Rachel Maddow exposes MAGA-loving gun 'cult' that welcomed Steve Bannon with open arms this week

Bob Brigham
October 12, 2021


Screen cap / YouTube

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow reported on how Trump advisor Steve Bannon spent his weekend after blowing off a Friday deadline to comply with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"In Pennsylvania, Trump adviser Steve Bannon spoke at a gun cult event about how Pennsylvania must have a full forensic audit and new canvas of the 2020 vote," Maddow reported.

"And when I say this was a sort of cult event, I'm not being flip about that," she added. "Literally, this was an event by the Moonies, the son of the Moonies, who is the guy that proclaimed himself the messiah. The son of the now-dead Moonie leader does not say that he technically is the messiah, but he and his brother now run a gun factory and church in Pennsylvania where the people who worship in the church are expected to hold their AR-15s while they worship and does he wear a crown of bullets," Maddow reported.

She noted he was also at the Capitol on January 6th.

MAGA-loving 'Church of the AR-15' purchasing massive Tennessee retreat for 'training center': report

Tom Boggioni
October 12, 2021

Church officials hold their AR-15-style rifles while people attend a blessing ceremony with their AR-15-style rifles at the Sanctuary Church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania. 

REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

According to a report from Vice, a pro-Donald Trump religious sect has purchased 130 acres on a mountaintop in Tennessee which they intend to turn into a "training center."

MAGA-loving 'Church of the AR-15' purchasing massive Tennessee retreat for 'training center'youtu.be

The Rod of Iron Ministries, which worships with AR-15's, is led by Pastor Hyung Jin "Sean" Moon, the son of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who passed away in September of 2012.

As Vice reports, the younger Moon is attempting to extend his influence into the "heartland" and the purchase of the property will provide him with a base of operations for his outreach efforts.

The report of the compound purchase follows a similar property purchase made in May in Texas.

Vice's Tess Owen's reports, "The younger Moon, who also goes by 'The Second King,' split from the main church amid a dramatic falling-out with his mother about who, between the two of them, was the rightful heir to his father's empire," before adding, "In 2017, Moon founded his church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, siphoning off hundreds of followers from the main congregation who were willing to make the seemingly radical leap of incorporating high-powered rifles into their spiritual life."

According to the report, the younger Moon described the Tennessee property as a future "spiritual retreat' along the lines of one his father created in Cheongpyeong.

"As soon as I was in the vicinity of this property, I immediately felt Cheongpyeong," he claimed during an interview. "As this spiritual download was happening, and we could feel the presence of Cheongpyeong, we just knew that of all the Tennessee lands that we've seen, this is the one that we must get to reclaim and have as a spiritual retreat."

During a recent sermon, he claimed the retreat would allow followers to shed the "satanic" influence of his mother, with whom he is still feuding, while boasting to his followers, "This is going to be a very, very important mission. Many, many, many busloads of people are going to come to pray there and do ancestor liberation there."

Reporting that the property appears to be a parcel close to Knoxville that recently sold for $460,000 and contains " ...a pond, at least one run-down building with a green roof, and graves of Confederate and Union soldiers," Vice's Owen's noted that Moon is currently taking applications where "members are asked to stipulate how many generations of ancestors they'd like to liberate."

"Under the original church, members were required to pay a specific amount for every generation they hoped to liberate. Moon's form has a donation section where people can choose how much they want to give for ancestor liberation and whether they'd prefer to pay via PayPal, check, wire, or cash," she added.

LONG READ AT VICE
You can read more here.

AMERIKAN Black flag: Understanding the Trumpists' latest threatening symbol

Chauncey Devega, Salon
October 12, 2021

David Dempsey at the Capitol riot (Twitter).

It's an old truism that the "real bad men" (and bad women) "move in silence and violence." That's certainly true for the most dangerous and most effective of Donald Trump's allies, henchmen, henchwomen, and other followers. But for Donald Trump himself, and most of his political cult, that rule does not apply.

Trump and his followers were loud, exuberant and enthusiastic on Jan. 6. The lethal attack on the Capitol had been publicly announced weeks in advance, and should have come as no surprise. Trump's rallies and gatherings continue to celebrate violence and the prospect of revenge — and specifically of "getting even" with Trump's "enemies."

Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign chairman and White House strategist, has now threatened to recruit Republican-fascist "shock troops" with the apparent goal of undermining the U.S. government, and by implication multiracial democracy, if and when Trump and the Republicans regain control of both Congress and the White House.

On a daily basis Fox News and other elements of the right-wing disinformation propaganda machine use stochastic terrorism and other techniques to radicalize their audience into committing acts of political violence. To this point, the Democratic Party and the political and news media class in general have remained in denial, and largely passive in response.

In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-black American flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents — meaning nonwhite people, "socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated people and others deemed to be "enemies" of "real America." As media critic Eric Boehlert recently noted, the liberal opinion site Living Blue in Texas is sounding the alarm about the specific meaning of the black flag and the Republican-fascists support for terrorism and other political violence. 

That post, "Are Your Republican Neighbors Planning on Killing You?", merits lengthy quotation:

It didn't take long to find hundreds of videos where these Trumpers and so-called patriots were hanging black American flags. ...

Black American flags are the flags that mean "no quarter shall be given." They are the opposite of the white flag of surrender.

According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the black American flag originated in the civil war and was flown by the Confederates.

It means that they will not surrender, will not take prisoners, and are willing to die for their cause. It means they will execute their enemies

Who are their enemies? Pretty much any non-Conservative. You know, Democrats, Liberals, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and the vaccinated. ...
So, we're the enemy, and they're openly professing to want to execute us. … So, why are they doing this
Covid vaccinations, mostly. They believe that Joe Biden has declared a civil war on them by mandating that employers with over 100 employees and the military have vaccinations.
Yes, they say civil war, and they say it's already started. But, unfortunately, many of them also live in states where masks and vaccines are required by state governments, healthcare, and law enforcement.
An alarming number of military members have been making Tik Toks talking about how they are being discharged because they refuse the vaccine. It's alarming because there is probably an equal number of guys on there talking about the civil war plans and actively using Tik Tok to recruit these military and ex-military members.

The biggest message they have been sending out is, "it's time" or "the time is now." ...

Although showing guns on Tik Tok is supposed to be against community guidelines, they show lots of videos of their guns, shooting them, wearing them, or sitting on their bed.
They primarily use Tik Tok as a recruiting tool and let others know their willingness to commit violence. Then they tell people to message them or where to find them on Telegram.

