THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

Cesar Chavez Day: A look back at farmworker leader

(9 images)

President Joe Biden declared Thursday Cesar Chavez Day, in honor of the United Farm Workers president who led protests of labor practices starting in 1963. Chavez died on April 3, 1993.


Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers union, tapes an interview at ABC affiliate radio station KLOS in Los Angeles on October 1, 1976. UPI File Photo
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Chavez responds to reports that the Ku Klux Klan was trying to help lettuce growers involved in a strike with his farmworkers’ union at a press conference in Los Angeles on February 8, 1979. He threatened a nationwide boycott if violence in the strike field increased. File Photo by Bob Flora/UPI
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Chavez (L) is accompanied by San Francisco Supervisor Bob Gonzales (R) as they march in a picket line outside a supermarket in San Francisco on March 22, 1979. The farmworkers were boycotting Chiquita bananas, which were produced by a firm that owns one of the nation’s largest iceberg lettuce producers, the UFW’s chief target in a strike. Led by Chavez, some 250 picketers paraded in front of the store. UPI File Photo
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Chavez shows Helen, his wife of 33 years, a plaque from the city of Montreal expressing support for the union’s latest grape boycott on October 24, 1985. It marks the 51st time Chavez has wielded his only real weapon – the consumer boycott – since he began organizing in 1963. File Photo by Mark Loundy/UPI
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A weakened Chavez (L, sitting) holds the hand of his wife to his cheek during a song at a mass held in his honor where he broke his 36-day fast in Delano, Calif., on August 21, 1988. From left to right: Ethel Kennedy, Helen Chavez, Cesar Chavez, Juana Chavez (Cesar’s mother) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson took up the hunger strike where Cesar Chavez left off, fasting on water for three days before passing on the fast to celebrities and leaders. Participants included actor Martin Sheen; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; actor Edward Olmos; actro Emilio Estevez; Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy; Peter Chacon, legislator; actress Julie Carmen; actor Danny Glover; singer Carly Simon; and actress Whoopi Goldberg. File Photo by Martin Jeong/UPI
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Chavez (R) receives a piece of bread from Ethel Kennedy. Chavez went on the water only fast more than a month prior to protest the reckless use of pesticides that endanger farmworkers. File Photo by Martin Jeong/UPI
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Chavez ends his fast as Kennedy looks on. File Photo by Martin Jeong/UPI
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UFW and sympathizers march through Altamont Pass near Livermore, Calif., on February 26, 1975. During their 110-mile march from San Francisco to the Gallo Winery in Modesto, the 250 marchers were demonstrating in support of their 18-month strike and boycott of Gallo wines, which had a contract with the Teamsters. UPI File Photo
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Chavez talks to a crowd of some 3,100 striking Imperial Valley lettuce pickers at a mass rally in Calexico, Calif., on February 1, 1979. Chavez said that the UFW was gearing up for a possible nationwide lettuce boycott. File Photo by Mark Loundy/UPI
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Opinion: Good riddance to this terrible Trump-era policy decision

By Raul A. Reyes

CNN  Fri April 1, 2022

(CNN)The Biden administration announced on Friday that it will soon end a Trump-era immigration policy, known as Title 42, that allowed US officials to bar entry to migrants and asylum seekers at the US border on the grounds that they could pose a health risk because of Covid-19.

Raul A. Reyes

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and a member of the USA Today board of contributors. Follow him on Twitter @RaulAReyes. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinions on CNN.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield previewed the policy change during a briefing on Wednesday, telling reporters that the move is being made at the recommendation of top federal health authorities.

"This is a decision we have long deferred to CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)," she said. The CDC, saying it conferred with the Department of Homeland Security, announced the change would go into effect at the end of May.

It's past time to say good riddance to Title 42: It was bad policy during the Trump administration, and it has been bad policy under Biden. Title 42 is legally questionable and morally indefensible. Its use put migrants in danger under the dubious justification of public health.

Title 42 is part of a 1944 health law that prohibits the entry of people into the US when there is a "serious danger to the introduction of [a communicable] disease into the United States." The Trump administration invoked the policy in March 2020, when the Covid-19 virus was rapidly spreading throughout the country and around the world, and when there was no vaccine in sight. Since then, US Customs and Border Protection statistics show that 1.7 million migrants have been sent back across the southern US border to Mexico, or repatriated to their country of origin.

From the start, Trump's invocation of Title 42 was driven by politics, not by legitimate health concerns. In fact, when the Trump administration sought to implement the law, the CDC doctor who oversaw the regulation refused to comply.

Instead, then-Vice President Mike Pence used his authority to issue an order closing the borders to migrants. Olivia Troye, a Pence adviser at the White House who later said she resigned over the Trump administration's handling of Covid-19, denounced the measure as a "Stephen Miller special" -- a reference to a senior Trump former advisor notorious for his extreme anti-immigration stance.

Title 42 was always a border control measure masquerading as public health policy. Covid-19 was already rampant in the US by the time the policy went into effect, and the law was never applied to air travelers or US citizens crossing the border. It was only used as a pretext for keeping out migrants who were mostly brown, Black and economically vulnerable.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that expelling migrants "is not the solution to an outbreak." Meanwhile, an article in last month's New England Journal of Medicine found that there "is no public health evidence that singling out asylum seekers or other migrants ...is effective in stemming the spread of Covid-19."

In addition to being immoral and ineffective, the use of Title 42 as a border control measure is also probably illegal.

