position:general secretary

  • In summary: the truth behind the stats :: Jewish Voice for Labour
    25 Feb 2019
    https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/blog/in-summary-the-truth-behind-the-stats

    Glyn Secker, secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour, and Dr Alan Maddison, a solidarity member, have been crunching the data, recently released by General Secretary Jennie Formby, of allegations of antisemitism made against Labour members

    Labour Briefing, March 2019
    (…)

    And a clear picture has finally emerged. Jennie Formby’s data confirms that the grounds for the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and Labour have indeed been grossly exaggerated, and in some cases fabricated. Over the last ten months there were:

    » 1,106 referrals of antisemitism allegations;

    » 433 of these had nothing to do with party members, leaving 673 to be investigated;

    » 220 of these were dismissed entirely for lack of evidence;

    » this left 453 cases;

    » 453 is 0.08% of the party’s 540,000 members – that’s about 1/12th of 1%;

    » 96 of these resulted in suspensions – that’s 0.01%, or 1/100th of 1% of members;

    » there were twelve expulsions – that’s 0.002%, or 1/500th of 1% of members!

    By no stretch of the imagination can a 0.08% incidence support the claim of a ‘”rampant problem in Labour”. Of course, even one case of antisemitism is one too many. But these are vanishingly small statistics, especially when you consider that 2-5% of the general population are considered to be antisemitic.

    This is not a wave, it is not even a ripple. In nautical terms it’s almost a dead flat calm. (…)

    #Corbyn

  • After the Quake

    #Gyumri, the city symbol of the quake that 21 years ago struck Armenia. The stories of the homeless, the #domiks, the migrants, waiting for the opening of the borders with Turkey. Reportage.

    December 7, 1988, 11.41 am – An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits northern Armenia, killing 25,000 and leaving many more homeless. Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. cuts short an official visit to the United States to travel to the small South Caucasus Soviet republic as news of the catastrophe makes headlines the world over. Poverty skyrockets as a nation mourned its dead.

    Hundreds of millions of dollars flooded into the country for relief and reconstruction efforts, but two other events of as much significance soon frustrated efforts to rebuild the disaster zone. In 1991, Armenia declared independence from the former Soviet Union, and in 1993, in support of Azerbaijan during a de facto war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, Turkey closed the land border with its eastern neighbor.

    Meanwhile, as corruption skyrocketed, the conflict as well as two closed borders and an economic blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey only added to Armenia’s woes. Yet, despite strong economic growth in the mid-2000s, albeit from a low base, and promises from then President Robert Kocharyan to completely rebuild Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city and the main urban center to be hit by the earthquake, the outlook appears as bleak as ever.

    Once Gyumri had been known for its architecture, humor and cultural importance, but now it has become synonymous with the earthquake and domiks – “temporary” accommodation usually amounting to little more than metal containers or dilapidated shacks. Hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter, others more fortunate found refuge in abandoned buildings vacated during the economic collapse following independence.

    Vartik Ghukasyan, for example, is 71 and alone. An orphan, she never married and now struggles to survive on a pension of just 25,000 AMD (about $65) a month in a rundown former factory hostel in Gyumri. However, that might all change as more buildings are privatized or their existing owners seek to reclaim them.

    According to the 2001 census, the population of Gyumri stands at 150,000 although some claim that it has since grown to 160-170,000. Nevertheless, few local residents take such figures seriously. Pointing to low school attendance figures, they estimate the actual population might be no more than 70,000. Even so, despite the exodus, there are as many as 4-7,000 families still living in temporary shelter according to various estimates.

    Anush Babajanyan, a 26-year-old photojournalist from the Armenian capital, is one of just a few media professionals who remain concerned by their plight. Having spent the past year documenting the lives of those still waiting for proper housing, the anniversary might have been otherwise low-profile outside of Gyumri, but Babajanyan attempted to focus attention on the occasion by exhibiting her work in Yerevan.

    “When I started this project, 20 years had passed since the earthquake and there were families still living in domiks who were not receiving enough attention,” she told Osservatorio. “ The government and other organizations promised to solve the issue of their housing, but their actions were not enough. Since then I have seen very little improvement.”

    “If this issue wasn’t solved in 20 years, it probably isn’t surprising that not much has changed in just a year. However, it has been two years since Serge Sargsyan, then Armenian prime minister and now president, said that the issue of these residents will be solved by now. But, although some districts are being reconstructed, this is not enough to resolve the issue.”

    As the center of Shirak, an impoverished region that most in Armenia and its large Diaspora appear to have largely forgotten, Gyumri suffers from unemployment higher than the national average. Travel agents continue to advertise flights from the local airport to parts of Russia. As elsewhere in the region, the only hope for a better life lies outside. But, with a global economic crisis hitting the CIS hard, there are now also fewer opportunities even there.

    This year GDP per capita has already plummeted by over 14 percent nationwide, far in excess of the decline registered in Azerbaijan and Georgia, while poverty and extreme poverty - already calculated with a low yardstick - has reportedly increased from 25.6 and 3.6 percent respectively in 2008 to 28.4 and 6.9 percent today. Local civil society activists claim that the figures might be twice as high in Gyumri.

    But, some believe, the city could benefit greatly from an open border with Turkey , transforming itself into a major economic and transit hub for direct trade between the two countries. Just 8 km away lies the village of Akhurik, one of two closed border crossings. Repair work had been conducted on the railway connecting Gyumri to the Turkish city of Kars prior to last year’s World Cup qualifying match with Turkey held in Yerevan.

    With Turkish President Abdullah Gül making a historic visit to Armenia for the match, villagers were once again given hope that a border opening would be imminent. “It will be very good if it opens,” one resident told RFE/RL at the time. “We used to work in the past — 40 families benefited from work related to the railway. Now they sit idle without work or have to choose migrant work in Russia. It will be good when the line is opened.”

    But, with pressure from Azerbaijan on Turkey not to sign two protocols aimed at establishing diplomatic relations and opening the border until the Karabakh conflict is resolved, such a breakthrough appears as elusive as ever while unemployment and poverty increases. Nowhere is that more evident than the city of Ashotsk, just 30 minutes outside of Gyumri. Karine Mkrtchyan, public relations officer for the Caritas Armenia NGO says conditions are typical.

    “Everywhere you will see abandoned places, especially public spaces,” she says. “They are ruined. There are no facilities, there is a lack of drinking water, and irrigation. People are on their own to solve their problems. We had a loss of life during the earthquake and then massive migration which stopped in the late 1990s before starting again in early 2000. Now there are even more people who decide to migrate.”

    Last week, on the 21st anniversary of the earthquake, the government attempted to counter criticism of what many consider to be inaction and a lack of concern with the socioeconomic situation in Gyumri. Opening a sugar refinery owned by one of the country’s most notorious oligarchs at the same time, the Armenian president visited Gyumri and promised that 5,300 new homes would allocated to those still without by 2013.

    The $70 million construction project has been made possible through a $500 million anti-crisis loan from the Russian Federation.

    However, whether such promises come to fruition remains to be seen and government critics remain unimpressed. Indeed, they point out, even if the apartments are built and allocated on time, it would have taken a quarter of a century to do so. Moreover, for Gyumri natives such as Mkrtchyan, the need for economic investment and development in the regions of Armenia remains as urgent as ever.

    https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Armenia/After-the-Quake-55719
    #tremblement_de_terre #post-catastrophe #Arménie #histoire #logement #réfugiés_environnementaux #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières

  • Salvini: chiusura entro le 21 dei negozi etnici. Confesercenti: no a discriminazioni

    Nel #decreto_sicurezza ci sarà un emendamento per prevedere «la chiusura entro le 21 dei negozietti etnici che diventano ritrovo di spacciatori e di gente che fa casino». Lo ha detto il ministro dell’Interno Matteo Salvini in diretta Facebook sottolineando che «non è un’iniziativa contro i negozi stranieri ma per limitare abusi».

    Market etnici, Confesercenti: no a norme discriminatorie
    Contro l’iniziativa annunciata da Salvini si schiera Confesercenti. «Non si può fare una norma che discrimina determinati imprenditori rispetto ad altri. Chi ha un’attività commerciale ha diritti e doveri: il dovere di rispettare le regole e il diritto di restare aperti, sia che siano esercizi gestiti da stranieri, sia che siano esercizi gestiti da italiani» dichiara Mauro Bussoni segretario generale della Confesercenti nazionale.

    Codacons: negozi etnici utili per acquisti “last minute”
    Per il Codacons la chiusura dei “negozietti etnici” deve essere prevista solo nei centri storici delle città italiane e in tutti quei casi in cui gli esercizi in questione
    creino degrado. «Crediamo che in materia di commercio e sicurezza non sia corretto generalizzare - spiega il presidente Carlo Rienzi -. Tali negozi etnici sono molto utili ai consumatori, perché rimangono aperti più a lungo degli altri esercizi e commercializzano una moltitudine di prodotti di diverse categorie, consentendo ai cittadini di fare acquisti “last minute”. Certamente la loro apertura va vietata in tutti quei casi in cui gli esercizi in questione creino disordini, e in modo assoluto nei centri storici delle città, perché la loro presenza alimenta il degrado urbano e danneggia le bellezze artistiche come nel caso di Roma, dove alcune vie del centro sono state trasformate in #suk» conclude Rienzi.


    https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2018-10-11/salvini-dl-sicurezza-chiusura-entro-21-negozi-etnici--160739.shtml?uuid

    #magasins_ethniques #ethnicité #negozi_etnici #fermeture #it_has_begun #discriminations #géographie_culturelle #Italie #criminalisation #Italie #sécurité #drogue #magasins #negozi_stranieri #magasins_étrangers #terminologie #mots #vocabulaire

    #lois_raciales?

    • Italy’s Matteo Salvini says ’little ethnic shops’ should close by 9pm

      Minister calls late-night stores mostly run by foreigners ‘meeting place for drug deals’

      Italy’s far-right interior minister has come under fire for a proposal that would force what he calls “little ethnic shops” to close by 9pm.

      Matteo Salvini added the measure to his immigrant-targeting security decree, arguing late-night grocery stores, mostly run by foreigners, are “a meeting place for drug deals and people who raise hell”.

      He claimed the initiative was not specifically aimed at foreigners and was merely a way to “limit the abuses of certain shops”.

      Thousands of grocery stores across Italy are run by immigrants, mainly people from Bangladesh and India, many of whom bought premises for a low price during the financial crisis.

      Mauro Bussoni, the general secretary of Confesercenti, a retail association, said: “You can’t make a law that discriminates some entrepreneurs over others.

      “Those who have a commercial activity have rights and duties: the duty to respect rules and the right to remain open, whether the activity is managed by a foreigner or an Italian.”

      Carlo Rienzi, the president of Codacons, a consumer association, said it was unfair to “generalise”, while noting shops that stayed open late were essential for people seeking “last-minute” purchases. But he agreed there should be a clampdown on outlets that have “created disorder” or “degraded” historical town centres.

      Andrea Marcucci, a politician from the centre-left Democratic party, said imposing curfews was among the premises of “a regime”.

      If the proposal became law, an industry source said, it should also apply to Italian-owned outlets, including bars, while security measures must also extend to foreign business owners.

      “Some say that Italian people go into their shop late at night and try to extort money from them,” said the source. “But they are too afraid to report such incidents to the police.”

      Salvini’s security decree, unveiled in September, includes plans to abolish key protections for immigrants and make it easier for them to be deported.

      On Thursday, he reiterated a plan to hire 10,000 more police officers, an initiative funded by money that previously paid for migrant reception and integration projects. Parliament has until mid-November to debate and modify the decree before it becomes law.

      Salvini’s latest proposal comes after Luigi Di Maio, his coalition partner, said measures would be introduced by the end of the year to limit Sunday trading in an attempt to preserve family traditions.

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/12/italy-matteo-salvini-little-ethnic-shops-foreigners?CMP=share_btn_tw
      #désordre #couvre-feu #décret
      ping @isskein

    • Pas de version française? A comparer avec ça:

      Petition for an increased #EU #Budget for #Research and Innovation
      https://seenthis.net/messages/722667

      We, the undersigned scientists, concerned citizens, innovators welcome the general structure and ambition of the proposal for an increased European Research and Innovation budget – a significant increase in a difficult situation. However, we believe that it falls short of the effort required of Europe to face the growing geopolitical challenges as well as the very high level of competition now set notably by Asian countries: gross domestic spending on R&D in the EU as percentage of GDP, which is below 2% and lags behind Korea (4.2%), Taiwan (3.3%), Japan (3.1%), USA (2.8%), China (2.1%, and constantly rising). There is a serious danger that the situation will force many promising young scientists to leave Europe, and that Europe will become less attractive for foreign scientists.

      As we are well aware, in the next decade Europe will have to rely more on its own forces to promote its values and its leadership. An cohesive Europe will need to invest in what counts for strengthening our societies, our economies, our security and our efforts in order to tackle the major global challenges of our planet. An ambitious research and innovation policy, engaging society as a whole, represents a large European added value, and will be decisive in increasing its cohesiveness.

      Chercheurs de gauche vs. chercheurs de droite?

      #Science #Université #Europe

    • ‘Secular stagnation’ meets the ‘GDP fetish’

      Tim Jackson introduces his new CUSP working paper ‘The Post-Growth Challenge’, in which he discusses the state of advanced economies ten years after the crisis. Our attempts to prop up an ailing capitalism have increased inequality, hindered ecological innovation and undermined stability, he argues.