However you interpret these videos posted by Trump followers and other neofascists — which could be mainly performative — it is clearly true that the American right is increasingly willing to accept or condone violence as a means of expanding and protecting their social and political power. (Salon did not find licensed news photographs of these flags, and has made the editorial decision not to reproduce the images mentioned above, which are easy to find on social media.)

Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that millions of Republican voters and Trump followers would support the use of violence to remove Joe Biden from office because of the "Big Lie" and their belief that that he is not a legitimate president. Similarly, a large proportion of Republicans believe that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were "patriots" whose use of violence was justified.

And a new poll from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics even suggests that more than 50 percent of Trump supporters want "red states" to secede from the Union. Republican elected officials and other right-wing opinion leaders have continued to escalate their threats of political violence against Democrats and other targeted groups.

In a recent speech to the North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Salt & Light" conference, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., issued what sounded like a declaration of war:
It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows to say, "No longer are we going to allow our culture to be determined by people who hate the things that we believe in…. We are going to stand valiantly for God's incredible inherent truths that predate any version of government. Because, my friends, if we lose this country today, if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever, our children will never know what freedom is. It's our duty to stand up, Let us stand united as men and women of faith to fight for our country.

During an interview with MSNBC's Joy Reid, terrorism and national security expert Malcolm Nance said that Cawthorn's video "picks up on the themes that are not just coming from the Steve Bannon level and Donald Trump level, they are coming from the Republican street — and that Republican street is armed. They're angry. They have been fed an entire line which makes them believe that America is no longer America and that they no longer want the America that the rest of us, the 60 percent of the country, live in. And they`re willing to take up arms for it."

Nance also noted that Cawthorn's propaganda video is thematically similar to the type of propaganda used by Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida to radicalize and recruit members.

During an interview with Scientific American magazine, Dr. Bandy Lee, the principal editor of the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," explained how a mentally pathological leader can "infect" his followers and perhaps even an entire nation:

I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence — while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a "lock and key" relationship….
"Shared psychosis" — which is also called "folie à millions" ["madness for millions"] when occurring at the national level or "induced delusions" — refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person's symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence — even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Trump and his regime gave permission and encouragement to his followers and other supporters to engage in antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. Once such a process has begun, and those forces are unleashed, it is not easy to stop. Fascism is not a simple machine with an on-and-off switch. In practice, fascism is given life and takes corporeal form through its followers, with each one being a potential carrier of the pathology.

As Hussein Ibish warned in a recent article in the Atlantic, "The cancer of political violence is not an endemic American disease. At the moment, it is a Republican disease. No one but Republicans themselves can cure it. Until they do, the violence of the right is only going to keep swelling and crashing. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar."

Fascism is a highly virulent social disease that usually destroys the host body – but not before spreading the disease to many other people. In fact, if the original host dies, he or she can be elevated to the status of martyr for "the cause," serving to inspire existing followers and lure in new ones.

Ultimately, Donald Trump, like other fascist and authoritarian leaders, is the symptom of a sick society. Trumpism is not actually the core disease. For America to counteract the deep underlying illness that has made Trumpism possible will require a long-term cultural and moral reckoning. Anything less, and the disease of American fascism will only go dormant until it is resurrected again — perhaps in a more dangerous and virulent form.

DE SADE WAS WHITE

GOP sadism is out of control -- when will respectable white people wake up?

John Stoehr
October 11, 2021

Too much depends on respectable white people. Those are white people who care about appearing respectable to other white people, who themselves care about appearing respectable to other white people. They are the great globular middle of American politics that determines electoral outcomes in this country. For the longest time, they sided with the Republican Party on account of tax cuts and other goodies.

Sadism isn't only about sex, though it can be, obviously. When I say "sadism," I mean the pleasure derived from seeing other people suffer. The Republicans have no policy goals. Their only goal is creating legal and political conditions in which the in-group is protected while the out-group is punished. But it doesn't end with punishment. It can't.
For the longest time, they sided with the Republican Party on account of tax cuts and other goodies. My hope is that, for the foreseeable future, they will side with the Democrats on account of tax cuts and other goodies being a banner for hiding the fact that sadism is the GOP's point.

When the out-group gains power, the in-group feels powerless. When the in-group feels powerless, the in-group feels oppressed. When the in-group feels oppressed, it cries out for freedom. But in order to feel free, the in-group must do more than merely punish the out-group. It must derive pleasure from seeing pain and suffering. This is what I want respectable white people to understand. When they vote for tax cuts and other goodies, they are doing far more. They are helping the GOP's authoritarian base feel a freedom that depends on suffering.

When white police officers pulled a Black paraplegic man out of his vehicle by his hair last month in Dayton, Ohio, on illegal drug suspicion, that might appear to be another case of police brutality. (Body cam footage of the incident was released Friday. An investigation by the police department is underway.) But to the authoritarian base of the Republican Party, what the Dayton cops did was the goal itself. Seeing the man's pain produced pleasure. It made them feel free.

It is sadism. It is not cruelty. Cruelty is not the point. Sadism is. You can be cruel without meaning to. You can be cruel without taking pleasure in pain. You can be cruel because you can't help it (on account of repeating past traumas, for instance). But sadism takes intention. It takes the desire to set aside priorities, like tax cuts and other goodies. It is its own cause. It is its own effect. This is another thing I want respectable white people to understand. Sadism isn't an unintended consequence. It's the point. When you vote for the Republican Party, when you give money to Republican candidates, you are joining a concerted effort to bring more suffering to more people, and you are complicit in the derivation of pleasure from suffering. You have become a sadist.

This sounds extreme. That's because sadism cancels equality. If the Republicans had some degree of commitment to equality, they might seek conditions in which the in-group feels free regardless of whether the out-group feels pain. But there is no equality. Therefore, there is no equal protection under law. Therefore, there is a one-to-one relationship between in-group freedom and out-group pain. Put another way, it's quite impossible for the in-group to feel free when the out-group does not feel pain. Sadism is the GOP's vital link.

Given the reality of this one-to-one relationship, you can see they don't mean freedom when they say freedom. They don't mean the presence of choice. They don't mean the absence of coercion. They don't mean freedom in any conventional sense. What they mean is the pleasure of seeing other people's pain, because their freedom can't exist without their suffering. Respectable white people need to understand this. Cries for freedom are in fact cries for sadism.

Just as they don't mean freedom when they say freedom, they don't mean borders when they say borders. Ten Republican governors went to the southern border to pressure the president to do more about immigrants coming in. Most of them were from non-border states. And that's the tell. The border they are defending isn't the border. It is the border between us and them, between the GOP's authoritarian base that can't feel free unless someone suffers, like immigrants, and everyone else who can feel free as they share power with others.

