It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Colombian President Duque is Rejected At The Madrid Book Fair
Citizens protest against Ivan Duque's presence in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @La_Directa
Published 17 September 2021
He ratified his alliance with the U.S. by requesting the Biden administration not to relax the blockade against the Bolivarian revolution.
On Thursday, about 30 bookstores rejected the presence of President Ivan Duque in Spain arguing that Colombian writers who denounced State terrorism in their country have been banned from the Madrid book fair, where the far-right politician was expected to take part.
That criticism, however, was not an isolated act. During the last few days, hundreds of citizens have held rallies in Madrid to denounce the violation of human rights and other crimes committed by the Duque administration. As a result of this environment, the Colombian president announced that he would not present his autobiographical book at the book fair.
"We come to Spain exclusively to strengthen cooperation in tourism, trade, and security," the right-wing politician said to justify his decision, implying that the Madrid fair no longer guaranteed the existence of "political neutrality."
"Neutral literature does not exist," the Spanish writers recalled, adding that the Colombian army, police, and paramilitary groups left 78 people dead, 800 citizens injured, and 91 people missing during the latest protests.
Despite this, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved to grant Duque the "Order of Isabella the Catholic," one of the highest recognitions that this country grants to foreigners.
During his official visit, the Colombian president took the opportunity to ratify his alliance with the United States by requesting the Biden administration not to relax the blockade against the Bolivarian revolution.
"A presidential election is needed as soon as possible in Venezuela," Duque said, thus evidencing his role within the U.S. strategy aimed at pressing for the departure of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Excessive Working Hours Kill Nearly 2 Million People Each Year A new WHO and ILO joint report finds that almost 2 million people die from work-related causes each year. | Photo: Twitter/@ilo
Published 17 September 2021
Occupational diseases and accidents cause the death of 1.9 million people every year, and in more than a third of the cases the death is linked to long working hours, warns a joint study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The study, the first of its kind by the two organizations, points to exposure to air pollution as another important risk factor, as it is linked to 450,000 deaths annually.
The study, which uses data prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (from up to 2016), takes into account 19 occupational risk factors, including exposure to asbestos (linked to more than 200,000 deaths each year) and to a lesser extent to substances such as cadmium, arsenic, beryllium, nickel, silica, or formaldehydes.
According to the WHO and ILO, some 450,000 of these annual deaths are caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 400,000 from strokes, 360,000 due to trauma and 350,000 by ischemic heart disease (narrowing of the coronary arteries).
The study concludes that work-related deaths linked to heart disease increased by 41% between 2000 and 2016, while those linked to stroke grew by 19% over the same period.
The report warns that work-related illnesses and injuries "overburden health systems, reduce productivity, and can have a catastrophic impact on household incomes."
It therefore calls for action to ensure safer and healthier workplaces by combating problems such as excessively long working hours and air pollution in these environments.
Bukele Rules Out Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage in El Salvador
The president's announcement on same-sex marriage and abortion was swiftly flagged by his critics. | Photo: Twitter/@decryptmedia
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on Friday a series of constitutional reforms the government will send soon to Congress will not contain decriminalization of abortion, legalization of same-sex marriage or steps to permit euthanasia.
The package of planned measures Bukele received this week from Vice President Felix Ulloa includes the extension and possible early termination of the presidential term as well as the creation of a new body to replace the electoral tribunal.
"I have decided, to dispel ANY DOUBT, NOT TO PROPOSE ANY KIND OF REFORM TO ANY ITEMS RELATED TO the RIGHT TO LIFE (from the moment of conception), to marriage (keeping only the original design, A MAN AND A WOMAN) or to euthanasia," Bukele wrote on his Facebook account, capitalizing certain parts.
The El Salvador president announced he plans to study the proposals, drawn up at Bukele's request by Ulloa with a team of lawyers in 2020 to overhaul human rights legislation, as well as the political and economic system, and the government's judicial structure.
El Salvador is known for having some of the strictest anti-abortion laws throughout the Americas.
"President @nayibbukele ruled out that he will propose any constitutional reform that has to do with abortion, euthanasia or same-sex marriage. The president made his statement on his Facebook wall after receiving a document from the Ad-Hoc commission."
Critics swiftly pounced on the president's announcement regarding same-sex marriage and abortion.
Highlighting the 40-year-old president's words, the executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said, for example, on Twitter: "Just in case any dupe still thought Bukele was a modern leader..."