      This week saw the launch of #System_Error a documentary #film from the prize-winning German Director #Florian_Opitz, who has made something of a reputation for himself critiquing the flaws in 21st century capitalism. The film explores our obsession with economic growth through the testimony of some of its most vociferous advocates. It’s a fascinating insight into the ‘GDP fetish’ that has dominated economic policy for over sixty years despite long-standing critiques to the contrary. Opitz’s film is a testament to the tenacity of the growth paradigm – even half a century later.

      If there’s one thing that might really throw a spanner in the works it’s that economic growth as we know it is slowly slipping away. Growth rates in advanced economies were declining already even before the crisis. The day after the film’s première in Berlin, former US treasury secretary, Larry Summers writing in the FT defended his contention (first advanced five years ago) that the growth rates expected by economists and yearned for by politicians may be a thing of the past. Sluggish growth, he has argued, is not simply the result of short-term debt overhang in the wake of the financial crisis but might just turn out to be the ‘new normal’. It’s an argument that has support, not only from other mainstream pundits, but also from national statistics: UK growth slumped to another five year low in the first quarter of 2018.

      Most reactions to the absence of growth consist in trying to get it back again as fast as possible – whatever the cost. Low interest rates, cheap money, inward investment, bank bailouts, government stimulus, land-grabs, tax havens, fiscal austerity, customs partnerships – you name it. Some of these things didn’t even make sense when put together. But at least they divert us from an inconvenient truth: that the future might look very different from the past. Were it not for a climate destabilised by carbon emissions, oceans which will soon contain more plastic than fish and a planet reeling from species loss a thousand times faster than any at time in the last 65 million years, it might not matter that they don’t add up. But is throwing good money after bad (so to speak) an effective strategy, even in its own right, when so much is still uncertain?

      How can we be sure that these increasingly desperate measures will work at all? We’ve been trying most of them for well over a decade, to very little avail. The best we’ve managed, claims Summers, is to stop things falling apart by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at monetary expansion and oscillating between stimulus and fiscal tightening (mostly the latter) as political preference dictates. The end result is a somewhat frightening sense, as the IPPR recently pointed out, that when the next crisis hits there will be neither fiscal nor monetary room for manoeuvre.

      In our latest CUSP working paper, I explore the dynamics of this emerging ‘post-growth challenge’. I believe it demands both a deeper understanding of how we got here and a wider palette of colours from which to paint the possibilities for our common future. The paper examines the underlying dynamics of secular stagnation, on both the demand and the supply side, and discusses its relationship to labour productivity growth, rising debt and resource bottlenecks.

      The toughest element in this challenge, not yet fully addressed on either the political left or the right, is the relationship between declining growth and social equity. The coordinates of inequality are now plain to see in the stagnant wage rate and declining living conditions of ordinary people. ‘Thousands upon thousands’ of people flocked to this year’s TUC march in London, making it abundantly clear that persistent inequality is threatening political stability. According to TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady ‘there is a new mood in the country; people have been very patient, but now they are demanding a new deal.’

      We have addressed the mathematics of this relationship in depth elsewhere. What we found was unexpected. The rising inequality that has haunted advanced economies in recent years wasn’t inevitable at all. Nor is it inevitable in the future. The problem lies, as I argue more specifically in this paper, not in secular stagnation itself but in our responses to it. Specifically, I suggest that rising inequality is the result of our persistent attempts to breathe new life into capitalism, in the face of underlying fundamentals that point in the opposite direction. Our growth fetish has hindered ecological innovation, reinforced inequality and exacerbated financial instability. Prosperity itself is being undone by this allegiance to growth at all costs.

      What’s clear now is that it’s time for policy-makers to take the ‘post-growth challenge’ seriously. Judging by the enthusiastic reception from the 900 or so people who attended the première of System Error in Berlin, such a strategy might have a surprising popular support.


      https://www.cusp.ac.uk/themes/s2/tj-blog_post-growth-challenge

    • #SYSTEM_ERROR

      Why are we so obsessed with economic growth, despite knowing that perpetual growth will kill us in the end? SYSTEM ERROR looks for answers to this principal contradiction of our time and considers global capitalism from the perspective of those who run it. In this manner, the film not only makes the absurdity of our growth-centered system uncomfortably perceptible, but also strikingly questions the seemingly irrefutable rules of the game within a bigger context.


      https://german-documentaries.de/en_EN/films/system-error.10103
      #film #documentaire

    • Europe, It’s Time to End the Growth Dependency

      Petition text

      The pursuit of economic growth is not environmentally sustainable, and it is failing to reduce inequalities, foster democracy and ensure well-being of citizens. We call on the European Union, its institutions, and member states to:
      1. Constitute a special commission on Post-Growth Futures in the EU Parliament. This commission should actively debate the future of growth, devise policy alternatives for post-growth futures, and reconsider the pursuit of growth as an overarching policy goal.
      2. Prioritise social and environmental indicators. Economic policies should be evaluated in terms of their impact on human wellbeing, resource use, inequality, and the provision of decent work. These indicators should be given higher priority than GDP in decision-making.
      3. Turn the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) into a Stability and Wellbeing Pact. The SGP is a set of rules aimed at limiting government deficits and national debt. It should be revised to ensure member states meet the basic needs of their citizens, while reducing resource use and waste emissions to a sustainable level.
      4. Establish a Ministry for Economic Transition in each member state. A new economy that focuses directly on human and ecological wellbeing could offer a much better future than one that is structurally dependent on economic growth.


      https://you.wemove.eu/campaigns/europe-it-s-time-to-end-the-growth-dependency
      #pétition

    • Degrowth: A Call for Radical Abundance

      When orthodox economists first encounter the idea of degrowth, they often jump to the conclusion that the objective is to reduce GDP. And because they see GDP as equivalent to social wealth, this makes them very upset.

      Nothing could be further from the truth.

      I reject the fetishization of GDP as an objective in the existing economy, so it would make little sense for me to focus on GDP as the objective of a degrowth economy. Wanting to cut GDP is as senseless as wanting to grow it.

      The objective, rather, is to scale down the material throughput of the economy. From an ecological standpoint, that’s what matters. And indeed some orthodox economists might even agree. Where we differ is that while they persist in believing (against the evidence) that this can be done while continuing to grow GDP, I acknowledge that it is likely to result in a reduction of GDP, at least as we presently measure it. In other words, if we were to keep measuring the economy by GDP, that’s what we would see in a degrowth scenario.

      And that’s okay.

      It’s okay, because we know that human beings can thrive without extremely high levels of GDP.

      There are many pieces to this argument, but I want to focus on one here in particular. One of the core claims of degrowth economics is that by restoring public services and expanding the commons, people will be able to access the goods that they need to live well without needing high levels of income.

      Take London, for instance. Housing prices in London are astronomically high, to the point where a normal one-bedroom flat can cost upwards of $1 million. These prices are fictional; they are largely a consequence of financial speculation and quantitative easing. Now imagine if the government were to cap the price of housing at half its present level. Prices would still be outrageously high, but Londoners would suddenly be able to work and earn significantly less than they presently do without suffering any loss to their quality of life. Indeed, they would gain in terms of time they could spend with their friends and family, doing things they love, improvements to their health and mental well-being, etc.

      The fictionally high prices of housing in London require that people work unnecessarily long hours to earn unnecessary money simply in order to access decent shelter – which they were previously able to access with a fraction of the income. The consequence of this imperative is that everyone is forced to contribute unnecessarily to expanding the juggernaut of production, the output of which must in turn find an outlet in the form of ever-increasing consumption.

      This is a problem that’s as old as capitalism itself. And it has a name: enclosure.

      Ellen Wood argues that the origins of capitalism lay in the enclosure movement in England, during which wealthy elites walled off the commons and systematically forced peasants off the land in a violent, centuries-long campaign of dispossession. This period saw the abolition of the ancient “right to habitation”, once enshrined in the Charter of the Forest, which guaranteed that ordinary people should have access to the resources necessary for survival.

      Suddenly, England’s peasants found themselves subject to a new regime: in order to survive they had to compete with each other for leases on the newly privatized land. And the leases were allocated on the basis of productivity. So in order to retain their access to leases, farmers had to find ways to extract more and more from the earth, and from labor, even if it was vastly in surplus to need. If they didn’t, and if they lost their leases, they could face starvation. And of course this same force, the imperative of ever-increasing productivity, was also at work in the industrial sector.

      In other words, the birth of capitalism required the creation of scarcity. The constant creation of scarcity is the engine of the juggernaut.

      The same process unfolded around the world during European colonization. In South Africa, colonizers faced what they called “The Labour Question”: How do we get Africans to work in our mines and on our plantations for paltry wages? At the time, Africans were quite content with their subsistence lifestyles, where they had all the land and the water and the livestock they needed to thrive, and showed no inclination to do back-breaking work in European mines. The solution? Force them off their land, or make them pay taxes in European currency, which can only be acquired in exchange for labor. And if they don’t pay, punish them.

      Scarcity is the engine of capitalist expansion.

      And, crucially, the scarcity was artificially created. Created by elite accumulation, backed up by state violence. In both England and South Africa, there was no actual scarcity. The same land and forests and resources remained, just as they had always been. But they were locked up. Enclosed. In order to regain access to the means of survival, people had no choice but to participate in the juggernaut.

      Today, we feel the force of scarcity in the constant threat of unemployment. We must be ever-more productive at work or else lose our jobs to someone who will be more productive than we are. But there is a paradox: as productivity rises, less labor is needed. So workers get laid off and find themselves with no means of survival. Victims of artificial scarcity. And the state, desperate to reduce unemployment, must then find ways to grow the economy in order to create new jobs, just so that people can survive.

      And all of us workers join in the choir: Give us growth! We need jobs!

      Scarcity creates recruits to the ideology of growth.

      Even people who are concerned about ecological breakdown, which is most of us, are forced to submit to this logic: if you care about human lives, then you must call for growth. We can deal with the environment later.

      But there will be no later, because the problem of scarcity is never solved. Whenever scarcity is about to be solved, it is always quickly produced anew. Think about it: for 150 years, economists have predicted that “In the very near future our economy will be so productive and replete that we will all have to work no more than a few hours a day.” But the prediction never comes true. Because capitalism transforms even the most spectacular productivity gains not into abundance and human freedom, but into scarcity.

      It’s strange, isn’t it? The ideology of capitalism is that it is a system that generates immense abundance (so much stuff!) But in reality it is a system that relies on the constant production of scarcity.

      This conundrum was first noticed back in 1804, and became known as the Lauderdale Paradox. Lauderdale pointed out that the only way to increase “private riches” (basically, GDP) was to reduce what he called “public wealth”, or the commons. To enclose things that were once free so that people have to pay in order to access them. To illustrate, he noted that colonialists would often even burn down trees that produced nuts and fruits so that local inhabitants wouldn’t be able to live off of the natural abundance of the earth, but would be forced to work for wages in order to feed themselves.

      We see this happening today in the endless waves of privatization that have been unleashed all over the world. Education? Healthcare? Parks? Swimming pools? Social Security? Water? All social goods must be privatized – they must be made scarce. People must be made to pay in order to access them. And in order to pay, they will of course have to work, competing with each other in the labor market to be ever-more productive.

      This logic reaches its apogee in the contemporary vision of austerity. What is austerity, really? It is a desperate attempt to re-start the engines of growth by slashing public investment in social goods and social protections, chopping away at what remains of the commons so that people are cast once again at the mercy of starvation, forced to increase their productivity if they want to survive. The point of austerity is to create scarcity. Suffering – indeed, poverty – must be induced for the sake of more growth.

      It doesn’t have to be this way. We can call a halt to the madness – throw a wrench in the juggernaut. By de-enclosing social goods and restoring the commons, we can ensure that people are able to access the things that they need to live a good life without having to generate piles of income in order to do so, and without feeding the never-ending growth machine. “Private riches” may shrink, as Lauderdale pointed out, but public wealth will increase.

      In this sense, degrowth is the very opposite of austerity. While austerity calls for scarcity in order to generate growth, degrowth calls for abundance in order to render growth unnecessary.

      Degrowth, at its core, is a demand for radical abundance.

      https://www.localfutures.org/degrowth-a-call-for-radical-abundance

  • China as a conflict mediator: Maintaining stability along the Belt and Road | Mercator Institute for China Studies
    https://www.merics.org/en/china-mapping/china-conflict-mediator
    https://www.merics.org/sites/default/files/styles/whole_width_image/public/2018-08/180815_MERICS_Mediation-Activities.jpg?itok=MYMeF0bP

    y Helena Legarda and Marie L. Hoffmann

    Recent years have seen significant changes in China’s international mediation activities. In countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Syria and Israel, among others, diplomats from China increasingly engage in preventing, managing or resolving conflict. In 2017 Beijing was mediating in nine conflicts, a visible increase compared to only three in 2012, the year when Xi Jinping took power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    The increase in Chinese mediation activities began in 2013, the year that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched. Before that, Beijing was relatively reluctant to engage in conflict resolution abroad. As the MERICS mapping shows, the year 2008 is an outlier in that regard. China’s activities at the time – such as its efforts to mediate between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, or between Sudan and South Sudan – were probably part of Beijing’s charm offensive and its drive to gain more international visibility in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

    #route_de_la_soie #belt_road #chine #eurasie #europe #transport #corridor #corridor_multimodal

  • The Song Sisters Facts
    http://biography.yourdictionary.com/the-song-sisters

    By marrying men of political distinction and adhering to their own political pursuits, the Song sisters— who included Ailing (1890-1973), Meiling (born 1897), and Qingling (1892?-1981) Song— participated in Chinese political activities and were destined to play key roles in Chinese modern history.