This is the last thing I want respectable white people to understand. There is no middle way. There is no neutral position. "Every state is now a border state," said Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany last week while visiting the border. Every state is a border state. Every issue is a border issue. Every person is a border person who must choose a side. Are you with us or against us. Sadism is the point

Unsupported ‘sickout’ claims take flight amid Southwest woes

By DAVID KOENIG and ALI SWENSON

Southwest passengers wait to check in at Miami International Airport, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021, in Miami. Southwest Airlines appears to be fixing problems that caused the cancellation of nearly 2,400 flights over the previous three days. By midday Tuesday, Southwest had canceled fewer than 100 flights, although more than 400 others were running late. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

DALLAS (AP) — When Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights over the weekend, citing bad weather and air traffic control issues, unsupported claims blaming vaccine mandates began taking off.

Conservative politicians and pundits, including Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, alleged the flight disruptions resulted from pilots and air traffic controllers walking off their jobs or calling in sick to protest federal vaccination requirements.

The airline, its pilots’ union and the Federal Aviation Administration denied that.

“The weekend challenges were not a result of Southwest employee demonstrations,” Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said Monday.

Still, Twitter posts claiming airline employees were “standing up to medical tyranny” and participating in a “mass sickout” amassed thousands of shares. Vague and anonymous messages on social media speculated that Southwest was hiding the real reason for its disruptions. And anti-vaccine rallying cries such as #DoNotComply, #NoVaccineMandate and #HoldTheLine were among the 10 most popular hashtags tweeted in connection to Southwest over the weekend, according to a report from media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.

Even as flights appeared to be running closer to normal on Tuesday, the Texas-based airline remained at the center of the latest front in the vaccine mandate culture war, its challenges exploited by opponents of vaccine requirements.

Neither the company nor its pilots’ union has provided evidence to back up their explanations for why nearly 2,400 flights were canceled from Saturday through Monday. Southwest has only said that bad weather and air traffic control issues in Florida on Friday triggered cascading failures in which planes and pilots were trapped out of position for their next flight.

The crisis peaked on Sunday, when the airline canceled more than 1,100 flights, or 30% of its schedule. By Tuesday evening, it had canceled fewer than 100 flights, or 2% of its schedule, although more than 1,000 flights were delayed, according to tracking service FlightAware.

“When you get behind, it just takes several days to catch up,” CEO Gary Kelly said Tuesday on CNBC. “We were significantly set behind on Friday.”

Southwest struggled all summer with delays and cancellations. A senior executive admitted to employees Sunday that the airline is still understaffed and might need to reduce flights in November and December.

Despite repeated requests, the company and the union have declined to say how many employees missed work during the crisis. They have said that absentee rates were similar to those over a typical summer weekend, but they have not put out numbers to support that argument. It is also unclear how many Southwest pilots are unvaccinated.

“We don’t know, and the company doesn’t know,” said Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.

Meanwhile, speculation from prominent Conservative politicians and pundits has flooded into the void. Many shared the unsubstantiated theory, but few provided details, facts or examples of employees walking off the job to protest the vaccine.

“Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate at work!” Cruz tweeted Sunday. “Suddenly, we’re short on pilots & air traffic controllers. #ThanksJoe.”

The Republican senator wrote in another tweet Monday that he met last week with leaders of pilot unions who “expressed deep concern over the vaccine mandates.” A spokeswoman for Southwest pilots said no one at the union had talked to Cruz. A spokesperson for Cruz did not respond to emailed questions from The Associated Press about whether the Republican senator had any firsthand knowledge of pilots or air traffic controllers skipping work.

Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin also posted the rumors on social media, without offering proof.

Vague, familiar-looking “friend of a friend” stories are a dangerous form of misinformation because they “feel like insider information being shared by individuals directly involved in the action,” according to Rachel Moran, a misinformation scholar at the University of Washington.

Similar unsupported claims circulated online in August, when social media users falsely claimed that flight delays and cancellations out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport were the result of vaccine mandates. In September, false internet rumors swirled that 40% of employees at defense contractor General Dynamics had declined the vaccine and threatened to quit.

Some Twitter users connected Southwest’s flight problems to news that on Friday the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association had asked a federal judge in Dallas to block the airline’s vaccine mandate. The union said under federal labor law, Southwest must bargain with the union before making changes affecting working conditions. The judge has not ruled yet.

Asked on Tuesday to respond to claims that vaccine mandates have reduced the workforce and contributed to supply-chain disruptions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki took a jab at Cruz — sarcastically labeling him a “world-renowned business, travel and health expert” — before defending Biden’s policy.

“I know there was a little hubbub over the course of the last few days about Southwest Airlines,” Psaki said. “We now know that some of those claims were absolutely false and actually the issues were completely unrelated to vaccine mandates.”

Biden’s order, which is still being finalized, would require employers with 100 or more workers to get vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19. Airlines, however, are government contractors because they perform work such as emergency flights for the Defense Department that carried Afghanistan refugees to the U.S. in August. That makes airlines subject to a tougher standard under the Biden order: mandatory vaccinations with no opt-out for getting tested.

Following the lead of other airlines, Southwest told employees last week that it would require them to be vaccinated by Dec. 8.

While some staff at airlines and other large companies have spoken out against vaccine requirements, comments on social media have created an exaggerated sense of the dissent, according to Moran, the misinformation scholar at the University of Washington.

“In reality, it’s quite a small number of people who are protesting employment-based mandates for the vaccine,” Moran said. “People are more vulnerable to misinformation in times of crisis, and these labor shortages and supply-chain delays either create a real sense of crisis or are manipulated by misinformation spreaders to make it appear like we are heading towards crisis.”

___

Swenson reported from New York. Amanda Seitz in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report. David Koenig can be reached at www.twitter.airlinewriter

Conservatives go wild over imaginary anti-vax Southwest pilots

Igor Derysh, Salon
October 12, 2021

Ted Cruz at CPAC (Screen Grab)

Former President Trump and several right-wing Republican lawmakers claimed over the holiday weekend that hundreds of canceled and delayed Southwest Airlines flights resulted from pilots and other airline employees resisting vaccine mandates. But the airline, the pilots union and the FAA have all said that Southwest's vaccine requirements had nothing to do with this weekend's issues.

Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights between Saturday and Monday and at least 1,400 other flights were delayed. The airline blamed severe weather, air traffic control staff shortages and a lack of hotel accommodations for employees for creating a cascading series of issues that led to inadequate staffing on more than one-fourth of Southwest's weekend flights. The union representing Southwest pilots blamed the airline's complicated technological system, which reassigns and reroutes pilots during disruptions, for causing a "domino effect" that forced the company to reassign more than 70% of its pilots over the weekend. Southwest saw a similar string of cancellations in June, which the airline later blamed on overly optimistic projections about how quickly it could scale up flights as passengers began to return over the summer.