Bukele made no mention of his plan to extend the presidential term from five to six years, nor of other contentious measures. He also failed to say when they would be sent to Congress, which his party and its allies control.
The Great Game of Smashing Nations
John Pilger: Courtesy The Consortium News
More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the U.S., Britain and their allies” destroyed.
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shah. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported TheNew York Times, were surprised to find that nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup.” TheWall Street Journal reported that 150,000 persons … marched to honor the new flag … the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
TheWashington Post reported that Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned.” Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a program of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
Under the monarchy, life expectancy was 35; 1-in-3 children died in infancy. Ninety percent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants.
Women at university in Afghanistan in the 1970s. (Amnesty International U.K.)
Backed by the West
So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:
Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”
For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy Soviet backed,” as the American and British press claimed at the time.
Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1977. (Library of Congress)
President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.
On July 3, 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorized a $500 million covert action” program to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.
The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:
Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”
Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilize and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.
‘Larger Interests’
In 1985, Afghan mujahideen cross into Afghanistan from a border region of Pakistan. (Erwin Franzen, CC BY-SA 1.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In August 1979, the U.S. embassy in Kabul reported that the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
Read again the words above I have italicized. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The U.S. was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.
Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
The mujahedin were dominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorized rural women. Later, in the early 1990s the Taliban would emerge, an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.
In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. Marina” of RAWA told me, We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”
April 28, 1998: Demonstration of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan in Peshawar, Pakistan, to condemn the sixth anniversary of swarming of fundamentalists into Kabul.” (RAWA, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In 1992, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The president, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.
The Game
I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”
The viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.
This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
On Afghanistan, he added this: We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”
July 17, 2019: Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, with U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. (State Department)
Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering …
Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery we” in the West rarely recognize as such.
Orifa
In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.
Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.
In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.
An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped an Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.
Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with 15 notes: a total of $15. Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a U.S. oil company consortium.
In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the U.S. and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s vice president.
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created a few stirred up Muslims”.
Do you have any regrets?” I asked.
Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”
When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of our protection,” isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?
Posted on August 27th, 2021
John Pilger’s 2003 film, Breaking the Silence, about the war on terror” is available to view here.
Cuba Thanks Mexico's Solidarity Amid US Blockade Strengthening
Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel (L) and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (R), Sept. 16, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @UpdateCuba
Published 17 September 2021
The Trump administration implemented over 240 economic sanctions against Cuba, including the suspension of non-family remittances.
During the celebrations of the Mexican independence on Thursday, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel thanked President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) for calling the U.S. to lift its economic blockade against Cuba.
"President AMLO, we will always remember your solidarity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the strengthening of the blockade. Among all the brother countries that our America gave us, Mexico is one of the dearests ones to Cuba,” Diaz-Canel stated.
The Donald Trump administration implemented over 240 economic sanctions against Cuba, including the suspension of non-family remittances, a ban on the import of products from any country containing over 10 percent of U.S. components, and the criminalization of ships and insurance companies linked to the transportation of fuels to this Caribbean nation.
These measures caused economic losses valued at US$20 billion to Cuba, causing an impact on the welfare of the population, who has also suffered the consequences of the economic recession prompted by the pandemic.
To counteract the effects of the blockade, Mexico sent over 100,000 barrels of diesel, oxygen tanks, buckets, syringes, and food to supply Cuban hospitals.
"The Cuban people only want to live in peace, and we accompany them in this battle," Miguel Diaz Reynoso, the Mexican ambassador to Cuba, stated and recalled with gratitude the help given by hundreds of Cuban doctors in the most critical stage of the pandemic.
During his speech to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in July, AMLO proposed to declare Cuba a "world heritage" for resisting against the United States, an issue on which he insisted on Thursday.
"One country may or may not agree with the Cuban Revolution or its government, but having resisted 62 years without submission is an undeniable historical feat," AMLO said and urged the U.S. to separate politics from humanitarian issues.
Draft family code brings Cuba closer to same-sex marriage equality
September 17, 2021
BY C.J. ATKINS People carry a banner with a message that reads in Spanish: "I am part of the revolution, I also am Fidel¨ during the annual LGBTQ pride parade in Havana, May 12, 2018. | Desmond Boylan / AP
Equality was a big winner in Cuba Wednesday when a new draft of the country’s family code was released that proposes allowing same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt children.