    Charlie Song and Guizhen Ni had three daughters and three sons, all of whom received American educations at their father’s encouragement. Though dissimilar political beliefs led the Song sisters down different paths, each exerted influence both on Chinese and international politics; indeed, Meiling’s influence in America was particularly great.

    In childhood, Ailing was known as a tomboy, smart and ebullient; Qingling was thought a pretty girl, quiet and pensive; and Meiling was considered a plump child, charming and headstrong. For their early education, they all went to McTyeire, the most important foreign-style school for Chinese girls in Shanghai. In 1904, Charlie Song asked his friend William Burke, an American Methodist missionary in China, to take 14-year-old Ailing to Wesleyan College, Georgia, for her college education. Thus, Ailing embarked on an American liner with the Burke family in Shanghai, but when they reached Japan, Mrs. Burke was so ill that the family was forced to remain in Japan. Alone, Ailing sailed on for America. She reached San Francisco, to find that Chinese were restricted from coming to America and was prevented from entering the United States despite a genuine Portuguese passport. She was transferred from ship to ship for three weeks until an American missionary helped solve the problem. Finally, Ailing arrived at Georgia’s Wesleyan College and was well treated. But she never forgot her experience in San Francisco. Later, in 1906, she visited the White House with her uncle, who was a Chinese imperial education commissioner, and complained to President Theodore Roosevelt of her bitter reception in San Francisco: “America is a beautiful country,” she said, “but why do you call it a free country?” Roosevelt was reportedly so surprised by her straightforwardness that he could do little more than mutter an apology and turn away.

    In 1907, Qingling and Meiling followed Ailing to America. Arriving with their commissioner uncle, they had no problem entering the United States. They first stayed at Miss Clara Potwin’s private school for language improvement and then joined Ailing at Wesleyan. Meiling was only ten years old and stayed as a special student.
    The First and Second Revolutiona

    Ailing received her degree in 1909 and returned to Shanghai, where she took part in charity activities with her mother. With her father’s influence, she soon became secretary to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary leader whose principles of nationalism, democracy and popular livelihood greatly appealed to many Chinese. In October of 1911, soldiers mutinied in Wuhan, setting off the Chinese Revolution. Puyi, the last emperor of China, was overthrown and the Republic of China was established with Sun Yat-sen as the provisional president. Charlie Soong informed his daughters in America of the great news and sent them a republican flag. As recalled by her roommates, Qingling climbed up on a chair, ripped down the old imperial dragon flag, and put up the five-colored republican flag, shouting “Down with the dragon! Up with the flag of the Republic!” She wrote in an article for the Wesleyan student magazine:

    One of the greatest events of the twentieth century, the greatest even since Waterloo, in the opinion of many well-known educators and politicians, is the Chinese Revolution. It is a most glorious achievement. It means the emancipation of four hundred million souls from the thralldom of an absolute monarchy, which has been in existence for over four thousand years, and under whose rule “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” have been denied.

    However, the “glorious achievement” was not easily won. When Qingling finished her education in America and went back in 1913, she found China in a “Second Revolution.” Yuan Shikai, who acted as president of the new Republic, proclaimed himself emperor and began slaughtering republicans. The whole Song family fled to Japan with Sun Yat-sen as political fugitives. During their sojourn in Japan, Ailing met a young man named Xiangxi Kong (H.H. Kung) from one of the richest families in China. Kong had just finished his education in America at Oberlin and Yale and was working with the Chinese YMCA in Tokyo. Ailing soon married Kong, leaving her job as secretary to Qingling, who firmly believed in Sun Yat-sen’s revolution. Qingling fell in love with Sun Yat-sen and informed her parents of her desire to marry him. Her parents, however, objected, for Sun Yat-sen was a married man and much older than Qingling. Charlie Soong took his family back to Shanghai and confined Qingling to her room upstairs. But Qingling escaped to Japan and married Sun Yat-sen after he divorced his first wife.

    Meanwhile, Meiling had transferred from Wesleyan to Massachusetts’s Wellesley College to be near her brother T.V. Song, who was studying at Harvard and could take care of her. When she heard of her parent’s reaction to Qingling’s choice of marriage, Meiling feared that she might have to accept an arranged marriage when she returned to China; thus, she hurriedly announced her engagement to a young Chinese student at Harvard. When her anxiety turned out to be unnecessary, she renounced the engagement. Meiling finished her education at Wellesley and returned to China in 1917 to become a Shanghai socialite and work for both the National Film Censorship Board and the YMCA in Shanghai.

    Ailing proved more interested in business than politics. She and her husband lived in Shanghai and rapidly expanded their business in various large Chinese cities including Hongkong. A shrewd businesswoman, who usually stayed away from publicity, Ailing was often said to be the mastermind of the Song family.

    Qingling continued working as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary and accompanied him on all public appearances. Though shy by nature, she was known for her strong character. After the death of Yuan Shikai, China was enveloped in the struggle of rival warlords. Qingling joined her husband in the campaigns against the warlords and encouraged women to participate in the Chinese revolution by organizing women’s training schools and associations. Unfortunately, Sun Yat-sen died in 1925 and his party, Guomindang (the Nationalist party), soon split. In the following years of struggles between different factions, Chiang Kai-shek, who attained the control of Guomindang with his military power, persecuted Guomindang leftists and Chinese Communists. Qingling was sympathetic with Guomindang leftists, whom she regarded as faithful to her husband’s principles and continued her revolutionary activities. In denouncing Chiang’s dictatorship and betrayal of Sun Yat-sen’s principles, Qingling went to Moscow in 1927, and then to Berlin, for a four year self-exile. Upon her return to China, she continued criticizing Chiang publicly.

    In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek married Meiling, thereby greatly enhancing his political life because of the Song family’s wealth and connections in China and America. Whereas Qingling never approved of the marriage (believing that Chiang had not married her little sister out of love), Ailing was supportive of Chiang’s marriage to Meiling. Seeing in Chiang the future strongman of China, Ailing saw in their marriage the mutual benefits both to the Song family and to Chiang. Meiling, an energetic and charming young lady, wanted to make a contribution to China. By marrying Chiang she became the powerful woman behind the country’s strongman. Just as Qingling followed Sun Yat-sen, Meiling followed Chiang Kai-shek by plunging herself into all her husband’s public activities, and working as his interpreter and public-relation officer at home and abroad. She helped Chiang launch the New Life Movement to improve the manners and ethics of the Chinese people, and she took up public positions as the general secretary of the Chinese Red Cross and the secretary-general of the commission of aeronautical affairs, which was in charge of the building of the Chinese air force. Under her influence, Chiang was even baptized.

    Meiling’s marriage to Chiang meant that the Song family was deeply involved in China’s business and financial affairs. Both Ailing’s husband Kong and her brother T.V. Song alternately served as Chiang’s finance minister and, at times, premier. In 1932, Meiling accompanied her husband on an official trip to America and Europe. When she arrived in Italy, she was given a royal reception even though she held no public titles.
    The Xi-an Incident

    In 1936, two Guomindang generals held Chiang Kaishek hostage in Xi-an (the Xi-an Incident) in an attempt to coerce him into fighting against the Japanese invaders, rather than continuing the civil war with Chinese Communists. When the pro-Japan clique in Chiang’s government planned to bomb Xi’an and kill Chiang in order to set up their own government, the incident immediately threw China into political crisis. In a demonstration of courage and political sophistication, Meiling persuaded the generals in Nanjing to delay their attack on Xi-an, to which she personally flew for peace negotiations. Her efforts not only helped gain the release of her husband Chiang, but also proved instrumental in a settlement involving the formation of a United Front of all Chinese factions to fight against the Japanese invaders. The peaceful solution of the Xi-an Incident was hailed as a great victory. Henry Luce, then the most powerful publisher in America and a friend to Meiling and Chiang, decided to put the couple on the cover of Time in 1938 as “Man and Wife of the Year.” In a confidential memo, Luce wrote "The most difficult problem in Sino-American publicity concerns the Soong family. They are … the head and front of a pro-American policy.

    "The United Front was thereafter formed and for a time it united the three Song sisters. Discarding their political differences, they worked together for Chinese liberation from Japan. The sisters made radio broadcasts to America to appeal for justice and support for China’s anti-Japanese War. Qingling also headed the China Defense League, which raised funds and solicited support all over the world. Ailing was nominated chairperson of the Association of Friends for Wounded Soldiers.
    Meiling’s Appeal to United States for Support

    The year 1942 saw Meiling’s return to America for medical treatment. During her stay, she was invited to the White House as a guest of President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. While there, she was asked by the President how she and her husband would deal with a wartime strike of coal miners, and she was said to have replied by drawing her hand silently across her throat. In February of 1943, she was invited to address the American Congress; she spoke of brave Chinese resistance against Japan and appealed to America for further support:

    When Japan thrust total war on China in 1937, military experts of every nation did not give China a ghost of a chance. But, when Japan failed to bring China cringing to her knees as she vaunted, the world took solace ….Letusnot forget that during the first four and a half years of total aggression China had borne Japan’s sadistic fury unaided and alone.

    Her speech was repeatedly interrupted by applause. In March, her picture again appeared on the cover of Timeas an international celebrity. She began a six-week itinerary from New York to Chicago and Los Angeles, giving speeches and attending banquets. The successful trip was arranged by Henry Luce as part of his fund-raising for United China Relief. Meiling’s charm extended past Washington to the American people, and the news media popularized her in the United States and made her known throughout the world. Indeed, her success in America had a far-reaching effect on American attitudes and policies toward China.

    Soon afterward, Meiling accompanied Chiang to Cairo and attended the Cairo Conference, where territorial issues in Asia after the defeat of Japan were discussed. The Cairo Summit marked both the apex of Meiling’s political career and the beginning of the fall of Chiang’s regime. Corruption in his government ran so rampant that—despite a total sum of $3.5 billion American Lend-Lease supplies—Chiang’s own soldiers starved to death on the streets of his wartime capital Chongqing (Chungking). While China languished in poverty, the Songs kept millions of dollars in their own American accounts. In addition to the corruption, Chiang’s government lost the trust and support of the people. After the victory over Japan, Chiang began a civil war with Chinese Communists, but was defeated in battle after battle. Meiling made a last attempt to save her husband’s regime by flying to Washington in 1948 for more material support for Chiang in the civil war. Truman’s polite indifference, however, deeply disappointed her. Following this rebuff, she stayed with Ailing in New York City until after Chiang retreated to Taiwan with his Nationalist armies.

    Ailing moved most of her wealth to America and left China with her husband in 1947. She stayed in New York and never returned to China. She and her family worked for Chiang’s regime by supporting the China Lobby and other public-relations activities in the United States. Whenever Meiling returned to America, she stayed with Ailing and her family. Ailing died in 1973 in New York City.
    Differing Beliefs and Efforts for a Better China

    Meanwhile, Qingling had remained in China, leading the China Welfare League to establish new hospitals and provide relief for wartime orphans and famine refugees. When Chinese Communists established a united government in Beijing (Peking) in 1949, Qingling was invited as a non-Communist to join the new government and was elected vice-chairperson of the People’s Republic of China. In 1951, she was awarded the Stalin International Peace Prize. While she was active in the international peace movement and Chinese state affairs in the 1950s, she never neglected her work with China Welfare and her lifelong devotion to assisting women and children. Qingling was one of the most respected women in China, who inspired many of her contemporaries as well as younger generations. She was made honorary president of the People’s Republic of China in 1981 before she died. According to her wishes, she was buried beside her parents in Shanghai.

    Because of their differing political beliefs, the three Song sisters took different roads in their efforts to work for China. Qingling joined the Communist government because she believed it worked for the well-being of the ordinary Chinese. Meiling believed in restoring her husband’s government in the mainland and used her personal connections in the United States to pressure the American government in favor of her husband’s regime in Taiwan. Typical of such penetration in American politics was the China Lobby, which had a powerful sway on American policies toward Chiang’s regime in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist government in Beijing. Members of the China Lobby included senators, generals, business tycoons, and former missionaries. In 1954, Meiling traveled again to Washington in an attempt to prevent the United Nations from accepting the People’s Republic of China. After Chiang’s death and his son’s succession, Meiling lived in America for over ten years. The last remaining of three powerfully influential sisters, she now resides in Long Island, New York.
    Further Reading on The Song Sisters

    Eunson, Roby. The Soong Sisters. Franklin Watts, 1975.

    Fairbank, John. China: A New History. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.

    Hahn, Emily. The Soong Sisters. Greenwood Press, 1970.

    Li Da. Song Meiling and Taiwan. Hongkong: Wide Angle Press, 1988.

    Liu Jia-quan. Biography of Song Meiling. China Cultural Association Press, 1988.

    Seagrave, Sterling. The Soong Dynasty. Harper and Row, 1985.

    Sheridan, James E. China in Disintegration. The Free Press, 1975.