Under US law, asylum-seekers have the right to make their claims for humanitarian relief. The US is a signatory to international agreements that recognize similar rights for refugees. Title 42 trampled on these rights by allowing immigration authorities to expel migrants without providing them with an opportunity to make their asylum cases. In 2021, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees called on Washington to lift Title 42, so that migrants could access the asylum process, "in line with international legal and human rights obligations."

Part of what made Title 42 so morally reprehensible is that it placed thousands of migrants in harm's way. A 2021 research team for Physicians for Human Rights found that people expelled under the measure were subjected to violence once they were returned to Mexican border cities. And Title 42 has been applied inconsistently: Refugees from Ukraine have been allowed to claim asylum at the border, while those from Haiti have been expelled and sent back to unsafe conditions at home. This glaring double standard is simply unacceptable.

Now, with Covid-19 restrictions being lifted across country, there's even less justification for continuing to keep Title 42 as US policy. For all these reasons, the rescission of Title 42 cannot come soon enough.

Republicans will seize on this move by the Biden administration as evidence of "an open borders" policy. They will paint doomsday scenarios of migrants crossing the border. Yet GOP lawmakers have never offered any constructive immigration or asylum solutions of their own. They prefer to drone on with talking points about Biden's so-called border crisis.

What this country is really confronting is decades of neglect and mishandling of US immigration policy by successive presidential administrations.

True, there is a backlog of migrants desperate to enter the US, and a great number of them will likely cross the border once Title 42 is rescinded. But that doesn't mean we should fear or demonize them. The Biden administration is already working on contingency plans to prepare for the anticipated increase in border arrivals.

Two additional solutions might be for Homeland Security to hire more civilian personnel to staff processing centers, and to partner with nonprofits that specialize in caring for vulnerable people. This will free Border Patrol officers to focus on their primary mission of securing the border, and will help ensure that migrants are treated with the compassion that they need and deserve.

The US has a legal obligation to help people fleeing danger and persecution. Now that the Biden administration is taking the long overdue step of lifting Title 42, the US can finally rebuild an asylum system that honors due process and respects human dignity.

P&O is Brexit in action – ripping up rights in a race to the bottom

This scandal could only happen in a country where unions are weak and the government is prepared to look the other way


PAUL MASON

 

Image: The New European

You have to admire the complexity of the legal structures that P&O designed to enable the sacking of British seafarers via Zoom call. The company is owned in Dubai. The ships are registered in Cyprus and the Bahamas – because, obviously, a ship that spends its life shuttling between Larne and Stranraer has to be registered in Nassau.

The scab workforce was hired by agency firms who now claim they knew nothing about the plan. And all this was done to make sure that 800 mainly British workers earning at least £9.50 an hour could be replaced by foreign agency crews earning, it is reported, £5.50 an hour.

As an example of freemarket globalisation, the move was almost a work of art. But it has foundered – not least because the British public have become sick of this kind of intrigue.

The seafarers were sacked in breach of UK employment law, which requires consultation before mass redundancies like these. But the government has done nothing concrete to reverse the decision.

It is “consulting” on plans to create “minimum wage corridors” to overcome the fact that, on ferry routes, national minimum wage schemes do not apply. Its inspectors have prevented two of the ferries from sailing, on grounds that their crews were inadequate. Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, has threatened “measures” to reverse the sackings.

But in truth, the whole of British employment law – and Britain’s chosen position as an outlier to Europe on social justice – was designed to aid firms like P&O, and its owner DP World, and to disempower trade unions like the RMT and Nautilus who represent the sacked workers.

Consider the economics of the move. The parent company, Dubai-owned DP World, makes almost a billion dollars a year, on a turnover of ten billion, from running container ports and maritime logistics all over the world. It bought P&O Ferries in 2019 from the Dubai government, for £322 million, on the assumption that it would earn money for shareholders from the get-go.

First came Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit, which reduced the number of passengers and lorries crossing the channel and the Irish Sea. Then came Covid-19, which hit Britain’s whole economy hard. As a result P&O Ferries, already loaded with debt, made losses for two years running. In May 2020, when management asked for 1,100 redundancies, this was done by the book – and unions reluctantly agreed new performance targets and wage restraints.

The firm, in short, was already operating by the seat of its pants, and has now decided that – since it cannot sack that part of the workforce protected by better laws and more active regulations inside the EU, that it must import third-world conditions onto its British ships.

What kind of mindset does it take to knowingly break the law; to hire security goons with handcuffs in case of trouble; to reshape the business model of an entire firm around powerless foreign workers paid half the minimum wage?

Sadly, the bosses who thought this up are not outliers. They are pursuing the imperative to extract maximum value from minimum investment.

It’s been fun watching the Tory outrage, though. Dover MP Natalie Elphicke joining in the chant “shame on you”, oblivious that the seafarers were chanting at her. Tory ministers venting over the very inhuman treatment that their own light-touch labour laws encouraged.

Because this is what Brexit was supposed to be about. Ripping up red tape in a race to the bottom, not just on labour costs but environmental charges and taxation. This was the story told across British business in the run-up to the referendum, and as Boris Johnson pushed for the hardest possible break.

While it is true that European labour standards still apply, because the government has not formally moved to undercut EU rules and regulations, P&O chose to attack its British workforce because it is here that trade union rights are weakest, and where government is prepared to look the other way.

The future for P&O Ferries looks bleak. It was bought by Dubai as a job lot with P&O’s more profitable port and logistics operations. It does not fit DP World’s global business model, focused on the booming containerisation of trade across the global south.

If a company can only turn a profit by importing workers from low-wage economies and by breaking the law, you have to ask whether it has a viable business model at all. With its sister companies set to rake in millions in government subsidies to develop Freeports, Westminster has significant leverage over the management of the firm – and should use it.

