Indonesian president says brutal Sulawesi slayings beyond humanity

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday condemned the brutal murder of four villagers by suspected Islamist militants as "beyond the limits of humanity", as the military chief prepared to deploy special forces to join the hunt for the killers.

© Reuters/WILLY KURNIAWAN Indonesian President Joko Widodo gestures during an interview with Reuters at the presidential palace in Jakarta

In a video address, the president said the attack on Friday in a region riven by bloody, sectarian conflict in the past was designed to drive a wedge among the population in the world's biggest majority-Muslim nation.

"That gross act had the purpose of provoking and terrorising the people. They wanted to destroy the unity and brotherhood of our people," he said.

"We need to stay united in the fight against terrorism."

Those killed in the Sigi region of central Sulawesi on Friday all were Christians, a church group and human rights activists said. The government has made no mention of their religion.

One of the victims was beheaded and the other three had their throats slit, according to National police spokesman Awi Setiyono.

Their homes and place of worship were set ablaze, he said, but reiterated the murders were not about religion.

Authorities believe the militant Islamist group, Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT), perpetrated the attack. There was no claim of responsibility.

Central Sulawesi was a flashpoint of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.

More than 100 military and police have been deployed to the area since Friday's killings and military chief, Hadi Tjahjanto, said special forces would be mobilised.

"I'm sure the MIT who perpetrated this crime on innocent residents will soon be captured," he said.

Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters that eleven farmers had been killed in the same area this year.

Separately on Monday, Indonesian police announced they had arrested suspected bomb-maker Upik Lawanga, from the militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah.

Lawanga is suspected of making a bomb that killed more than 20 people in 2005 at a market in Poso, also central Sulawesi.

(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Stanley Widianto; Writing and additional reporting by Kate Lamb; Editing by Martin Petty)

Canada to Trump: You can't take our prescription drugs

Canada is putting the kibosh on President Donald Trump's efforts to lower drug prices by importing medications from our northern neighbor.

© Photo Illustration: Shutterstock/CNN

Canadian health minister Patty Hajdu on Friday announced new measures to protect the country's drug supply from bulk importations that could worsen drug shortages. It bars the distribution of certain drugs outside of Canada if that would cause or worsen a shortage.

"Our health care system is a symbol of our national identity and we are committed to defending it," Hajdu said. "The actions we are taking today will help protect Canadians' access to the medication they rely on."

Importing drugs from abroad, particularly Canada, is a centerpiece in Trump's plan to reduce prices, a key priority of his campaign and first term. After the President issued an executive order in July that pushed to allow such importations, the Department of Health and Human Services issued in a final rule in late September establishing a path for states and certain other entities to set up drug importation programs.

President-elect Joe Biden has also expressed interest in allowing consumers to import drugs from other countries as along as the federal government deems them safe.

Last week, Florida became the first state to submit an importation proposal to the federal agency to create such a program under the newly issued rule. The plan calls for initially importing several classes of drugs, including maintenance medications to help those with chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. Several other states, including Vermont, Colorado, New Mexico and Maine, have also passed laws to pursue federal approval for importation.

In response to the growing momentum, a trio of pharmaceutical industry groups last week filed a court challenge to importation, saying the effort would jeopardize Americans' health and fail to reduce prices.

"The final rule fails to overcome the well-documented safety concerns regarding importation expressed for nearly two decades by previous HHS secretaries across party lines or to make any showing that the proposal would result in any—let alone significant—cost savings to American consumers," said James Stansel, general counsel at PhRMA, the main industry lobbying group.

Health policy experts have also questioned the effectiveness of importing drugs from Canada -- where an independent body established by Parliament ensures that brand-name drug prices are not excessive. Even HHS Secretary Alex Azar called it a "gimmick" in 2018, before changing his tune.

In announcing the measures last week, Canada's Health Ministry said it has repeatedly stated that the US rule would not do much to reduce prices in America since Canada represents only 2% of global pharmaceutical sales, while the US accounts for 44% of sales.

The Canadian Pharmacists Association has warned that the nation already suffers from drug shortages, which have grown worse during the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, days before then-Democratic presidential primary contender Bernie Sanders went north with diabetes patients seeking cheaper insulin, a coalition of 15 Canadian medical professional and patient groups pressed the government to protect the country's pharmaceutical supply.

Though it has only weeks left in office, the Trump administration has recently pushed through several measures aimed at lowering drug prices. Earlier this month, it unveiled two controversial rules that immediately sparked legal threats from the pharmaceutical industry.

One will have Medicare pay the same price for certain expensive prescription drugs as other developed nations, a "most-favored-nation price."

The other will effectively ban drug makers from providing rebates to pharmacy benefit managers and insurers -- a radical change in the way many drugs are priced and paid for in Medicare and Medicaid. Instead, drug companies will be encouraged to pass the discounts directly to patients at the pharmacy counter.

The administration had backed away from issuing this rule last year after it was found to raise costs for senior citizens and the federal government.

Mysterious silver monolith disappears from Utah desert


SALT LAKE CITY — A mysterious silver monolith that was placed in the Utah desert has disappeared less than 10 days after it was spotted by wildlife biologists performing a helicopter survey of bighorn sheep, federal officials and witnesses said.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the ‘monolith’ has been removed from Bureau of Land Management public lands by an unknown party,” on Nov. 27, BLM spokesperson Kimberly Finch said in a statement. The agency did not remove the structure, she said.