This weekend's cancellations came just two days after the Southwest pilots' union asked a federal judge to block the company's vaccine mandate. Republican lawmakers, without evidence, quickly seized on an imaginary link, tying the travel chaos to the company's new policy and President Biden's call for a federal vaccine mandate.

"Joe Biden's illegal vaccine mandate at work. Suddenly, we're short on pilots & air traffic controllers," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, declared on Twitter — while actually linking to a CNBC article that quoted an airline spokeswoman refuting his claim as an "unfounded rumor" and "inaccurate."

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., claimed that Southwest employees were "standing up for their rights as Americans.

"You will NEVER be able to comply your way out of tyranny," she tweeted.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said he stands with Southwest employees who are "fighting against these mandates."

"This isn't about a vaccine, this is about freedom," he wrote.

"Shut them down," wrote Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.

Donald Trump also sought to link the issues to vaccine mandates, as well as his endlessly repeated false claims about the 2020 election.

"I think it has a lot to do with a lot of things. I think it has something to do with the election that was rigged," he said in a radio interview this weekend. "I think these are big fans of your favorite president, I think that this has something to do with that. I think it has something to do with the ... I think it has a lot to do with mandates."

Donald Trump Jr., also amplified the baseless claim on Twitter, claiming that employees had gone on "strike" over the mandates.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson amplified these unfounded claims to his primetime audience, saying that the flight cancellations were the "direct consequence" of Biden's vaccine mandate.

But there's no evidence of a strike or sick-out by airline employees. The pilots' union has said that pilots called in sick at a normal rate over the weekend.

Asked how much the company's vaccine mandate contributed to the cancellations, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly told CNBC, "Zero."

Kelly said that the rate of employee absences over the weekend was "very normal."

"Understand how airlines work," he said. "When you get behind, it just takes several days to catch up."

The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said on Saturday that "our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial action."

"There are false claims of job actions by Southwest Pilots currently gaining traction on social media and making their way into mainstream news. I can say with certainty that there are no work slowdowns or sickouts either related to the recent mandatory vaccine mandate or otherwise," union president Casey Murray said in a statement on Sunday, pointing instead to severe weather in the southeast United States, staffing shortages and the company's operating system, which he said has become "subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure."

The union said last week that it does not oppose vaccines but filed a lawsuit to block the mandate because Southwest had not consulted employees before making the decision.

Murray told the Dallas Morning News that pilot sick rates over the weekend "were exactly in line with where they were all summer with the same kind of operational disasters."

Incoming Southwest CEO Bob Jordan last month blamed the company's months-long issues predating the vaccine mandates on staffing shortages stemming from the pandemic, when thousands of employees accepted buyouts, early retirements or long-term leave.

Southwest COO Mike Van de Ven said in a video to employees that despite "a very aggressive hiring plan ... we are still not where we want to be with staffing," especially pilots.

Industry experts blamed the company's "point-to-point route network" for making the airline more susceptible to widespread issues than other airlines. Delays cause cascading issues at each flight's additional stops and the airline had scheduled more flights than it could handle, Henry Harteveldt, president of the Atmosphere Research Group, told NBC News.

"You screw up Florida, you screw up their whole network a whole lot more because it's connected to the rest of their system. Once it gets screwed up, airplanes are out of place, crews are out of place," added Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant at Boyd Group International. "The crew gets stuck in Omaha and ran out of time, they should be in Orlando. Getting that squared away takes time."

Cruz ignored all of the contradictory evidence and statements from the airline, the pilots and the FAA — which also said there is no evidence that "this weekend's cancellations were related to vaccine mandates" — to accuse the media of Democratic propaganda when his baseless claim was widely fact-checked. He then claimed he had not meant Southwest employees but was referring to air traffic controllers in Jacksonville, where local aviation authorities reported staffing issues over the weekend.

But the statement he posted explicitly refuted the "rumor" that it was impacted by an "organized walkout late Friday by controllers in response to the FAA's mandate that all employees get vaccinated." Instead, it blamed staffing issues on "normal approved leave" and controllers who are required to stay at home for 48 hours after getting vaccinated.

"If you believe the pilots unions, MANY MORE FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS ARE COMING (and not just SWA) because of Biden's illegal vaccine mandate," Cruz wrote.

Nearly all major airlines have now required employees to be vaccinated without encountering the same problems as Southwest, where the issues have persisted for more than four years, according to the pilots' union. While Republicans continue to attack Biden for urging vaccine requirements, most voters support such mandates and data shows that compliance rates have been exceptionally high.

United Airlines, the first airline to require vaccines for employees at a time when its overall vaccination rate was below 70% in August, says that all but about 300 of the company's 67,000 employees have been vaccinated or granted exemptions, a rate of more than 99.5%.

"I did not appreciate the intensity of support for a vaccine mandate that existed, because you hear that loud anti-vax voice a lot more than you hear the people that want it," United CEO Scott Kirby told The New York Times. "But there are more of them. And they're just as intense."

FAILED NATO STATE

Ransomed and beaten: Migrants face abuse in Libyan detention

By SAMY MAGDY

1 of 11

Guinean migrant Osman Touré waits his turn to receive a test for COVID-19 abroad the Geo Barents before disembarkation at the port of Augusta, on the island of Sicily, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. Touré is among tens of thousands of migrants who have endured torture, sexual violence and extortion at the hands of guards in detention centers in Libya, a major hub for migrants fleeing poverty and wars in Africa and the Middle East, hoping for a better life in Europe. (AP Photo/Samy Magdy)

ONBOARD THE GEO BARENTS OFF LIBYA (AP) — Osman Touré was crying from the pain of repeated beatings and torture as he dialed his brother’s cellphone number.

“I’m in prison in Libya,” Touré said in that August 2017 call. “They will kill me if you don’t pay 2,500 dinars in 24 hours.”

Within days, Touré’s family transferred the roughly $550 demanded to secure his freedom from a government detention center in Libya. But Touré was not let go — instead, he was sold to a trafficker and kept enslaved for four more years.

Touré is among tens of thousands of migrants who have endured torture, sexual violence and extortion at the hands of guards in detention centers in Libya, a major hub for migrants fleeing poverty and wars in Africa and the Middle East, hoping for a better life in Europe.

The 25-year-old Guinean, along with two dozen other migrants, spoke to The Associated Press aboard the Geo Barents, a rescue vessel operated by the medical aid group Doctors without Borders in the Mediterranean off Libya. Most had been held in trafficking warehouses and government detention centers in western Libya over the past four years.