In France, when Brittany Ferries faced huge losses during the Covid-19 surge, the French government subsidised both the firm and the Brittany region to keep the ferry service afloat. That, effectively, is what we already do with the railway system in every corner of Britain.

If it turns out P&O needs government cash to survive, it should not only be forced to reverse the sackings and the pay cuts, but take union representatives onto the board, with a British government golden share ensuring control over the executive.

One of the saddest aspects to this shambles concerns the RMT union, which represents the sacked ratings. It’s fighting courageously for its members’ rights, and has rallied the rest of the union movement to its aid. But in 2016, during the Brexit referendum, it urged them to vote Leave. The EU, it said, has encouraged “social dumping”. “Leave the EU to end attacks on seafarers” it told its members.

Well P&O is still engaged in “social dumping” – that is the transfer of low wages and poor conditions into high-wage and unionised economies – with Britain well outside the EU. Because, as many of us pointed out at the time, that was the point of Brexit.

"From Nebesna Kara with love," it reads.

'Punishment from above': Hobby pilots build Ukraine's drone fleet

Joe STENSON
Fri, April 1, 2022, 


A Ukrainian activist examines one of the drones constructed at a secret location in Lviv (AFP/Aleksey Filippov)

At a secret location in the Ukraine city of Lviv, the windows taped up to ward off unwanted attention, underground hobbyists improvise deadly drones bound for the front line of the war against Russia.

On a cluttered table the x-shaped frame of one drone stands among bundles of plastic propellers and sachets of minuscule screws.

Soon it will take flight with its payload: a wine bottle-sized anti-tank grenade designed to plunge on Russian armour.

Two other drones are already affixed with quad propellers, their squat bodies gaping with miniature bomb bays to rain explosives on Russian infantry challenging Ukrainian defenders to the north and east.

One more -- the shape of a stealth bomber, the size of a bird of prey -- will conduct reconnaissance missions for artillery squads, spotting targets and marking them for incoming fire.

Since Russia invaded, the Nebesna Kara ("Punishment from Above") collective has made around 40 such specialist drones for the Ukrainian military.

Before February 24, its six members were friends in the drone racing community.

"Unfortunately everything changed," said Alex, a member who declined to share his full name for security reasons.

- Hit and run -

Analysts say Ukrainian forces have been outmanned and outgunned in the war with Russia. But their dogged defence has thrived through local knowledge, hit-and-run tactics and technological sabotage.

In the early days of the invasion it was feared the capital Kyiv would fall to a 40-mile (65-kilometre) long Russian armoured column approaching from the north.

It has been reported that mobile teams armed with drones played a key role in parrying that attack by marking targets for air strikes, forcing the convoy to disperse.

"This is a technique for reconnaissance and adjusting artillery fire," said Nebesna Kara member Dmitriy, who declined to be further identified.

"Now there's a great demand for such subversive equipment," he said.

The collective -- which also has 10 "advising members" and draws on the knowledge of 877 enthusiasts via online chat -- receives orders from military specialists in conflict hotspots.

Their flying Frankenstein's creations are put together from over-the-counter kits, 3D printed parts and components ordered from a Chinese online retailer.

To one end of the room the parts are strewn across a workbench -- circuit boards dotted with microchips, threads of electric wiring, bulbous electric motors.

- 'Cheaper than iPhones' -

The Ukrainian military has heavily relied on donations to shore up the defence of the country. Foreign nations have poured in "lethal aid" and everyday citizens have been solicited for cash.

Alex says their miniature drone programme operates in much the same way. Specialists tell them what they need the drone to do and they tailor-make it with crowdfunding cash.

But the benefits far outweigh the costs.

On his phone Dmitriy shows a video from the perspective of a drone, buzzing along a Russian trench and highlighting weapon positions cached in the churned earth.

"If you have a normal pilot that is used to operating this stuff, he can go over this trench and in five minutes he's going to have all the information that he needs," said Alex.

"An iPhone costs more than this equipment," he added.

To the side of the workshop are stacked the outgoing parcels of drones and spare parts.

One is bound for the southern city of Mykolaiv. On Tuesday a missile strike punched a hole in the regional government building there, killing 28.

Prepared for shipping, it is accompanied by a handwritten note in red and blue felt tip addressed to the Ukrainian pilot -- and maybe also to the Russian troops outside the city gates.

"From Nebesna Kara with love," it reads.

jts/bur/pvh/har

UKRAINIAN ANARCHIST ARMY 1917-1921 'MAKHNOVICHNA'

Afghanistan: Bomb blasts at playing field kill several in Herat

A group of children was playing in a field in Herat when two bombs went off. In a separate incident in southern Afghanistan, at least five children were killed when they found an unexploded shell.

Children in Afghanistan are frequently killed by bombs and unexploded ordinance

Several children were killed in Afghanistan on Friday in two separate incidents in the city of Herat and in the southern Helmand province.

While the explosion in Helmand appeared to have been an accident, Taliban officialsin Herat said they believed bombs that went off at a playing field had been recently planted.

What happened in Herat?

In the western city of Herat, a group of children and young men who came to a field to play were hit when two bombs went off in quick succession.

Five people were killed in the blast and at least 20 others were wounded, according to Taliban-appointed provincial officials.

The field is used for traditional Afghan games including mud wrestling and a horse-mounted game called Buzkashi.

The playing area was deemed safe after it had recently been demined to remove unexploded ordinance, Sabit Harwi, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the intelligence office in Herat told the AFP news agency.