The Utah Department of Public Safety said biologists spotted the monolith on Nov. 18, a report that garnered international attention. It was about 11 feet (3.4 metres) tall with sides that appeared to be made of stainless steel.

While Utah officials did not say specifically where the monolith was located, people soon found it on satellite images dating back to 2016 and determined its GPS co-ordinates, prompting people to hike into the area.

Reporters with The Salt Lake Tribune hiked to the spot on Saturday and confirmed that it was gone.

Spencer Owen of Salt Lake City said he saw the monolith Friday afternoon and camped in the region overnight, but as he hiked to the area again on Saturday people passing him on the trail warned him it was gone, the Tribune reported. When he arrived at the spot, all that was left was a triangular piece of metal covering a triangular-shaped hole in the rocks.

“I was really bummed,” said Owen, who posted a video on his Instagram. “It was so pretty and shiny. I wanted to go see it again.”

Riccardo Marino and his girlfriend Sierra Van Meter were travelling from Colorado to California on Friday and decided to stop and see the object after finding the GPS co-ordinates online.

“This was just a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we couldn't miss out,” Marino told KUTV.

On the way, they passed a long-bed truck with a large object in the back and he said he joked “oh look, there's the Utah monolith right there,” he said.

When they arrived at the spot, it was gone.

Steve Adams said he left Helper, in central Utah, at 7 a.m. Saturday to drive to the area. When he arrived and asked someone for directions he was told the tower was gone. He and some friends made the hike anyway.

“It was pretty disappointing,” he told the Tribune. “We were really excited to go down and have an adventure to see it. It feels like it was everybody’s and then it was nobody’s. It’s gone.”

Riccardo Marino

The Associated Press

Mystery Utah monolith vanishes after visitors trash the secret site

We were not worthy

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© Kelsea Dockham/Canyon State Overland via AP In this Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020, photo provided by Kelsea Dockham, rocks mark the location where a metal monolith once stood in the ground in a remote area of red rock in Spanish Valley, Utah south of Moab near Canyonlands National Park.

The mysterious metal monolith found in Utah earlier this month has vanished, after sparking alien conspiracy theories and attracting hordes of messy internet pilgrims to its remote location in the desert.

The monolith disappeared sometime on Friday night during the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The paper sent a reporter to visit the site on Saturday, but the object was gone when he arrived.

The only sign of its presence was a triangular cut left in the rock and a triangular metal slab that likely served as the object's base.

"It's gone," hiker Spencer Owen said in a video posted on his Instagram over the weekend, after the monolith had been removed.

The three-sided, 3.4-metre-tall object became a viral sensation in mid-November when state biologists announced they'd spotted it from a helicopter while counting bighorn sheep in southern Utah. Officials shared photos and videos of the puzzling object, but they withheld its location amid concerns that people might go looking for it.

Internet users figured out the location within a week, and soon the site was overrun with visitors eager to examine the object — and to capture a piece of its viral fame.

Visitors revealed that the object likely wasn't built by aliens, unless those aliens were getting their supplies from a hardware store. The object was a hollow structure made from three sheets of metal, which had been riveted together and embedded in a slot carved into the rock.


Archived satellite footage shows it had been in place since at least 2016, though its exact purpose remains unknown. The prevailing theory is that it was an art project, although no one has come forward to claim it as their work.

The Utah Bureau of Land Management (BLM) confirmed on Sunday that the object had been removed, but the organization did not know who took it away or why.

The BLM had urged people to stay away from the object, citing concerns that visitors would make a mess of the site or get lost on the way.

Video: Mysterious metal monolith discovered in Utah desert

The government organization seemed almost relieved by the development, after monolith-hunters swarmed the area and made a mess of the natural environment around it. The BLM says the site did not have the parking spaces or restrooms necessary to accommodate the sudden influx of people.

"Visitors who flocked to the site parked on vegetation and left behind human waste as evidence of their visit," the BLM said in a statement.

The BLM's Monticello field office says the monolith was a nice distraction from the 2020 news cycle, but it has also been a headache for officials charged with caring for public lands in Utah.

"It was installed without authorization on public lands and the site is in a remote area without service for the large number of people who now want to see it," Amber Denton Johnson, field manager for Monticello, said in a BLM statement. "Whenever you visit public lands please follow Leave No Trace principles and federal and local laws and guidance."

Read more: Famous alien-hunting telescope shut down to avoid ‘catastrophic failure’

Several hikers showed up at the site over the weekend to find nothing but the hole where the monolith once stood.

Hikers Riccardo Marino and Sierra Van Meter say they were among the first to discover that the object had disappeared. They arrived at the site around 11 p.m. and found nothing but a note in the sand reading: "Bye b----."

Someone appeared to have urinated on the site, the couple told local station KUTV.

Marino says they saw a suspicious truck on their way to see the monolith.

"We had passed a truck, a long bed truck, early 200s light-coloured truck with a large object on the back," he told the station. "I joked out loud, like, 'Oh, look, there's the Utah monolith right there,'" he recalled.

It's unclear whether the object was removed by its maker or taken away by someone else.

The monolith's designer and its true purpose have been a mystery since it was first discovered on Nov. 18.

The mystery has only deepened with this latest development, as two new questions remain unanswered: Where is the monolith now, and who — or what — took it?