They were among 60 migrants who fled Libya on Sept. 19 in two unseaworthy boats and were rescued a day later by the Geo Barents. The AP also obtained testimonies from many others collected in recent months by the aid group, known by its French acronym MSF.

The European Union has sent 455 million euros to Libya since 2015, largely channeled through U.N. agencies and aimed at beefing up Libya’s coast guard, reinforcing its southern border and improving conditions for migrants.

However, huge sums have been diverted to networks of militiamen and traffickers who exploit migrants, according to a 2019 AP investigation. Coast guard members are also complicit, turning migrants intercepted at sea over to detention centers under deals with militias or demanding payoffs to let others go.

The practice continues unabated and U.N.-commissioned investigators said in a 32-page report last week that “policies meant to push migrants back to Libya to keep them away from European shores ultimately lead to abuses,” including possible crimes against humanity.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants hoping to reach Europe have made their way through Libya, where a lucrative trafficking business has flourished in a country without a functioning government, split for years between rival administrations in the east and west, each backed by armed groups and foreign governments.

The migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, told the AP that detention center guards beat and tortured them, then extorted money from their relatives, supposedly in exchange for their freedom. Their bodies showed traces of old and recent injuries, and signs of bullet and knife wounds on their backs, legs, arms and faces.

On paper, the detention centers are run by the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, which is overseen by the Interior Ministry and Libya’s interim authorities, who took power earlier this year under U.N. auspices to carry out national elections by the end of the year. But on the ground, notorious militias remain in control, according to migrants and the U.N. investigators.

“Migrants are detained for indefinite periods without an opportunity to have the legality of their detention reviewed, and the only practical means of escape is by paying large sums of money to the guards or engaging in forced labor or sexual favors inside or outside the detention,” the U.N. report said.

Spokespeople for Libya’s government, the Interior Ministry, the directorate and the coast guard did not answer phone calls or respond to messages seeking comment.

Touré, the youngest of seven siblings abandoned by their father, said that as an adolescent he watched others from his small Guinean town of Kindia make it to Europe and help pull their families out of poverty.

He began his own attempt in March 2015, taking odd jobs along the way to finance the trip. Traffickers held him captive for months twice, in Niger and Algeria, before he crossed into Libya in April 2017, he said.

Four months later, Touré embarked from Libya, only to be intercepted by the coast guard and returned to Tripoli. At the port, he and other migrants attempted to flee but were caught by security forces and taken to the al-Nasr Martyrs detention center in Zawiya.

That’s when the torture started. He described how guards would hang them upside down and whip their bare feet. At times other migrants were forced or given incentives to take part in the violence.

“A migrant from Ghana refused to beat us, but there was a Cameroonian who was really cruel,” Touré said.

His second week in prison, six guards approached him. One slapped him hard on the right side of his face. The rest kicked and beat him. Then he was handed a cellphone and ordered to call his family.

Ten others in the cell were forced to do the same. Three were taken out by the guards in the next few days. He doesn’t know what became of them, he said.

The money sent by captives’ relatives was usually transferred via Western Union or an informal system of personal accounts to a trafficker in coordination with the guards. In some cases, like Touré’s, families sent money to the detained migrant and guards took them to withdraw it.

Touré was taken from his cell three days after the phone call. He thought he would walk free. Instead, the guards sold him to a trafficker in Zawiya. He spent the next four years enslaved, working in the trafficker’s warehouse.

Finally his luck changed in September when the trafficker’s wife took pity on him and persuaded her husband to set him free, he said. Within days he was on a small inflatable boat with 55 others attempting the Mediterranean crossing.

Overladen, the boat did not make it far. Those onboard were rescued by the Geo Barents 48 nautical miles off Libya’s coast. They were taken to Sicily, where Italian authorities permitted the rescue ship to dock on Sept. 27 and let the migrants apply for asylum. They could still be returned to their home countries if their requests are denied.

Touré and other migrants said that besides plain cruelty, there was racism behind their abuse in Libya. The U.N. report found the same — that Black sub-Saharan Africans were likely to be subjected to harsher treatment than others.

“Libya isn’t a safe place for Black Africans,” Touré said.

The point of arrival at one of Libya’s ports was the first opportunity for Libya’s security forces to extract payment from migrants trying to reach Europe.

For some, particularly Arab migrants, the ordeal ended there without detention, as long as they paid. Waleed, a Tunisian, told the AP he bribed guards four times at the Tripoli port and walked free. Three other times he was taken to detention centers, where he found a way to get enough money to the guards and was released.

Mohammed, a Moroccan, also said he was released at port in 2020 by handing over 3,000 dinars ($660). Both men gave only their first names out of fear for the safety of family members still inside Libya.

The Libyan coast guard, which is trained and equipped by the European Union, has intercepted some 87,000 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea since 2016, including about 26,300 so far this year, according to U.N. figures. But only about 10,000 are in detention centers, according to the U.N. migration agency, raising concerns that many are in the hands of criminal groups and traffickers, and others are dead.

Not all have enough money to pay bribes. Mohammed Salah, a 20-year-old migrant from the Ivory Coast, told the AP he was intercepted and returned to Libya in January 2020. He didn’t have the 3,000 dinars ($660) demanded for his freedom.

After he argued over the bribe, he was beaten at the police station and suffered a broken leg. Detention center guards then handed him over to a trafficker, who enslaved him for over a year, he said.

Valentin Najang of Cameroon was detained in the Zawiya detention center after being captured early last month. The guards repeatedly beat him and other migrants with sticks and plastic tubing, the 18-year-old told the AP. Once, he watched two guards beat a young migrant from Mauritius unconscious. A week into his detention, his family paid 500,000 Cameroonian francs (over $880) for his freedom.

At the heart of the abuses against migrants remains the question of who can be held accountable. The U.N. report did not name suspects, saying more investigation is needed to determine who was culpable.

But migrants and others inside Libya say the issue is clear cut: It’s the militias and warlords who have become powerful government figures in many areas.

The coastal town of Zawiya, where the al-Nasr Martyrs detention center is located, is controlled by the Nasr Martyrs militia, which have “the final word on all the town’s security and military matters,” said a former senior official at the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The militia is led by Mohammed Kachlaf, who was sanctioned in 2018 by the U.N. Security Council, which called his network “one of the most dominant in the field of migrant smuggling and the exploitation of migrants in Libya.”

Zawiya’s coast guard unit is commanded by Abdel-Rahman Milad, who was also sanctioned in 2018 by the U.N. Security Council for human trafficking. U.N. experts said Milad and other coast guard members “are directly involved in the sinking of migrant boats using firearms.” Milad has denied any links to human smuggling.