That change is one among many in a 480-article document being put forward for consideration by Cuba’s legislature and eventually the whole people. It would replace a 1975 family code that Cuban legal experts and sociologists say is now out-of-date because family structures and society have changed.
Article 61 of the preliminary draft of the updated family code defines marriage as a “union of two people with legal aptitude who voluntarily agree to enter into it in order to build a life together based on affection and love.” The 1975 code had defined it as “the voluntarily established union between a man and a woman.”
The drafting of a new family code is required by Cuba’s adoption of a new constitution in 2019. That document enshrined one of the most expansive discrimination protection articles of any constitution in the world. It declared, in its Article 42:
“All people are equal before the law, receive the same protection and treatment from the authorities, and enjoy the same rights, liberties, and opportunities, without any discrimination for reasons of sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ethnic origin, skin color, religious belief, disability, national or territorial origin, or any other personal condition or circumstance that implies a distinction injurious to human dignity.”
The inequality of marriage rights is just one aspect of the old family code that is now invalidated by the new constitution. Another is the unequal age of consent to enter into a marriage for men and women; the 1975 code allowed for the possibility of women to marry at 14 and men at 16. That will change in the replacement code.
If the new family code becomes law, it will mark a milestone achievement for the LGBTQ community in Cuba—not just for the marriage rights it will extend to couples who want them, but also because it symbolizes how far the Cuban Revolution has come in its treatment and inclusion of LGBTQ Cubans.
Long before the socialist government came to power, homophobia and heterosexism were widespread in Cuba—as in most societies. They, unfortunately, carried over into revolutionary Cuba.
“The social pathological character of homosexual deviations” was targeted for elimination by the first National Congress on Education and Culture in 1971. The meeting, attended by Fidel Castro, declared that “all manifestations of homosexual deviations are to be firmly rejected and prevented from spreading.” Government workers found themselves unemployed if they were discovered to be homosexual, gay artists faced censorship, and many more were imprisoned for homosexual sex acts.
For a three-year period (1965-68), gay men were arrested and sent to labor camps that went by the name UMAP, or Military Units to Aid Production. Designed as alternatives to military conscription for those who were conscientious objectors or found unfit for other reasons, the UMAPs became de facto prisons for Cuba’s gay population.
The camps were only closed after Fidel himself supposedly went undercover along with members of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) to investigate the treatment experienced by internees.
Even with the shuttering of the camps, homosexuality remained legally forbidden. A slow thaw began in 1975 though, when the Supreme Court of Cuba ruled workplace discrimination against gays would no longer be allowed. Decriminalization (but not legalization) of same-sex relations followed shortly after in 1979.
The Mariel Boatlift of 1980, however, was another dark spot on the treatment of gays. Many homosexuals were among the small number of so-called “deviants” cast off that year. The latter part of the decade was a time of creeping advances in the cultural field, with the gradual appearance of literature and other materials referencing gay subject matter. In 1988, the last explicitly anti-gay law, the 1930 Public Ostentation Act, was repealed.
In 1992, the UJC passed a resolution condemning discrimination on the basis of sexuality, and Fidel announced he did not consider homosexuality to be “a phenomenon of degeneration,” and declared his absolute opposition to “any form of repression, contempt, scorn, or discrimination with regard to homosexuals.” It was quite a turnaround from his 1965 declaration that no homosexual could ever embody “the conditions and requirements of a true Revolutionary, a true Communist militant.”
The following year, public education campaigns against homophobia were conducted for the first time.
The shift from abolishing anti-gay laws and combatting homophobia to attempting the enactment of LGBTQ protections and rights into the legal code happened in the 2000s. A law on civil unions was first proposed in the National Assembly in 2007, promoted by Mariela Castro—head of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and the daughter of former president Raúl Castro and niece of Fidel.
The legislation never received a vote at the time, but Mariela Castro continued to propose it year after year, with the backing of the Federation of Cuban Women and the Union of Cuban Jurists. People’s World reported that she told a San Francisco audience in 2012, “We first proposed marriage, but legal scholars, and some Communist Party members, were up in arms. So as not to lose the fight, we proposed equal recognition of same-sex couples.”
The 2019 constitution nearly made marriage equality a reality; its first draft had included language saying marriage was a union of “two people…with absolutely equal rights and obligations.” After intense opposition from the Catholic Church and Evangelical Christian groups, the clause was removed, and the task of defining marriages was left to a new family code to supplement the constitution.
