israeli company that makes Pegasus, but it targets the company and was filed in response to the revelations that Pegasus has been used to spy on at least 180 journalists in 20 countries, including 30 in France.
Drafted by RSF lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, the complaint cites invasion of privacy (article 216-1 of the French penal code), violation of the secrecy of correspondence (article 226-15), fraudulent collection of personal data (article 226- 18), fraudulent data introduction and extraction and access to automated data systems (articles 323-1 and 3, and 462-2), and undue interference with the freedom of expression and breach of the confidentiality of sources (article 431-1).
This complaint is the first in a series that RSF intends to file in several countries together with journalists who were directly targeted.
The complaint makes it clear that NSO Group’s spyware was used to target Brouksy and Monjib and other journalists the Moroccan authorities wanted to silence.
The author of two books on the Moroccan monarchy and a former AFP correspondent, Brouksy is an active RSF ally in Morocco.
20-day hunger strike
Monjib, who was recently defended by RSF, was released by the Moroccan authorities on March 23 after a 20-day hunger strike, and continues to await trial.
“We will do everything to ensure that NSO Group is convicted for the crimes it has committed and for the tragedies it has made possible,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
“We have filed a complaint in France first because this country appears to be a prime target for NSO Group customers, and because RSF’s international’s headquarters are located here. Other complaints will follow in other countries. The scale of the violations that have been revealed calls for a major legal response.”
After revelations by the Financial Times in 2019 about attacks on the smartphones of around 100 journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents, several lawsuits were filed against NSO Group, including one by the WhatsApp messaging service in California.
The amicus brief that RSF and other NGOs filed in this case said: “The intrusions into the private communications of activists and journalists cannot be justified on grounds of security or defence, but are carried out solely with the aim of enabling government opponents to be tracked down and gagged.
“NSO Group nonetheless continues to provide surveillance technology to its state clients, knowing that they are using it to violate international law and thereby failing in its responsibility to respect human rights.”
RSF included NSO Group in its list of “digital predators” in 2020.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Préfète Duffaut (Haiti), Le Générale Canson, 1950.
In 1963, the Trinidadian writer CLR James released a second edition of his classic 1938 study of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. For the new edition, James wrote an appendix with the suggestive title ‘From Toussaint L’Ouverture to Fidel Castro’. In the opening page of the appendix, he located the twin Revolutions of Haiti (1804) and Cuba (1959) in the context of the West Indian islands: ‘The people who made them, the problems and the attempts to solve them, are peculiarly West Indian, the product of a peculiar origin and a peculiar history’. Thrice James uses the word ‘peculiar’, which emerges from the Latin peculiaris for ‘private property’ (pecu is the Latin word for ‘cattle’, the essence of ancient property).
Property is at the heart of the origin and history of the modern West Indies. By the end of the 17th century, the European conquistadors and colonialists had massacred the inhabitants of the West Indies. On St. Kitts in 1626, English and French colonialists massacred between two and four thousand Caribs – including Chief Tegremond – in the Kalinago genocide, which Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre wrote about in 1654. Having annihilated the island’s native people, the Europeans brought in African men and women who had been captured and enslaved. What unites the West Indian islands is not language and culture, but the wretchedness of slavery, rooted in an oppressive plantation economy. Both Haiti and Cuba are products of this ‘peculiarity’, the one being bold enough to break the shackles in 1804 and the other able to follow a century and a half later.
Osmond Watson (Jamaica), City Life, 1968.
Today, crisis is the hour in the Caribbean.
On 7 July, just outside of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, gunmen broke into the home of President Jovenel Moïse, assassinated him in cold blood, and then fled. The country – already wracked by social upheaval sparked by the late president’s policies – has now plunged even deeper into crisis. Already, Moïse had forcefully extended his presidential mandate beyond his term as the country struggled with the burdens of being dependent on international agencies, trapped by a century-long economic crisis, and struck hard by the pandemic. Protests had become commonplace across Haiti as the prices of everything skyrocketed and as no effective government came to the aid of a population in despair. But Moïse was not killed because of this proximate crisis. More mysterious forces are at work: US-based Haitian religious leaders, narco-traffickers, and Colombian mercenaries. This is a saga that is best written as a fictional thriller.
Four days after Moïse’s assassination, Cuba experienced a set of protests from people expressing their frustration with shortages of goods and a recent spike of COVID-19 infections. Within hours of receiving the news that the protests had emerged, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel went to the streets of San Antonio de los Baños, south of Havana, to march with the protestors. Díaz-Canel and his government reminded the eleven million Cubans that the country has suffered greatly from the six-decade-long illegal US blockade, that it is in the grip of Trump’s 243 additional ‘coercive measures’, and that it will fight off the twin problems of COVID-19 and a debt crisis with its characteristic resolve.
Nonetheless, a malicious social media campaign attempted to use these protests as a sign that the government of Díaz-Canel and the Cuban Revolution should be overthrown. It was clarified a few days later that this campaign was run from Miami, Florida, in the United States. From Washington, DC, the drums of regime change sounded loudly. But they have not found find much of an echo in Cuba. Cuba has its own revolutionary rhythms.
Eduardo Abela (Cuba), Los Guajiros (1938).
In 1804, the Haitian Revolution – a rebellion of the plantation proletariat who struck against the agricultural factories that produced sugar and profit – sent up a flare of freedom across the colonised world. A century and a half later, the Cubans fired their own flare.
The response to each of these revolutions from the fossilised magnates of Paris and Washington was the same: suffocate the stirrings of freedom by indemnities and blockades. In 1825, the French demanded through force that the Haitians pay 150 million francs for the loss of property (namely human beings). Alone in the Caribbean, the Haitians felt that they had no choice but to pay up, which they did to France (until 1893) and then to the United States (until 1947). The total bill over the 122 years amounts to $21 billion. When Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide tried to recover those billions from France in 2003, he was removed from office by a coup d’état.
After the United States occupied Cuba in 1898, it ran the island like a gangster’s playground. Any attempt by the Cubans to exercise their sovereignty was squashed with terrible force, including invasions by US forces in 1906-1909, 1912, 1917-1922, and 1933. The United States backed General Fulgencio Batista (1940-1944 and 1952-1959) despite all the evidence of his brutality. After all, Batista protected US interests, and US firms owned two-thirds of the country’s sugar industry and almost its entire service sector.
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 stands against this wretched history – a history of slavery and imperial domination. How did the US react? By imposing an economic blockade on the country from 19 October 1960 that lasts to this day, which has targeted everything from access to medical supplies, food, and financing to barring Cuban imports and coercing third-party countries to do the same. It is a vindictive attack against a people who – like the Haitians – are trying to exercise their sovereignty. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). ‘At current prices’, he said, ‘the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion’.
None of this information would be available without the presence of media outlets such as Peoples Dispatch, which celebrates its three-year anniversary this week. We send our warmest greetings to the team and hope that you will bookmark their page to visit it several times a day for world news rooted in people’s struggles.
Bernadette Persaud (Guyana), Gentlemen Under the Sky (Gulf War), 1991.
On 17 July, tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets to defend their Revolution and demand an end to the US blockade. President Díaz-Canel said that the Cuba of ‘love, peace, unity, [and] solidarity’ had asserted itself. In solidarity with this unwavering affirmation, we have launched a call for participation in the exhibition Let Cuba Live. The submission deadline is 24 July for the online exhibition launch on 26 July – the anniversary of the revolutionary movement that brought Cuba to Revolution in 1959 – but we encourage ongoing submissions. We are inviting international artists and militants to participate in this flash exhibition as we continue to amplify the campaign #LetCubaLive to end the blockade.
A few weeks before the most recent attack on Cuba and the assassination in Haiti, the United States armed forces conducted a major military exercise in Guyana called Tradewinds 2021 and another exercise in Panama called Panamax 2021. Under the authority of the United States, a set of European militaries (France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) – each with colonies in the region – joined Brazil and Canada to conduct Tradewinds with seven Caribbean countries (The Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago). In a show of force, the US demanded that Iran cancel the movement of its ships to Venezuela in June ahead of the US-sponsored military exercise.
The United States is eager to turn the Caribbean into its sea, subordinating the sovereignty of the islands. It was curious that Guyana’s Prime Minister Mark Phillips said that these US-led war games strengthen the ‘Caribbean regional security system’. What they do, as our recent dossier on US and French military bases in Africa shows, is to subordinate the Caribbean states to US interests. The US is using its increased military presence in Colombia and Guyana to increase pressure on Venezuela.
Elsa Gramcko (Venezuela), El ojo de la cerradura (‘The Keyhole’), 1964.
Sovereign regionalism is not alien to the Caribbean, which has made four attempts to build a platform: the West Indian Federation (1958-1962), Caribbean Free Trade Association (1965-1973), Caribbean Community (1973-1989), and CARICOM (1989 to the present). What began as an anti-imperialist union has now devolved into a trade association that attempts to better integrate the region into world trade. The politics of the Caribbean are increasingly being drawn into orbit of the US. In 2010, the US created the Caribbean Basic Security Initiative, whose agenda is shaped by Washington.
In 2011, our old friend Shridath Ramphal, Guyana’s foreign minister from 1972 to 1975, repeated the words of the great Grenadian radical T. A. Marryshow: ‘The West Indies must be West Indian’. In his article ‘Is the West Indies West Indian?’, he insisted that the conscious spelling of ‘The West Indies’ with a capitalised ‘T’ aims to signify the unity of the region. Without unity, the old imperialist pressures will prevail as they often do.
In 1975, the Cuban poet Nancy Morejón published a landmark poem called “Mujer Negra” (“Black Woman”). The poem opens with the terrible trade of human beings by the European colonialists, touches on the war of independence, and then settles on the remarkable Cuban Revolution of 1959:
I came down from the Sierra
to put an end to capital and usurer,
to generals and to the bourgeoisie.
Now I exist: only today do we own, do we create.
Nothing is alien to us.
The land is ours.
Ours are the sea and sky,
the magic and vision.
My fellow people, here I see you dance
around the tree we are planting for communism.
Its prodigal wood already resounds.
The land is ours. Sovereignty is ours too. Our destiny is not to live as the subordinate beings of others. That is the message of Morejón and of the Cuban people who are building their sovereign lives, and it is the message of the Haitian people who want to advance their great Revolution of 1804.