And Tripoli’s Abu Salim neighborhood, where a detention center with the same name is located, is controlled by a militia led by Abdel-Ghani al-Kikli. Though Amnesty International has accused him of war crimes and other serious rights violations, he was named this year as the head of the government’s so-called Stability Support Authority with even broader arrest powers.

“It is a well-connected mafia with influence in each corner of the government,” the former Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration official said.

___

AP video journalist Ahmed Hatem contributed from aboard the Geo Barents.

‘Squid Game’ strikes nerve in debt-ridden South Korea
By KIM TONG-HYUNG

This undated photo released by Netflix shows South Korean cast members, from left, Park Hae-soo, Lee Jung-jae and Jung Ho-yeon in a scene from "Squid Game." Squid Game, a globally popular South Korea-produced Netflix show that depicts hundreds of financially distressed characters competing in deadly children’s games for a chance to escape severe debt, has struck a raw nerve at home, where there’s growing discontent over soaring household debt, decaying job markets and worsening income inequality. (Youngkyu Park/Netflix via AP)


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — “Squid Game,” a brutal Netflix survival drama about desperate adults competing in deadly children’s games for a chance to escape severe debt hit a little too close to home for Lee Chang-keun.

The show has captivated global audiences since its September debut, becoming one of Netflix’s biggest hits. It has struck raw nerves at home, where there’s growing discontent over soaring personal debt, decaying job markets and stark income inequalities worsened by financial crises in the past two decades.

In the dystopian horrors of Squid Game, Lee sees a reflection of himself in the show’s protagonist Seong Gi-hun, a laid-off autoworker coping with a broken family and struggling with constant business failures and gambling problems.

Seong gets beaten by gangster creditors into signing off his organs as collateral, but then receives a mysterious offer to play in a series of six traditional Korean children’s games for a shot at winning $38 million.

The South Korea-produced show pits Seong against hundreds of other financially distressed players in a hyper-violent competition for the ultimate prize, with losers being killed at every round.

It is raising disturbing questions about the future of one of Asia’s wealthiest economies, where people who once crowed about the “Miracle of the Han River” now moan about “Hell Joseon,” a sarcastic reference to a hierarchical kingdom that ruled Korea before the 20th century.

“Some scenes were very hard to watch,” said Lee, a worker at South Korea’s Ssangyong Motors who struggled with financial difficulties and depression after the carmaker laid him and 2,600 other employees off while filing for bankruptcy protection in 2009.

After years of protests, court battles and government intervention, Lee and hundreds of other Ssangyong workers returned to work in recent years. But not before a spate of suicides among co-workers and family members who were plunged into financial misery.

This undated photo released by Netflix shows a scene of contestants vying to win the Dalgona Korean candy challenge in a scene from "Squid Game." Squid Game, a globally popular South Korea-produced Netflix show that depicts hundreds of financially distressed characters competing in deadly children’s games for a chance to escape severe debt, has struck a raw nerve at home, where there’s growing discontent over soaring household debt, decaying job markets and worsening income inequality. (Youngkyu Park/Netflix via AP)

“In Squid Game, you see characters scrambling to survive after being laid off at work, struggling to operate fried chicken diners or working as ‘daeri’ drivers,” who get paid for driving drunk people home in their own cars, Lee said. “That reminded me of my co-workers who died.”

Lee said he and his colleagues struggled to find work and were backlisted by other auto companies that considered them militant labor activists.

A 2016 report by Korea University medical researchers said at least 28 laid-off Ssangyong workers or their relatives died of suicide or severe health problems, including those linked to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Squid Game is one of many South Korean shows inspired by economic woes. Its dark tale of inequality and class has drawn comparisons with Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “Parasite,” another pandemic-era hit with stunning visuals and violence exposing the underside of South Korea’s economic success story.

South Korea’s rapid rebuilding from the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War has been spectacular –- from Samsung’s emergence as a global technology giant to the immense popularity of K-pop and movies that’s expanding beyond Asia — millions of South Koreans now grapple with the dark side of that rise.

“Class problems are severe everywhere in the world, but it seems South Korean directors and writers tackle the issue with more boldness,” said Im Sang-soo, a film director.

In Squid Game, Seong’s troubles trace back to his firing a decade earlier from the fictional Dragon Motors, a nod to Ssangyong, which means “double dragon.”

Hundreds of workers, including Lee, occupied a Ssangyong plant for weeks in 2009 to protest the layoffs before being dispersed by riot police who besieged them, assaulted them with batons, shields and water-cannons and dropped tear gas cannisters by helicopter.

That violent standoff injured dozens and is woven into Squid Game’s narrative. Seong has flashbacks about a Dragon coworker killed by strikebreakers while organizing fellow game participants to create barricades with dormitory beds to block murderous sneak night attacks by more vicious opponents looking to eliminate the competition.

Ultimately, it’s every person for themselves in Squid Game’s cruel battle royale between hundreds of people willing to risk even their lives for a shot at freeing themselves from the nightmare of insurmountable debts.

The show features other crushed or marginalized characters, like Ali Abdul, an undocumented factory worker from Pakistan with severed fingers and a boss who refuses to pay him, epitomizing how the country exploits some of the poorest people in Asia while ignoring dangerous working conditions and wage theft.

And Kang Sae-byeok, a pickpocketing North Korean refugee who had known nothing but rough life on the streets and is desperate for money to rescue her brother from an orphanage and to smuggle her mother out of the North.

Many South Koreans despair of advancing in a society where good jobs are increasingly scarce and housing prices have skyrocketed, enticing many to borrow heavily to gamble on risky financial investments or cryptocurrencies.

Household debt, at over 1,800 trillion ($1.5 trillion), now exceeds the country’s annual economic output. Tough times have pushed a record-low birth rate lower as struggling couples avoid having babies.

Squid Game’s global success is hardly a cause for pride, Se-Jeoung Kim, a South Korean lawyer based in Poland, wrote in a Seoul Shinmun newspaper column.

“Foreigners will come to you, saying they too watched Squid Game with fascination, and may ask whether Ali’s situation in the drama could really happen in a country that’s as wealthy and neat as South Korea, and I would have nothing to say,” she said.

Kim Jeong-wook, another Ssangyong worker who spent months with Lee perched atop a chimney at a Ssangyong factory in 2015, demanding their jobs back, said he couldn’t watch Squid Game after episode one.

“It was too traumatic for me,” he said.

___

AP Entertainment Writer Juwon Park contributed to this story.