—With files from The Associated Press

thespencerowen

What’s underneath the #monolith

Spencer Owen on Instagram: “What’s underneath the #monolith”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CH_212pAKpr/?utm_source=ig_embed

heavydsparks
Verified
Turns out the mystery monolith is actually just an insanely creative piece of metal art. Bravo to whoever or whatever did this 👏🏼👏🏼😉 #utah #utahmonolith #utahisrad

Amazon workers at German warehouse to strike again


BERLIN (Reuters) - Trade union Verdi on Sunday called on workers at a German Amazon warehouse to strike for the second time in a week to disrupt the processing of orders following the 'Black Friday' discount shopping sales on Nov. 27

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© Reuters/BRENDAN MCDERMID FILE PHOTO: Amazon's JFK8 distribution center in Staten Island, New York City

Scheduled to begin on Monday's night shift and finish at the end of Tuesday's late shift, the strike follows a three-day walkout between Thursday and Saturday last week in which more than 500 workers took part, Verdi said..

Verdi has been organising strikes at Amazon in Germany - the company’s biggest market after the United States - since 2013, along with other unions hoping to force the e-commerce company to recognise collective bargaining agreements that apply to retail employees at other firms.

An Amazon spokesman said the company offered "excellent" salaries and benefits and safe working conditions, and that these and its pay were comparable with other major employers in the region.

The U.S. retail giant has seen sales soar globally as restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus sent consumers online, making it difficult for some bricks-and-mortar shops to compete.

Verdi argues this has strengthened the case for higher wages, adding workers were not sufficiently protected against the spread of the coronavirus.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

The last known slave ship and the community founded by its survivors

Anderson Cooper CBS

Two years ago, a sunken ship was found in the bottom of an Alabama river. It turned out to be the long lost wreck of the Clotilda, the last slave ship known to have brought captured Africans to America in 1860. At least 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas, in the more than 350 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but as you'll hear tonight, the journey of the 110 captive men, women, and children brought to Alabama on the Clotilda, is one of the best-documented slave voyages in history. The names of those enslaved Africans, and their story, has been passed down through the generations by their descendants, some of whom still live just a few miles from where the ship was found in a community called Africatown.





For 160 years this muddy stretch of the Mobile River has covered up a crime. In July 1860 the Clotilda was towed here, under cover of darkness. Imprisoned in its cramped cargo hold, 110 enslaved Africans.

Joyceyln Davis: I just imagined myself being on that ship just listening to the waves and the water, and just not knowing where you were going.

Joyceyln Davis, Lorna Gail Woods, and Thomas Griffin are direct descendants of this African man, Oluale. Enslaved in Alabama, his owner changed his name to Charlie Lewis. Pollee Allen, whose African name was Kupollee, was the ancestor of Jeremy Ellis and Darron Patterson.

Darron Patterson: No clothes. Eating where they defecated. Only allowed outta the cargo hold for one day a week for two months. How many people do you, do we know now that could've survived something like that, without losing their mind? 

© Provided by CBS News Descendants of some of the enslaved aboard the Clotilda

There are no photographs of Pat Frazier's great-great-grandmother, Lottie Dennison, but Caprinxia Wallace and her mother, Cassandra, have a surprising number of pictures of their ancestor, Kossula, who's owner called him Cudjo Lewis.

Anderson Cooper: What does it feel like to be able to know where you come from? To know the person who came here first?

Caprinxia Wallace: It's empowering, very. Like, growing up my mom made sure she told me all the stories that her dad told her about Cudjo.

Anderson Cooper: Cassandra, that was important to you to pass that knowledge along?

Cassandra Wallace: Very important, yes. My dad sat us down and he would make us repeat Kossulu, Clotilda, Cudjo Lewis.

Thomas Griffin: It has historical importance, as well as a story that needs to be told.

The story of the Clotilda began in 1860, when Timothy Meaher, a wealthy businessman, hired Captain William Foster to illegally smuggle a ship load of captive Africans from the Kingdom of Dahomey, in West Africa, to Mobile, Alabama. Slavery was still legal in the southern United States, but importing new slaves into America had been outlawed in 1808.

In his journal, Captain Foster described purchasing the captives using "$9,000 in gold and merchandise."

© Provided by CBS News

As this replica shows, the enslaved Africans were locked, naked in the cargo hold of the Clotilda for two sickening months. When they arrived in Mobile, they were handed over to Timothy Meaher and several others. Captain Foster claimed he then burned and sank the Clotilda, but exactly where remained a mystery.

Until 2018, when a local reporter, Ben Raines, found the Clotilda in about 20 feet of water not far from Mobile. He'd been searching for seven months, following clues in Captain Foster's journal.

The exact location hasn't been made public for fear someone might vandalize the ship. But last February the Alabama Historical Commission gave maritime archeologist James Delgado, who helped verify the wreck, permission to take us there.

Anderson Cooper: So the Clotilda came up this way?

James Delgado: Straight up here, practically in a straight line after they dropped off the people, and then on one side of the bank, set her on fire and sank her.

Anderson Cooper: So he was trying to destroy evidence of a crime?

James Delgado: Yes.

The bow of the Clotilda is not far from the surface, but the water's so muddy, the only way to see it is with a sonar device.

MAN: Sonar is on. Zero pressure. Good to drop.

Anderson Cooper: So we're almost over it now?

James Delgado: Yeah, we're coming right up on it.

MAN: So, that's the bow right there?

Anderson Cooper: That's it right there?

James Delgado: Yes.

Anderson Cooper: Oh, you can see it like that?