A gay Cuban couple kiss after receiving a blessing from Rev. Roger LaRade, of the Eucharistic Catholic Church in Canada, in Havana, May 9, 2015. Many other religious groups are outspoken opponents of LGBTQ equality in Cuba and are actively trying to sink the new draft family code. | Desmond Boylan / AP
The anti-discriminatory Article 42 of the constitution implied directly that the family code would have to recognize same-sex marriage as a right, however, which the draft released Wednesday explicitly does.
“We consider this version [of the family code] to be consistent with the constitutional text, and it develops and updates the various legal-family institutions in correspondence with the humanistic nature of our social process,” Cuban Justice Minister Óscar Silveira Martínez said when announcing the draft.
Yamila González Ferrer, vice president of the Union of Cuban Jurists, who appeared with the justice minister, emphasized that the proposed code goes far beyond just authorizing same-sex marriage.
“It protects all expressions of family diversity and the right of each person to establish a family in coherence with the constitutional principles of plurality, inclusion, and human dignity,” she said.
The preliminary draft is now open for public discussion. The National Assembly is expected to take it up in December and will debate and vote on it. Following the legislature’s approval of a final version, the family code will go to a referendum of the whole Cuban people, likely in 2022.
CONTRIBUTOR C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People's World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left. In addition to his work at People's World, C.J. currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of ProudPolitics.
Gay marriage, adoption, surrogacy: Revolutionary bill raises among LGBTIQ+ Cubans
The Cuban government published the draft of a new family code this week that would allow same-sex marriage, adoption by gay couples and recognizes surrogacy, but the road ahead is long, because the legal framework must be approved in a referendum and religious groups are likely to oppose it.
The proposal defines marriage as “a voluntary union between two persons” instead of a woman and a man, as the current law from 1975 says. The change of those few words sparked a major debate in the country in 2018 when authorities removed similar language from the draft for a new constitution following criticism by the Catholic Church and other religious groups.
“The proposal is much more than what we expected and goes beyond recognizing the marriage of same-sex couples,” said Maykel Vivero, an activist and founder of the LGBTIQ+ magazine Tremenda Nota. “There are a lot of options for families, and some are frankly revolutionary, surprising. Many countries do not have these issues resolved.”
The language in the proposal recognizes surrogacy for couples that struggle with fertility or same-sex couples, but says no one can charge for the surrogacy. The proposal also includes provisions to allow a child of a same-sex couple to legally have two mothers or two fathers. It would even allow a child to have more than two parents, in cases where the surrogate mother or the biological parent would claim the right, or when a partner decides to legally adopt a stepchild.
“Families are much more diverse than what the (current) law acknowledged,” Vivero said. “Hopefully, the code will be approved without any hiccup, but it has many enemies” among conservative groups and inside the government, he added.
“We know the homophobic and transphobic history of the Cuban revolution,” he said.
For Cuba, the legislation is a far cry from the days when Fidel Castro called gays “elvispreslianos” (followers of Elvis Presley) and sent them to forced labor camps known as UMAPs in the 1960s. LGBTIQ+ activists are cautiously optimistic but fear the draft might prompt a backlash from religious groups, which mobilized in 2018 to oppose the gay marriage clause in the new constitution. The Cuban government ceded to the pressure and rephrased the controversial article to say the issue would be resolved in a new Family Code that would have to be approved in a national referendum.
At the time, it was a major disappointment for gay and lesbian Cubans and a majority of the population who supported giving same-sex couples the same rights that heterosexual couples enjoy, according to a survey conducted by the government’s office of national statistics in 2016.
On the TV show "La Mesa Redonda," ("The Round Table"), Justice Minister Oscar Manuel Silvera Martínez said Wednesday that the commission in charge of drafting the legislation would consider public comments before sending a final version to the National Assembly in December. After approval by the Assembly, the bill would need to be ratified by the population in a referendum. This new procedure has not been used to approve any other legislation, except for the 2018 Constitution.
The proposal “shatters paradigms,” said Leonardo Pérez Gallardo, a law professor at the University of Havana who is a commission member. “It embraces, recognizes and protects families whatever their form of organization, and therefore gives them equal treatment.”
The commission comprises members of the National Assembly, state institutions and political organizations, but has no representatives from LGBTIQ+ groups.