Under years of Taliban rule, women nurses work alongside men

A midwife and a nutrition counsellor weigh a baby at the Tangi Saidan clinic

 Elise BLANCHARD AFP

Issued on: 13/10/2021 -

Daymirdad (Afghanistan) (AFP)

In a village deep in the mountains of central Afghanistan that has been ruled by the Taliban for a quarter of a century, women openly work alongside men at a vital health clinic.

Tangi Saidan in Wardak province has lived in the shadow of the front line but never been under the full control of government forces since a US-led invasion ousted the brutal and repressive Taliban regime in 2001.

Reached by narrow dirt roads, the Tangi Saidan clinic is alone in offering surgery in the remote area, with local Taliban leaders allowing some flexibility in the movement's rules on the segregation of the sexes.

"We have to operate here. If we don't, women will die," said Sharif Shah, a man and the only surgeon, who carries out procedures on women.

Tangi Saidan has lived in the shadow of the front line but never been under the full control of government forces since the 2001 invasion

 Elise BLANCHARD AFP

It takes hours to reach the clinic from some surrounding villages, and in the winter, when snow blocks the roads, patients are often carried on foot.

Reaching better health facilities in the capital Kabul, a day trip away on rocky, winding roads, is out of the question for people in this impoverished mountain area.

There are seven women among the clinic's 28 staff members: one nurse, a vaccine specialist, two midwives, a nutritionist and two cleaners, often working side by side with men.

"When it is necessary, Islamic law permits it," Mohammad, the Taliban official in charge of health care in Daymirdad district, told AFP.

Burqa-clad women with children inside the Tangi Saidan clinic

 Elise BLANCHARD AFP

The Taliban, who seized power in August as US-led forces withdrew from Afghanistan, have yet to issue clear guidelines on how they will govern in line with sharia law.

They initially ordered women to refrain from returning to work until Islamic systems were in place.

The group later called women health workers back to clinics and hospitals, but many were too afraid to resume their duties.

Others in Kabul, the most progressive Afghan city, said rules on segregation made their work too difficult.

- 'Curtain between them' -

But Jamila, the sole female nurse at the Tangi Saidan clinic, said she had never had to worry about working in Daymirdad, although she is chaperoned by a male "mahram", or guardian, when she does the night shift.

"People don't have a problem with men doctors, because a doctor is like a mahram," she said.

Clear rules govern this coexistence -- one of few exceptions granted by the Taliban.

When there are no male nurses, a female nurse can care for male patients.

And when there are no female doctors, a male physician can treat women.

In deeply conservative Afghanistan, even in areas under the control of the previous US-backed governments, women and men were expected to be treated by a health professional of the same sex 

Elise BLANCHARD AFP

"Men and women can work together in the same room, although under normal circumstances there should be a curtain between them," the Taliban official explained.

Yet at the Tangi Saidan clinic, there is no curtain, and nurse Jamila chats openly with her male colleagues.

In deeply conservative Afghanistan, even in areas under the control of the previous US-backed governments, women and men were expected to be treated by a health professional of the same sex.

Jamila is more concerned with whether she will continue to be paid.

The country's health service is on the brink of collapse, with Western nations largely halting the aid that propped up Afghanistan's clinics and hospitals.

Many staff at government health centres have gone months without salaries, while medicines are dwindling and skilled staff such as doctors have fled the country.

- 'Sun has finally risen' -

The Taliban victory has brought economic hardship but also an end to air strikes and night raids by airdropped government forces in the village, located near a front line.

The clinic run by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan was repeatedly targeted by troops looking for Taliban militants, who were treated alongside civilians during the conflict.

A mother with her newborn rests at the Tangi Saidan clinic

 Elise BLANCHARD AFP

Behind its green walls, still pockmarked from automatic fire, Mandanda, a patient in her 60s who has come from a neighbouring village for chest pains, is relieved.

"We are no longer losing our children. It is as though the sun has finally risen," she said.

But in a neighbouring bed, Jamila, a 40-year-old mother of seven, is less upbeat.

"They have brought us peace, but we have nothing to eat," she told AFP.

- Few illusions -

Mastura, a 27-year-old midwife, recalls with horror an attack on the clinic two years ago -- helicopters roaring above, screams, and a gun pointed at her when Afghan government forces charged in.

Two women and a child at the clinic, run by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan 

Elise BLANCHARD AFP

Two staff members died in the raid.

During her seven years at the clinic, the fear of raids was part of everyday life, but Mastura said she had avoided run-ins with the Taliban.

"They are not in the street saying 'do this or don't do that'. They live here with their families as part of society," she said.

But Mastura is under few illusions about the future under the Islamists.

"My mother and my grandmother had very difficult lives. I am only 27 and my life has already been very difficult.

"I don't think that it will be any better for my daughter."

© 2021 AFP

Danish artist hires lawyers to reclaim Hong Kong Tiananmen statue

The 'Pillar of Shame' commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing has stood at the University of Hong Kong since 1997

 Peter PARKS AFP/File

Issued on: 13/10/2021 - 

Hong Kong (AFP)

The Danish artist behind a Hong Kong sculpture mourning those killed in Tiananmen Square has instructed a lawyer to secure his work and bring it overseas after the city's flagship university ordered its sudden removal.

The eight-metre (26-feet) high "Pillar of Shame" by Jens Galschiot has sat on the University of Hong Kong's (HKU) campus since 1997, the year the city was handed back to China.

It features 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on one another and commemorates democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Last week Hong Kong's oldest university ordered it to be removed by 5pm on Wednesday citing "legal advice" as authorities crack down on dissent.

Galshiot told AFP he had hired a local lawyer and requested a hearing with the university over the future of the statue as the deadline looms.

"I hope that my ownership of the sculpture will be respected and that I will be able to transport the sculpture out of Hong Kong under orderly conditions and without it having suffered from any damage," he told AFP via email.

Galschiot said he would prefer the statue to have stayed in Hong Kong. If it was destroyed by authorities, he said, Hong Kongers should collect "as many pieces of the Pillar of Shame as possible".

The Unversity of Hong Kong, the city's oldest university, ordered the sculpture be removed, citing 'legal advice' as authorities crack down on dissent 

Peter PARKS AFP/File

"These pieces may be used to make some symbolic manifestation that 'Empires pass away - but art persists'," the artist said.

Glaschiot said he had also been in contact with people in Hong Kong who were making 3D scans of the sculpture to produce miniature versions.

- Crackdown on dissent - FREE SPEECH

HKU's removal order was penned by global law firm Mayer Brown and addressed to the Hong Kong Alliance, a now disbanded organisation that used to organise the city's annual Tiananmen remembrance vigils.