The bombs that went off appear to have been planted in the area shortly before the group came to play, he said. Local police defused two other bombs found in the area after Friday's deadly blasts.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts in Herat.
What happened in Helmand?

In a separate incident earlier on Friday, a group of children was killed in the southern province of Helmand whenthey came across an unexploded mortar shell that suddenly detonated.

The children, who were aged between 3- and 12-years-old, discovered the shell in the district of Marja and were playing with it when it went off, a Taliban media officer told the Associated Press.

Two other children were wounded in the blast and are being treated in a local hospital.

A dangerous situation for children

The two incidents highlighted the dangerous situation facing children in Afghanistan.

Since seizing control of Afghanistan in August last year, the hardline Islamist Taliban have been facing attacks by the regional chapter of the militant "Islamic State" (IS) group.

While Afghan society facing a rising economic crisis since the Taliban takeover, many children try to gather scrap metal to sell and support their families.

Due to the decades of conflict that have plagued Afghanistan, children can sometimes come across unexploded ordnance — which results in severe injury or death.

rs/sms (AP, AFP)

Will France’s Yellow Vests come back to haunt Macron on election day?

Fri, 1 April 2022


The most potent protest movement in recent French history, the Yellow Vest uprising looked at one point like it might bring a premature end to Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. More than three years after it was smothered, its politicised remnants are counting on their ballots to finish the job.

France’s upcoming presidential election has been described as the least suspenseful in decades, a lopsided contest in which Macron is widely expected to prevail over a motley crew of challengers rejected by a majority of voters.

It’s a prospect 56-year-old Jérôme Batret finds hard to stomach, more than three years after the farmer from rural Auvergne first donned a “yellow vest” in protest at Macron’s government – joining an unconventional insurgency that caught Paris elites napping, rattling the government, baffling commentators, and eventually inspiring copy-cat protests around the world.

Named after the now-famous fluorescent waistcoats that are mandatory in French cars, the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) staged more than 60 consecutive weeks of protests against economic hardship, mounting inequality and a discredited political establishment. They manned roundabouts across the country night and day, took to the streets of towns and cities on every Saturday, and at their peak in December 2018 even stormed the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, amid scenes of chaos not witnessed since May 1968.

On the day a sea of yellow swarmed the Champs-Elysées, protesters in Batret’s usually tranquil hometown of Le Puy-en-Velay set fire to the local police prefecture with a molotov cocktail. When the French president paid a secretive visit days later to offer shaken officers his support, his vehicle was chased away by angry protesters shouting “Tous pourris” (You’re all corrupt) and “Macron resign”.

Batret was among the very first Gilets jaunes, manning a nearby roundabout non-stop for three weeks. During those heady days, it felt like Macron’s fall was “only a matter of days”, he recalls in an interview with FRANCE 24. Little did he expect the young president would see off the challenge and come back stronger three years later, poised for another mandate.

“He didn’t respect the people back then and he doesn’t respect them now,” says Batret, citing Macron’s pledge last year to “emmerde” (piss off) those who reject Covid-19 vaccines. “We have a president who wants to piss off his own people – and yet he’ll win again.”

‘Politicians in Paris don’t give a shit about us’

Like other rural and suburban workers who formed the backbone of the Yellow Vest insurgency, Batret says his spending power has plummeted during Macron’s five years in office – a turbulent term marked by the coronavirus pandemic and now the fallout from the war in Ukraine. Surging energy prices mean most of his earnings are now swallowed up by the fuel he needs to run his car and tractor, and heat his house.

“People in Paris tell me it’s not so bad for them, but out here in the countryside we’ve got no choice,” he says. “My sons work 35 kilometres from home. That’s 400 euros per month in petrol just to get to work.”

The trigger for the Yellow Vest uprising was an unpopular fuel tax, ostensibly designed to finance France’s transition to a green economy – though it soon became apparent that its proceeds would mostly be used to plug a budget deficit widened by the government’s tax cuts for businesses. The levy infuriated motorists in rural and suburban areas starved of public transport and other services, where households are heavily reliant on their cars.

This original association with motor vehicles, cemented by the symbol of the high-visibility vests, allowed some commentators in well-connected cities to dismiss the protesters as recalcitrant, selfish motorists unconcerned by climate change – an image that has largely stuck.

“Politicians in Paris don’t give a shit about us,” says Batret. “They make empty promises come election time and then leave us to rot. They have no respect for the people.”

A longtime conservative voter, the organic farmer says he will no longer vote for career politicians “who’ve never done anything real in their lives”. On April 10 he will cast his ballot in favour of Jean Lassalle, the Occitan-speaking son of Pyrenean shepherds who was fined 1,500 euros in 2018 for wearing a gilet jaune in France’s National Assembly.

“I know lots of people who never voted before but are now interested in the ‘small candidates’, like Lassalle, [trotskyist Philippe] Poutou, and others who never get mentioned in the media,” says Batret. “I also know people who’ll back extremists like [far-right polemicist] Eric Zemmour, but that says more about their state of despair than their true beliefs.”

When voters head back to the polls two weeks later for the second-round run-off, polls suggest they are likely to face a repeat of the 2017 duel between Macron and veteran far-right candidate Marine Le Pen – a prospect Batret is not relishing.

“On April 24 they’ll be telling us to back Macron as the lesser evil, but I don’t think he is,” he says. “If it’s Macron versus Le Pen again, I’ll vote Le Pen. And if it’s Zemmour, I’ll leave the country.”