James Delgado: Yeah.

Anderson Cooper: You can see it totally clearly. I mean, that's the ship?

James Delgado: Yes. Yeah, that's Clotilda.

© Provided by CBS News The remains of the Clotilda seen on sonar.

On sonar, the bow is clearly defined, as are both sides of the hull. The ship is 86 feet long, but the back of it, the stern, is buried deep in mud. Those two horizontal lines are likely the walls of the cargo hold where the enslaved Africans had been packed tightly together, on the voyage from West Africa.

Anderson Cooper: So the hold where people were held, how big was that?

James Delgado: In terms of where people could actually fit, five feet by about 20 feet.

Anderson Cooper: Wait a minute. It was only five feet high? So people could barely stand up in this hold?

James Delgado: Yes.

Diving on the wreck is difficult. Underwater there is zero visibility. You can't even see the ship, Delgado's team has only felt it with their hands. They call it "archeology by Braille."

© Provided by CBS News

This is the only image our camera could pick up -- a plank of wood covered with what looks like barnacles.

Delgado and state archeologist Stacye Hathorn, showed us some of the artifacts they retrieved. This plank of wood is likely from the hull of the ship. And this iron bolt, with wood attached, shows evidence of fire damage.

Stacye Hathorn: You don't see the grain of the wood.

James Delgado: It basically makes a briquette.

Anderson Cooper: So this is evidence clearly of, that they tried to burn the ship?

Stacye Hathorn: Yes.

James Delgado: Yes.

© Provided by CBS News James Delgado and Stacye Hathorn speak with correspondent Anderson Cooper

The enslaved Africans were taken off the ship before it sank, but Delgado says there could still be DNA from some of them in the wreck.

James Delgado: You will find human hair. You can find nail clippings. Somebody may have lost a tooth--

Anderson Cooper: You could still find human hair in the wreck of the Clotilda?

James Delgado: Yes.

The state of Alabama has set aside a million dollars for further excavation to determine if the Clotilda can ever be raised from the riverbed. The ship may be too damaged or the effort too expensive.

Mary Elliott: I think what's extremely important for folks to understand is that – that there was a concerted effort to hide these things that were done.

© Provided by CBS News Mary Elliott

Mary Elliott oversees the collection of slavery artifacts at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Mary Elliott: It's important that we found the remnants of this ship, because it, for African Americans, it's their piece of the true cross their touchstone to say, "We've been telling you for years. And here's the proof."

Remarkably, many of the descendants still live just a few miles from where the Clotilda was discovered. This is Africatown. Founded around 1868, three years after emancipation, by 30 of the Africans brought on the Clotilda.

Joycelyn Davis has organized festivals to honor Africatown's founders. One of whom was her great great great grandfather, Charlie Lewis. Last February she took us to the street he lived on, called Lewis Quarters.

© Provided by CBS News Correspondent Anderson Cooper and Joycelyn Davis

Anderson Cooper: So pretty much everyone on this street can trace their lineage back to Charlie Lewis--

Joyceyln Davis: Yes. Everyone here is related.

Anderson Cooper: Wow.

Joyceyln Davis: Yeah.

Lewis and some of the others got jobs at a nearby sawmill, owned by Timothy Meaher, the same man responsible for enslaving them.

Joyceyln Davis: I mean, they worked for, like, a dollar a day. And so they saved up their money to buy land.

Cudjo Lewis also worked at the Meaher's sawmill. This rare film shows him in 1928, by then he was in his 80's and one of the Clotilda's last living survivors.

© Provided by CBS News

He helped found this church in Africatown. The same church his descendants still attend today.

Anderson Cooper: After emancipation, it seemed so unlikely that a group of freed slaves could pool their resources and build a community. I mean, that's an extraordinary thing.

Mary Elliott: There's this thing we say about making a way out of no way.

Anderson Cooper: Making a way out of no way?

Mary Elliott: When these folks were forced over here from the continent of Africa they didn't come with empty heads. They came with empty hands. So they found a way to make a way. And they relied on each other. And they were resilient.

Africatown is the only surviving community in America founded by Africans and over the decades it prospered. There was a business district. The first Black school in Mobile, and by the 1960s, 12,000 people lived here.

Lorna Gail Woods: They built a city within a city. And that's what we can be proud of.

Cassandra Wallace: We had a gas station. We had a grocery store...

Darron Patterson: Drive in...

Cassandra Wallace: ...post office, all that was a booming area of Black-owned business.

But today those Black-owned businesses are gone. An interstate highway was built through the middle of Africatown in the early 1990s, and the small clusters of remaining homes are surrounded by factories and chemical plants. Fewer than 2000 people still live here.

The Smithsonian's Mary Elliott took us to Africatown's cemetery, where some of the Clotilda's survivors and generations of their descendants are buried.

© Provided by CBS News

Anderson Cooper: No matter where you go in Africatown, you can hear factories and industry and the highway.

Mary Elliott: There is this constant buzz. It's a buzz you hear all the time, day and night. And it's a constant reminder of the breakup of this community.

The descendants we spoke with hope the discovery of the Clotilda will lead to the revitalization of Africatown and they'd like the descendants of Timothy Meaher, the man who enslaved their ancestors, to get involved.

According to tax records, Meaher's descendants still own an estimated 14% of the land in historic Africatown, their name is on nearby street signs and property markers. Court filings indicate their real estate and timber businesses are worth an estimated $36 million.