During the 2018 debate, observers warned that the government was using gay rights to improve its international image and deflect from other reforms. The new Family Code draft was published amid intense criticism of the government’s human rights record, after authorities quashed protests in July with violence and banned criticism in social media.
But Vivero believes the legislation provides a unique opportunity for correcting some of the wrongs against gay and lesbian Cubans, who for decades were perceived with suspicion if not as outright enemies of the revolution.
“It is an act of reparation, of justice,” he said. “It opens a lot of opportunities for Cuban families, families that were erased, that were never included in the national project. Now they could be, and that is huge.”
Did whales originate in Egyptian waters?
A group of Egyptian scientists discovered a 43 million-year-old fossil in "Whale Valley" — now in the Western Desert. This picture shows a whale skeleton at the Wadi el-Haitan Fossil and Climate Change Museum in Fayoum, Egypt, Jan. 14, 2016. - Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
CAIRO — An Egyptian team of scientists from Mansoura University made a new discovery of a previously unknown species of an amphibian whale in Egyptian waters that lived 43 million years ago.
In a statement posted on its official Facebook page Aug. 25, the Egyptian Cabinet praised the discovery as a breakthrough for Arab paleontologists, since it is the first time in history that an Arab-Egyptian team documents a new species of whales.
The study was authored by Hesham Sellam, a prominent vertebrate paleontologist, professor at the American University in Cairo and founder of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Center. Mohamed Sameh, who found the whale fossil in 2008, co-authored the paper on the discovery that was published Aug. 25 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
In 2008, a research team at the Egyptian Ministry of Environment found the whale's fossilized remains in Wadi al-Hitan in the Fayoum region, southwest of the capital Cairo. The area contains invaluable fossil remains of extinct whales.
In the Cabinet statement, Sameh pointed to the existence of many ancient whales in the Eocene Epoch in the Fayum Depression in Egypt's Western Desert. He stressed the importance of the area for studying the evolution of whales.
Sameh said that he had kept the fossil he discovered in 2008 with the Ministry of Environment for scientific research purposes, before he agreed to assign the study of the fossil to Abdullah Gohar, who was a master's student at the Faculty of Sciences at Mansoura University in 2017. Gohar worked on this study as part of his master's thesis in vertebrate fossils.
“The study showed that the fossil belonged to a new species of whale that was not known before. This helps trace back the evolution of whales from land dwellers to sea creatures,” Gohar told Al-Monitor.
He explained that the whale has several anatomical features that enabled it to coexist at that time, adding that whales are mammals that moved from land to water in ancient times. He said, “The four-legged whale weighed an estimated 600 kilograms [1,323 pounds] and was 3 meters [10 feet] long. Its somewhat rectangular body and the size of its vertebrae enabled it to be a great swimmer. We discovered from the rehabilitation of the muscles connected to the spine that it was also able to carry its body on land.”
The Egyptian team named the whale “Pheumsetis Anubis.” Gohar explained that the first syllable — “Pheu” — refers to the Fayoum Depression, the home of the whale, while “setis” is a Latin reference for the word whale. “Anubis” is the name of the pharaonic god of death, which just like the whale had a jackal-like head.
“We found out that the new whale was radically different from all its whale peers known before, especially in the size of the teeth and the dimensions of the skull. It had great predatory skills and strong and huge jaw muscles, which made it one of the fiercest creatures in that environment. It was more like the god of death for the rest of the mammals at the time, similar to the blue whale that lives today,” Gohar noted.
Wadi al-Hitan — also known as Whale Valley — is located in the Western Desert of Egypt and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2005 for its hundreds of invaluable fossils of now extinct whale species. “It is the most important site in the world for the demonstration of this stage of evolution. It portrays vividly the form and life of these whales during their transition,” as can be read on the UNESCO website.
Gohar pointed out that despite the abundance of fossils in the Fayoum region, the majority of relevant studies and research were conducted by foreign scientists. “Now we have become the first Egyptian team to register in its name such an amazing discovery,” he added.
Salam said, “We did not want to leave the fossil to be studied by foreign researchers. We wanted to assign an Egyptian student to work on the study. Gohar, who hails from Fayoum governorate, was the perfect choice. The whale lived on the land of his ancestors millions of years ago. This discovery will help unearth more finds in the region.”
The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences said in the paper that the new discovery contributed to increasing knowledge about the origin of ancient whales, their coping mechanisms and their ecosystems.