The post Washington Beats the Drum of Regime Change, but Cuba Responds to Its Own Revolutionary Rhythm first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Europe’s identity crisis is not confined to the ceaseless squabbles by Europeans over the EU, Brexit or football. It goes much deeper, reaching sensitive and dangerous territory, including that of culture and religion. Once more, Muslims stand at the heart of the continent’s identity debate.
Of course, anti-Muslim sentiments are rarely framed to appear anti-Muslim. While Europe’s right-wing parties remain committed to the ridiculous notion that Muslims, immigrants and refugees pose a threat to Europe’s overall security and unique secular identities, the left is not entirely immune from such chauvinistic notions.
The right’s political discourse is familiar and is often condemned for its repugnantly ultra-nationalistic, if not outright racist, tone and rhetoric. The left, on the other hand, is a different story. The European left, notably in countries like France and Belgium, frame their ‘problem’ with Islam as fundamental to their supposed dedication to the secular values of the State.
“A problem arises when, in the name of religion, some want to separate themselves from the Republic and therefore not respect its laws,” Macron said during a speech in October 2020.
Leftist politicians and intellectuals were just as eager as the right to prevent Ihsane Haouach, a Belgian government representative, from serving as a commissioner at the Institute for the Equality of Women and Men (IEFH). Again, both sides joined forces, although without an official declaration of unity, to ensure Haouach had no place in the country’s democratic process.
It was a repeat of a similar scenario in France last May when Sara Zemmahi was removed from the ruling party’s candidates list for seemingly violating France’s valeurs de la République – the values of the Republic.
These are but mere examples, and are hardly restricted to French-speaking countries. There are many such disquieting events pointing to a deep-seated problem that remains unresolved. In Britain, Rakhia Ismail, who was celebrated as the country’s first hijab-wearing mayor in May 2019, resigned from her post less than a year and a half later, citing racism and marginalization.
While the Belgian, French, and British media elaborated on these stories as if unique to each specific country, in truth, they are all related. Indeed, they are all the outcome of an overriding phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice, coupled with a wave of racism that has plagued Europe for many years, especially in the last decade.
Though Europe’s official institutions, mainstream media, sports clubs and so on, continue to pay lip service to the need for diversity and inclusion, the reality on the ground is entirely different. A recent example was the horrific outcome of England’s defeat in the EURO2020 final against Italy. Gangs of white English, mostly males, attacked people of color, especially black people, whether on the street or online. The extent of cyber-bullying, in particular, targeting dark-skinned athletes is almost unprecedented in the country’s recent history.
Various British officials, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, condemned the widespread racism. Interestingly, many of these officials have said or done very little to combat anti-Muslim hate and violence in the past, which often targeted Muslim women for their head or face covering.
Strikingly, Johnson, purportedly now leading the anti-racist charge, was one of the most disparaging officials who spoke demeaningly of Muslim women in the past. “Muslim women wearing burka look like letter boxes,” he said, according to the BBC.
Of course, Islamophobia must be seen within the larger context of the toxic anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiments, now defining factors in shaping modern European politics. It is this hate and racism that served as the fuel for rising political parties like Le Front National in France, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, The Freedom Party in Austria and the Lega in Italy. In fact, there is a whole intellectual discourse, complete with brand new theories that are used to channel yet more hate, violence and racism against immigrants.
And where is the left in all of this? With a few exceptions, much of the left is still trapped in its own intellectual hubris, adding yet more fuel to the fire while veiling their criticism of Islam as if genuine concern for secularism.
Oddly, in Europe, as in much of the West, crosses and Stars of David as necklaces, or the Catholic nuns’ head covering, velo delle suore, let alone the kippahs, the religious tattoos and many other such symbols are all part of Europe’s everyday culture. Why do we never hear of such controversy of a Jewish man being tossed out of a public building because of his kippah or a white French woman being expelled from university for wearing a cross? The matter has less to do with religious symbols, in general, than of the religious symbols of races and peoples who are simply unwanted in Europe.
Also, limiting the discussion to refugees and immigrants may give the impression that the debate is mostly concerned with the non-European ‘others’ who are ‘invading’ Europe’s shores, determined to ‘replace’ Europe’s original, white, Christian inhabitants. This is hardly the case, since a sizable percentage of Belgians and French, for example, are themselves Muslims, estimated at 6 percent and 5% respectively. Namely, these Muslims are European citizens.
Haouach, Zemmahi and Ismail actually wanted to be a part of – not break apart from – these societies by honoring their country’s most cherished political traditions, yet without erasing their own cultural heritage and religious identities in the process. Alas, they were all vehemently rejected, as if Europe has made a collective decision to ensure that Muslims subsist in the margins forever. And when Muslim communities try to fight back, using Europe’s own judicial systems as their supposed saviors, they are, once again, rejected. The latest of such spurns was in June, when Belgium’s constitutional court resolved that prohibiting the wearing of hijab does not constitute a violation of freedom of religion or the right to education.
It is time for European countries to understand that their demographics are fundamentally changing, and that such change can, in fact, be beneficial to the health of these nations. Without true diversity and meaningful inclusion, there can be no real progress in any society, anywhere.
But while demographic shifts can offer an opportunity for growth, it can also inspire fear, racism and, predictably, violence as well.
Europe, which has fought two horrendous wars in the last century, should know better.
The post Progress or War: On Islamophobia and Europe’s Demographic Shifts first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Beta variant of coronavirus spreading in France poses a “threat” to the UK, a scientist involved in advising the government has warned. Evidence suggests the variant may evade the effect of vaccines.
Professor John Edmunds, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said he could understand concerns over the variant that have led to last-minute travel rule changes.
It was announced on the evening of 16 July that holidaymakers returning from France must continue to quarantine even if they are double-jabbed. Restrictions on other amber list countries have been eased. Ministers said the move was a precautionary measure due to concerns over the “persistent presence” of the Beta variant in France.
Edmunds told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme:
The Beta variant has remained a threat throughout. It is probably less infectious than the Delta variant that is spreading here in the UK at the moment. Where it has an advantage is that it is able to escape the immune response to a better extent.
He added:
As the population here becomes more and more immune, the conditions are right then for the Beta variant to get an advantage, so I can understand the concern.
Of the variants that are out there and are known about, that one has always been a threat to us. There is some good evidence from South Africa that it can evade the immune response generated by the AstraZeneca vaccine more efficiently.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca jab is among the four approved vaccines administered to millions of people in the UK in recent months.
From 19 July, travellers returning to England from all amber list countries except France won’t need to quarantine on arrival if they have been double vaccinated or are under 18. The France announcement underlines the uncertainty in some areas over the lifting of lockdown restrictions in England.
It also marks another hit to the fortunes of the travel sector. Industry body Abta said it was a further setback for hopes of a “meaningful recovery”. It also came just two days after the Spanish holiday islands of Ibiza, Mallorca, and Menorca were moved from green to amber, meaning anyone over 18 who is not fully vaccinated must quarantine on their return.
Owing to its reliance on airplanes, foreign travel has been linked to climate change. Areas of Europe are currently experiencing extreme floods believed to be linked to climate change. Meanwhile areas of North America have experienced record-breaking heatwaves:
Currently Western Europe is seeing “worst flood in a century". Especially Germany & Belgium. Many cities are facing heavy rains in Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Whereas in Canada heatwaves are making new records. Not good signs. pic.twitter.com/JtzWcoBhkN
— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) July 17, 2021
German, Belgian flood deaths rise to 157 as search continues https://t.co/l8EXo1nMOi pic.twitter.com/bHUa07qpgu
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 17, 2021
Health secretary Sajid Javid said the government had always been clear it would take rapid action at the borders to “protect the gains made by our successful vaccination programme”. However, Labour has accused ministers of creating holiday “chaos”.
Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said:
Ministers are making up rules on the hoof and causing chaos. They have never had a proper strategy in place – once again the travel industry and the British people are paying the price.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on The Canary.
By Jean-Pierre Viatge in Pape’ete
Fifteen days after Tahiti Nui’s anti-nuclear protest on July 2, the Tavini Huiraatira party has organised a march Mā’ohi Lives Matter this weekend with support from the Mā’ohi Protestant Church, Association 193 and Moruroa e Tatou.
Former territorial president of Tahiti and pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has called for an “unprecedented mobilisation” of the population.
It was after the unrest caused by the publication of the book Toxic (Toxique) last March that the anti-nuclear protest was set for July 17.
The event on Saturday (Tahiti time) is also being mirrored in Auckland at AUT University on Sunday in a Mai te Paura Ātōmī i te Tiāmara’a (From Bomb contamination to self determination) rally being organised by Les Tahitiens de NZ.
The date was chosen to mark the controversial French atmospheric nuclear test Centaur on 17 July 1974.
This was a failed test, complicated by a dreadful weather forecast, that would have blown the radioactive cloud across French Polynesia to the main island of Tahiti Nui.
According to estimates given by the journalist authors of the book Toxic, this would have exposed up to 110,000 Polynesians to radioactive fallout.
Famous JFK speech
In the days running up to the protest, it is by the historic words extracted from the famous John Fitzgerald Kennedy speech that Oscar Temaru wanted to attract popular support: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
“It is a call for a general mobilisation,” Temaru explained.
“I can’t tell how many we will be. But I can tell you that there will be thousands of people.”
And Temaru, leader of the Tavini, added: “I will be satisfied only if we have 50,000 people.”
The bar is set very high.
Fifteen days after the July 2 march that marked this year’s 55th anniversary of the first nuclear test, and a week before the official visit of President Emmanuel Macron to French Polynesia, the collective called Fait Nucléaire en Polynésie (Nuclear Fact in French Polynesia) wanted to strike hard.
At the beginning of the month, the Moruroa e Tatou association managed to gather between 2000 to 3000 protesters in Pape’ete, thanks largely to the support of the l’Église Protestante Mā’ohi (Mā’ohi Protestant Church), which provided most of the protesters.
If its representatives were not at the press conference given last Tuesday at the Tavini headquarters to promote the protest of July 17, the religious organisation is still part of the organising collective.
Richard Tuheiava tried to explain the absence of the church leaders by asking the press: “You seem to doubt the involvement of the Mā’ohi Protestant Church? Don’t worry…”
Grievances and complaints
Two points of gathering are planned for Saturday morning from 6am in Tahiti. One is the carpark of the former Mamao hospital, for protesters coming from the east coast, and the other, the Tipaerui sports stadium for those coming from the west coast.
The two marches for the protest called Mā’ohi Lives Matter will start walking at 9am toward the main place of Tarahoi which will be the focal point for the event.