The University of Hong Kong said it was "still seeking legal advice and working with related parties to handle matters in a legal and reasonable manner".

Mayer Brown said the university was a longstanding client who was being helped to "understand and comply with current law."

"Our legal advice is not intended as commentary on current or historical events," a spokesperson told AFP.

Hong Kong used to be the one place in China where mass remembrance of Tiananmen's dead was still tolerated.

The 'Pillar of Shame', by Danish artist Jens Galschiot, features 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on one another and commemorates democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 

Peter PARKS AFP/File

But the city is being remoulded in China's own authoritarian image in the wake of huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago.

Scores of opposition figured have been jailed or fled overseas and authorities have also embarked on a mission to rewrite history and make the city more "patriotic".

Many of the alliance's leaders have been arrested over the last year and the last two vigils have been banned with authorities citing the coronavirus.

Officials have also warned that commemorating Tiananmen could constitute subversion under a new national security law that Beijing imposed on the city last year.

A museum run by the alliance was also raided and shuttered, its exhibits carted away in police vans.

© 2021 AFP

UK worker shortage threatens Christmas turkey supply

Brexit has been blamed for the shortage of foreign workers 

OLI SCARFF AFP

Issued on: 13/10/2021 -

Godstone (United Kingdom) (AFP)

In a dark wooden barn in the countryside of southeast England, farmer Patrick Deeley is surrounded by a throng of 600 white turkeys at feeding time.

But the typical sight at Flower Farm near Godstone, in Surrey, belies a crisis: a lack of seasonal workers that will leave Deeley struggling to meet high festive demand.

"I don't feel confident that I'll get sufficient staff to be able to do the job that I need before Christmas," Deeley told AFP. "The pressure will be on."

Normally, Deeley could count on 12 seasonal workers by mid-December to help him pack, prepare and deliver the birds. For the last 15 years, he has recruited from Europe.

But Britain has now been out of the European Union for nearly 12 months. Free movement of people and workers across the bloc has ended, and tougher immigration rules have been introduced.

Unlike previous years, Deeley has not been able to attract a single worker from the European mainland to his 150-acre (61-hectare) family run farm in the rolling North Downs.

"Brexit is, as far as I can see, a huge contributing factor to that. It's created a massive loss of labour," he said.

- Fewer turkeys -

Faced with a labour shortage in the poultry sector, farmers across the country have been advertising for workers. But applications are extremely rare.

"It's not the most glamorous work in the world," said Mark Gorton, who rears turkeys in Norfolk, in the east of England.

"It's difficult work, it's farming seven days a week."

In previous years, Gorton said he would have had arrangements in place for 300 to 400 seasonal workers by the middle of December.

Farmers have had few, if any, responses to their ads for seasonal workers

 OLI SCARFF AFP

Like Deeley, this year he has none.

"We're six weeks away from when we start processing Christmas turkeys for the Christmas market and at the moment we haven't got any labour," said Gorton.

As a result, some farmers have been forced to produce fewer turkeys this year.

Supermarkets, where a shortage of lorry drivers has created delays in supply of some foods, leading to empty shelves, have also reduced their orders.

A lorry driver shortage is causing supply chain issues

 Tolga Akmen AFP

For Deeley, even if farmers had "10 turkeys or 20,000", the basic shortage of skilled labour would still be a problem.

The Traditional Farm-fresh Turkey Association, an industry body, has said the majority of its members have reported a five-fold increase in orders.

And the situation will inevitably hit consumers in the pocket.

"I think people will unfortunately have to see an increase in product costs," said Deeley.

- 'Unloved' -

While the poultry sector is one of the hardest hit by labour shortages ahead of Christmas, it is far from being the only one.

Christmas tree providers have warned of higher prices and shortages due to increased costs of imported firs and raw materials, as well as labour and transport.

Global supply chain hold-ups and the increased cost of container shipments could have a knock-on effect on the cost of toys.

Pig farmers say they will be forced to cull their livestock because of a lack of butchers and abbatoir workers

 DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS AFP

And once toys arrive at ports, a lack of lorry drivers and warehouse staff could compound problems.

Meanwhile, the pig industry is warning about a lack of abattoir staff and butchers -- many of them also foreign workers -- spiralling production costs and falling prices.

The National Pig Association called it "the biggest crisis" in decades, and would force livestock farmers to cull their animals without them going into the food chain.

That has left fears for the availability of another festive favourite served alongside turkey roast at Christmas -- "pigs in blankets" (sausages wrapped in bacon).

To help, the government, which blames the coronavirus pandemic more than Brexit, has eased immigration rules to allow 5,500 three-month work visas for seasonal workers.

Prices could rise for Christmas trees because of higher costs of imports and raw materials BEN STANSALL AFP

Many foreign workers went back to their home countries when the global health crisis struck and have not returned.

But farmers are concerned the visa waivers will have little effect.

"Would I leave my home, my country, my job, my security, just to come over and help out a country that said we don't want you anymore? I wouldn't do it," said Deeley.

"I see the implications now of Brexit as just huge, colossal," he explained, adding it had led to a situation where foreign workers felt "unloved".

Down on the farm, difficult months lie ahead.

"I'm going to have to persuade the people that are working for me that we're going to have to work 18-19 hours a day, instead of 16," said Deeley.

© 2021 AFP

Aussie women cricketers get pay rise but 'big gap' remains

Australia cricket captain Meg Lanning painted a pay rise for women as vindication William WEST AFP

Issued on: 13/10/2021 - 

Sydney (AFP)

Australia's women cricketers will get a pay rise this year, administrators said, while admitting that wages will still fall well short of the men's game.

Retainers for Big Bash League players will increase about 14 percent, Cricket Australia said, and players in the domestic cricket league will see a 22 percent rise.

Australia captain Meg Lanning said it was vindication.

"When you properly invest in female sport the results follow and everyone benefits -– the game, the fans and the players," she said.

Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley said the increase was a step forward.

But he admitted that "there's still a gap, there's still a really big gap, as compared to their male counterparts".

In total, the new package is worth Aus$1.2 million (US$880,000).

The average retainer for men playing all formats is said to be about $200,000 per person not including salary.

"We want to keep striving to make it a really attractive and credible full-time professional career for our up-and-coming female cricketers," Hockley said.

The dispute about equal pay has come into focus in several sports.

But it has become a high-profile and bitter dispute in United States soccer, where the women's game is extremely popular.

The United States Soccer Federation last month said it had offered "identical" contracts to its men's and women's national teams as part of efforts to end the dispute.

Tennis Grand Slams are among the sports that now offer equal prize money for men and women.

© 2021 AFP