Salam praised the scientific paper that sheds light on African and Egyptian natural fossil heritage. “It highlights the distinguished Egyptian content of ancient animal fossils, which contributes day after day to revealing important scientific mysteries,” he said.
In 2018, Salam and his research team at Mansoura University found a fossil of a new species of a dinosaur dating back to the late Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago. “Those fossils are displayed at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Center,” Salam added.
He hopes that one day the Egyptian government will open a natural history museum that will house these vertebrate fossils.
Gohar believes that the discovered fossil of the walking whale has answered scientific questions about the origin of whales. “This discovery has also raised many scientific questions, most notably whether the ancestors of whales originated from India and Pakistan. Egypt may now have another say about their origin,” Gohar concluded.
Erdogan’s choices limited as Russian-backed Syrian forces increase attacks, weigh final assault on Idlib Turkish and Russian military vehicles patrol in the countryside of Rumaylan in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province near the Turkish border on Sept. 16. - DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images
Three Turkish soldiers were killed Sept. 11 in a bomb attack in Idlib, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed and Islamist opposition in northwest Syria — and Turkey responded by hitting US-backed Kurdish groups in northeast Syria.
This latest episode "underscores Ankara’s growing predicament in Idlib, where jihadi forces target Turkish troops even as Turkey’s military presence shields them against the Syrian army," as Fehim Tastekin explains.
Think of it as a war within a war: While the decade-long conflict started as an effort to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, it has devolved into Turkey’s endless war with no seeming exit strategy, except one offered by Russia (see below).
Background of a quagmire
Turkey’s role in Syria has descended into a ten-year quagmire. Assad remains in power, supported by Russia and Iran. Turkey and the US continue to support forces that want to overthrow Assad, or at least hold their ground. But the Biden administration is unlikely to get into the regime change business. Turkey increasingly finds itself at odds with both Washington and Moscow over just about everything.
The factions get odder: Turkey, Russia and Iran compose the so-called “Astana Group” (named after the location of their first meeting) on Syria diplomacy. The group has miraculously hung together despite Russian and Iranian support for the Syrian government and Turkey’s opposition.
Russia, given the right timing, will likely support the Syrian military eventually retaking the city of Idlib and crushing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has Turkey’s implicit support, and other jihadist opposition groups there.
Syrian military forces already have intensified attacks on Idlib recently, and there are fears in the region of massive displacement that could result from an assault, as Khaled Al-Khateb reports from Aleppo.
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Erdogan has been trying to stave off an all-out attack. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, a massive strain on its economy.
On the other hand, he wants the United States and the West to end support for the People’s Protection Units (the YPG), the Kurdish group that makes up the core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is opposing the Syrian government. The SDF has been the on-the-ground Syrian partner for the successful US-led coalition operations against the Islamic State in Syria.
Erdogan considers the YPG a terrorist group, indistinguishable from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and on a level with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
So, while Turkish forces face increasing risk of a potential Russian-backed Syrian assault on Idlib (more below), as well as from rogue actors on Sept. 11, Erdogan keeps lashing out at Syrian Kurds in those areas occupied by the Turkish military and pro-Turkish Syrian proxy forces.
Metin Gurcan wrote here last month about how Turkey is increasingly employing drones for targeted killings of Syrian Kurdish leaders, and Amberin Zaman has covered the regular Turkish attacks and bombings of Syrian Kurdish targets.
The failed HTS makeover in Idlib
As part of its commitments to the Astana talks, and to preserve what remains of the anti-Assad armed opposition, Turkey has tried to moderate HTS and encourage it to rebuild its image, including by severing ties with more radical fringe elements, while consolidating other pro-Turkish armed opposition forces under the new Syrian Liberation Front, as Sultan Al-Kanj reports from Idlib.
Turkey "assumed that HTS’ suppression of other jihadis would fulfill its commitments to Russia to eliminate terrorist groups," explains Tastekin. "Yet HTS has reinforced its de facto emirate in Idlib, and dozens of radical groups such as Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Tawhid, Ansar al-Din, Ajnad al-Kavkaz and the Turkistan Islamic Movement have maintained their presence in the province. Hurras al-Din, the umbrella group of al-Qaeda-inspired factions, has ostensibly disintegrated, but the factions have not left the region. Similarly, HTS’ move to dissolve the Chechen-led Jund al-Sham does not mean the group has been eliminated."