There a speech is planned to remind the objective of the protest. At midday after one minute silence in homage to the sick and former Polynesian veterans who died due to the nuclear tests, a section will be dedicated to a statement by victims who survived.
Video recordings made for this occasion will be shown on a big screen to carry the message of the sick Polynesians and international sympathisers who could not physically make it to the protest.
Among them will be Hilda Lini, sister of the late Walter Lini, the father of independence of Vanuatu.
Some diplomats from the Pacific are also on the card, recognised by the United Nations along with representatives of non-government organisations which sit at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
“Partners from well-known Pacific institutions, partners of the UN and active individuals in the Pacific region who know the fight of the Tavini on the nuclear issues,” added Michel Villar, foreign affairs councillor for the pro-independence party.
Crime against humanity lawsuit
The other main issue for this protest on Saturday –- and not the least –- is tied to the lawsuit alleging a crime against humanity pressed by independent Polynesians before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, an action that has now stalled.
Since last March, anti-nuclear activists have set up a network of recommendations for those recognised as victims and compensated to file a complaint in The Hague over the shortcomings of the the so-called Morin Law and community meetings have since been organised.
These complaints are likely to reinforce the statement made by Oscar Temaru before the ICJ in October 2018, as explained by Michel Villar last March.
“People have been trained to take statements. It’s already running full speed,” said Temaru.
“I am very satisfied with the last meetings that we have had.”
On Saturday, a host of complaints would help the pro-independence and anti-nuclear causes.
At least to boost communication of their story of suffering on the international stage.
Translated for Asia Pacific Report by Ena Manuireva, one of the organisers of the Mai te Paura Ātōmī i te Tiāmara’a (From Bomb contamination to self determination) rally at WF603, Auckland University of Technology at 12noon on Sunday, July 18.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
4 Mins Read France’s cultivated meat pioneer Gourmey will expand its cell-based foie gras offerings after raising $10 million in a record seed round.
The post French Cultured Foie Gras Maker Gourmey To Go For Chicken After Record $10M Seed appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Ena Manuireva
On 27 May 2021, a significant event took place in Rwanda where French President Emmanuel Macron asked for forgiveness from the people of Rwanda after admitting for the first time that France bore a “terrible responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the 1994 genocide.
This is how President Macron’s wording appeared in The Guardian:
“France played its part and bears the political responsibility for the events in Rwanda. France is obligated to face history and admit that it caused suffering to the Rwandan people by allowing itself lengthy silences at the truth exam …”
On the other hand, the French government assumes no liability for the genocide and ecocide perpetrated in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia)- the “crown jewel” of France’s overseas territories.
The French administration is living in denial concerning its responsibility to the Ma’ohi Nui people vis-a-vis the impact of nuclear tests in the region.
Former French President Hollande said in 2016 that: “I recognise that the nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996 in French Polynesia have had an environmental impact, causing health consequences.”
Further, Hollande added that the issue of compensation for health consequences would be examined — but that statement fell flat as a series of empty promises. That speech has no political or compensatory weight since every five years the reset button is activated during the French presidential elections.
Promises turn stale
Promises made by politicians usually turn stale unless they are seeking another electoral mandate.
France projects an image of itself as a responsible nation in the world at large — but France has treated the issues concerning Rwanda and Ma’ohi Nui differently.
The Rwanda population received a confession of guilt whereas the Ma’ohi Nui populations have received a slap in the face.
Mā’ohi Nui is still waiting an admission of guilt from the French administration — especially after the publication of the investigative book Toxic that discredited all the French governments’ discourse concerning “safe and clean” nuclear tests.
The French government refuses to tell the truth concerning the harm successive administrations have committed upon Ma’ohi Nui.
Ma’ohi Nui standing up in protest
The release of the book Toxic has injected a renewed energy among civil and political groups in Mā’ohi Nui who are reminding the French state that discussions concerning accountability are long overdue. The book focused on the degree to which the radioactive fallout from an atmospheric nuclear test named Centaur contaminated nearly the entirety of the Mā’ohi Nui Islands.
France has used the local Ma’ohi Nui population as guinea pigs to advance its national ambition of becoming a nuclear power while ignoring the rights of the local population and their environment.
Marches in commemoration of the more than 100,000 Ma’ohi Nui people affected by the radioactive cloud from the Centaur explosion will take place in the streets of Pape’ete in Tahiti, on July 17 — the very date when Centaur exploded in 1974.
Marches in Pape’ete are also a response to the stand taken by French President Macron. The French leader has organised a meeting this week when, once more, discussions concerning the modality of potential compensation are taking place along with new rules to be drafted for victims of radioactivity.
However, instead of holding the meeting in Mā’ohi Nui, where most of the contamination has occurred, the meeting is being held in the colonial capital of Paris. Locating the meeting in Paris appears to be yet another way for the French administration to try to control the narrative surrounding the Centaur blast.
Faa’a mayor Oscar Temaru, a former French Polynedsia territorial president, is under no illusion that most of the participants attending the Paris meeting will be pro-French, including Tahiti’s current government which has responded positively to the invitation.
The main anti-nuclear Mā’ohi parties have rejected the invitation from Paris for France’s lack of transparency concerning process, and because these parties believe France’s capital is an inappropriate venue for discussing the horrendous nuclear tests that took place in Mā’ohi Nui.
Total transparency
Temaru says that the way to demonstrate total transparency would be to call upon a neutral arbitrator such as the United Nations to mediate between the French government and Mā’ohi Nui representatives.
Temaru asks for this despite knowing well that the French practise a policy of the “empty chair” at the UN. The International Court of Justice in the Hague would be another appropriate place to discuss decolonisation: especially since Macron said in 2017 that colonisation was a crime against humanity.
According to Temaru, pro-French representatives of the local Tahitian government are trying to undermine the resolution of 2013 that reinscribed French Polynesia onto the UN list of non-self-governing territories. These Tahitian representatives are asking for the 2013 resolution to be overturned: that is very unlikely to happen.
In consequence, Oscar Temaru and his people are organising a day of action for July 17 in Pape’ete, Tahiti. They will march in commemoration of the day the 1974 Centaur nuclear test was initiated — for reparation for damage caused to the Ma’ohi Nui environment and people as a result of nuclear testing, and for the decolonisation of Ma’ohi Nui.
Temaru has invited Moana peoples to stand beside him in solidarity. Nuclear capability is the colonial weapon par excellence and this issue cannot be separated from indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination.
Organisers in Aotearoa have responded to Temaru’s call and have organised a rally to take place in Auckland on July 18 at the same time as protests occur in Tahiti.
Organising the diaspora around Ma’ohi Nui protest
Members of the Tahitian community living in Auckland will add their voices and feet to support their countrymen/women in Tahiti and rally in a show of solidarity. This rally acknowledges that Ma’ohi Nui communities have fought for redress from France over the nuclear issue for long decades.
Rally organisers seek the active support of communities and civil society groups committed to the rights of the Ma’ohi Nui people in their fight against colonialism and neo-colonialism. The Auckland gathering recognises the suffering of other smaller communities in the Pacific in the face of ecological and political colonialism.
The action for Ma’ohi Nui in Auckland will be a cross-generational endeavour aiming to bring together young activists with more experienced ones-so that the new generation can work alongside those who have gone before.
Organisers recognise they stand upon the shoulders of Māori, Pacific, and Pakeha giants who have fought for nuclear justice for Moana peoples in years gone by. The consequences of nuclear testing in the Pacific are intergenerational.
This rally seeks to bring together all the Pacific people (and all other supporters) who live by the Moana-Nui-a-Hiva. Nuclear testing, climate change, and deep-sea mining all imperil our ocean. We must respond to these threats collectively as peoples of the “Sea of Islands”.
The Ma’ohi Nui peoples’ struggle for their rights concerning nuclear issues is an Oceanic issue.
The rally will send a strong message to the French administration that people will not rest until there are concrete efforts made by the French colonial power in Mā’ohi Nui to:
• Recognise responsibility for the 30 years of nuclear testing
• Compensate the whole of Mā’ohi Nui who have carried the sanitary cost of contamination
• Repatriate the unstable nuclear waste buried under the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa
• Clean up both atolls
• Start the process of de-colonisation as stated in the 2013 resolution of the UN Charter
Auckland rally plans
The Auckland rally for Mā’ohi Nui has two components. Firstly, we will gather in the “Elizabeth Yates” room at the Ellen Melville Centre to watch live video of the Tahitian day of action in Pape’ete. Oscar Temaru will address his people in Tahiti and those gathered in Auckland.
Secondly, we will go to nearby Bernard Freyberg Square where there will be poems, songs, and speeches given in honour of Mā’ohi Nui and her struggle for reparations and decolonisation.
In this work, organisers are guided by the wisdom of assassinated Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou:
“The Pacific, with its ocean and its islands, is a gift of the gods to the peoples of Oceania, past and present. The ocean, the islands, the air and the light, the fish, the birds, the plants and mankind together comprise the Life which is our supreme heritage as Pacific people. Everyone is responsible for his own fulfilment.”
“This responsibility is becoming more and more difficult to exercise as the dangers assume ever greater dimensions:
• The danger of denial of the indigenous peoples and their heritage;
• The danger of denial of the greatest dignity of all: control of one’s
life and destiny;
• The danger of blind industrialisation smothering the earth with
tar and concrete;
• The danger of tentacular multinationals which suck the substance;
of our countries to nourish other bellies and other minds…; and
• the danger of nuclear weapons.”
Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevian originally from the south of “French” Polynesia who has lived in New Zealand for many years and is currently a doctoral studies candidate in Te Ara Poutama at Auckland University of Technology. He contributes articles for Asia Pacific Report. He is organising the Auckland rally with colleague Tony Fala.
Speakers TBA:
Rally programme TBA.
Rally on Facebook Events page, Mai te Paura Atomi, i te Tiamara’a/ From Bomb Contamination to self- determination.
Organisers:
Ena Manuireva (Ma’ohi Nui lead organiser). Email: jmanuireva@gmail.com Cellphone: 02102575958
Tony Fala (support organiser). Email: tony_fala@yahoo.com Cellphone: 0220129381
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Young players excluded from matches because of their religious dress find a way to play on and encourage other hijab-wearing women into the sport
Founé Diawara was 15 years old when she was first told she could not wear her hijab in a football match.
It was an important game. She had recently got into the team of a club in Meaux, the town north-east of Paris where she grew up, and they were playing a local rival. Diawara had been wearing her hijab during training, but as she was about to walk on to the pitch, the referee said she must remove it if she wanted to play.