But so far the descendants we spoke with say no one from the Meaher family has been willing to meet.

Darron Patterson: I don't think it's something that people want to remember.

Caprinxia Wallace: Because they have to acknowledge that they benefit from it today.

Pat Frazier: That they benefited, that's it. That they benefited. And they don't want to acknowledge that.

Anderson Cooper: People don't want to look back and acknowledge it.

Pat Frazier: They don't want to acknowledge that that's how part of their wealth was derived.

Darron Patterson: Big part--

Pat Frazier: And that, on the backs of those people.

Anderson Cooper: What would you want to say to them? I mean, if-- if they were willing to sit down and have, you know, have a coffee with you?

Jeremy Ellis: We would first need to acknowledge what was done in the past. And then there's an accountability piece, that your family, for this many years, five years, owned my ancestors. And then the third piece would be, how do we partner together with, in Africatown?

Pat Frazier: I don't want to receive anything personally. However, there's a need for a lot of development in that community.

We reached out to four members of the Meaher family, all either declined or didn't respond to our request for an interview.

© Provided by CBS News Mike Foster

One man who did want to meet the descendants is Mike Foster. He's a 73-year-old Air Force veteran from Montana. While researching his geneology last year, Mike Foster discovered he is the distant cousin of William Foster, the captain of the Clotilda.

Anderson Cooper: Had you heard of the last slave ship?

Mike Foster: No. No.

Anderson Cooper: What did you think when you heard it?

Mike Foster: I wasn't happy about it. It was, it was very distressing.

Anderson Cooper: Do you feel some guilt?

Mike Foster: No, I didn't feel any guilt. I didn't do it. But I could apologize for it.

And last February, before the pandemic, that's exactly what he did.

Lorna Gail Woods: Yeah, over 160 years have passed, and we finally--

Mike Foster: Hundred and sixty years.

Lorna Gail Woods: Yes.

Joyceyln Davis: This is a powerful moment. This is a powerful moment.

Mike Foster: So I'm here to say I'm sorry.

Lorna Gail Woods: Thank you.

Pat Frazier: Thank you.

© Provided by CBS News

In an effort to attract tourism to Africatown, the state of Alabama plans to build a welcome center here, but the descendants we spoke with hope more can be done to restore and rebuild this historic Black community and honor the African men and women who founded it.

Pat Frazier: So, I always think, my God, such strong people, so capable, achieved so much, and started with so little.

Darron Patterson: We have to do something to make sure that the legacy of those people in that cargo hold never ever is forgotten. Because they are the reason that we're even here.

Produced by Denise Schrier Cetta. Associate producer, Katie Brennan. Broadcast associate, Annabelle Hanflig. Edited by Patrick Lee.

China Scores Big Against Poverty 

But the Poor Haven’t Gone Away

GRUDGING CAPITALI$T COMPLEMENTS 

FOR STATE CAPITALI$T CHINA

Clara Ferreira Marques
Sat, November 28, 2020



(Bloomberg Opinion) -- China has all but met President Xi Jinping’s pledge to eradicate extreme poverty by 2020. More than 800 counties considered severely impoverished just under a decade ago have now cleared a government-defined line of 4,000 yuan, or roughly $600, in annual per-capita income. The last nine, in the province of Guizhou in China’s southwest, were removed from the list this past week.

The sheer scale of China’s overall achievements when it comes to poverty alleviation is remarkable. More than 850 million people have been lifted out of extreme penury in under four decades. Almost 90% of the population was below the international poverty threshold in 1981, according to the World Bank; by the 2019, that was under 1%. It’s true the world as a whole has seen a dramatic improvement in poverty rates, but more than three-quarters of that is due to China. And the amelioration to individuals’ lives under the latest campaign — which involved tracking down remote villages and the very poorest families, one by one — are real and visible.

The milestone, a year before the Communist Party’s 100-year anniversary, is a huge propaganda win. It delivers a timely boost for Xi, who made this a very personal campaign, and likely will eventually officially mark the achievement with fanfare. It’s a morally laudable, and very public, demonstration of what government machinery can achieve with its unique ability to mobilize resources.

It isn’t, though, the categorical success that Beijing officials, and Xi himself, will portray when it is officially celebrated. It’s as much about semantics as it is about reality on the ground. Extreme poverty is officially gone and millions of villagers have been moved off mountaintops, but many more continue to live with significant privation. The uneducated and elderly will struggle to move up further, and there’s plenty of penury in urban areas and among migrants, often excluded from official discourse that has focused on rural poverty. Inequality is rising too.

As Matthew Chitwood, a researcher who has just returned from two years in rural Yunnan, told me, most of those once living in hardscrabble hill settlements see themselves as better off now, with new homes and tarmac roads. But that doesn’t mean they have stopped being poor, or that their status — and those of millions of others — will continue to improve.

The government is quite aware of this. Premier Li Keqiang stirred up a storm earlier this year when he pointed out that 600 million people — more than two-fifths of the total — still had an income per person of barely 1,000 yuan, or about $150, a month. Hardly enough, he said, to rent a room in a medium-sized city. That’s possibly a pessimistic reading of the statistics. But Li highlighted a very real problem. China still has a vast, low-earning population, a problem far trickier to fix. For one, many are insufficiently educated: Scott Rozelle of Stanford University has pointed out that in fact China has one of the least educated labor forces in the middle-income world, with only three in 10 having ever attended high school, according to the 2015 national census.