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has been on a Turkish-backed public relations blitz this year, including in February replacing his robes for a designer blue suit and snappy haircut for an interview with a US reporter, when he said there was no torture and HTS detained only "regime agents." He also said HTS’s connection with Al-Qaeda has ended.
Despite shedding its Al-Qaeda affiliation, HTS is still designated by the US, the UN Security Council and Turkey as a terrorist group.
The realities on the ground in Idlib also point to HTS and Golani keeping up their jihadi bona fides. Golani recently praised the presence of foreign fighters in Idlib, saying that ‘these fighters are now part of us. They are part of the people. They are happy with the people and the people are happy with them, too,’ as Mohammed Hardan reports.
Another shortcoming of the so-called HTS turnaround is the replacement of a reviled HTS security force by a new unit called "moral police," as Hardan reports here, and banning a pro-opposition news channel, as Al-Kanj reports here from Idlib.
Putin and the Road to Damascus
Turkey’s failure in Idlib to reopen the M4 highway and expand the security perimeter around the city, as called for in its agreement with Russia, has increased Russian pressure on Ankara, which is aware of its dwindling options for success in Syria.
"Idlib was certainly high on the agenda" when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Assad in Moscow on Sept. 14, reports Tastekin. "Putin said at the meeting that the main problem in Syria today was the presence of foreign forces without permission or a UN mandate – a reference to Turkey and the United States."
Erdogan is feeling the heat and may be willing to explore a tentative opening with Damascus, something Putin has been pushing for years.
"Ankara’s willingness to open a communication channel with Damascus without ending its support for opposition groups reflects its desire for limited collaboration — against the Kurdish drive for autonomy," writes Tastekin. "Such a contradictory policy is unlikely to impress Damascus."
As we wrote back in January 2020: "Putin plays the diplomatic game in Syria as if he were gambling with other people’s money. One can probably envision a reason for a three-way negotiation among Russia, Syria and Turkey to hammer out some understanding on the Kurds. He still envisions a diplomatic breakthrough along the outlines of a cease-fire based on an updated version of a 1998 treaty between Syria and Turkey, in which Damascus ended its support and expelled the PKK."
Assad may feel that the advantage is his, and that Turkey could be boxed in as a result of a recent US-Russian diplomatic flurry on Syria.
"US-Russian dialogue might help spur serious negotiations between Damascus and the Kurds, which in turn might diminish the Turkish military presence east of the Euphrates River," concludes Tastekin. "The Biden administration has effectively relaxed the Caesar Act sanctions on Syria by overlooking Iranian oil tankers entering the Syrian port of Tartus and the flow of Egyptian gas and Jordanian electricity to Lebanon via Syria. These signs of improved US-Russian dialogue would leave little room for Ankara."
A plague of crew abandonment has swept through the lower end of the maritime industry over the past year, with dozens of small shipowners allegedly walking away from their financially-distressed vessels and leaving the crews behind - often without pay.
“We’re still living here in the vessel like a jail . . . we can not go outside, we can not make anything, we live only in the shipping and the berth and now also winter is coming," said Capt. Abdullah Dahha, master of the allegedly abandoned vessel Ali Bey, in a recently-released video appeal.
The Ali Bey's ship manager is housed in an unmarked waterfront office in Istanbul's tidy Kadikoy district, just above an upscale natural-products store. It is just one of the scores of companies alleged to have abandoned vessels at the pier since the start of the pandemic. According to the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), a record 85 cases of vessel abandonment were reported in 2020.
The Ali Bey's Syrian crew have been aboard the detained vessel at the port of Constanta, Romania since last November, and they are still waiting for a claimed $186,000 in allegedly unpaid back pay. According to ITF's local coordinator, the last four holdouts have received threats from the shipowner's representatives, including warnings that they could be blacklisted and reported to the authorities for demanding their wages.
In September, Capt. Dahha told the British NGO Human Rights at Sea (HRAS) that he recently received a strange visit from an unknown man who offered to settle with the four remaining crewmembers for $110,000 - about 60 percent of what they are owed. Dahha refused the offer, but he said that the crew is concerned about retaliation. The ITF is helping them out with food, water and electricity, he said, but the conditions on board are poor.
In a recent update, the local ITF coordinator asserted that the shipowner has sued him personally for reporting the abandonment case to the authorities. The crew has engaged its own lawyer, backed by ITF, and is awaiting a legal resolution of their case.
"Our lives are lived between the berths," Capt. Dahha said. "We need to finish this case."