Founé Diawara during a training session at Montreuil football pitch in the suburbs of Paris.
Les Hijabeuses (from left): Zamya, Founé Diawara and Hawa Doucouré
I’m not a woman wearing a hijab playing football, just a woman who loves football
Les Hijabeuses at a training session
Karthoum Dembélé, Hawa Doucouré and other players from Les Hijabeuses at the Women’s Urban Cup, a football tournament organised by Urban Jeunesse Academy
Les Hijabeuses at the Women’s Urban Cup
Bouchra Chaïb training at Montreuil football pitch
Les Hijabeuses during a training session at Montreuil football pitch. The group share the ground with other young people from the area
Les Hijabeuses and a community organiser for the Citizen’s Alliance, which helped set up the group
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
A European court judgment this week could reverse laws that protect the vulnerable and abused
A case to be heard in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg this week could have disastrous consequences for those campaigning to eradicate prostitution.
The hearing is the first step in determining whether France’s laws on prostitution – which criminalise paying for sex – are constitutional, or whether they contravene the human rights of self-titled “sex workers”.
The oldest profession? I prefer to use the phrase ‘the oldest oppression’
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
ANALYSIS: By Adam Taylor, Griffith University
A covid-19 vaccine from French company Valneva has yet to complete clinical trials. But it has caught the eye of governments in the UK, Europe and Australia.
One of the vaccine’s main selling points is its apparent ability to mount a more general immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, rather than rely on the spike protein to do this.
This means the vaccine is more likely to be effective against the type of virus variants that have already been emerging, and may emerge in the future. Some reports describe it as “variant proof”.
The hope is vaccines using this technology would be able to provide protection for longer, rather than keep being reformulated to get ahead of these new variants.
How does Valneva work?
Valneva’s vaccine, called VLA2001, is based on tried and tested vaccine technology. It is the technology used in the vaccine against poliovirus and in some types of flu vaccines. And the company already has a commercially available Japanese encephalitis vaccine based on the same technology.
VLA2001 uses an inactivated version of the whole virus, which cannot replicate or cause disease.
The virus is inactivated using a chemical called beta-propiolactone or BPL. This is widely used to inactivate other viruses for vaccines. It was even used to make experimental versions of vaccines against SARS-CoV, the virus that caused SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
This type of inactivation is expected to preserve the structure of the viral proteins, as they would occur in nature. This means the immune system will be presented with something similar to what occurs naturally, and mount a strong immune response.
After being inactivated, the vaccine would be highly purified. Then, an adjuvant (an immune stimulant) is added to induce a strong immune response.
VLA2001 isn’t the first inactivated vaccine against covid-19. Leading covid-19 inactivated vaccines, such as those developed by Sinopharm and Bharat Biotech, have been approved for use in China and received emergency approval in other countries, including India.
However, VLA2001 is the only covid-19 vaccine candidate using whole inactivated virus in clinical trials in the UK and in mainland Europe.
What are the benefits known so far?
This approach to vaccine development presents the immune system with all of the structural components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not just the spike protein, as many other covid-19 vaccines do.
So Valneva’s vaccine is thought to produce a more broadly protective immune response. That is, antibodies and cells of the immune system are able to recognise and neutralise more pieces of the virus than just the spike protein.
The federal government is speaking with a French company about potentially importing its vaccine to use in the Australian rollout.https://t.co/8OXapOauE4
— news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) May 1, 2021
As a result, Valneva’s vaccine could be more effective at tackling emerging covid-19 virus variants and, if approved, play a useful role as a booster vaccine.
Valneva’s vaccine can be stored at standard cold-chain conditions (2-8℃) and is expected to be given as two shots.
How about results from clinical trials?
According to the company, no safety concerns or serious adverse events were associated with VLA2001 in early-stage clinical trials.
VLA2001 was given as a low, medium or high dose in these trials with all participants in the high-dose group generating antibodies to the virus spike protein.
One measure of immune response in the high-dose group after completing the two doses indicated antibody levels were, after two weeks, at least as high as those seen in patients naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Interestingly, VLA2001 induced immune responses against a number of virus proteins (including the spike protein) across all participants, an encouraging sign the vaccine can provide broad protection against covid-19.
We’re looking for volunteers for the latest UK COVID-19 vaccine study.
The Valneva phase 2/3 study is open to healthy adults who have not had a previous COVID-19 vaccine.
Sign up via the NHS Covid-19 vaccine research registry: https://t.co/san2RD5Oq6 pic.twitter.com/hyHgGeBAiL
— R&D Southampton (@RDsouthampton) May 4, 2021
The vaccine has since advanced to phase 3 clinical trials in the UK. The trial, which started in April 2021, will compare its safety and efficacy with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The phase 3 trial is expected to be completed by the northern hemisphere’s autumn this year. And if successful, would be submitted for regulatory approval after that.
Who is interested?
Despite phase 3 clinical trials only just starting, the UK government has pre-ordered more than 100 million doses of the vaccine from Valneva, with the option of buying more down the track. If trials prove successful and pass regulatory approval, this means the vaccine could be used as a booster in time for this year’s northern hemisphere’s winter.
Australia has confirmed it’s also in talks with Valeneva about importing the vaccine. Some countries in Europe are also reportedly keen to strike a deal.
EXCLUSIVE Some EU nations still want Valneva COVID-19 vaccine deal -sources https://t.co/FtL49NU37L pic.twitter.com/g3yhFaOKuB
— Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) April 30, 2021
As new cases of covid-19 increase globally, we’ll continue to see new viral variants emerge that threaten to escape the protection existing vaccines offer.
Already, we are seeing vaccines from companies such as Moderna and Novavax begin to reformulate their spike protein-based vaccines to get ahead of emerging variants.
So Valneva’s vaccine, with the potential to elicit a more broadly protective immune response, may prove to be a useful tool to combat the rise of the virus and its mutations. However, whether the vaccine is really “variant proof” or merely less affected by emerging variants remains to be seen.
Dr Adam Taylor, is early career research leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The tributes to the late President Idriss Deby just poured in last week – especially from Western leaders. And boy were the condolences nauseating – at least to anyone vaguely familiar with Chad and its longtime strongman, or those even faintly fond of decency. The worst of it came – unsurprisingly and unapologetically – from the country’s former (officially) and persistent (de facto) colonial masters in Paris. Coming right on the heels of Deby’s – still hazy on its exact details – death on the battlefield against a rebel rebellion, President Emmanuel Macron’s office released a statement announcing that “France lost a brave friend.”
The White House pulled its pity-punches a bit more than Paris – despite Washington’s extensive support for the dictatorial Deby – and offered only its “sincere condolences” to the people of Chad.
The post Our ‘Dear Friend’ Deby Is Dead appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
In Montceau-les-Mines, a French town once dependent on coal mining, there was no just transition from fossil fuels. Once a left-leaning industrial hub, Montceau today is an open field for the far right.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
In a recent report, the United Nations Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, concluded that, on January 3, French warplanes had struck a crowd attending a wedding in the remote village of Bounti, killing 22 of the guests.
According to the findings, based on a thorough investigation and interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses, 19 of the guests were unarmed civilians whose killing constitutes a war crime.
Unlike the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other countries, the French war in Mali receives little media coverage outside the limited scope of French-speaking media, which has successfully branded this war as one against Islamic militants.
What is interesting about the Mali story is the fact that, despite its centrality to the geopolitics of the Sahel region in Africa, it is framed within disconnected narratives that rarely overlap.
However, the story has less to do with Islamic militancy and much to do with foreign interventions. Anti-French sentiment in Mali goes back over a century when, in 1892, France colonized that once-thriving African kingdom, exploiting its resources and reordering its territories as a way to weaken its population and to break down its social structures.
The formal end of French colonialism of Mali in 1960 was merely the end of a chapter, but definitely not the story itself. France remained present in Mali, in the Sahel and throughout Africa, defending its interests, exploiting the ample resources and working jointly with corrupt elites to maintain its dominance.
Fast forward to March 2012 when Captain Amadou Sanogo overthrew the nominally democratic government of Amadou Toumani Touré. He used the flimsy excuse of protesting Bamako’s failure to rein in the militancy of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) in the north.
Sanogo’s pretense was quite clever, though, as it fit neatly into a grand narrative designed by various Western governments, lead among them France and the United States, who saw Islamic militancy as the greatest danger facing many parts of Africa, especially in the Sahel.
Interestingly but not surprisingly, Sanogo’s coup, which angered African governments, but was somehow accommodated by Western powers, made matters much worse. In the following months, northern militants managed to seize much of the impoverished northern regions, continuing their march towards Bamako itself.
The army coup was never truly reversed but, at the behest of France and other influential governments, was simply streamlined into a transitional government, still largely influenced by Sanogo’s supporters.
On December 20, 2012, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2085, which authorized the deployment of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali. Armed with what was understood to be a UN mandate, France launched its war in Mali, under the title of ‘Operation Serval’.
It is worth mentioning here that the Mali scenario had just transpired in Libya when, on March 17, 2011, the UNSC passed Resolution 1973, which was conveniently and immediately translated into a declaration of war.
Both scenarios proved costly for the two African countries. Instead of ‘saving’ these countries, the interventions allowed violence to spiral even further, leading to yet more foreign interventions and proxy wars.
On July 15, 2014, France declared that ‘Operation Serval’ was successfully accomplished, providing its own list of casualties on both sides, again, with very little international monitoring. Yet, almost immediately, on August 1, 2014, it declared another military mission, this time an open-ended war, ‘Operation Barkhane’.
Barkhane was spearheaded by France and included Paris’ own ‘coalition of the willing’, dubbed ‘G5 Sahel’. All former French colonies, the new coalition consisted of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. The declared goal of France’s indefinite intervention in the Sahel is to provide material support and training to the ‘G5 Sahel’ forces in their ‘war on terror’.
However, according to Deutsche Welle, the ‘optimism’ that accompanied ‘Operation Serval’ completely vanished with ‘Operation Barkhane’. “The security situation has worsened, not only (in the) the north but (in) central Mali as well”, the German news agency recently reported, conveying a sense of chaos, with farmers fleeing their land and with “self-defense militias” carrying out their own operations to satisfy “their own agendas”, and so on.
In truth, the chaos in the streets merely reflected the chaos in government. Even with a heavy French military presence, instability continued to plague Mali. The latest coup in the country took place in August 2020. Worse still, the various Tuareg forces, which have long challenged the foreign exploitation of the country, are now unifying under a single banner. The future of Mali is hardly promising.