Many of those in the bottom cohort are also rural workers who have migrated to towns but, thanks to the hukou system of household registration, have little access to local benefits — another prickly problem.

One of China’s great advantages is that the bottom half of its population has benefited from its economic growth over the last decades. A study by economist Thomas Piketty and others last year found that average incomes for that cohort multiplied by more than five times in real terms between 1978 and 2015, compared to a 1% drop for same group in the United States. But that may not continue.

Worse, there’s the fact that lifting people out of poverty with lump sums and zero-interest loans doesn’t necessarily stick. It isn’t impossible to slide backward and find that gains reverse, as many discovered during the Covid-19 outbreak. China has done better in the pandemic than many others, but laborers still suffer when external demand collapses. Welfare provision is sparse.

Encouragingly, Beijing is not deaf to the question of what happens next, as Li’s comments suggested. To go further, it could do worse than to reconsider how poverty is measured and targeted. That doesn’t mean a fruitless debate over whether China’s absolute poverty line is marginally higher or lower than the international standard once all factors are considered. The fact is that having cleared a modest county-level hurdle and dealt with the destitute, to adequately deal with the wider problem of a huge low-income class in a still-expanding economy, it would be better served with a more dynamic definition that also considers poverty as relative, and even subjective. Not least because how China’s citizens feel will determine how they see their leaders.

Hong Kong, not usually an example in dealing with questions of income distribution, uses relative poverty, setting the line at 50% of the median household income, before government intervention, adjusted for household size. The European Union uses an at-risk-of-poverty threshold of 60 % of the national median disposable income, after social transfers. China’s “two no worries and three guarantees” that cover food, clothing, housing, healthcare and education show that it too can think more broadly. No province is rich if children are underfed and ill-educated. It could do worse than to now take a wider view of measurement and targets, perhaps even considering social mobility. That should result in more holistic approaches to combatting the problem too.

The party that completes its century next year has thrived as incomes have risen.

It needs to keep everyone moving on up.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.

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Viewpoint: How Ethiopia is undermining the African Union

Alex de Waal


Sat, November 28, 2020

Ethiopia took the lead in creating Africa's continental organisation, the African Union (AU), but Ethiopia analyst Alex de Waal argues that its actions are now jeopardising the body's founding principles.

Shortly before three former African heads of state arrived in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the northern Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered what he called the "final phase of our rule of law operations".

This was a remarkable rebuff.

Former Presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Joachim Chissano of Mozambique and Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa met Mr Abiy on Friday, but were told that the Ethiopian government would continue its military operations.

Mr Abiy also said that they could not meet any representatives of the group Ethiopia is fighting in Tigray, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which the prime minister has dismissed as a "criminal clique".

Members of the Ethiopian Tigrayan community in South Africa have been protesting over the conflict

Citing the Charter of the United Nations in a statement earlier in the week, the prime minister insisted that the federal government was engaged in a domestic law-enforcement operation and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation applied.

But Nigerian legal expert Chidi Odinkalu argues that Ethiopia is using the charter to escalate a war, the opposite of its pacific intent, saying that the "audacity of this position is disconcerting".

He points out that the conflict is already internationalised, because Eritrea is entangled and refugees are crossing into Sudan.

Also, the United Nations has adopted principles to prevent states abusing the doctrine of non-interference to give themselves impunity to commit atrocities.

Since 1981, conflict resolution has been a duty and a right. Since 2005, states have had the responsibility to protect civilians in conflict.
Fears of war crimes

In rebuffing the African mediators, Mr Abiy is not just turning down a peace initiative. He is challenging the foundational principles of the African Union itself.

Article 4(g) of the AU's Constitutive Act - to which Ethiopia acceded in 2002 - does specify "non-interference by any member state in the internal affairs of another".

But this is immediately followed by Article 4(h), which gives the AU the right "to intervene in a member state… in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity".

This so-called "duty of non-indifference" was adopted in the wake of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

It was first formulated by an International Panel of Eminent Personalities, strongly supported by Ethiopia, which was brought together to recommend how Africa should prevent such atrocities in the future. "Non-indifference" is Africa's version of the UN's "responsibility to protect".

Ethiopia accuses the TPLF of killing 600 civilians in Mai Kadra, which it has denied

The Ethiopian government has itself accused the TPLF of carrying out atrocities, and observers fear that when the news blackout is lifted, evidence of war crimes by both sides will come to light.

There are unconfirmed reports that Eritrean troops have crossed the border and rounded up Eritrean refugees in United Nations camps in Tigray, which would be a violation of the United Nations convention on refugees.

Ethiopia's diplomatic triumph

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was founded in 1963, with its headquarters in Addis Ababa, with the aim of consolidating the newly won independence of African states.

Locating the OAU in Ethiopia was a diplomatic triumph for Emperor Haile Selassie, who had long championed international law.

Famously, his 1936 speech at the League of Nations predicted that if Italy's invasion of Ethiopia were to go unpunished, the world would be bathed in blood.

The OAU was a common front for Africa's liberation from colonial and racist rule.

But it also served as a club of autocrats, who held to their common interest of staying in power no matter what. Tanzania's founding President, Julius Nyerere, lamented that it had become "a trade union of heads of state".

By the 1990s it was clear that the OAU needed to be refashioned to be able to respond to Africa's wars, coups and atrocities, and in 2002 the AU was created with a far more ambitious agenda of promoting peace and democracy.