The Ali Bey's operator has no publicly-available contact information and could not be reached for comment.
Over the last two decades, the West African seaboard has been a stomping ground for industrial trawlers. Although most of them are flagged locally by West African nations, they are owned and operated by foreigners, mainly in China or European countries.
Unfortunately, lax implementation of fisheries laws have enabled IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing to go unabated, resulting in a massive decline in fish stocks. Environmental concerns, mostly focused on saving marine ecosystems and controlling climate change, have been the basis for policy changes to stop IUU fishing.
However, it is imperative to view IUU fishing from a human rights perspective - especially the immutable impact it has on poor coastal communities of the affected countries.
West Africa has also been synonymous with piracy, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea region, which has received extensive attention from maritime players and the United Nations.
While responding to a recent United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on maritime security, one of West Africa’s eminent maritime researchers, Dr. Ifesinachi Okafor, said that failure to include the human cost for IUU fishing has led piracy to get more attention than the costly plunder of fisheries by foreign vessels.
“In the last 50 years, Africa has lost over $200 billion to illegal fishing by vessels linked to foreign nations. Illegal fishing is so extensive that it amounts to 40-65 percent of the legally reported catch in West Africa alone. Yet, there has been zero resolution on this by UNSC. In contrast, the economic cost of piracy over the last 20 years does not amount to $20 billion. Neither does the environmental impact directly affect the livelihoods of millions of people,” Dr. Okafor said. “Yet, over 30 Security Council resolutions and presidential statements have been issued on piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Gulf of Guinea since 2008. Foreign partners invest millions in tackling piracy while simultaneously investing billions in enabling their fishing vessels to plunder depleting fisheries in Africa.”
In comments at the debate, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken concurred that the debate over piracy must also take IUU fishing into account. “We must bring the same coordinated and comprehensive responses to other threats such as maritime safety and security. This includes IUU fishing- which undermines the sustainability of fish stocks, circumvents the green conservation and management measure, and violates the sovereign rights of coastal states and often goes hand in hand with the use of forced labor and other illicit activities,” he said.
In August, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) released a report from primary data it collected on socio-economic rights of small-scale fishing communities in Ghana. The focus was on impacts of IUU fishing on the human rights of artisanal fishermen.
Ghana has one of the highest rates of dependence on fish for nutrition in Africa, with fish providing 60 percent of animal protein intake and a yearly per capita fish consumption estimated at 28 kilos. In addition, Ghana’s marine fisheries provide livelihoods for around 2.5- 3 million people along the value chain, which is approximately 10 percent of the country’s population.
Despite the artisanal fisheries sector being a key economic mainstay in Ghana, it is in a perilous state with severe socio-economic implications to the small-scale fishing communities. Ghana’s artisanal fishermen rely on a small pelagic fishery, mainly Sardinella spp., also commonly referred to as ‘people’s fish’ due to their critical role to food security and local livelihoods.
Industrial trawlers are partly to blame for plummeting catches of smaller fish. Driven by the local lucrative trade, trawlers enter prohibited zones and illegally adapt their fishing gear to target sardinella, which are in high demand for local consumption. A major portion of these catches are destined for the illegal ‘saiko’ trade, where the trawlers transship the caught fish at sea to small purpose-built canoes for landing at Ghana’s ports. An estimate by EJF in 2017 on the ‘saiko’ trade revealed that 100,000 tons of fish were traded with a landed value of $50 million. The proportion of juveniles caught via this trade is estimated at 67 percent and in some extreme case reaching 100 percent.
Already, scientists have predicted the collapse of the small pelagic fishery within the next decade in a business-as –usual scenario, with FAO recommending closure of the sardinella fishery shared by Cote d’Ivore, Ghana, Togo and Benin to allow for fish populations recovery.
This comes at the cost of declining income and rising poverty in Ghana’s coastal communities. According to the EJF report, approximately 90 percent of the surveyed fishermen and processors saw a decline in their incomes over the past five years. Around 70 percent of these reported damage to their fishing gear by industrial trawlers.
As a result, fishermen are having to travel further out to sea in search of fish - beyond the six nautical mile / 30 meter depth Inshore Exclusion Zone (IEZ) restricted for artisanal fishing - yet they still report zero catch on some fishing days.
Marginalized and vulnerable coastal fishing communities add to the matrix of Gulf of Guinea piracy and the disastrous irregular crossings into Europe through the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