So what was the point of the intervention, anyway? Certainly not to ‘restore democracy’ or ‘stabilize’ the country. Karen Jayes elaborates. “France’s interests in the region are primarily economic,” she wrote in a recent article. “Their military actions protect their access to oil and uranium in the region.”
To appreciate this claim more fully, one only needs a single example of how Mali’s wealth of natural resources is central to France’s economy. “An incredible 75 percent of France’s electric power is generated by nuclear plants that are mostly fueled by uranium extracted on Mali’s border region of Kidal,” in the northern parts of the country. Therefore, it is unsurprising that France was ready to go to war as soon as militants proclaimed the Kidal region to be part of their independent nation-state of Azawad in April 2012.
As for the bombing of the Bounti wedding, the French military denied any wrong-doing, claiming that all of the victims were ‘jihadists’. The story is meant to end here, but it will not – as long as Mali is exploited by outsiders, as long as poverty and inequality will continue to exist, leading to insurrections, rebellions and military coups.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In a recent report, the United Nations Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, concluded that, on January 3, French warplanes had struck a crowd attending a wedding in the remote village of Bounti, killing 22 of the guests.
According to the findings, based on a thorough investigation and interviews with hundreds of eyewitnesses, 19 of the guests were unarmed civilians whose killing constitutes a war crime.
Unlike the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and other countries, the French war in Mali receives little media coverage outside the limited scope of French-speaking media, which has successfully branded this war as one against Islamic militants.
What is interesting about the Mali story is the fact that, despite its centrality to the geopolitics of the Sahel region in Africa, it is framed within disconnected narratives that rarely overlap.
However, the story has less to do with Islamic militancy and much to do with foreign interventions. Anti-French sentiment in Mali goes back over a century when, in 1892, France colonized that once-thriving African kingdom, exploiting its resources and reordering its territories as a way to weaken its population and to break down its social structures.
The formal end of French colonialism of Mali in 1960 was merely the end of a chapter, but definitely not the story itself. France remained present in Mali, in the Sahel and throughout Africa, defending its interests, exploiting the ample resources and working jointly with corrupt elites to maintain its dominance.
Fast forward to March 2012 when Captain Amadou Sanogo overthrew the nominally democratic government of Amadou Toumani Touré. He used the flimsy excuse of protesting Bamako’s failure to rein in the militancy of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) in the north.
Sanogo’s pretense was quite clever, though, as it fit neatly into a grand narrative designed by various Western governments, lead among them France and the United States, who saw Islamic militancy as the greatest danger facing many parts of Africa, especially in the Sahel.
Interestingly but not surprisingly, Sanogo’s coup, which angered African governments, but was somehow accommodated by Western powers, made matters much worse. In the following months, northern militants managed to seize much of the impoverished northern regions, continuing their march towards Bamako itself.
The army coup was never truly reversed but, at the behest of France and other influential governments, was simply streamlined into a transitional government, still largely influenced by Sanogo’s supporters.
On December 20, 2012, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2085, which authorized the deployment of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali. Armed with what was understood to be a UN mandate, France launched its war in Mali, under the title of ‘Operation Serval’.
It is worth mentioning here that the Mali scenario had just transpired in Libya when, on March 17, 2011, the UNSC passed Resolution 1973, which was conveniently and immediately translated into a declaration of war.
Both scenarios proved costly for the two African countries. Instead of ‘saving’ these countries, the interventions allowed violence to spiral even further, leading to yet more foreign interventions and proxy wars.
On July 15, 2014, France declared that ‘Operation Serval’ was successfully accomplished, providing its own list of casualties on both sides, again, with very little international monitoring. Yet, almost immediately, on August 1, 2014, it declared another military mission, this time an open-ended war, ‘Operation Barkhane’.
Barkhane was spearheaded by France and included Paris’ own ‘coalition of the willing’, dubbed ‘G5 Sahel’. All former French colonies, the new coalition consisted of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. The declared goal of France’s indefinite intervention in the Sahel is to provide material support and training to the ‘G5 Sahel’ forces in their ‘war on terror’.
However, according to Deutsche Welle, the ‘optimism’ that accompanied ‘Operation Serval’ completely vanished with ‘Operation Barkhane’. “The security situation has worsened, not only (in the) the north but (in) central Mali as well”, the German news agency recently reported, conveying a sense of chaos, with farmers fleeing their land and with “self-defense militias” carrying out their own operations to satisfy “their own agendas”, and so on.
In truth, the chaos in the streets merely reflected the chaos in government. Even with a heavy French military presence, instability continued to plague Mali. The latest coup in the country took place in August 2020. Worse still, the various Tuareg forces, which have long challenged the foreign exploitation of the country, are now unifying under a single banner. The future of Mali is hardly promising.
So what was the point of the intervention, anyway? Certainly not to ‘restore democracy’ or ‘stabilize’ the country. Karen Jayes elaborates. “France’s interests in the region are primarily economic,” she wrote in a recent article. “Their military actions protect their access to oil and uranium in the region.”
To appreciate this claim more fully, one only needs a single example of how Mali’s wealth of natural resources is central to France’s economy. “An incredible 75 percent of France’s electric power is generated by nuclear plants that are mostly fueled by uranium extracted on Mali’s border region of Kidal,” in the northern parts of the country. Therefore, it is unsurprising that France was ready to go to war as soon as militants proclaimed the Kidal region to be part of their independent nation-state of Azawad in April 2012.
As for the bombing of the Bounti wedding, the French military denied any wrong-doing, claiming that all of the victims were ‘jihadists’. The story is meant to end here, but it will not – as long as Mali is exploited by outsiders, as long as poverty and inequality will continue to exist, leading to insurrections, rebellions and military coups.
The post The Secret Wars of Africa’s Sahel: What Is Behind Mali’s Ongoing Strife first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
On April 1 — appropriate date, perhaps, for a saga of unending western foolishness and villainy — the EU announced that officials from Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, and Germany would be meeting virtually to discuss a possible return of the USA to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Later announcements indicated that representatives of both the USA and Iran would meet with European partners in Vienna in the first week of April, although possibly from different rooms to separate US and Iranian representatives. Talks began on August 6.
A State Department spokesman welcomed the move, indicating the Biden administration’s preparedness to return to the 2015 deal tortuously negotiated over several years between Iran, the US Obama administration and European powers, and that former President Donald Trump later unilaterally abrogated in May 2018. A pretense by the USA and Europe that resumption of JCPOA requires arduous negotiation camouflages the reality that it has always been obvious that removal of US sanctions on Iran would automatically prompt its immediate return to the JCPOA framework.
The use of the potential (but not the actuality) of nuclear weapons in the form of weapons development capability has arguably been an instrument of Iranian foreign diplomacy from the days of the Shah, first as a defense against nuclearization of regional neighbors and, since the Islamic revolution in 1979 — and in the guise of varying percentages of uranium enrichment and the construction of centrifuges (many unused) — against US and European opposition to Iranian independence from Washington.
The 2015 deal itself was the outcome of a long-standing, bullying, propaganda campaign by the USA, Israel, and Europe (UK, France, and Germany) to smear Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program (including the slight enrichment of uranium for scientific and medical purposes, far below the 90%+ required for nuclear weaponry) as a meaningful threat of nuclear war. Yet Iran, a signatory in 1968 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), had over several decades conceded detailed scrutiny of its energy program (perfectly legitimate, under the NPT) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel, on the other hand, in possession of one hundred or more nuclear warheads, never signed the NPT.
Israel, with a far smaller population (9 million) than Iran (82 million) and a far smaller territory (22,145 sq.km to Iran’s 1,648,195 sq km), is and has consistently shown evidence of being by far the more likely nuclear aggressor in the Middle East. In June 1981, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an unfinished suspected Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In 2007, Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. In the period 2009 to 2012 the Israeli administration of Benjamin Netanyahu several times threatened to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, the US and Israeli administrations collaborated in a cyberattack on Iranian facilities (“Stuxnet”) in 2009. There have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists – the latest reported in November 2020 – mostly attributed to Israel’s Mossad.
Through JCPOA, Iran — which has never possessed nuclear weapons and which has never formally revealed evidence of wanting or planning them — was cowered into conceding an implicit but false admission to being at fault in some way. Iran’s Supreme Leaders have consistently stated their belief that such weapons are immoral. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, confirmed a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons in October 2003. “Evidence” of Iranian scientists’ planning for nuclear weaponry is based on forgeries.
The bullying gang was a cabal of more prosperous nations that unlike Iran, did possess nuclear weapons and, in the case of the USA, had actually used them and, from time to time, demonstrated continuing willingness to consider their use.
Furthermore, Washington has never shown a fraction of the hysteria it regularly performs on account of Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear “threat” as it did with the actual nuclear weaponization of India from 1998 (with possibly 150 nuclear warheads today) and Pakistan in 1972.
Iran’s misleading concession to the West’s false narrative was the product of Western coercion through sanctions’ regimes. US-driven sanctions’ terror over Iran, both primary (involving relations between Iran and U.S. actors) and secondary (involving relations between Iran and non-U.S. actors), started from the early 1980s and extended in 1995 to cover bilateral trade and foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas development. Sanctions were further extended in 2002 to include nuclear and missile technology, financial services, transportation, foreign banks operating in Iran, and purchase of Iranian oil. Although many sanctions were lifted by JCPOA, others were retained, including Iranian support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles, arms-related transactions, violations of human rights and corruption. The slipperiness of concepts such as “terrorism,” “human rights,” and “corruption” in the hands of U.S. and allied states and state-compliant “NGO” agencies provides ample room for continuing sanctions aggression on false or misleading pretext. This is particularly worrisome in the contexts of covert and proxy wars between the US, European powers, Gulf States, Israel, and Salafist rebels in Syria, on the one hand and, on the other, the Syrian government, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as also in the case of Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen. Even a return to JCPOA, therefore, would exercise considerable restraint on Iranian exercise of its legitimate, sovereign power.
Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program originated from imperial machinations in Iran. It was launched in 1957 with US and European assistance in the administration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in the wake of the US-UK orchestrated coup d’etat of 1953 that toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000. It is possible that the Shah always entertained the possibility of transitioning from a nuclear energy to a nuclear weapons program should neighboring states do the same. The USA supplied the country with a reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium in 1967. After a two-year hiatus, the Shah’s program was resumed by the revolutionary administration in 1981. The regime intended to continue collaborating with a French-owned consortium, but France succumbed to pressure from the Reagan administration in 1984 to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite the absence of any evidence for US claims that Iran’s then only reactor presented a risk of proliferation. In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.
Sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian economy and the welfare of its people. The value of Iranian petroleum exports fell from $53 billion in 2016-2017 to $9 billion in 2019-2020. Iranian GDP shrank by between 5% and 6.5% each year in the period 2018-2020, and inflation rose each year between 30% and 41%. The value of the Iranian currency, the rial, fell from 64,500 rials to the dollar in May 2018 to 315,000 to the dollar in October 2020.
As strategies of control, sanctions have significant other weaknesses, even from the western point of view. Since the revolution of 1979, first, there is a clear correlation between western aggression towards Iran and the influence on the Iranian polity of anti-western Iranian conservatives and their control over Iranian society through the clerical hierarchy and its exercise of superordinate power over Iran’s parliamentary democracy by the Office of the (non-elected) Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the religious foundations (or bonyads) and Revolutionary Guards. Second, sanctions encourage Iranian strategies of import substitution and technological independence. Third, they help consolidate Iran’s relations with global powers that rival Washington, including Russia and China, and its relations with sympathetic powers in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In March 2021 Iran and China agreed a deal whereby China would invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil to fuel. The deal represented a further incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East (extending to an offer by China to broker peace between Israel and Palestine) at the likely expense of the USA, promising further escalation of tensions between China and the USA and the ultimate threat of nuclear war.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
On April 1 — appropriate date, perhaps, for a saga of unending western foolishness and villainy — the EU announced that officials from Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, and Germany would be meeting virtually to discuss a possible return of the USA to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Later announcements indicated that representatives of both the USA and Iran would meet with European partners in Vienna in the first week of April, although possibly from different rooms to separate US and Iranian representatives. Talks began on August 6.
A State Department spokesman welcomed the move, indicating the Biden administration’s preparedness to return to the 2015 deal tortuously negotiated over several years between Iran, the US Obama administration and European powers, and that former President Donald Trump later unilaterally abrogated in May 2018. A pretense by the USA and Europe that resumption of JCPOA requires arduous negotiation camouflages the reality that it has always been obvious that removal of US sanctions on Iran would automatically prompt its immediate return to the JCPOA framework.
The use of the potential (but not the actuality) of nuclear weapons in the form of weapons development capability has arguably been an instrument of Iranian foreign diplomacy from the days of the Shah, first as a defense against nuclearization of regional neighbors and, since the Islamic revolution in 1979 — and in the guise of varying percentages of uranium enrichment and the construction of centrifuges (many unused) — against US and European opposition to Iranian independence from Washington.
The 2015 deal itself was the outcome of a long-standing, bullying, propaganda campaign by the USA, Israel, and Europe (UK, France, and Germany) to smear Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program (including the slight enrichment of uranium for scientific and medical purposes, far below the 90%+ required for nuclear weaponry) as a meaningful threat of nuclear war. Yet Iran, a signatory in 1968 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), had over several decades conceded detailed scrutiny of its energy program (perfectly legitimate, under the NPT) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel, on the other hand, in possession of one hundred or more nuclear warheads, never signed the NPT.
Israel, with a far smaller population (9 million) than Iran (82 million) and a far smaller territory (22,145 sq.km to Iran’s 1,648,195 sq km), is and has consistently shown evidence of being by far the more likely nuclear aggressor in the Middle East. In June 1981, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an unfinished suspected Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In 2007, Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. In the period 2009 to 2012 the Israeli administration of Benjamin Netanyahu several times threatened to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, the US and Israeli administrations collaborated in a cyberattack on Iranian facilities (“Stuxnet”) in 2009. There have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists – the latest reported in November 2020 – mostly attributed to Israel’s Mossad.
Through JCPOA, Iran — which has never possessed nuclear weapons and which has never formally revealed evidence of wanting or planning them — was cowered into conceding an implicit but false admission to being at fault in some way. Iran’s Supreme Leaders have consistently stated their belief that such weapons are immoral. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, confirmed a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons in October 2003. “Evidence” of Iranian scientists’ planning for nuclear weaponry is based on forgeries.
1 The bullying gang was a cabal of more prosperous nations that unlike Iran, did possess nuclear weapons and, in the case of the USA, had actually used them and, from time to time, demonstrated continuing willingness to consider their use.
Furthermore, Washington has never shown a fraction of the hysteria it regularly performs on account of Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear “threat” as it did with the actual nuclear weaponization of India from 1998 (with possibly 150 nuclear warheads today) and Pakistan in 1972.
Iran’s misleading concession to the West’s false narrative was the product of Western coercion through sanctions’ regimes. US-driven sanctions’ terror over Iran, both primary (involving relations between Iran and U.S. actors) and secondary (involving relations between Iran and non-U.S. actors), started from the early 1980s and extended in 1995 to cover bilateral trade and foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas development. Sanctions were further extended in 2002 to include nuclear and missile technology, financial services, transportation, foreign banks operating in Iran, and purchase of Iranian oil. Although many sanctions were lifted by JCPOA, others were retained, including Iranian support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles, arms-related transactions, violations of human rights and corruption. The slipperiness of concepts such as “terrorism,” “human rights,” and “corruption” in the hands of U.S. and allied states and state-compliant “NGO” agencies provides ample room for continuing sanctions aggression on false or misleading pretext. This is particularly worrisome in the contexts of covert and proxy wars between the US, European powers, Gulf States, Israel, and Salafist rebels in Syria, on the one hand and, on the other, the Syrian government, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as also in the case of Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen. Even a return to JCPOA, therefore, would exercise considerable restraint on Iranian exercise of its legitimate, sovereign power.
Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program originated from imperial machinations in Iran. It was launched in 1957 with US and European assistance in the administration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in the wake of the US-UK orchestrated coup d’etat of 1953 that toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000. It is possible that the Shah always entertained the possibility of transitioning from a nuclear energy to a nuclear weapons program should neighboring states do the same. The USA supplied the country with a reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium in 1967. After a two-year hiatus, the Shah’s program was resumed by the revolutionary administration in 1981. The regime intended to continue collaborating with a French-owned consortium, but France succumbed to pressure from the Reagan administration in 1984 to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite the absence of any evidence for US claims that Iran’s then only reactor presented a risk of proliferation. In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.
Sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian economy and the welfare of its people. The value of Iranian petroleum exports fell from $53 billion in 2016-2017 to $9 billion in 2019-2020. Iranian GDP shrank by between 5% and 6.5% each year in the period 2018-2020, and inflation rose each year between 30% and 41%. The value of the Iranian currency, the rial, fell from 64,500 rials to the dollar in May 2018 to 315,000 to the dollar in October 2020.
As strategies of control, sanctions have significant other weaknesses, even from the western point of view. Since the revolution of 1979, first, there is a clear correlation between western aggression towards Iran and the influence on the Iranian polity of anti-western Iranian conservatives and their control over Iranian society through the clerical hierarchy and its exercise of superordinate power over Iran’s parliamentary democracy by the Office of the (non-elected) Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the religious foundations (or bonyads) and Revolutionary Guards. Second, sanctions encourage Iranian strategies of import substitution and technological independence. Third, they help consolidate Iran’s relations with global powers that rival Washington, including Russia and China, and its relations with sympathetic powers in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In March 2021 Iran and China agreed a deal whereby China would invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil to fuel. The deal represented a further incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East (extending to an offer by China to broker peace between Israel and Palestine) at the likely expense of the USA, promising further escalation of tensions between China and the USA and the ultimate threat of nuclear war.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
4 Mins Read French grocery chains will have to begin switching to food refill stations as part of a new environmental bill. The law, which has been passed by the French parliament, will require retailers to phase out disposable plastic packaging and dedicate a fifth of their store to allow customers to buy dry food products using their […]
The post French Supermarkets To Phase Out Plastic Packaging With Refill Stations appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Total’s objective in recent years has been to close its refineries in France. It has found ways to refine elsewhere: in Dubai, India, China, and with plans for Africa. The objective is twofold: to refine as close as possible to the crude oil deposits, but also to do so in countries where working conditions are worse and environmental standards are lower. Disastrous consequences have resulted, such as the forced displacement of entire populations in Uganda.
Even though oil refining fulfills important needs in the region around Paris, and it is very profitable, Total’s refinery in Grandpuits was put on the list to be closed. In 2018 a lack of structural maintenance led the pipeline to burst, which accelerated Total’s plan. The company refused to invest the several hundred million needed for repairs and decided to shut down the refinery.
The post How Oil Workers And Environmentalists United In Struggle appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
On 29 March 2021 Amnesty International announced the appointment of Dr. Agnès Callamard, a leading international human rights expert, as its new Secretary General, effective immediately.
Dr. Callamard has recently been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. In that role, she led ground-breaking investigations including into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/09/09/agnes-callamard-calls-overturned-verdict-in-khashoggi-case-parody-of-justice/]
As Secretary General, Dr. Callamard will be the Chief Executive of Amnesty’s International Secretariat and the principal spokesperson of the global Amnesty movement, which has some 10 million supporters, and offices in more than 70 countries.
“At a time when human rights are under unprecedented threat around the world, Dr. Callamard will lead, excite and rally the entire Amnesty movement to meet these challenges head-on,” said Sarah Beamish, Chair of the International Board, in announcing the appointment. “The combination of her intellectual acuity, her deep global human rights experience, and her courageous voice makes her highly qualified to front our movement. We are delighted she has accepted this challenge to take us boldly into our next phase.”
“Where governments and corporations seek to silence those who speak out against their abuses, to obfuscate the truth, and to undermine or reject human rights norms, the rigorous investigations and uncompromising campaigns of Amnesty International are more vital than ever.” Agnès Callamard
“I am honoured to take up the post of Secretary General and work alongside Amnesty’s supporters around the world so that together we defend and demand respect for all human rights for all,” Dr Callamard said.
Dr. Callamard, a French national, has built a highly distinguished career in the international human rights and humanitarian sectors, working across NGOs, academia, and the United Nations. Alongside her role as a United Nations independent human rights expert, she held the role of Director of the Global Freedom of Expression Project at Columbia University. Previously, she has been the Executive Director of the Freedom of Expression organization ARTICLE 19 and was the founder and Executive Director of HAP International (the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership).
Dr. Callamard worked with Amnesty International from 1995-2001, including as Chef de Cabinet for then-Secretary General Pierre Sané. She has led human rights investigations in more than 30 countries and published extensively on human rights, women’s rights, freedom of expression, refugee movements, and the methodology of human rights investigations.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
Watch a live broadcast from central Paris where people are gathering on Saturday 20 March to march against “systemic racism and police brutality.”