    #Chine #USA #histoire

  • Tunisia’s Nobel prize-winning union meets Bashar al-Assad | Middle East Eye
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ugtt-visits-assad-280282311

    A delegation from the Nobel-prize winning Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) has sparked controversy after a delegation of leaders met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    According to a statement put out by the union, a delegation chaired by general secretary Bouali M’Barki and composed of 21 trade union leaders, met Assad in Damascus on Saturday.

    It said the visit aimed to show solidarity with the Syrian people in their “war against terrorism”

  • Qatar: Saudi led coalition lists the closure of Al Jazeera among conditions to end crisis
    International Federation of Journalists, le 23 juin 2017
    http://www.ifj.org/nc/news-single-view/backpid/1/article/qatar-saudi-led-coalition-lists-the-closure-of-al-jazeera-among-conditions-to-e

    Saudi Arabia led coalition today sent an ultimatum to Qatar with 13 demands to be met within the next 10 days in order to end Qatar crisis, including the closure of Al Jazeera and other news outlets funded by Qatar.

    Reports said that, following the decision early June of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Yemen and Egypt of cutting ties with Qatar, Kuwait has today presented a list of 13 demands to this country as part of its mediation in the talks.

    Among the Opens external link in new windowdemands, the coalition is asking Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera and its affiliate stations, as well as the news outlets funded directly and indirectly by this country, media added.

    The IFJ recently has called on the coalition to Opens external link in new windowstop using journalists as political footballs and respect journalists doing their jobs and their families. The Federation warned that the crisis is having an impact on thousands of people, in particular journalists working in Doha for Al Jazeera and other Qatari media who are under pressure to leave the country or lose their nationality.

    “Al Jazeera is a source of information for citizens in the Middle East and beyond. The restriction of freedom of speech and media pluralism in the region risks worsening the crisis, instead of solving it. In addition, dozens of journalists face losing their jobs with devastating effects for them and their families,” said IFJ President Philippe Leruth. “The Middle East needs journalists to speak the truth to power and banning any media outlet is an outrageous attempt to censure the public debate.”

    In late May, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates moved to block the websites of Al Jazeera and other Qatari media outlets. On June 7, Jordan closed Al Jazeera’s Amman bureau and stripped it of its operating license. Saudi Arabia followed suit the next day, closing Al Jazeera’s Riyadh bureau, according to reports.

    For any media request please contact the IFJ President Philippe Leruth (EN-FR-ES).

    For more information, please contact IFJ on + 32 2 235 22 16

    The IFJ represents more than 600,000 journalists in 141 countries

    #Qatar #Al_Jazeera #nuit_torride #liberté_d'expression #iberté_de_la_presse #presse #média #information #International_Federation_of_Journalists #journalistes #syndicats #solidarité

    • Stop using journalists as “political footballs” in Qatar crisis, demands
      IFJ, le 15 juin 2017
      http://www.ifj.org/nc/news-single-view/backpid/1/article/stop-using-journalists-as-political-footballs-in-qatar-crisis-demands-ifj

      The IFJ has called on the authorities in a number of Arab states to stop using journalists as “a political football’ as hundreds of media staff face the axe, families risk being torn apart and TV stations, newspapers and websites risk closure.

      The call comes as demands to close down Al Jazeera and a blockade of its broadcasts by a number of other countries are having a devastating impact on journalists and their families.

      Fifty-five journalists from other Gulf states currently working at Al Jazeera in Doha are under pressure to leave or lose their nationality amid a crisis which threatens the future of broadcasters and other media.

      The crisis comes following threats by Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners - including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates Egypt and Yemen - to the Qatari authorities to close down Al Jazeera.

      The demand was one of ten put forward by the Saudi-led coalition in its ongoing political dispute with Qatar.

      Last week the authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia closed down Al Jazeera’s office in Riyadh and cancelled its operating licence. Jordan followed suit by closing Al Jazeera’s Amman office. The Egyptian authorities had already shut down Al Jazeera in 2013 and seized all its equipment at the Cairo office.

      Threats have also been made by some members of the government and politicians to close down Al Jazeera in Israel.

      The dispute, which has seen Al Jazeera’s broadcasts and access to its websites blocked in a number of countries, is also affecting other media.

      In Egypt the authorities have blocked access to Al Jazeera websites and TV channels, in opposition to the broadcaster’s alleged backing for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. They have also taken the opportunity to block other Qatari media and close down independent and critical news websites. Hundreds of journalists’ jobs are at risk, including more than 100 members of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate.

      In the UAE, telecommunication providers, Du and Etisalat, have stopped broadcasting Qatari-owned sports network Bein Sports. It owns the exclusive Middle East rights for the most important sports events in the world including the ongoing French Open tennis tournament, the NBA Finals, Formula One and all the major football competitions.

      In Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage has joined the authorities in Bahrain in banning tourist destinations from airing Al Jazeera. Violations of these injunctions face fines up to SR 100,000 (€23,800), closure, revocation of tourism licenses, and even imprisonment.

      Even Saudi citizens can be fined up to $2700 if caught watching Al Jazeera.

      The blockade is already impacting on journalists. Nationals from other Gulf States working at Al Jazeera and other media in Qatar have been told they must leave the country or face losing their right to return home and even their nationality.

      The Saudi authorities have given their nationals two weeks to leave or lose their citizenship.

      This is having an impact on thousands of people, in particular journalists working in Doha for Al Jazeera and other Qatari media.

      At Al Jazeera and Bein Sports alone 44 Saudi nationals, 13 Bahrainis and 1 from the United Arab Emirates are under threat.

      There is also a brutal impact on families that face being broken apart.

      With hundreds of journalists having settled in Doha as they took up work with Qatari media, many have put down roots and married Qataris. Now those families face being forced apart.

      UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has warned of the humanitarian crisis such actions are having.

      IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “We utterly condemn moves to force the closure of Al Jazeera, throw its journalists out of jobs and undermine the freedom to inform, and the right to free speech and free media.

      “Journalists doing their jobs and their families – husbands, wives and children - must not be used as political footballs in this dispute.“

      ”There is now a grave danger their human rights are being violated.“

      “The IFJ will stand in support of every journalist – whether from Qatar or the states imposing the blockade and sanctions – to help defend their right to work, their job and their fundamental human rights”.

      Amnesty International has also called for action. “For potentially thousands of people across the Gulf, the effect of the steps imposed in the wake of this political dispute is suffering, heartbreak and fear,” said James Lynch, its Deputy Director of Global Issues Programme.

      “These drastic measures are already having a brutal effect, splitting children from parents and husbands from wives. People from across the region – not only from Qatar, but also from the states implementing these measures – risk losing jobs and having their education disrupted. All the states involved in this dispute must ensure their actions do not lead to human rights violations. ”

  • CGT union tries to block general strike against French labor law - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/30/cgtl-m30.html

    While Martinez refused to inform the population about his secret, back-channel talks with Valls, his comments show that he is preparing a rapid climb-down. He abandoned previous calls by union officials for a “withdrawal” of the law, calling instead for the law to be “rediscussed.”

    Martinez repeatedly insisted that the CGT would not enter into political conflict with the PS. He declared that he was not “going one on one against Valls.” He stressed that the CGT is “playing its role … We are in our proper role as a trade union.”

    This was an all but explicit statement of support for the PS. Asked whether he regretted the CGT’s call for a vote for Hollande in the 2012 presidential elections, Martinez refused to say either yes or no, saying only that the CGT had not “paid enough attention” at the time. He recalled that in 2012, then-CGT General Secretary Bernard Thibault had called for a vote to remove Hollande’s right-wing opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, and then obliquely declared that in “another era,” the CGT issued open endorsements of presidential candidates.

  • Tiens, puisqu’on cause du Panamá on pourrait en profiter pour parler des #pavillons_de_complaisance.
    De la part de la Fédération Internationale des Ouvriers du Transport

    ITF comment on Panama Papers revelations - International Transport Workers’ Federation
    http://www.itfglobal.org/fr/news-events/press-releases/2016/april/itf-comment-on-panama-papers-revelations

    ITF comment on Panama Papers revelations

    The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) is welcoming revelations of tax avoidance and related activities in the leaked Panama Papers this week in the hope that the exposure will lead to a change in the current climate of tacit approval for this kind of socially damaging behaviour.

    07/04/2016

    General secretary Stephen Cotton said: “Money laundering, terrorist financing and tax evasion are all clearly unacceptable practices and at odds with the global union movement’s social and economic justice agenda that we at the ITF promote through our work with transport unions around the globe. Equally of concern to us is large-scale corporate tax avoidance that directly impacts on public investment and essential services.

    Much of this activity has been allowed to go on in plain sight with minimal steps being taken to hold companies or individuals to account. It is right that the sheer volume of the crisis and the impact of these widespread financial abuses have been put into the public arena. It is time to take the kind of definitive action the ITF has been involved in for years to stem this corporate greed.

    Cotton continued: “Take our flags of convenience (FOC) campaign launched in 1948.
    […]

    Devinette : quel a été le premier pays à enregistrer des navires sous pavillon de complaisance à l’époque contemporaine ? Et au profit de quel autre pays ?

    Flag of convenience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience

    Belen Quezada, the first foreign ship flagged in the Panamanian registry, was employed in running illegal alcohol between Canada and the United States during Prohibition.

  • Liberal, Harsh Denmark
    Hugh Eakin

    A cartoon published by the Danish newspaper Politiken showing Inger Støjberg, the country’s integration minister, lighting candles on a Christmas tree that has a dead asylum-­seeker as an ornament, December 2015
    Anne-Marie Steen Petersen