‘The Gilets jaunes didn’t just evaporate’

Within months of the rioting witnessed on the Champs Elysée in late 2018, the number of Yellow Vests out on the streets had starkly diminished, and Macron could claim to have largely seen off the most formidable challenge to his presidency.

In terms of its material objectives, the movement was only partially successful. It forced the government into a series of crisis measures to prop up purchasing power, for instance by raising minimum pensions, which helped sap support for the movement. So did Macron’s “Great National Debate”, called in response to the protests, which the ubiquitous president soon turned into a town-hall road-show offering him unrivalled media coverage – while the Yellow Vests were kept at bay.

Still, the movement left an indelible mark on France, sending a clear warning to the country’s self-styled “Jupiterian” president and putting neglected swathes of the country back on the map.

“The Gilets jaunes didn’t just evaporate after taking off their vests,” says Magali Della Sudda, a researcher at Sciences-Po in Bordeaux, who has studied the uprising from its inception and continues to monitor its resurgences.

While the Yellow Vests are now a scattered and diminished force, Della Sudda identifies successive “waves of mobilisation”, some coinciding with policies or statements that galvanised protesters, like the introduction of a Covid-19 health pass restricting people’s freedom of movement or Macron’s pledge to “emmerde” anti-vaxxers.

“There are signs the movement is picking up again, focusing once again on its original themes of purchasing power and social justice,” she says, pointing to the tentative return of Yellow Vests on roundabouts across the country.

“Of course history never repeats itself quite the same way, but we can expect the movement to gain traction again, in one form or another, in the coming months – for instance if Macron puts his pension reform back on the table,” she adds, referring to an unpopular pension overhaul which the government forced through parliament without a vote and then suspended amid the pandemic.

Della Sudda says this year’s presidential campaign has done very little to address the grievances voiced by the Yellow Vests and their supporters, further fuelling popular resentment of politicians. Having pored over some of the tens of thousands of cahiers de doléances (complaint books) drawn up as part of Macron’s national debate, she points to a glaring gap between the country’s dominant political discourse and ordinary people’s real concerns.

“There is a huge discrepancy between the complaints voiced by the Gilets jaunes and by the broader public and the way political parties and the media fail to address these topics,” she says. “It took a war in Ukraine for candidates and the media to start talking about purchasing power – but the problem of energy and food prices did not start with the war.”

Surveys have consistently placed the cost of living at the top of voters’ concerns, followed by health and the environment – largely mirroring the priorities listed by French citizens in the cahiers de doléances, particularly those from rural areas where hospitals and other public services have shut over the years. And yet prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the presidential campaign was dominated by talk of immigration and Islam, driven by the unrivalled media exposure enjoyed by the likes of Zemmour.

>> Pushing far-right agenda, French news networks shape election debate

The gross inadequacy of the campaign means it is still unclear whether the bulk of the Gilets jaunes will boycott the polls or choose to cast protest votes instead, says Della Sudda, though stressing that the uprising has left a profound imprint on many, politicising citizens who previously shunned the polls. She says there are signs large swathes of the movement will seize on the opportunity to deliver their verdict on Macron’s government.

Toppling France’s ‘presidential monarchy’

The Yellow Vests’ relative inexperience of politics has contributed to generating misconceptions – as with their use of the term “apolitical” to stress their rejection of traditional party politics. Studies carried out at the height of the movement revealed that most participants were first-time protesters with no political or union affiliation. A majority said they didn’t believe in the traditional left-right divide, but theirs was a rejection of partisan politics, not of politics per se.

One of the defining features of the Yellow Vests is their attempt to reclaim politics by wresting it from the control of parties and institutions they see as undemocratic. As Della Sudda puts it, “one can credit the movement with getting the French to show interest in their institutions and constitution – a remarkable feat in its own right.”

Those institutions are failing the people, says 56-year-old Sabine, a primary school teacher from the Montpellier area in southern France, who declined to give her full name. She ranks among the numerous Gilets jaunes who have taken up grassroots politics after years of abstaining from the electoral process.

“I used to boycott the Fifth Republic’s anti-democratic elections,” she says, referring to the presidential regime instituted more than 60 years ago by France’s wartime hero, General Charles De Gaulle. “But after five years of Macron, I’ve decided to use my ballot to stop the rot.”

Sabine likens the Yellow Vest experience to a personal and collective awakening to politics and rampant injustice. She describes its members as “society’s invisible people who have risen up, who have sprung from the earth with their bright jackets, a symbol of alertness and visibility”.

“First there was the uprising, then the movement took root on roundabouts and on social media, and by way of regular meetings and assemblies,” she says. “Over time we were able to elaborate a political thought, in the noble sense of the word, meaning a commitment to improve the society we live in.”

More than three years after they first donned their bright jackets, Sabine and a dozen fellow activists are back on the roundabout they occupied on the outskirts of Montpellier at the start of the movement. After lengthy discussions, most members have agreed to back leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon on April 10.

“There were two main requirements for our choice of candidate: to carry our aspirations and have a chance of beating Macron. Mélenchon is the only one who meets both,” the teacher explains. She points to his pledges to impose a cap on prices, boost wages, bolster public services and convene a constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution and replacing France’s “presidential monarchy”.

>> A new Republic: Leftist Mélenchon promises to topple France’s ‘presidential monarchy’

“Mélenchon is not our ideal candidate, he’s not to everyone's taste and we are well aware that there’s no easy fix. But he’s our best option. We’re at a crossroads: either we change course now or we let those in power dismantle our social system,” Sabine adds. “But our struggle won’t end at the ballot box. Whoever wins on April 24, we’ll keep up the fight.”