Organised by several activist groups to mark the International Day Against Police Brutality (15 March) and the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (21 March), people are demanding the creation of an independent entity to monitor the use of force by police officers and reparation for victims of police brutality.
One of the organisers is Assa Traore, whose brother Adama, 24, died in police custody in 2016 after he was stopped for an ID check. According to a 2018 medical assessment, Traore died of asphyxiation after officers pinned him to the ground.
The post Parisians March Against Systemic Racism And Police Brutality appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed another ambitious list of proposed acquisitions for the Indonesian Air Force (TNI-AU) over the next four years. Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto and TNI Chief Air Vice Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said in an annual report to senior defence personnel, published in mid-February, that desired platforms include the Dassault Rafale […]
The post Indonesia eyes French, US-made aircraft for air force recapitalisation appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
French Secular State, Judiciary and Education on Trial
The October 16, 2020, slaying of French civics teacher, Samuel Paty, drew intensely impassioned responses from the French state, members of the society and, specifically, the Muslim immigrant community, the teacher having shown a naked caricature of the Prophet. Displaying this image from the infamous Charlie Hebdo magazine crossed a “red line” for faithful Muslims. Therefore, the conflict between the Muslim community (3.3% of the population) and the dominant French society invoking the firmly held principle of secularism and separation of church (religion) and state mushroomed. However, such a heated conflict elicits many questions.
Chronology
On October 16, 2020, M. Samuel Paty, a civics teacher in a middle school in France, fell victim to a brutal murder caught in a conflict between the French practice of secularism and the rage of fundamentalist vengeance. For his having shown Charlie Hebdo cartoons, one being a depiction of the Prophet with genital exposure, religious Muslims were outraged for their children attending that school. Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Chechen youth from outside that school, exacted the ultimate vengeance with Paty’s beheading. This act being not an isolated incident, it is important to trace the escalation.
Secularism
The principle and practice of laïcité, a social model in law for France since 1905, guarantees the rights of religious freedom for religions and individuals thereof, while maintaining the secular state’s distinct separation from religious influence and the power of any clergy. Not to be defined by atheism, it advocates secularity, a view based on “this-world” terms, entrenching the right of freedom of speech. Thus, the law, dating from 1905, allowed, even encouraged, the naked caricature as a teaching aid in support of the lesson directed at all students, including Muslim. For most, laïcité is to be an absolute principle.
However, Dr. Alain Gabon, professor at Virginian Wesleyan University, has called Macron on his response by itemising the president’s abrogation of the entrenched law which he purports to be protecting. In fact, Gabon accuses him of enhancing separatism by treating Islam as a distinct threat beyond other religions, hence, separately. However, officials of the French Council of Muslim Faith have signed a “Charter of Principles” outlining terms and conditions that would pacify Islam according to the ideals of the Republic. He writes:
…besides the extreme violations of freedom of religion and the brutalisation of Islam, the charter is also a glaring violation of French laïcité – a principle the Macron government nonetheless claims to uphold. Based on the 1905 law on the separation of church and state, French laïcité includes three sacred principles that are not open to interpretation: freedom of conscience and religion, the separation of church and state, and equal treatment by the state of all religions. Macron is trampling on all three pillars.
Islam will be a special case before the law.
Inclusion is necessary
What is the message to the youth? With this, they may sup at the trough of a statist hegemony as re-educated Muslims, their practice dictated not from the authority of their community leaders but of a government department, as marginalisation becomes official – hardly a prescription for peace and harmony, or laïcité. Neo-colonialism is not dead. As Khalid Hajji, a recognized professor of humanities, has written:
My long experience of working with Muslim youth in Europe has shown me that violence among them is largely due to the fact that they cannot recognise themselves in the values of the countries where they live, rather than because of religious fervour… Religion is often only a demarcation line in their attempts to negotiate their sense of identity in today’s difficult European context…. A criminal or a terrorist is not only the product of Islamic culture, but also of the French republic – of its schools, its migration policies and its social fabric.
His warning must be heeded. However, the conflict continued after the firebombing, after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, after the attack in Garland, Texas, after the execution of Samuel Paty, after the restrictions on Muslim organisations, after the assault on Muslim women, and promises of “war legislation.” Now, after the state’s intervention creating separateness of the Muslim community, the state must give protection as it flaunts its own law that should protect the community. It’s a conundrum. This unfolding narrative has become a meme, a continuing stand-off between ideological republicanism vs. the principles of a minority community.
Political utility
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” Churchill said. In an outpouring of nationalism inspired by grief, horror and indignation, Macron rose magnificently to the occasion conferring posthumous honours on the victim of the execution. The nation rallied. The enemy was named: radical Islam, terrorist, separatism. While Macron never used the term, Islamo-gauchisme became a meme in the press lumping “leftism” with Islam as a threat, timely in the era of Yellow Vests. Contradicting the secularist laws of the first decade of the twentieth century, laws were drafted and passed even to the extent that any association may be punished for an act of one of its members in contradiction to individual human rights. The government assumed powers of decree in the fight against the common enemy taking a step to the right. Surprisingly, the Communist Party of France and the socialist LFI of Mélonchon supported Macron in the nationalist frenzy. Macron was the warrior supreme for all republicans, a strong role with an election coming in 2022.
Of course, his opposition was not silent. Calling radical Islam a “warlike ideology,” National Rally leader, Marine Le Pen has called for “war legislation” to compete with her rival, for her battle is not only with Islam but with Macron whom she would best.
A common enemy unifies people. While the Yellow Vest protests have underscored the economic and financial crises of capitalism as they rally against austerity and privilege, a gasoline tax and inequities, the traumatised French population gathered en masse in unified nationalism. They confronted the Muslim enemy, alleged radical separatism which, in some aspersions, is somehow leftist Islamo gauchisme. What, then, is left of solidarity of the Arab working class with the general population? They have been dismissed with a word in the current rightward trend. The religious rights of Muslims need to be included. This is not limited just to Muslim students but to Arab workers who compose 3.3% of the French population.
One must empathize with the young, for this is the troubled ground on which they are to be nurtured. While they may not be victims in this fury, these innocents, it all began with a lesson designed for them. They deserve more respect.
My teaching experience
Having taught many Muslim youths in middle-class Ontario schools, I see them as I see all students – a wonderful mix of characters engaged in school life. They were not separate, but engaging and respectful, even with an unusual role I played.
Following 1987, upon the Ontario government’s having included sexual orientation in the Bill of Rights, I became program director and implementer of the Anti-Homophobia Action Committee for my board. Because my home school was strongly composed of Muslim students, I was warned by colleagues, “You can’t do that with these kids.” I did. Furthermore, as the teacher in charge, I was uncompromisingly “out,” presenting the students with assemblies on human rights and hate crimes. Happily, as the “out” gay teacher, I had never a sideways glance, rude remark, snigger or any slight from any of those Muslim youths. They deserved the respect they gave. No, the Charlie Hebdo image would not have been welcome in my classroom.
It’s universal: no student must be humiliated and marginalised. The consequences may be catastrophic. As Ontario’s Ministry of Education prescribed as my career began, the teacher must act as a “kind, firm, judicious parent.”
What must teachers do?
A “kind, firm and judicious parent”? I cannot find one of those qualities in those cartoons, for school must become a locus of learning and growth to prepare the productive citizen. Admittedly, a middle-class Ontario school is some distance from a Parisian banlieue; however, the universal mandate is that all students must be safe, welcome and secure in the educational establishment. Alienation must be avoided, for that will bring disaster for these kids of whose perilous journeys to the West I have only hints. The singular function of the school must be graduation, a source of dignity and pride in their new country.
The far, far better lesson must be grounded on Martin Luther King’s admonition in his speech in the Riverside Community Church on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated. “Be neighbourly.”
Compare the two, Charlie vs. Martin. Who benefits? Cui Bono?
Laïcité has value
While this short work may be thought to be an attack on the original principles of French secularism, it is not. Of course, ideas must be discussed openly on freedom of speech in class – with sensitivity to create civil dialogue, mandated from ministries of education. I maintain that the cartoons did not have to be shown, perhaps mentioned. Who in France would not have known about them? Such images are the red line for that already marginalised community which must not be used as a political tool. Reasonable accommodation with respect for the young must be for any teacher the fundamental moral principle.
Need a lesson on freedom of speech? How about Julian Assange to whom France will not give asylum?
Furthermore, I applaud the separation of religion and state when it is done fairly and equitably, in the spirit of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité when applied with respect, especially to youth who are so easily alienated from authority. They are our future, and we can’t afford not to. I recommend the policy in more countries and jurisdictions, East and West, even my own Province of Ontario where the Roman Catholic Schools, and only that religious group’s schools, are funded publicly. I say remove it.
• First published in Planning Beyond Capitalism
The post Charlie Hebdo and His Neighbours first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
During the election campaign that led him to the White House, Joe Biden promised swift reversal of Donald Trump’s draconian anti-immigrant policies. On his first day in office, President Biden signed executive orders to halt construction of the border wall, reverse the Muslim ban and safeguard DACA, a temporary programme that protects some migrants who came to the U.S. as children.
Only a week into his term, the bold plans for reform began to falter. Biden’s 100-day deportation moratorium was barred by a judge. The plan to reunite separated migrant families is delayed. And Biden’s most ambitious proposal, amnesty for most of the 11 million undocumented, is already in doubt. Meanwhile, in the midst of a raging pandemic, Democrats are calling for more targeted relief for undocumented immigrants who act as essential workers.
The precedent for immigration relief for workers on the frontlines of COVID-19 came from the other side of the Atlantic a month earlier. In late December 2020, the French government announced that it was fast-tracking citizenship applications for immigrants working as essential workers during the pandemic, in order to reward them for their special service to French citizens. The naturalisation applications of these immigrants already on the path to citizenship would be expedited, but they would still go through the required steps, including proving their integration into French society.
France’s new citizenship exception would seem to offer a progressive vision for the new Biden administration. The spectacle of white nationalists storming the U.S. Capitol on 6 January, with their belligerent messaging of racism, misogyny and xenophobia, redoubled the calls by liberals to undo or reverse Trump’s immigration policies. Many continued to advocate specifically for immigrant essential workers.