Since then it has developed a set of mechanisms that include suspending countries where there is an unconstitutional change in government, and offering help to mediate conflicts, along with an obligation for conflict-afflicted countries to welcome good-faith peacemaking efforts.
How the African Union has helped

Mr Abiy himself intervened in the Sudanese crisis last year when he sought a peaceful resolution to the confrontation between the pro-democracy movement and the military, which had unseated President Omar al-Bashir.

The formula for Sudan's transition to democracy was drawn up on the AU's template.

But the AU is not a strong institution. It has a low budget and cannot impose its will.

More powerful states and organisations can overrule it - as Nato did when the AU sought a negotiated settlement to the Libya conflict in 2011, but the United States, European and Arab countries pursued regime change.

The AU's real value lies in its soft power: it articulates the norms of peace and cooperation and persuades African leaders to go along, knowing that they rise together and sink together.

Over time, it has proven its value: Africa has become more democratic and peaceable.

A generation ago, African diplomatic efforts to avoid conflicts or resolve them were rare. Today, they are standard practice.
Find out more about the Tigray crisis:


The long, medium, and short story


Why Ethiopia may be marching into guerrilla war


The man at the heart of Ethiopia's Tigray conflict


Marooned by conflict: 'My little brother needs medicine'

In a statement announcing the three envoys' mission, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is the current AU chairperson, reaffirmed the organisation's position that the conflict "should be brought to an end through dialogue".

But it was couched in standard diplomatic courtesies and lacked bite.

In comparable situations - such as Libya or Sudan - the AU chair has convened a special heads of state meeting of the AU's Peace and Security Council. Mr Ramaphosa has not done that.

Tens of thousands of people have crossed into Sudan raising international concerns about the fighting

South Africa - which is currently one of three African nations on the UN Security Council - postponed a discussion on Ethiopia at the UN on Monday, citing the need to hear the envoys' report first.

Because it hosts its headquarters, Ethiopia has an outsized influence on the day-to-day affairs of the AU.

Other African countries have long suspected that it has a double standard, giving Ethiopia leeway that it does not accord to other countries. That did not matter so much when Ethiopia was active in supporting mediation efforts and peacekeeping operations, especially in Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

Now, many are asking if it has brazenly crossed a red line.
'The AU is for others, not Ethiopia'

The Ethiopian government has purged Tigrayan officers from AU and UN peacekeeping missions, according to a report in Foreign Policy magazine quoting a UN document. It also demanded that the AU Commission dismiss its head of security, who was a Tigrayan and whose loyalties were questioned because of the conflict.

And now Mr Abiy has effectively rejected Africa's highest-level mediators, politely recording only that they "imparted their wisdom, insights and readiness to support in any way they are needed".

After Ethiopian federal troops occupied the Tigrayan capital Mekelle on Saturday, Mr Abiy declared his operation complete - implying that he doesn't need peacemakers. But the African mediators - all from countries that have long experience of armed conflicts - are not likely to be so confident.

The AU headquarters was built on the site of Ethiopia's notorious central prison, known as Alem Bekagn - meaning "farewell to the world" in Amharic.

Thousands of political prisoners were imprisoned there, many tortured and executed, during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. That symbolism is not lost on African civil society activists, who wonder if they are becoming prisoners of their Ethiopian hosts.

A senior AU diplomat remarked on Friday: "Abiy thinks that the AU is for others, not for Ethiopia."

Mr Abiy's rejection of mediation harkens back to an earlier era in which African civil wars were ended by force of arms, not peace agreements - leaving grievances to fester.

It threatens to make a mockery of the African Union's hard-won norms and principles of peacemaking.



Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Global Affairs at Tufts University in the US. He worked for the AU on Sudan in different capacities from 2005 to 2012.

THE STONE AGE WAS NEW AGE

Archaeologists race to uncover stone-age crystal hunt in Swiss Alps

Archaeologists are carrying out an urgent excavation because the site in Uri canton is at risk of washing away with a melting glacier. Experts have found evidence that people were searching for crystals 10,000 years ago.


Climate change has spurred archaeologists to stage an emergency dig in an area of the Swiss Alps where evidence has been found that people were hunting for crystals as far back as 7,500 BC.

The eastern Swiss canton of Uri said on Friday it had sent an emergency mission to the Brunnifirm glacier this week to uncover more evidence.

People searching for crystals on the glacier in 2013 found bits of wood, deer horn and crystal shards in a crystal crevice.

Oldest objects found in Alps

When the objects were tested, they turned out to be from the Mesolithic era — making them among the oldest artifacts ever found in the Alps, Uri canton said in a statement.

The glacier ice had preserved the objects airtight for thousands of years.

This week archaeologists worked at an altitude of some 2,800 meters (9,100 feet) on the Oberalpstock mountain, which officials say is at risk of washing away with a melting glacier.

The spot is only free of snow for a short period of the year. Despite finding a gap in the weather, the canton said archaeologists still worked in extreme conditions on steep terrain with an icy subsoil.

"We had to wait for exactly the right time," glacier archaeologist Marcel Cornelissen said in the statement, pointing out that "with a thick layer of snow, digging would have made no sense."

New trench dug

Over the past few days, archaeologists have dug an exploratory trench on the slope, aiming to find more possible remains.

While few details of the new finds have been revealed, the canton's statement said the objects collected would help provide more precise data on how crystal was mined at that time and also on the conditions of general life 10,000 years ago.