    1.
    In country after country across Europe, the Syrian refugee crisis has put intense pressure on the political establishment. In Poland, voters have brought to power a right-wing party whose leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, warns that migrants are bringing “dangerous diseases” and “various types of parasites” to Europe. In France’s regional elections in December, some Socialist candidates withdrew at the last minute to support the conservatives and prevent the far-right National Front from winning. Even Germany, which took in more than a million asylum-seekers in 2015, has been forced to pull back in the face of a growing revolt from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party and the recent New Year’s attacks on women in Cologne, allegedly by groups of men of North African origin.
    And then there is Denmark. A small, wealthy Scandinavian democracy of 5.6 million people, it is according to most measures one of the most open and egalitarian countries in the world. It has the highest income equality and one of the lowest poverty rates of any Western nation. Known for its nearly carbon-neutral cities, its free health care and university education for all, its bus drivers who are paid like accountants, its robust defense of gay rights and social freedoms, and its vigorous culture of social and political debate, the country has long been envied as a social-democratic success, a place where the state has an improbably durable record of doing good. Danish leaders also have a history of protecting religious minorities: the country was unique in Nazi-occupied Europe in prosecuting anti-Semitism and rescuing almost its entire Jewish population.
    When it comes to refugees, however, Denmark has long led the continent in its shift to the right—and in its growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy. To the visitor, the country’s resistance to immigrants from Africa and the Middle East can seem implacable. In last June’s Danish national election—months before the Syrian refugee crisis hit Europe—the debate centered around whether the incumbent, center-left Social Democrats or their challengers, the center-right Liberal Party, were tougher on asylum-seekers. The main victor was the Danish People’s Party, a populist, openly anti-immigration party, which drew 21 percent of the vote, its best performance ever. Its founder, Pia Kjærsgaard, for years known for suggesting that Muslims “are at a lower stage of civilization,” is now speaker of the Danish parliament. With the backing of the Danish People’s Party, the center-right Liberals formed a minority government that has taken one of the hardest lines on refugees of any European nation.
    When I arrived in Copenhagen last August, the new government, under Liberal Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, had just cut social benefits to refugees by 45 percent. There was talk among Danish politicians and in the Danish press of an “invasion” from the Middle East—though the influx at the time was occurring in the Greek islands, more than one thousand miles away. In early September, Denmark began taking out newspaper ads in Lebanon and Jordan warning would-be asylum-seekers not to come. And by November, the Danish government announced that it could no longer accept the modest share of one thousand refugees assigned to Denmark under an EU redistribution agreement, because Italy and Greece had lost control of their borders.
    These developments culminated in late January of this year, when Rasmussen’s minister of integration, Inger Støjberg, a striking, red-headed forty-two-year-old who has come to represent the government’s aggressive anti-refugee policies, succeeded in pushing through parliament an “asylum austerity” law that has gained notoriety across Europe. The new law, which passed with support from the Social Democrats as well as the Danish People’s Party, permits police to strip-search asylum-seekers and confiscate their cash and most valuables above 10,000 Danish kroner ($1,460) to pay for their accommodation; delays the opportunity to apply for family reunification by up to three years; forbids asylum-seekers from residing outside refugee centers, some of which are tent encampments; reduces the cash benefits they can receive; and makes it significantly harder to qualify for permanent residence. One aim, a Liberal MPexplained to me, is simply to “make Denmark less attractive to foreigners.”
    Danish hostility to refugees is particularly startling in Scandinavia, where there is a pronounced tradition of humanitarianism. Over the past decade, the Swedish government has opened its doors to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Syrians, despite growing social problems and an increasingly popular far-right party. But one of the things Danish leaders—and many Danes I spoke to—seem to fear most is turning into “another Sweden.” Anna Mee Allerslev, the top integration official for the city of Copenhagen, told me that the Danish capital, a Social Democratic stronghold with a large foreign-born population, has for years refused to take any refugees. (Under pressure from other municipalities, this policy is set to change in 2016.)
    In part, the Danish approach has been driven by the country’s long experience with terrorism and jihadism. Nearly a decade before the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015, and the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris in November, the publication of the so-called Muhammad cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had already turned Denmark into a primary target for extremists. Initially driven by a group of Danish imams, outcry against the cartoons gave strength to several small but radical groups among the country’s 260,000 Muslims. These groups have been blamed for the unusually large number of Danes—perhaps as many as three hundred or more—who have gone to fight in Syria, including some who went before the rise ofISIS in 2013. “The Danish system has pretty much been blinking red since 2005,” Magnus Ranstorp, a counterterrorism expert who advises the PET, the Danish security and intelligence service, told me.
    Since the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, the PET and other intelligence forces have disrupted numerous terrorist plots, some of them eerily foreshadowing what happened in Paris last year. In 2009, the Pakistani-American extremist David Headley, together with Laskar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist organization, devised a meticulous plan to storm the Jyllands-Posten offices in Copenhagen and systematically kill all the journalists that could be found. Headley was arrested in the United States in October 2009, before any part of the plan was carried out; in 2013, he was sentenced by a US district court to thirty-five years in prison for his involvement in the Mumbai attacks of 2008.
    In February of last year, just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a young Danish-Palestinian man named Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein tried to shoot his way into the Copenhagen meeting of a free-speech group to which a Swedish cartoonist, known for his caricatures of Muhammad, had been invited. El-Hussein succeeded in killing a Danish filmmaker at the meeting before fleeing the scene; then, hours later, he killed a security guard at the city’s main synagogue and was shot dead by police.
    Yet many Danes I talked to are less concerned about terrorism than about the threat they see Muslims posing to their way of life. Though Muslims make up less than 5 percent of the population, there is growing evidence that many of the new arrivals fail to enter the workforce, are slow to learn Danish, and end up in high-crime immigrant neighborhoods where, while relying on extensive state handouts, they and their children are cut off from Danish society. In 2010, the Danish government introduced a “ghetto list” of such marginalized places with the goal of “reintegrating” them; the list now includes more than thirty neighborhoods.
    Popular fears that the refugee crisis could overwhelm the Danish welfare state have sometimes surprised the country’s own leadership. On December 3, in a major defeat for the government, a clear majority of Danes—53 percent—rejected a referendum on closer security cooperation with the European Union. Until now, Denmark has been only a partial EU member—for example, it does not belong to the euro and has not joined EU protocols on citizenship and legal affairs. In view of the growing threat of jihadism, both the government and the opposition Social Democrats hoped to integrate the country fully into European policing and counterterrorism efforts. But the “no” vote, which was supported by the Danish People’s Party, was driven by fears that such a move could also give Brussels influence over Denmark’s refugee and immigration policies.
    The outcome of the referendum has ominous implications for the European Union at a time when emergency border controls in numerous countries—including Germany and Sweden as well as Denmark—have put in doubt the Schengen system of open borders inside the EU. In Denmark itself, the referendum has forced both the Liberals and the Social Democrats to continue moving closer to the populist right. In November, Martin Henriksen, the Danish People’s Party spokesman on refugees and immigration, toldPolitiken, the country’s leading newspaper, “There is a contest on to see who can match the Danish People’s Party on immigration matters, and I hope that more parties will participate.”
    2.
    According to many Danes I met, the origins of Denmark’s anti-immigration consensus can be traced to the national election of November 2001, two months after the September 11 attacks in the United States. At the time, the recently founded Danish People’s Party was largely excluded from mainstream politics; the incumbent prime minister, who was a Social Democrat, famously described the party as unfit to govern.
    But during the 1990s, the country’s Muslim population had nearly doubled to around 200,000 people, and in the 2001 campaign, immigration became a central theme. The Social Democrats suffered a devastating defeat and, for the first time since 1924, didn’t control the most seats in parliament. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the ambitious leader of the victorious Liberal Party (no relation to the current prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen), made a historic decision to form a government with support from the Danish People’s Party, which had come in third place—a far-right alliance that had never been tried in Scandinavia. It kept Fogh Rasmussen in power for three terms.
    From an economic perspective, the government’s embrace of the populist right was anomalous. With its unique combination of comprehensive welfare and a flexible labor market—known as flexicurity—Denmark has an efficient economy in which the rate of job turnover is one of the highest in Europe, yet almost 75 percent of working-age Danes are employed. At the same time, the country’s extraordinary social benefits, such as long-term education, retraining, and free child care, are based on integration in the workforce. Yet many of the qualities about the Danish system that work so well for those born into it have made it particularly hard for outsiders to penetrate.
    Denmark is a mostly low-lying country consisting of the Jutland Peninsula in the west, the large islands of Funen and Zealand in the east, and numerous smaller islands. (It also includes the island of Greenland, whose tiny population is largely Inuit.) The modern state emerged in the late nineteenth century, following a series of defeats by Bismarck’s Germany in which it lost much of its territory and a significant part of its population. Several Danish writers have linked this founding trauma to a lasting national obsession with invasion and a continual need to assert danskhed, or Danishness.
    Among other things, these preoccupations have given the Danish welfare system an unusually important part in shaping national identity. Visitors to Denmark will find the Danish flag on everything from public buses to butter wrappers; many of the country’s defining institutions, from its universal secondary education (Folkehøjskoler—the People’s High Schools) to the parliament (Folketinget—the People’s House) to the Danish national church (Folkekirken—the People’s Church) to the concept of democracy itself (Folkestyret—the Rule of the People) have been built to reinforce a strong sense of folke, the Danish people.
    One result of this emphasis on cohesion is the striking contrast between how Danes view their fellow nationals and how they seem to view the outside world: in 1997, a study of racism in EU countries found Danes to be simultaneously among the most tolerant and also the most racist of any European population. “In the nationalist self-image, tolerance is seen as good,” writes the Danish anthropologist Peter Hervik. “Yet…excessive tolerance is considered naive and counterproductive for sustaining Danish national identity.”
    According to Hervik, this paradox helps account for the rise of the Danish People’s Party, or Dansk Folkeparti. Like its far-right counterparts in neighboring countries, the party drew on new anxieties about non-European immigrants and the growing influence of the EU. What made the Danish People’s Party particularly potent, however, was its robust defense of wealth redistribution and advanced welfare benefits for all Danes. “On a traditional left-right scheme they are very difficult to locate,” former prime minister Fogh Rasmussen told me in Copenhagen. “They are tough on crime, tough on immigration, but on welfare policy, they are center left. Sometimes they even try to surpass the Social Democrats.”
    Beginning in 2002, the Fogh Rasmussen government passed a sweeping set of reforms to limit the flow of asylum-seekers. Among the most controversial were the so-called twenty-four-year rule, which required foreign-born spouses to be at least twenty-four years old to qualify for Danish citizenship, and a requirement that both spouses combined had spent more years living in Denmark than in any other country. Unprecedented in Europe, the new rules effectively ended immigrant marriages as a quick path to citizenship. At the same time, the government dramatically restricted the criteria under which a foreigner could qualify for refugee status.
    To Fogh Rasmussen’s critics, the measures were simply a way to gain the support of the Danish People’s Party for his own political program. This included labor market reforms, such as tying social benefits more closely to active employment, and—most notably—a muscular new foreign policy. Departing from Denmark’s traditional neutrality, the government joined with US troops in military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq; Denmark has since taken part in the interventions in Libya and Syria as well. (In his official state portrait in the parliament, Fogh Rasmussen, who went on to become general secretary of NATO in 2009, is depicted with a Danish military plane swooping over a desolate Afghan landscape in the background.)
    Yet the immigration overhaul also had strong foundations in the Liberal Party. In 1997, Bertel Haarder, a veteran Liberal politician and strategist, wrote an influential book called Soft Cynicism, which excoriated the Danish welfare system for creating, through excessive coddling, the very stigmatization of new arrivals to Denmark that it was ostensibly supposed to prevent. Haarder, who went on to become Fogh Rasmussen’s minister of immigration, told me, “The Danes wanted to be soft and nice. And we turned proud immigrants into social welfare addicts. It wasn’t their fault. It was our fault.”
    According to Haarder, who has returned to the Danish cabinet as culture minister in the current Liberal government, the refugees who have come to Denmark in recent years overwhelmingly lack the education and training needed to enter the country’s advanced labor market. As Fogh Rasmussen’s immigration minister, he sought to match the restrictions on asylum-seekers with expedited citizenship for qualified foreigners. But he was also known for his criticism of Muslims who wanted to assert their own traditions: “All this talk about equality of cultures and equality of religion is nonsense,” he told a Danish newspaper in 2002. “The Danes have the right to make decisions in Denmark.”
    3.
    Coming amid the Fogh Rasmussen government’s rightward shift on immigration and its growing involvement in the “war on terror,” the decision by the Danish paperJyllands-Posten in September 2005 to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad seemed to bring into the open an irresolvable conflict. In the decade since they appeared, the cartoons have been linked to the torching of Western embassies, an unending series of terrorist attacks and assassination plots across Europe, and a sense, among many European intellectuals, that Western society is being cowed into a “tyranny of silence,” as Flemming Rose, the former culture editor of Jyllands-Postenwho commissioned the cartoons and who now lives under constant police protection, has titled a recent book.1 In his new study of French jihadism, Terreur dans l’hexagone: Genèse du djihad français, Gilles Kepel, the French scholar of Islam, suggests that the cartoons inspired an “international Islamic campaign against little Denmark” that became a crucial part of a broader redirection of jihadist ideology toward the West.
    And yet little about the original twelve cartoons could have foretold any of this. Traditionally based in Jutland, Jyllands-Posten is a center-right broadsheet that tends to draw readers from outside the capital; it was little known abroad before the cartoons appeared. Following reports that a Danish illustrator had refused to do drawings for a book about Muhammad, Rose invited a group of caricaturists to “draw Muhammad as you see him” to find out whether they were similarly inhibited (most of them weren’t). Some of the resulting drawings made fun of the newspaper itself for pursuing the idea; in the subsequent controversy, outrage was largely directed at just one of the cartoons, which depicted the Prophet wearing a lit bomb as a turban. Even then, the uproar began only months later, after the Danish prime minister refused a request from diplomats of Muslim nations for a meeting about the cartoons. “I thought it was a trap,” Fogh Rasmussen told me. At the same time, several secular Arab regimes, including Mubarak’s Egypt and Assad’s Syria, concluded that encouraging vigorous opposition to the cartoons could shore up their Islamist credentials.
    Once angry mass protests had finally been stirred up throughout the Muslim world in late January and early February 2006—including in Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan—the crisis quickly took on a logic that had never existed at the outset: attacks against Western targets led many newspapers in the West to republish the cartoons in solidarity, which in turn provoked more attacks. By the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in early 2015, there was a real question of what Timothy Garton Ash, in these pages, has called “the assassin’s veto,” the fact that some newspapers might self-censor simply to avoid further violence.2 Jyllands-Posten itself, declaring in an editorial in January 2015 that “violence works,” no longer republishes the cartoons.
    Lost in the geopolitical fallout, however, was the debate over Danish values that the cartoons provoked in Denmark itself. Under the influence of the nineteenth-century state builder N.F.S. Grundtvig, the founders of modern Denmark embraced free speech as a core value. It was the first country in Europe to legalize pornography in the 1960s, and Danes have long taken a special pleasure in cheerful, in-your-face irreverence. In December Politiken published a cartoon showing the integration minister Inger Støjberg gleefully lighting candles on a Christmas tree that has a dead asylum-seeker as an ornament (see illustration on page 34).
    Explaining his own reasons for commissioning the Muhammad cartoons, Flemming Rose has written of the need to assert the all-important right to “sarcasm, mockery, and ridicule” against an encroaching totalitarianism emanating from the Islamic world. He also makes clear that Muslims or any other minority group should be equally free to express their own views in the strongest terms. (Rose told me that he differs strongly with Geert Wilders, the prominent Dutch populist and critic of Islam. “He wants to ban the Koran. I say absolutely you can’t do that.”)
    But Rose’s views about speech have been actively contested. Bo Lidegaard, the editor of Politiken, the traditional paper of the Copenhagen establishment, was Fogh Rasmussen’s national security adviser at the time of the cartoons crisis. Politiken, which shares the same owner and inhabits the same high-security building as Jyllands-Posten, has long been critical of the publication of the cartoons by its sister paper, and Lidegaard was blunt. “It was a complete lack of understanding of what a minority religion holds holy,” he told me. “It also seemed to be mobbing a minority, by saying, in their faces, ‘We don’t respect your religion! You may think this is offensive but we don’t think its offensive, so you’re dumb!’”
    Lidegaard, who has written several books about Danish history, argues that the cartoons’ defenders misread the free speech tradition. He cites Denmark’s law against “threatening, insulting, or degrading” speech, which was passed by the Danish parliament in 1939, largely to protect the country’s Jewish minority from anti-Semitism. Remarkably, it remained in force—and was even invoked—during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. According to Lidegaard, it is a powerful recognition that upholding equal rights and tolerance for all can sometimes trump the need to protect extreme forms of speech.
    Today, however, few Danes seem concerned about offending Muslims. Neils-Erik Hansen, a leading Danish human rights lawyer, told me that the anti–hate speech law has rarely been used in recent years, and that in several cases of hate crimes against Muslim immigrants—a newspaper boy was killed after being called “Paki swine”—the authorities have shown little interest in invoking the statute. During the cartoon affair, Lidegaard himself was part of the foreign policy team that advised Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen not to have talks with Muslim representatives. When I asked him about this, he acknowledged, “The government made some mistakes.”
    4.
    Last fall I visited Mjølnerparken, an overwhelmingly immigrant “ghetto” in north Copenhagen where Omar el-Hussein, the shooter in last year’s attack against the free speech meeting, had come from. Many of the youth there belong to gangs and have been in and out of prison; the police make frequent raids to search for guns. Upward of half the adults, many of them of Palestinian and Somali origin, are unemployed. Eskild Pedersen, a veteran social worker who almost single-handedly looks after the neighborhood, told me that hardly any ethnic Danes set foot there. This was Denmark at its worst.
    And yet there was little about the tidy red-brick housing blocks or the facing playground, apart from a modest amount of graffiti, that suggested dereliction or squalor. Pedersen seems to have the trust of many of his charges. He had just settled a complicated honor dispute between two Somalian families; and as we spoke, a Palestinian girl, not more than six, interrupted to tell him about a domestic violence problem in her household. He has also found part-time jobs for several gang members, and helped one of them return to school; one young man of Palestinian background gave me a tour of the auto body shop he had started in a nearby garage. (When a delegation of Egyptians was recently shown the neighborhood, the visitors asked, “Where is the ghetto?”)
    But in Denmark, the police force is regarded as an extension of the social welfare system and Pedersen also makes it clear, to the young men especially, that he works closely with law enforcement. As last year’s shooting reveals, it doesn’t always work. But city officials in Copenhagen and in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, describe some cases in which local authorities, drawing on daily contact with young and often disaffected Muslims, including jihadists returning from Syria, have been able to preempt extremist behavior.
    Across Europe in recent weeks, shock over the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees has quickly been overtaken by alarm over the challenge they are now seen as posing to social stability. Several countries that have been welcoming to large numbers of Syrian and other asylum-seekers are confronting growing revolts from the far right—along with anti-refugee violence. In December Die Zeit, the German newsweekly, reported that more than two hundred German refugee shelters have been attacked or firebombed over the past year; in late January, Swedish police intercepted a gang of dozens of masked men who were seeking to attack migrants near Stockholm’s central station. Since the beginning of 2016, two notorious far-right, anti-immigration parties—the Sweden Democrats in Sweden and Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom in the Netherlands—became more popular than the ruling parties in their respective countries, despite being excluded from government.
    Nor is the backlash limited to the right. Since the New Year’s attacks by migrants against women in Cologne, conservative opponents of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy have been joined by feminists and members of the left, who have denounced the “patriarchal” traditions of the “Arab man.” Recent data on the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, who in January were polling at 28 percent of the popular vote, shows that the party’s steady rise during Sweden’s decade of open-asylum policies has closely tracked a parallel decline in support for the center-left Social Democrats, the traditional force in Swedish politics. Confronted with such a populist surge, the Swedish government announced on January 27 that it plans to deport as many as 80,000 asylum-seekers.
    As the advanced democracies of Europe reconsider their physical and psychological borders with the Muslim world, the restrictive Danish approach to immigration and the welfare state offers a stark alternative. Brought into the political process far earlier than its counterparts elsewhere, the Danish People’s Party is a good deal more moderate than, say, the National Front in France; but it also has succeeded in shaping, to an extraordinary degree, the Danish immigration debate. In recent weeks, Denmark’s Social Democrats have struggled to define their own immigration policy amid sagging support. When I asked former prime minister Fogh Rasmussen about how the Danish People’s Party differed from the others on asylum-seekers and refugees, he said, “You have differences when it comes to rhetoric, but these are nuances.”
    In January, more than 60,000 refugees arrived in Europe, a thirty-five-fold increase from the same month last year; but in Denmark, according to Politiken, the number of asylum-seekers has steadily declined since the start of the year, with only 1,400 seeking to enter the country. In limiting the kind of social turmoil now playing out in Germany, Sweden, and France, the Danes may yet come through the current crisis a more stable, united, and open society than any of their neighbors. But they may also have shown that this openness extends no farther than the Danish frontier.
    —February 10, 2016