Anyone but Macron

A veteran leftist who is having his third shot at the presidency, Mélenchon is locked in a battle for second place with his longtime rival Le Pen – and polls suggest he is likely to fall short once again, missing out on the April 24 run-off. Second-round data also looks more encouraging for Le Pen, who has significantly narrowed the gap with Macron since she lost by more than 20 percentage points five years ago.

>> Closing in on Macron: Could Le Pen’s blandest campaign be her most successful yet?

On paper, the narrowing gap means Le Pen is more likely to benefit from the “anyone but Macron” vote than Mélenchon, says Della Sudda, with some supporters claiming that widespread anger could propel her to an unlikely victory over the president.

“It’s an argument I’ve been hearing on the roundabouts, voiced by a minority of Yellow Vests. But it’s not clear it will translate into widespread support for Le Pen,” she says. “Anti-Macronism is just one component of the Yellow Vest vote; and the National Rally doesn’t carry all of their aspirations – far from it.”

Both the National Rally and Mélenchon's La France insoumise (France unbowed) have been cautious in their appeals to the Gilets jaunes, wary of scaring away more moderate voters, says Frédéric Gonthier, a political scientist at the Pacte research centre in Grenoble, who has carried out extensive surveys of the Yellow Vest movement.

“Mélenchon and Le Pen are trying to present themselves as credible alternatives to Macron, by softening the more divisive elements in their platforms and tempering their populist pitch,” he explains. “For candidates who are trying to project an image of respectability, overtly anti-elitist statements aimed at seducing the Yellow Vests would be counterproductive.”

Vying for the working-class vote, the two candidates have focused on the hardship endured by France’s most vulnerable, hoping to draw the Yellow Vests among them without overt appeals.

Mélenchon has had to tread carefully, says Gonthier, noting that many Yellow Vests were deeply suspicious of his longtime membership of the Socialist Party, seeing him as a political “apparatchik”. As for Le Pen, “her party is deeply uncomfortable with the issue of police brutality, which is intimately associated with the Gilets jaunes.”

A tiny window of opportunity

The Yellow Vests’ often violent protests were met with a fierce crackdown that eventually smothered the movement, but not the anger. During the first months of unrest, dozens of protesters, journalists and bystanders suffered shocking injuries – including gouged eyes and hands ripped off – as a result of the rubber bullets and stun grenades used by riot police, while scores of officers were also wounded. The government’s steadfast refusal to question the police tactics, with Macron at one point saying “there is no such thing as police violence”, infuriated the Yellow Vests and further radicalised its diehard members.

Daniel Bodin’s voice breaks into sobs when recalling the violence of those days. The 66-year-old was among the first to man the roundabout near Montpellier, where he and Sabine still don their high-visibility jackets. “We’d never seen anything like it before. They treated us like pariahs,” he says of the “brutal repression” ordered by a president he describes as “authoritarian”.

There is something visceral about the revulsion Macron elicits among many Yellow Vests, who are prone to citing his derogatory comments – such as telling an unemployed man he need only “cross the street” to find a job, complaining about the “crazy money” France spends on welfare, and urging pensioners to “complain less” about their shrinking allowances.

“His comments are proof of his contempt for small folk like us, but it would be foolish to stop at that. It’s the laws he passed that upset me most,” says Bodin, pointing to the Covid-19 health pass and a contentious law extending police powers as evidence of civic freedoms being curtailed under Macron.

Like others in his group, Bodin is routing for Mélenchon in the election. He sees it as the only chance to reverse “the downward slide into neoliberal economics” and “put our politics back into the people’s hands”. He singles out for praise the leftist candidate’s pledge to introduce a so-called “citizen’s initiative referendum”, giving voters the power to initiate policy and revoke their elected representatives.

“But we are neither fans, nor groupies,” he cautions. “And we don’t claim to tell people how they should vote – that’s what political parties do.”

Bodin acknowledges deep divisions within the Yellow Vest movement, between those willing to engage with the electoral process and others who “would rather wait for the system to collapse or a civil war to break out”. “I understand those who are disgusted by politics and don’t want to vote,” he adds. “But we have a tiny window of opportunity and we must give it a try.”

US Could Have Done More To Limit Civilian Toll In Raqqa Battle: Study

By AFP News
04/01/22

The US military could have done more to limit civilian casualties and damage during the battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa that marked the Islamic State's fall in 2017, according to a report commissioned by the Pentagon.

At the end of the nearly five-month battle to free the city from IS, "60 to 80 percent" of it was "uninhabitable" and resentment of the population was directed at the liberators, said a report by the research center RAND Corporation.

"Raqqa endured the most structural damage by density of any city in Syria," said the report released Thursday.

"The level of structural damage and the lack of US support for Raqqa's reconstruction led many Raqqa residents to resent the method of their city's liberation," it added.

A Syrian family from Raqqa inside a tent in a camp for people displaced by the war against the Islamic State (IS) group, in Ain Issa, after the US battle to liberate Raqqa, which saw massive damage to civilians Photo: Save the Children via AFP / Sam Tarling

So-called "targeted" air strikes and artillery fire by coalition forces on Raqqa caused numerous civilian casualties between June 6 and October 30, 2017: from 744 to 1,600 dead, according to counts by the coalition, Amnesty International or the specialized site Airwars, the RAND report said.

But the battle of Raqqa also caused the destruction of a large number of buildings and civil infrastructure, which "undermined... long-term US interests" in the region, the 130-page document said.

According to UN figures cited by RAND, 11,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged between February and October 2017, including eight hospitals, 29 mosques, more than 40 schools, five universities and the city's irrigation system.