"The site offers the best chance of gaining new scientific knowledge," said Christian Auf der Maur, the archaeological expert commissioned by the Canton of Uri.

The Uri Research Institute for the Culture of the Alps, which was set up two years ago at the University of Lucerne, will carry out carbon dating on the objects found.

The Swiss Alps are well known for producing an array of gemstones, including crystals, shaped and formed over millions of years.

Switzerland has several mineral museums, including the crystal museum in Seedorf, Uri canton.

With material from AFP

Switzerland: Double 'no' to tougher ethics rules for business

Swiss voters have narrowly rejected stricter ethical rules for many global firms based in the Alpine republic. A separate poll calling on banks and pension funds to stop funding arms makers was also defeated.



A Swiss civic group referendum that would see 29,000 multinationals adopt strict global liability rules has failed, despite backing from half the population.

The initiative titled "Responsible companies — to protect people and the environment'' won a narrow majority of votes on Sunday, with 50.7% percent backing it and 49.3% against, but failed because a majority of the country's cantons, or states, came out against it.

Nearly a quarter of all jobs in the Alpine republic are linked to Swiss-based global enterprises such as Nestle, Novartis, Glencore and Roche.

Read more: 5 deadly countries for environmental defenders

A second referendum on curbing bank and pension fund investments in or lending to Swiss defense firms was headed for defeat by 58% of voters, said exit pollsters.

The second proposal sought to ban funding to arms makers and targeted a traditional Swiss sector involving 3,000 firms, employing 50,000 people.

Under Switzerland's direct democracy system, proposals need to win both a majority of votes cast and of cantons to pass.

Failure of the main "Responsible Business Initiative" (RBI) sought by civic groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International triggers a milder Swiss government alternative requiring scrutiny of child labor abroad and mining in conflict zones.

Read more: Cocoa farming, cheap chocolate and child labor

Bern's initiative would require "due diligence" but no global liability as sought by RBI campaigners, who faced government assertions of going too far.
Narrow escape for multinationals

The RBI would have extended Swiss company liability over human rights abuses and environmental harm caused aboard, including for subsidiaries.

Swiss vote on human rights vs. business interests

Parliamentarian Christa Markwalder described the pre-referendum debate as "the most aggressive campaign I've ever experienced in my 20 years in politics."

She had opposed the RBI initiative but had wanted a stronger counterproposal.

"People understand you can't justify human rights violations by economic considerations," said business ethics professor Florian Wettstein, an RBI initiative co-organizer.

Since 2014, a United Nations working group based in Geneva has been drafting what could become an internationally binding treaty to regulate transnational corporations over human rights and environmental crimes.

Another campaigner, Friends of the Earth International, has demanded an end to "corporate impunity" abroad.

ipj/mm (Reuters, dpa, AFP, AP)

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/11/swiss-firms-narrowly-avoid-responsible.html

Polish police attempt to block protest against abortion ruling

Warsaw police tried to break up a women's rights march taking place in the country's capital, with protesters opposing curbs on abortion rights. Poland's abortion law is already one of the most conservative in Europe.



Hundreds of protesters gathered in Warsaw and other Polish cities on Saturday to voice their opposition to further proposed restrictions to the country's abortion law.

Police attempted to break up the protests after declaring that the march organizers had not fulfilled legal requirements to inform authorities ahead of time. Authorities also said the demonstration broke rules baring large gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Protesters in Warsaw began the march by symbolically changing the name of Roman Dmowski Roundabout to "Women's Rights Roundabout." The activists hope for formal recognition of name — which they say would honor equality rather than Dmowski, a statesman and independence activist who was also an anti-Semite.

Protesters symbolically renamed Roman Dmowski Roundabout to "Women's Rights Roundabout"

Read more: Poland's churches become sites of protest amid abortion row

The red lightning bolt movement

As police blocked the march, protesters were forced onto a busy road. In response to the honks of annoyed drivers, the protesters shouted: "We're sorry for the inconvenience, we have a government to overthrow."

A police officer used tear gas against opposition lawmaker Barbara Nowacka during the demonstration. Borys Budka, the leader of the centrist Civic Platform party explained that Nowacka had been there "in defense of peacefully protesting women."

A women wearing a mask with the movement's red lightning logo

A mother of two teenage girls told the Associated Press that she was taking part in the march "for my daughters."

Read more: Opinion: Abortion ruling is a nightmare for Polish women

Protesters called for a relaxation of the strongly Catholic country's strict abortion law and for the resignation of the conservative government. Many protesters carried signs saying "Strajk Kobiet" (Women's Strike).

Many signs, and protesters' faces, also depicted a red lightning bolt which has become the logo of the movement.

102 years of women's suffrage

Similar marches also took place in Krakow, Gdansk and other cities in part also to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of women's suffrage in the country.

On October 22, the Polish Constitutional Court issued a ruling banning abortions of fetuses with congenital defects, even if the fetus would not survive birth. The move sparked widespread protests, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the street in Poland's largest protest movement since the fall of Communism in the country.

Poland's conservative government has also targetted LGBT+ people with hostile rhetoric

The government has not yet implemented the court ruling, which is seen as a win for the women's rights movement.

Poland's abortion laws were already some of the strictest in the European Union, allowing for abortion only in a limited number of cases. The rules were negotiated in the 1990s among politicians and the Catholic church.

ab/rs (AP, dpa)