    #danemark #migrations #asile #réfugiés

  • Attaques concertées contre BDS en France, au Canada, aux Etats-Unis, en Angleterre...
    http://seenthis.net/messages/459796

    Réaction en Angleterre :

    « Interdire le boycott d’Israël est antidémocratique »
    The Independant, le 20 février 2016
    http://www.aurdip.fr/interdire-le-boycott-d-israel-est.html

    Lettre signée par : Ahdaf Soueif, Roger Waters, Tommy Sheppard MP, Cat Smith MP, Malia Bouattia, NUS Black Students’ Officer, Len McCluskey, General Secretary, Unite the Union, Alex Cunningham MP, Chris Stephens MP, Clive Betts MP, Dave Anderson MP, Kate Osamor MP, Marie Rimmer MP, Martyn Day MP, Nic Dakin MP, Steven Paterson MP, Yasmin Qureshi MP, Louise Haigh MP, Lord Ahmed Nazir, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Matt Wrack, General Secretary FBU, Mick Whelan, General Secretary ASLEF, Tim Roache, General Secretary Elect GMB, Mick Cash, General Secretary RMT, Piers Telemancque, Vice president Society and Citizenship, NUS, Shelly Asquith - Vice President Welfare, NUS, Ken Loach, Mark Thomas, Rizwan Ahmed, Mike Leigh, Andrew Smith, Campaign Against Arms Trade, Alexei Sayle, Anna Carteret, April De Angelis, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Caryl Churchill, Fionn Travers-Smith, Move Your Money, Gillian Slovo, Hari Kunzru, Hugh Lanning, Chair of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jeremy Hardy, Jo Ram, Community Reinvest, Joel Benjamin, Community Reinvest, John Hilary, Executive Director of War on Want, Maggie Steed, Maxine Peake, Mick Bowman, Newcastle City Council, Michael Radford, Miriam Margolyes, Niall Buggy, Pauline Melville, Peter Kosminsky, Rachel Holmes, Riya Hassan, Palestinian BDS National Committee, Robert Wyatt, Vica Rogers, Debt Resistance UK

    On y trouve des parlementaires, des dirigeants de centrales syndicales, et des artistes dont Roger Waters, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, mais aussi Robert Wyatt (de Soft Machine).

    A propos d’artistes anglais, Jospeh Coward, un jeune chanteur (que je ne connais pas mais qui vient d’enregistrer un titre avec Thurston Moore de Sonic Youth), vient aussi de s’engager pour BDS, très explicitement dans cet article :
    http://www.thefourohfive.com/music/article/the-405-meets-joseph-coward-145

    #Palestine #Royaume_Uni #BDS #Boycott #Censure #criminalisation_des_militants #artistes

  • Ethiopian Opposition Say 10 Oromo Students Killed at Protests - Bloomberg Business
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/ethiopian-opposition-say-10-oromo-students-killed-at-protests

    Ethiopian police killed 10 Oromo students who were demonstrating peacefully over plans to integrate the capital, Addis Ababa, with surrounding towns in Oromia region in the past three weeks, an opposition leader said.

    High-school and university students from across Ethiopia’s most-populous region are protesting to demand the government shelve a master plan for the city, said Bekele Nega, general secretary of the Oromo Federalist Congress.

    “The protest is not as usual, they are not backing away,” he said by phone from Addis Ababa. “They are not willing to stop until the demands are met.” Authorities gave a lower number of fatalities.

    Ethiopia, which the International Monetary Fund forecasts will have sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing economy this year, is seeing tensions between its plans for rapid development and its constitution, which enshrines the right to ethnic self-administration. Oromo critics say the integration of the capital with surrounding towns amounts to annexation of the ethnic group’s territory as farmers will be evicted and the language and culture lost.

    #meurtres #discriminations #peuples_autochtones #éthiopie #contestation #répression

  • Immigration au #Qatar : la #kafala toujours en place malgré les promesses

    L’ONG Amnesty International publie ce jeudi un rapport pour rappeler au Qatar qu’il n’a pas tenu ses promesses en matière d’amélioration des droits des ouvriers, et notamment la réforme de la Kafala, ce système qui met tout employé à la merci de son employeur pour changer de travail, sortir du territoire…Une réforme annoncée il y a un an et qui n’a pas eu lieu.

    http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20150521-immigration-qatar-kafala-rapport-amnesty-travailleurs-migrants
    #migration #travail #exploitation

    • Will Migrant Domestic Workers in the Gulf Ever Be Safe From Abuse?

      Jahanara* had had enough. For a year, the Bangladeshi cook had been working 12 to 16 hours a day, eating only leftovers and sleeping on the kitchen floor of her employer’s Abu Dhabi home – all for half the salary she had been promised. She had to prepare four fresh meals a day for the eight-member family, who gave her little rest. She was tired, she had no phone and she was alone. So, in the summer of 2014, in the middle of the night after a long day’s work, she snuck out into the driveway, scaled the front gate and escaped.

      Jahanara ran along the road in the dark. She did not know where she was going. Eventually, a Pakistani taxi driver pulled over, and asked her if she had run away from her employer, and whether she needed help. She admitted she had no money, and no clue where she wanted to go. The driver gave her a ride, dropping her off in the neighboring emirate of Dubai, in the Deira neighborhood. There, he introduced her to Vijaya, an Indian woman in her late fifties who had been working in the Gulf for more than two decades.

      “It’s like I found family here in this strange land.”

      Vijaya gave the nervous young woman a meal of rice, dal and, as Jahanara still recalls, “a beautiful fish fry.” She arranged for Jahanara to rent half a room in her apartment and, within a week, had found her part-time housekeeping work in the homes of two expat families.

      Jahanara is a 31-year-old single woman from north Bangladesh, and Vijaya, 60, is a grandmother of eight from Mumbai, India. Jahanara speaks Bengali, while Vijaya speaks Telugu. Despite the differences in age and background, the two women have become close friends. They communicate in gestures and broken Urdu.

      “It’s like I found family here in this strange land,” Jahanara says.

      The younger woman now cleans four houses a day, and cooks dinner for a fifth, while the older woman works as a masseuse, giving traditional oil massages to mothers and babies.

      Jahanara’s experience in #Abu_Dhabi was not the first time she had been exploited as a domestic worker in the Gulf. She originally left Bangladesh six years ago, and has been home only once since then, when she ran away from abusive employers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the police deported her. She had no choice – under the much-criticized kafala system for legally employing migrant workers, a domestic worker is attached to a particular household that sponsors their visa. Employers often keep the worker’s passport to prevent their leaving, although this is illegal in most Gulf countries today.

      Under kafala, quitting a bad boss means losing your passport and vital work visa, and potentially being arrested or deported. This is why, the second time, Jahanara escaped in the dead of night. Now, she works outside official channels.

      “You earn at least three times more if you’re ‘khalli walli,’” Vijaya says, using a colloquial Arabic term for undocumented or freelance migrant workers. The name loosely translates as “take it or leave it.”

      “You get to sleep in your own house, you get paid on time and if your employer misbehaves, you can find a new one,” she says.

      “The Gulf needs us, but like a bad husband, it also exploits us.”

      Ever year, driven by poverty, family pressure, conflict or natural disasters back home, millions of women, mainly from developing countries, get on flights to the Gulf with their fingers crossed that they won’t be abused when they get there.

      It’s a dangerous trade-off, but one that can work out for some. When Jahanara and Vijaya describe their lives, the two women repeatedly weigh the possibility of financial empowerment against inadequate wages, routine abuse and vulnerability.

      By working for 23 years in Dubai and Muscat in Oman, Vijaya has funded the education of her three children, the construction of a house for her son in a Mumbai slum and the weddings of two daughters. She is overworked and underpaid, but she says that’s “normal.” As she sees it, it’s all part of working on the margins of one of the world’s most successful economies.

      “The Gulf needs us,” Vijaya says. “But like a bad husband, it also exploits us.”

      The International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that there are 11.5 million migrant domestic workers around the world – 73 percent of them are women. In 2016, there were 3.77 million domestic workers in Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

      In a single household in these states, it’s common to find several domestic workers employed to do everything from cleaning and cooking, to guarding the home and tutoring the children.

      Unlike other sectors, the demand for domestic workers has been resilient to economic downturns. Estimated to be one of the world’s largest employers of domestic workers, Saudi Arabia hosts around 2.42 million. The majority of these workers (733,000) entered the country between 2016 and 2017, during its fiscal deficit. In 2017, domestic workers comprised a full 22 percent of Kuwait’s working age population. Oman has seen a threefold explosion in its domestic work sector since 2008. Overall, the GCC’s migrant domestic work sector has been growing at an annual average of 8.7 percent for the past decade.

      That growth is partly fueled by the increasing numbers of women entering the workforce. The percentage of Saudi Arabia’s adult female population in the formal labor force has risen from 18 percent to 22 percent over the past decade. In Qatar, the figure has jumped from 49 percent to 58 percent. And as more women go to work, there’s a growing need for others to take over the child and elderly care in their households. Experts call this transfer of care work from unpaid family members to paid workers from other countries the “global care chain.”

      A 2017 report, which examined the effect of changing demographics in the Gulf, found that dramatically decreased fertility – thanks to improved female education and later marriages – and greater numbers of the dependent elderly have resulted in an “increased trend for labour participation of ‘traditional’ informal care givers (usually women).”