The US military, which conducted 95 percent of the airstrikes and 100 percent of the artillery fire during the battle, did not commit war crimes during the battle because it tried to respect international laws on the protection of civilians in wartime, but RAND said there was "room for improvement."

Instead of focusing on airstrikes to spare the lives of its soldiers, the US military should be prepared to send more troops into the field to gain better situational awareness and take on more risk.

© Copyright AFP 2022. All rights reserved.

Activists slam Europe for dumping on Africa

Activists in Africa are concerned about how fast the continent has become a dumpsite for Europe — for everything from electronic waste to used clothing. It's a toxic nuisance that poses a huge environmental threat.


Environmental activists say EU countries should deal with their toxic waste at home rather than flooding Africa with it

David Kumordzi is a composer and musician based in Ghana's capital Accra. He spends a lot of his time mobilizing people to clean up his country's beaches.

The waste Kumordzi and his team collect includes plastics and discarded clothing.

"Most of the waste is coming from Europe because we are connected to the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the waste we are seeing around our beaches is not from Ghana," he told DW from Accra.

He blamed Europe for the tons of waste constantly being washed ashore.

Environmental activists in Africa have for years raised concerns about how fast the continent is becoming a dumpsite for Europe.

WASTE PICKERS OF DAKAR
On the hunt for plastic and metals
About 2,000 waste pickers work at the Mbeubeuss landfill outside the Senegalese capital, Dakar. With an iron hook, they scour the waste for recyclable plastic, or burn the trash to find valuable metals.
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More rags than riches

The continent receives an almost continuous stream of incoming containers filled with discarded items — from electronic waste to used clothing. It's not just a nuisance, it also poses a threat to both human health and the environment.

West Africa's hub for used clothing from abroad is Accra's Kantamanto Market.

Piles of imported clothes are sorted by traders looking for quality items but there are usually more rags than riches.

Every week, about 15 million individual items of used clothing arrive in Ghana, according to the Or Foundation, a human rights and environmental NGO from the United States.

Old clothes from Europe

Forty percent of these items end up discarded due to their poor quality. They find their way to landfills from where they are often washed into the ocean.

Liz Ricketts, the co-founder of the Or Foundation, told DW that some of the clothes are just trash from households in Europe.

"Six percent of the clothing that comes in [to Africa] is already trash and that number has actually gone up from what we have found out previously — and that could be a shirt that somebody painted their house in and they wiped their hands all over, and then they end up over here [in Ghana]," Ricketts lamented.

She said that some of the items were intentionally destroyed and should never have ended up in Africa.

THE UGLY FACE OF PLASTIC POLLUTION

The age of plastic

Plastic is lightweight, durable — and wildly popular. We've produced 8.3 billion metric tons of the material since mass production began in the 1950s. Because it doesn't easily biodegrade, much of what we've made now lives in landfills like this one on Nairobi's outskirts. Rubbish pickers there hunt for recyclable plastics to earn a living. But a lot of plastic also ends up in the ocean ...

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A tsunami of European electronic waste

Many African countries — such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Republic of Benin, among others — receive huge containers filled with used electronic devices such as phones, kitchen appliances and even automobiles that are no longer road worthy for European streets.

The cars — often in disrepair — have frequently been involved in ghastly accidents in Europe before being shipped to Africa.

Most items that land here have been rejected as unusable in Europe but are sent to Africa with the excuse that they are somehow useful to the people there.

According to a UN report, the world produced over 53 million tons of electronic waste in 2019 alone — up by 21% in just five years.

The UN's Global E-waste Monitor 2020 has also predicted that global e-waste — discarded products with a battery or plug — will reach 74 metric tons by 2030; almost a doubling of e-waste in just 16 years.

The trend makes e-waste the world's fastest-growing domestic waste stream, one fueled mainly by the higher consumption rates of electric and electronic equipment, their short life cycles, and the fact that they are not made to be repaired.

Watch video07:11 Ghana: Where Europe's e-waste goes

Burdened with toxic e-waste

E-waste can be highly toxic and damaging to people's health and although Africa is not necessarily responsible it ends up on the continent anyhow — especially in West Africa.

African environmental expert Nnimmo Bassey spoke with DW from Nigeria, saying, "the trend is not just worrying but consistent with what has been going on for a long time."

Bassey said Africa is becoming a dumpsite for all kinds of waste because the rest of the world is rejecting the West's garbage.

"Other nations are getting more conscious about waste in their territories and they are rejecting toxic waste from polluting countries and suddenly Africa has become an attractive location," he said.

For Bassey, Africa lacks strong laws that deal with the shipping of waste from the West into its territories.

"Our politicians, our governments are not taking a serious position on this phenomenon because they are also probably looking for payments for toxic waste to be dumped on the continent," Bassey explained.

Watch video 03:54 Tackling e-waste in Cameroon

Slowing climate change

Ghana's Agbogbloshie enclave is notorious for its toxic waste pollution — largely from electronic waste. Young Ghanaians risk their health to extract aluminium and copper among others items from the waste products.

Bassey said Africa is already suffering from high levels of pollution from the e-waste menace as it "experiences the unprecedented impact of global warming, adding to that is pollution from the extractive industry."

The UN's Sustainable Development Goals as relate to the environment are aimed at getting the world to work hard at reducing the impact of climate change.

Africa is already experiencing the drastic effects of climate change and with many of its countries becoming dumpsites for Europe, analysts fear the continent will not be able to meet its targets.