However, it would be wrong to follow this vision of immigration policy. To address the entrenched racism exposed and exacerbated — but not created — by the Trump administration, different tactics are required. The demands for the Biden administration should reach much further than reforms that entrench the system itself, whether a path to citizenship for the most deserving essential workers or protecting DACA, which is just a temporary programme with no path to citizenship.
France’s fast-tracked naturalisation process undoubtedly improves the lives of a few immigrants, providing them with security and benefits that they would not otherwise have. Notably, these are not undocumented immigrants but those already on the path to citizenship. Yet, it is a mistake to uncritically celebrate the French government and its pandemic-era generosity.
While a few hundred, or even, eventually, thousand immigrants may become French citizens in recognition of their “commitment to the nation”, this policy makes no change to the country’s harsh immigration system. By recognising essential migrant workers, the French state is primarily making a statement about how it values the lives of citizens who require care. U.S. observers are pointing to France as an example of inclusive immigration policies when France, like the U.S., is actually waging a racist war against immigrants.
As with the exceptional humanitarian measures the French state has instituted in the past, which simultaneously justify criminalising and deporting a majority of immigrants, these policies draw attention away from the precarious conditions in which the majority of immigrants live — which include an increasing number of informal camps in the heart of Paris.
The French immigration system is increasingly draconian, under pressure from the extreme rightwing populist National Rally party, formerly known as the National Front, and the turn to the right in Europe more generally. President Macron imposed a new law in 2018 that cut the timeframe to legally apply for asylum — with the goal of deporting people more quickly — and doubled the amount of time that immigrants could be kept in detention. In 2018, France detained more migrants than any other EU country.
Like the U.S., France is home to legions of undocumented immigrants who work in exploitative conditions that now expose them to COVID-19, and who have no pathways to legalisation, before or after French government’s new policy. Furthermore, there is the long-standing fear in France that acknowledging race and racism or even the existence of different ethnic communities in its society would lead to an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ acceptance of divided communities. But this unacknowledged racism, often expressed as Islamophobia, has been called out by French immigrant rights groups and anti-racist collectives, who say the country’s colonial history is expressed in exclusionary immigration policies, among other practices.
If the U.S. government adopted the policy of fast-tracked naturalisation for essential workers, as some are calling for, it would similarly serve to draw attention away from the difficult and often violent conditions under which so many immigrants live, covering up the fact that both American and French societies primarily value immigrant lives when they are sacrificed. The trend in the U.S. throughout the last two decades of Democrat and Republican administrations has been increased surveillance and criminalisation of immigrants, expansion of immigrant detention and deportation, and extreme militarisation of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Rewarding essential workers with citizenship entrenches the idea that most immigrants should not be granted legal status and that the state’s job is to keep its borders closed, protecting limited resources — this is so even as both France and the U.S. are fully reliant on immigrant labour.
Rather than putting in place a standard policy of inclusion, the state decides which few immigrants have proved themselves most deserving of inclusion, gathering accolades for its generosity. Speeding up citizenship for immigrant essential workers in the US — similarly to members of the U.S. military, at least in theory — would serve the same purpose. These policies are designed to build pride in the nation’s benevolence and care, even as they work behind the scenes to legitimise the mass exclusion, detention or exploitation of migrants, based on racist ideas of belonging. They make citizens feel better about the woeful ways in which their governments treat immigrants, giving them a moral pass.
Premising citizenship on exceptional deservingness is a common way of talking about who deserves to become a citizen. Before this pandemic, France gave citizenship to a Malian immigrant who risked his life to scale a building and save a child. But rewarding heroes has also meant implicitly consenting to criminalising everyone who is not a hero.
During the pandemic, the stories of immigrant deservingness in the U.S. shifted from exceptional youth to essential workers — farm labourers, cleaners, medical personnel — who were amply demonstrating their utility to the nation. Some called on the U.S. government to give these undocumented essential workers protection from deportation or even a path to citizenship. This would undoubtedly improve the lot of these immigrants, yet once again lifts up the few, while maintaining a system that criminalises most. Such calls draw attention away from the failures of the government to provide state payments that allow people to stay at home during a pandemic or make their workplaces safer.
The linkage between citizenship and productivity in a capitalist workplace, usually as an exploited worker, has uncomfortable implications. Firstly, it leaves out all those who work outside the narrow definitions of productivity, such as in unpaid care work, and those who are young, elderly, disabled, and otherwise outside the capitalist market. Secondly, immigrants are positioned as deserving of the protections of citizenship by the dint of their labour for others.
After the past year of uprisings against white supremacy in both France and the U.S., it is easy to connect this way of valuing immigrants to the legacies of slavery and colonialism. Indeed, immigrants are being valued for their ability to take the fall, to get sick so “we” do not. To pay this impossible debt — the debt of life, and generations of life, valued as lesser — the state is recognising these immigrants now: quid pro quo. It says: now, we owe you nothing — all histories can be forgotten. We must resist judging the worth of human life and dignity in this way.
What if, in fact, France and the U.S. truly followed the principles upon which their nations were formed — liberty, equality, fraternity; and to be the land of the free? What if they valued everyone’s life equally? Tendayi Achiume, legal scholar and UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, argues that citizenship for all immigrants from the “Third World” to the “First” would simply enact an entitlement to political equality that recognises the interconnections created by past and ongoing forms of imperialism. In other words, French or U.S. citizenship for immigrants — all immigrants — is a form of decolonisation or even debt repayment for past and ongoing imperial projects. Militarised borders, in contrast, are attempts to protect the ill-gained riches of empire.
There should be an immediate amnesty and path to citizenship for all immigrants in the U.S., whether or not they are deemed essential. While Biden’s plan to provide a pathway to all 11 million undocumented immigrants is a start, why should it be delayed for eight years? More urgently, the U.S. border must be demilitarised, through the dismantling of ICE and Border Patrol, as these groups create the need to label some people as “illegal”, enabling violence against them, and will continue to do so, regardless of a one-time pathway to citizenship. These demands tie in with the Black Lives Matter movement’s abolitionist demands to undo the carceral system, and replace it with one that treats all people with care and respect.
With a week left in his presidency, Trump visited the border wall in the Rio Grande Valley, to shore up his legacy of hate. A true break with racist policy would knock down the wall and all its supporting ramparts, including the idea of deservingness.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
By RNZ Pacific
A coalition government in New Caledonia has collapsed after indigenous pro-independence politicians resigned, citing persistent economic issues and unrest over the sale of nickel assets.
The South Pacific archipelago has been gripped by riots over the sale process of Brazilian mining giant Vale’s local nickel business, with protesters saying a locally-led offer had been unfairly overlooked.
New Caledonia, with a population of about 290,000, is also grappling with the question of decolonisation.
The crisis comes as New Caledonia is facing widespread flooding and damage from Tropical Cyclone Lucas.
The island chain enjoys a large degree of autonomy but depends heavily on France for matters such as defence and education.
Referendums in 2018 and 2020 both narrowly rejected independence. A third referendum due by the end of next year should finally settle the issue, under the terms of a 1998 Noumea accord with France.
Five pro-independence politicians – three from the Union Caledonian (UC) and two from the National Union for Independence (UNI) – both members of the pro-independent Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), in the 11-member executive have resigned.
Upheaval marks end of Santa coalition
The upheaval marks the end of President Thierry Santa’s multiparty government after 18 months in power. Congress must elect a new government within 15 days.
#DirectLNC #LncPays Les indépendantistes de Nouvelle-Calédonie font chuter le gouvernement https://t.co/EhEUsMybEf
— Les Nouvelles calédoniennes (@lncnc) February 2, 2021
The Santa-led anti-independence coalition, L’avenir en confiance, claimed in a statement that the pro-independence legislators were causing a political crisis in the middle of a pandemic and amid economic and social tensions.
The pro-independence members’ resignation letter said a “crisis of confidence” had set in and that the government was not functioning properly at an important time when preparations were needed to be made for the next independence vote.
The letter also said the nickel asset sale favoured the interests of multinationals over locals.
New Caledonia is the world’s fourth-largest nickel producer, behind Indonesia, the Philippines and Russia.
Demand for nickel, mainly used in making stainless steel, is expected to grow rapidly as a raw material in electric vehicle batteries.
Vale wants to sell its nickel business in New Caledonia to a consortium of buyers including Swiss commodities trader Trafigura.
Indigenous Kanak leaders had supported an earlier bid designed to keep majority ownership under the control of the island territory.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By RNZ Pacific
A coalition government in New Caledonia has collapsed after indigenous pro-independence politicians resigned, citing persistent economic issues and unrest over the sale of nickel assets.
The South Pacific archipelago has been gripped by riots over the sale process of Brazilian mining giant Vale’s local nickel business, with protesters saying a locally-led offer had been unfairly overlooked.
New Caledonia, with a population of about 290,000, is also grappling with the question of decolonisation.
The crisis comes as New Caledonia is facing widespread flooding and damage from Tropical Cyclone Lucas.
The island chain enjoys a large degree of autonomy but depends heavily on France for matters such as defence and education.
Referendums in 2018 and 2020 both narrowly rejected independence. A third referendum due by the end of next year should finally settle the issue, under the terms of a 1998 Noumea accord with France.
Five pro-independence politicians – three from the Union Caledonian (UC) and two from the National Union for Independence (UNI) – both members of the pro-independent Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), in the 11-member executive have resigned.
Upheaval marks end of Santa coalition
The upheaval marks the end of President Thierry Santa’s multiparty government after 18 months in power. Congress must elect a new government within 15 days.
#DirectLNC #LncPays Les indépendantistes de Nouvelle-Calédonie font chuter le gouvernement https://t.co/EhEUsMybEf
— Les Nouvelles calédoniennes (@lncnc) February 2, 2021
The Santa-led anti-independence coalition, L’avenir en confiance, claimed in a statement that the pro-independence legislators were causing a political crisis in the middle of a pandemic and amid economic and social tensions.
The pro-independence members’ resignation letter said a “crisis of confidence” had set in and that the government was not functioning properly at an important time when preparations were needed to be made for the next independence vote.
The letter also said the nickel asset sale favoured the interests of multinationals over locals.
New Caledonia is the world’s fourth-largest nickel producer, behind Indonesia, the Philippines and Russia.
Demand for nickel, mainly used in making stainless steel, is expected to grow rapidly as a raw material in electric vehicle batteries.
Vale wants to sell its nickel business in New Caledonia to a consortium of buyers including Swiss commodities trader Trafigura.
Indigenous Kanak leaders had supported an earlier bid designed to keep majority ownership under the control of the island territory.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