      The enduring use of migrant domestic workers in the region is also a result of local traditions. For example, while Saudi Arabia was still the only country in the world that banned women from driving, there was a consistent need for male personal drivers, many coming from abroad. The ban was lifted in June 2018, but the demand for drivers is still high because many women don’t yet have licenses.

      “Without domestic workers, societies could not function here,” says Mohammed Abu Baker, a lawyer in Abu Dhabi and a UAE national. “I was brought up by many Indian nannies, at a time when Indians were our primary migrants. Now, I have a Pakistani driver, an Indonesian cook, an Indian cleaner, a Filipino home nurse and a Sri Lankan nanny. None of them speak Arabic, and they can hardly speak to each other, but they run my household like a well-oiled machine.”

      There is also demand from expatriate families, with dual wage earners looking for professional cleaning services, part-time cooks and full-time childcare workers.

      “When I came from Seattle with my husband, we were determined not to hire servants,” says Laura, a 35-year-old teacher in an American primary school in Abu Dhabi. “But after we got pregnant, and I got my teaching job, we had to get full-time help.”

      “My American guilt about hiring house help disappeared in months!” she says, as her Sri Lankan cook Frida quietly passes around home-baked cookies. “It is impossible to imagine these conveniences back home, at this price.”

      Laura says she pays minimum wage, and funds Frida’s medical insurance – “all as per law.” But she also knows that conveniences for women like her often come at a cost paid by women like Frida. As part of her local church’s “good Samaritan group” – as social workers must call themselves to avoid government scrutiny – Laura has helped fundraise medical and legal expenses for at least 40 abused migrant workers over the past two years.

      Living isolated in a house with limited mobility and no community, many domestic workers, especially women, are vulnerable to abuse. Afraid to lose their right to work, employees can endure a lot before running away, including serious sexual assault. Legal provisions do exist – in many countries, workers can file a criminal complaint against their employers, or approach labor courts for help. But often they are unaware of, or unable to access, the existing labor protections and resources.

      “I never believed the horror stories before, but when you meet woman after woman with bruises or unpaid wages, you start understanding that the same system that makes my life easier is actually broken,” Laura says.

      In 2007, Jayatri* made one of the hardest decisions of her life. She left her two young children at home in Sri Lanka, while the country was at war, to be with another family in Saudi Arabia.

      It was near the end of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and 22-year-old Jayatri had been struggling to support her family since her husband’s death in the war two years earlier. The 26-year conflict claimed the lives of tens of thousands of fathers, husbands, sons and brothers, forcing many Tamil women to take on the role of sole breadwinner for their families. But there are few job opportunities for women in a culture that still largely believes their place is in the home. Women who are single or widowed already face stigma, which only gets worse if they also try to find paying work in Sri Lanka.

      S. Senthurajah, executive director of SOND, an organization that raises awareness about safe migration, says that as a result, an increasing number of women are migrating from Sri Lanka to the Gulf. More than 160,000 Sri Lankan women leave home annually to work in other countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Malaysia, according to the International Organization for Migration.

      Senthurajah says recruitment agencies specifically target vulnerable female heads of households: widows, single and divorced women and women whose husbands are disabled or otherwise unable to work to support the family. Women like Jayatri.

      When a local recruitment agency approached her and offered her a job as a domestic worker in the Gulf, it was an opportunity she felt she couldn’t turn down. She traveled from Vavuniya, a town in the island’s north – which was then under the control of Tamil Tiger rebels – to Colombo, to undergo a few weeks of housekeeping training.

      She left her young children, a boy and a girl, with her mother. When she eventually arrived in Saudi Arabia, her passport was taken by the local recruitment agency and she was driven to her new home where there were 15 children to look after. From the start, she was abused.

      “I spent five months in that house being tortured, hit and with no proper food and no salary. I worked from 5 a.m. to midnight every day,” she says, not wanting to divulge any more details about how she was treated.

      “I just wanted to go home.”

      Jayatri complained repeatedly to the recruitment agency, who insisted that she’d signed a contract for two years and that there was no way out. She was eventually transferred to another home, but the situation there was just as bad: She worked 18 hours a day and was abused, again.

      “It was like jail,” she says.

      “I spent five months in that house being tortured, hit and with no proper food and no salary. I worked from 5 a.m. to midnight every day.”

      In 2009, Jayatri arrived back in northern Sri Lanka with nothing to show for what she had endured in Saudi Arabia. She was never paid for either job. She now works as a housemaid in Vavuniya earning $60 per month. It’s not enough.

      “This is the only opportunity I have,” she says. “There’s no support. There are so many difficulties here.”

      Jayatri’s traumatic time in Saudi Arabia is one of many stories of abuse that have come out of the country in recent years. While there are no reliable statistics on the number of migrant domestic workers who suffer abuse at the hands of their employers, Human Rights Watch says that each year the Saudi Ministry of Social Affairs and the embassies of source countries shelter thousands of domestic workers with complaints against their employers or recruiters.

      Excessive workload and unpaid wages are the most common complaints. But employers largely act with impunity, Senthurajah says.

      “It’s like a human slave sale,” Ravindra De Silva, cofounder of AFRIEL, an organization that works with returnee migrant workers in northern Sri Lanka, tells News Deeply.

      “Recruitment agencies have agents in different regions of the country and through those agents, they collect women as a group and send them. The agents know which families [to] pick easily – widows and those with financial difficulties,” he says.

      In 2016, a man turned up at Meera’s* mud-brick home on the outskirts of Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, offering her a job in the Gulf.

      “They told me I could earn well if I went abroad and that they could help me to look after my family,” she says.

      Within a few months of arriving in Saudi Arabia, Meera, 42, couldn’t keep up with the long hours and strenuous housework. She cooked and cleaned for 12 family members and rarely got a break.

      Her employer then became abusive.

      “He started beating me and put acid in my eyes,” she says. He also sexually assaulted her.

      But she endured the attacks and mistreatment, holding on to the hope of making enough money to secure her family’s future. After eight months, she went back home. She was never paid.

      Now Meera makes ends meet by working as a day laborer. “The agency keeps coming back, telling me how poor we are and that I should go back [to Saudi Arabia] for my children,” she says.

      “I’ll never go back again. I got nothing from it, [except] now I can’t see properly because of the acid in my eyes.”

      While thousands of women travel to a foreign country for work and end up exploited and abused, there are also those who make the journey and find what they were looking for: opportunity and self-reliance. Every day, more than 1,500 Nepalis leave the country for employment abroad, primarily in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, India and Malaysia. Of the estimated 2.5 million Nepalis working overseas, about 11 percent are female.

      Many women from South Asian countries who work in the Gulf send remittances home that are used to improve their family’s socio-economic status, covering the cost of education, health care, food and housing. In addition to financial remittances, the social remittances of female migrants in terms of skills, attitudes, ideas and knowledge can also have wide-ranging benefits, including contributing to economic development and gender equality back home.

      Kunan Gurung, project coordinator at Pourakhi Nepal, an organization focused on supporting female returnee migrants, says those who have “successful” migration journeys are often able to use their experiences abroad to challenge gender norms.

      “Our society is patriarchal and male-dominated, but the boundaries expand for women who return from the Gulf successfully because they have money and thus some power,” he says.

      “The women have left their village, taken a plane and have lived in the developed world. Such experiences leave them feeling empowered.”

      Gurung says many returning migrant workers invest their savings in their own businesses, from tailoring to chicken farms. But it can be difficult, because women often find that the skills they earned while working abroad can’t help them make money back home. To counter this, Pourakhi trains women in entrepreneurship to not only try to limit re-migration and keep families together but also to ensure women are equipped with tangible skills in the context of life in Nepal.

      But for the women in Nepal who, like Jayatri in Sri Lanka, return without having earned any money, deep-rooted stigma can block their chances to work and separate them from their families. Women who come home with nothing are looked at with suspicion and accused of being sexually active, Gurung says.

      “The reality is that women are not looked after in the Gulf, in most cases,” he says.

      In Kathmandu, Pourakhi runs an emergency shelter for returning female migrants. Every evening, staff wait at Kathmandu airport for flights landing from the Gulf. They approach returning migrants – women who stand out because of their conservative clothes and “the look on their faces” – and offer shelter, food and support.

      Of the 2,000 women they have housed over the last nine years, 42 have returned pregnant and 21 with children.

      “There are so many problems returnee migrants face. Most women don’t have contact with their families because their employer didn’t pay, or they have health issues or they’re pregnant,” says Krishna Gurung (no relation to Kunan), Pourakhi’s shelter manager.

      “They don’t reintegrate with their families. Their families don’t accept them.” Which could be the biggest tragedy of all. Because the chance to make life better for their families is what drives so many women to leave home in the first place.

      Realizing how crucial their workers are to the Gulf economies, major labor-sending countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, India and the Philippines have been using both pressure and dialogue to improve conditions for their citizens.

      Over recent years, they have instituted a wide array of bans and restrictions, often linked to particularly horrifying cases of abuse. Nepal has banned women from working in the Gulf in 2016; the same year, India disallowed women under 30 from migrating to the Gulf. In 2013, Sri Lanka temporarily banned women from leaving the country for domestic work, citing abuse abroad and neglected families at home, and now requires a family background report before women can travel.

      The most high-profile diplomatic dispute over domestic workers unfolded between the Philippines and Kuwait this year. In January, the Philippines banned workers from going to Kuwait, and made the ban “permanent” in February after a 29-year-old Filipino maid, Joanna Demafelis, was found dead in a freezer in her employers’ abandoned apartment in Kuwait City.

      “Bans provide some political leverage for the sending country.”

      At the time, the Philippines’ firebrand president, Rodrigo Duterte, said he would “sell my soul to the devil” to get his citizens home from Kuwait to live comfortably back home. Thousands of Filipino citizens were repatriated through a voluntary return scheme in the first half of 2018, while Kuwait made overtures to Ethiopia to recruit more maids to replace the lost labor force. Duterte’s ban was eventually lifted in May, after Kuwait agreed to reform its migrant work sector, ending the seizure of passports and phones, and instituting a 24-hour hotline for abused workers.

      It’s well established that bans do not stop women from traveling to the Gulf to become domestic workers. Bandana Pattanaik, the international coordinator of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, has criticized bans as being “patriarchal, limiting to female agency and also ending up encouraging illegal human smuggling.”

      But others point out that the international pressure generated by travel bans has had some effect, as in the case with the Philippines and Kuwait. “Bans provide some political leverage for the sending country,” says Kathmandu-based researcher Upasana Khadka. “But bans do not work as permanent solutions.”
      ATTEMPTS AT REFORM

      Today, after decades of criticism and campaigning around labor rights violations, the Gulf is seeing a slow shift toward building better policies for domestic workers.

      “In the past five years, five of the six GCC countries have started to adopt laws for the protection of migrant domestic workers for the very first time,” says Rothna Begum, women’s rights researcher for Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch.

      “The GCC countries have long cultivated the image of being luxurious economies meant for the good life,” Begum says. “This image is hard to maintain as labor exploitation comes to light. So, while they try to shut the reporting down, they have also been forced to address some of the issues raised by their critics.”

      Legal and institutional reforms have been announced in the domestic work sector in all GCC countries except Oman. These regulate and standardize contracts, mandate better living conditions, formalize recruitment, and plan rehabilitation and legal redress for abused workers.

      This gradual reform is due to international pressure and monitoring by human rights groups and international worker unions. After the 2014 crash in the oil economy, the sudden need for foreign investment exposed the GCC and the multinational companies doing business there to more global scrutiny.

      Countries in the Gulf are also hoping that the new national policies will attract more professional and skilled home workers. “Domestic work is a corrupt, messy sector. The host countries are trying to make it more professional,” says M. Bheem Reddy, vice president of the Hyderabad-based Migrant Rights Council, which engages with women workers from the southern districts of India.

      Many of the Gulf states are moving toward nationalization – creating more space for their own citizens in the private sector – this means they also want to regulate one of the fastest growing job sectors in the region. “This starts with dignity and proper pay for the existing migrant workers,” Reddy says.

      There have been attempts to develop a regional standard for domestic labor rights, with little success. In 2011, the ILO set standards on decent work and minimum protection through the landmark Domestic Workers Convention. All the GCC countries adopted the Convention, but none have ratified it, which means the rules are not binding.

      Instead, each Gulf country has taken its own steps to try to protect household workers who come from abroad.

      After reports of forced labor in the lead-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar faced a formal inquiry by the ILO if it didn’t put in place migrant labor protections. Under that pressure, in 2017, the country passed a law on domestic work. The law stipulates free health care, a regular monthly salary, maximum 10-hour work days, and three weeks’ severance pay. Later, it set a temporary minimum wage for migrant workers, at $200 a month.

      The UAE’s new reforms are motivated by the Gulf crisis – which has seen Qatar blockaded by its neighbors – as well as a desire to be seen as one of the more progressive GCC countries. The UAE had a draft law on domestic work since 2012, but only passed it in 2017, after Kuwait published its own law. The royal decree gives household workers a regular weekly day off, daily rest of at least 12 hours, access to a mobile phone, 30 days paid annual leave and the right to retain personal documents like passports. Most importantly, it has moved domestic work from the purview of the interior ministry to the labor ministry – a long-standing demand from rights advocates.