"You cannot have a clean environment when you are accepting waste to be dumped in your environment, so clearly those targets of cleanliness cannot be met," Bassey said.

'THE FRAGILE PARADISE': PLANET EARTH'S TURBULENT TIMES

Threatened planet

"The Fragile Paradise" is an exhibition of award-winning photographs and video installations showing how humans have impacted the environment — and the climate — over millennia. Its highlight is a 20-meter sculpture of the Earth onto which 3D high-resolution satellite images are projected. The view from space highlights not only the beauty of the blue planet — but also its vulnerability.

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Europe must pay for dumping waste in Africa

For many environmental activists it seems clear that Europe should compensate African countries for the waste it dumps on the continent. Such compensation, according to campaigners like Kumordzi, should be channelled into making Africa safer for its people.

He suggested, "people that are not contributing towards protecting our environment must make budget provisions for that. Any company in Europe that is producing waste — plastics, electronic waste and clothing must source funding into African countries."

Bassey said Europe cannot deny responsibility for the level of waste it is generating and shipping to Africa.

"They [European countries] can't deny" being responsible for the waste found on the African continent," declares Bassey.

Each nation must begin to own their waste, he says.

"Each nation must take care of their waste. Consume less, produce less waste and when you produce the waste, recycle it or take care of that waste on your own territories," Bassey said.

"It is criminal for any country to dump toxic waste in another territory, because they clearly know the health implications."

It appears this menace can only be resolved by the countries producing the waste and the African nations accepting it.

But the continent — and the world — is running out of time.

Edited by: Keith Walker

AIMING HIGH: THE GOALS IN PICTURES

Goal 1: A world without poverty

The first goal calls for the eradication of poverty "in all its forms everywhere". This is an extension of the old Millennium goal that set out to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Opinions are divided on the feasibility of the target.

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East Africa faces worst hunger crisis in decades

Millions of people in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia face starvation due to delayed rains and a lackluster growing season. Aid organizations warn of a catastrophe if urgent action isn't taken.

Cattle in the East African region are dying in huge numbers due to the drought

The wind is dry and the heat is punishing in Kapetadie, a remote village in Turkana County in northern Kenya near the border with South Sudan.

Parched earth stretches as far as the eye can see, littered with the carcasses of dead cows, goats and other livestock who have died of thirst and hunger.

"Our animals have died. Goats, cows, camels and donkeys," ward administrator Elijah Musekidor laments.

The village's only water source is not clean, he says. People, along with their animals, who also drink here, run the risk of getting sick and dying.

Only 10% of expected rainfall fell in Turkana in the last six months of 2021.

The vegetation is withered and there's little for the traditional herders living here to graze their animals on.

The surface water is also almost gone  — 80% of water sources in Turkana have dried up, according to the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA.

With livestock malnourished and dying, many here have no animals to sell at the market. And with harvests way below normal levels elsewhere in Kenya because of the lack of rain, food prices are skyrocking.

Kenya's Turkana County is one of the hardest hit regions

As a result, around two-thirds of Turkana's 900,000 people are facing starvation, Kenya's drought authority says.

The normally arid region has become even dryer as it experiences a years-long drought, says the head of Turkana's water service, Vincent Palor.

"We have not had rain for the last few years, and this is actually exacerbating the situation," he told DW.

To make matters worse, 40% of the county's boreholes that tap into groundwater reservoirs are not functional, a recent survey revealed, due to failure to provide routine maintenance.

Millions at risk of severe hunger

Many communities across East Africa are facing similar fates, with small-scale farmers and herders the hardest hit — and least able to cope.

The United Nations estimates that 13 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia are suffering severe hunger due to persistent drought, as the region is hit with the driest conditions recorded since 1981.

Aid organizations worry that the situation in East Africa will likely deteriorate further without urgent and scaled-up support.

International aid group Oxfam warned that the hunger crisis could quickly turn into a "catastrophe" if aid fails to reach the most vulnerable.

"The brutal truth is that at the moment, East Africa is not on the global agenda,'' Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher told the AP news agency.

Hundreds of thousands of people in East Africa could die this year due to the hunger crisis, she said.

Hunger forcing Somalis to flee

In Somalia, the drought emergency has intensified, with the number of people affected increasing to about 4.5 million people, up from 3.2 million in December 2021.

Many families in drought-ravaged rural areas are fleeing to major cities in search of food and water.

At the Al-Hidaya camp for internally displaced persons on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu, Halimo Ali tries to console her four-year-old son. 

Her family traveled to the camp, which currently holds more than 800 families, from the south of Somalia.  

"We have lost our cows and goats because of the severe drought," Ali told DW. "We could not get food and water, so we decided to move."

Halimo Ali says she had to flee the devastating drought in southern Somalia

Malnourished children

Many of those arriving at the camp are malnourished and sick. 

"These drought-affected people suffer from a lack of enough food while the children also suffer from anemia, measles, and weak bones," community leader and camp chairman Nadifo Hussein said. 

He said that with more people traveling to the capital from drought-hit regions, the camp would soon be unable to help new arrivals. 

"We need lifesaving intervention," he told DW.

Aden Farah, Humanitarian Advisor for Save the Children in Somalia, said about 671,000 people had been displaced internally in the country due to the drought. 

In Somalia's 2011 famine, an estimated 250,000 people died, half of them children.

This time around, some 5 million Somalis already face acute food insecurity.

Drought-stricken Somali families are fleeing to the Al-Hidaya camp for internally displaced persons

Thelma Mwadzaya in Kenya and Mohamed Odowa in Somalia contributed to this article.

Edited by: Kate Hairsine

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