      The UAE has also become the first Gulf country to allow inspectors access to a household after securing a warrant from the prosecutor. This process would be triggered by a worker’s distress call or complaint, but it’s unclear if regular state inspections will also occur. Before this law, says Begum, the biggest obstacle to enforcing labor protection in domestic work was the inability for authorities to monitor the workspace of a cleaner or cook, because it is a private home, unlike a hotel or a construction site.

      The UAE has not followed Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in stipulating a minimum wage for domestic workers. But it has issued licenses for 40 Tadbeer Service Centers, which will replace recruitment agencies by the end of the year. Employers in the UAE will have to submit their requests for workers through these centers, which are run by private licensed agents but supervised by the Ministry of Human Resources. Each of the centers has accommodation for workers and can also sponsor their visas, freeing them up to take on part-time jobs while also catering to growing demand from UAE nationals and expats for legal part-timers.

      “You focus on the success stories you hear, and hope you’ll have that luck.”

      B. L. Surendranath, general secretary of the Immigration Protection Center in Hyderabad, India, visited some of these centers in Dubai earlier this year, on the invitation of the UAE human resources ministry. “I was pleasantly surprised at the well-thought-out ideas at the model Tadbeer Center,” he says. “Half the conflicts [between employer and worker] are because of miscommunication, which the center will sort out through conflict resolution counselors.”

      Saudi Arabia passed a labor law in 2015, but it didn’t extend to domestic work. Now, as unemployment among its nationals touches a high of 12.8 percent, its efforts to create more jobs include regulating the migrant workforce. The Saudi government has launched an electronic platform called Musaned to directly hire migrant domestic workers, cutting out recruitment agencies altogether. Women migrant workers will soon live in dormitories and hostels run by labor supply agencies, not the homes of their employers. The labor ministry has also launched a multi-language hotline for domestic workers to lodge complaints.

      Dhaka-based migrant rights activist Shakirul Islam, from Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme, welcomes these changes, but remains circumspect. “Most women who return to Bangladesh from Saudi [Arabia] say that the revised laws have no impact on their lives,” he says. “My understanding is that the employers are not aware of the law on the one hand, and on the other, do not care about it.”

      Migrant rights activists, ILO officials, the governments of source countries and workers themselves are cautiously optimistic about the progressive direction of reforms in the Gulf. “But it is clear that none of the laws penalize employers of domestic workers for labor rights violations,” says Islam.

      Rights activists and reports from the ILO, U.N. and migrants’ rights forums have for decades repeated that full protection of domestic workers is impossible as long as GCC countries continue to have some form of the kafala sponsorship system.

      Saudi Arabia continues to require workers to secure an exit permit from their employers if they want to leave the country, while Qatar’s 2015 law to replace the kafala sponsorship system does not extend to domestic workers. Reddy of the Migrant Rights Council says the UAE’s attempt to tackle kafala by allowing Tadbeer Center agents to sponsor visas does not make agents accountable if they repeatedly send different workers to the same abusive employer.

      For now, it seems the women working on the margins of some of the richest economies in the world will remain vulnerable to abuse and exploitation from their employers. And as long as opportunities exist for them in the Gulf that they can’t find at home, thousands will come to fulfil the demand for domestic and care work, knowing they could be risking everything for little or no return.

      Jahanara says the only thing for women in her position to do is to take the chance and hope for the best.

      “You focus on the success stories you hear, and hope you’ll have that luck.”


      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2018/08/31/will-migrant-domestic-workers-in-the-gulf-ever-be-safe-from-abuse-2

      #travail_domestique #migrations #pays_du_golfe

  • Germany downplays report of rift with NATO over Breedlove comments | Reuters
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/07/us-ukraine-crisis-germany-breedlove-idUSKBN0M30LB20150307

    German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier downplayed a magazine report on Saturday of tensions with NATO over hawkish comments about Ukraine made by the Western alliance’s supreme allied commander.

    Der Spiegel news magazine said an official in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices had complained of Air Force General Philip Breedlove’s “dangerous propaganda” over Ukraine and that Steinmeier had talked to the NATO General Secretary about him.

    It’s true that I asked in two instances, in which the information we had from our sources was not entirely consistent with the information that came from the United States or NATO,” Steinmeier said at a European Union foreign ministers meeting.

    But I also say that we have no interest in any dispute emerging from this,” Steinmeier said at the meeting in Riga. “We have to see that we stay closely together, also in the question of assessment of risk, and not differ in our advice.

    Der Spiegel said German government officials were surprised when Breedlove said on Feb. 25 that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine. “What is clear is that right now it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day,” Breedlove said in Washington.

    German officials said information from their BND intelligence agency and other sources was that a ceasefire agreed in Minsk was shaky but holding. The battles between the Ukraine army and pro-Russian separatists had mostly halted and heavy weapons were being withdrawn.

    When asked about the Der Spiegel report, Breedlove said in a statement: "It is my responsibility as the commander of NATO’s military forces to deliver clear assessments regarding potential threats in our periphery.

    Sometimes realities on the ground are unwelcome and sobering. But public communication has been critical during the Ukraine crisis, because Russia has embarked on a deliberate strategy to confuse using disinformation and propaganda.

    Bon, ce que dit l’ennemi c’est de la #propagande (Breedlove), mais si, maintenant, ce que dit l’allié c’est aussi de la propagande (cabinet de Merkel), ça va devenir difficile à suivre…

  • À Donetsk, il n’y a pas que des mines et de la métallurgie : la bière, don de Staline aux travailleurs…

    The spirit of freedom - #Sarmat
    http://www.manufacturing-journal.net/index.php/articles/foodabeverage/350-sarmat

    The construction of brewery lasted from 1952 to 1962. The history of brewery started in 1951, when Stalin, the General Secretary of the USSR, visited Donetsk mines. While encouraging miners to achieve better working results to help the country rebuild the economy destroyed by the war, Iosif Stalin asked the miners:
    What would you like?”.
    One braver worker dared to answer:
    We’d like...beer”.
    Immediately in 1951 the decision about constructing the brewery in Donetsk was made. Next year the project was prepared and the construction began. At that time the brewery was called Donetsk Brewery Company and was equipped with state-of-the-art machines, being the biggest brewery in Ukraine. Production capacity allowed production of 7 mln liters of beer. Traditional well known types of beer were produced, like: Zhiguli, Ryzke, Moskovskoe, Ukrainskoe. The initial enterprise employed 1100 people. Later after modernization the number of personnel was reduced to 700, and then to 540 employees. The high quality of Donetsk beer became popular within a short period of time. The main reason for that was that beer is traditionally one of the favourite drinks in Donbass region of Ukraine, where a lot of coal mines are concentrated. Miners and metallurgists lose a lot of liquid, while working. Therefore, they should frequently rehydrate their bodies with water containing essential minerals and salts. Beer perfectly suits this purpose, as it gives energy, releases stress and replaces both the lost liquid and minerals.

    La marque phare est Sarmat, tous les sites de production sont dans l’est de l’Ukraine (et la bière sans alcool en Crimée)

    In 2001 the brewery capacity reached 14 mln liters per year. Currently Sarmat’s market share in Ukraine is 4%. On October 27, 2001 Donetsk Brewery changed its name to CJSC Sarmat. This year became one of the most important for the company – it ended the old era and started an absolutely new chapter in the brewery’s history. CJSC Sarmat united the assets of 5 breweries: Lugansk Brewery, Non-alcoholic beer factory Krym, Dnepropetrovsk brewery Dnipro, company Poltavpivo, and Donetsk Brewery. Until 2008 the owner of 99% of Sarmat shares was the management company System Capital Management. On July 4, 2008 SABMiller plc – the world’s second largest brewing company – acquired 99.84% of the shares of CJSC Sarmat.

    En 2011, SABMiller a apporté ses filiales russe et ukrainienne au turc Efes (filiale du groupe Anadolu)

  • #Egypt expels Turkish ambassador over critical remarks by PM #erdogan
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/egypt-expels-turkish-ambassador-over-critical-remarks-pm-erdogan

    A file photo taken on June 1, 2010, shows Turkish ambassador to Egypt Huseyin Avni Botsali speaking during a meeting with General Secretary Amr Mussa (not seen) and other Arab Ambassadors for the Arab League at the headquarters in Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Khaled Desouki)

    Egypt decided Saturday to expel Turkish Ambassador Huseyin Avni Botsali after remarks made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Cairo deemed as being “provocative,” the foreign ministry said. Ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said Cairo took three decisions on Saturday concerning its diplomatic ties with Ankara. "First to expel the Turkish ambassador and downgrade our ties to the level of charge d’affaires, second to declare the Turkish ambassador persona non grata and third we will not (...)

    #Top_News #turkey

  • Speech by Shaykh Mouaz Al-Khatib, President of the Syrian National Coalition, directed to Mr. Hassan Nasrallah, General Secretary of Hezbollah
    https://www.facebook.com/ahmad.mouaz.alkhatib.alhasani/posts/637999119560485%5C

    I will say to you with all honesty: some of the stances that are being taken by some your officials will make part of your ideology responsible for a historical disorder, for moral bankruptcy, and some of the stances of some members of your party has caused a tidal wave of atheism that has began to invade generations: those stances, in my opinion, cannot be affiliated in any way to the prophet’s household (peace be upon them).

    The consciences of the people can no longer go on, and the invitation by the two respected scholars, Al Rifai and Al Aseer, (towards defending the Syrian people) was nothing but a response to the chilling events that are occurring from the butchering of civilians and the gushing of blood, to the screams of the women in the prisons.

    Je cite ce passage que je trouve quelque peu étonnant (quelqu’un a la version originale, il accuse vraiment Nasrallah de provoquer l’athéisme ?). Sinon, Salem Raféi et Ahmad el-Assir sont deux sheikhs salafistes, le premier de Tripoli, et le second est le dangereux escroc de Saïda ; « respected scholars » est certainement discutable dans le paysage religieux libanais.

  • Mikhail Gorbachev tells Vladimir Putin ’not to be afraid of his own people’ - Telegraph
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9915008/Mikhail-Gorbachev-tells-Vladimir-Putin-not-to-be-afraid-of-his-own-peop

    Mr Gorbachev, 82, condemned a raft of recent Kremlin-backed laws as “an attack on the rights of citizens” and said that Mr Putin’s inner circle was full of “thieves and corrupt officials”.
    The former Soviet general secretary - whose policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) unleashed the civil freedoms that contributed to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 - expressed “astonishment” at the scale of controversial legislation introduced in Russia since Mr Putin returned to the presidency in May.
    The new laws include increased fines for unsanctioned demonstrations, a broadened definition of treason, the re-criminalisation of libel and measures to force foreign-funded non-governmental organisations to label themselves as “foreign agents”.

    En fait, c’est un remerciement…
    http://rbth.ru/news/2013/03/02/putin_wishes_gorbachev_happy_birthday_23442.html

    Putin wishes Gorbachev happy birthday, 13:24 March 2, 2013 Interfax

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a greeting message to ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to wish him a happy birthday, the Kremlin press service reported on Saturday.
    “Your fruitful social and research activities and your active involvement in essential charity and educational projects have rightfully won you deep respect. It is important that you are attaching unyielding significance to the implementation of significant initiatives in the international cooperation area and are seeking to promote Russia’s authority in the world by your multifaceted work,” Putin said in his greeting message to Gorbachev.

  • New Chinese leader signals further pro-market restructuring - World Socialist Web Site

    Donc, la Chine va devenir encore plus capitaliste !

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/18/tour
    –d18.html
    By John Chan
    18 December 2012

    The new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary, Xi Jinping, conducted a “southern tour” from December 7 to 11. It was designed to send an unequivocal message that his leadership will impose another round of pro-market restructuring, further opening up the Chinese economy to foreign capital. The tour followed the recent 18th CCP congress, which installed Xi as party leader and adopted an economic agenda in line with the China 2030 report, jointly published with the World Bank in February.

    Xi sought to replicate the “southern tour” of CCP leader Deng Xiaoping in January-February 1992, just weeks after the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. Deng’s tour greatly accelerated the processes of capitalist restoration that he had begun in 1978. With the backing of the military, Deng ended the protracted internal debates that had followed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown, and opened up all of China as a cheap labour platform for global corporations. As investment flooded in, tens of millions of workers were laid off as state enterprises were restructured into joint-stock companies or sold to private owners.

  • STL: Defense Lawyer Searches for his Defendants
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/stl-defense-lawyer-searches-his-defendants

    Roux wants us to believe that the United Nations General Secretary (UNSG) picked the judges for the tribunal without political pressure. In reality, STL judges were nominated by their respective countries.

    He believes it to be a coincidence that the majority of those controlling the court’s proceedings come from six countries that consider Hezbollah to be a terrorist organisation.

    The president of STL is from New Zealand. Its current and former prosecutors are from Canada. The head of the investigation division at the prosecutor’s office is British, while his predecessor was Australian. The registrar is Dutch, who follows a US citizen and a British citizen before that.

    The headquarters of STL is in the only European country which classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

    #TSL

  • General Strike total success : AIBEA
    http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20120228/1936676.html

    he National General Strike at the joint call of all the Central Trade Unions today has received an unprecedented response from all sections of workers and nearly ten crore of workers have taken part and made a historic success, All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) claimed today. Informing this to UNI, AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatachalam said the strike was against the increasing attacks on workers and the globalization and liberalization policies of the UPA Government at the Centre have added to the miseries of the common people and workers. He said Exploitation of the workers is on the increase.