50,000 teachers go on strike in New Zealand over cost of living

AFP Published March 17, 2023 

New Zealand teachers and early childhood educators gather outside Wellington’s Parliament House as part of a nationwide strike for better pay and conditions, in Wellington, New Zealand, March 16, 2023. — Reuters

WELLINGTON: Around 50,000 teachers in New Zealand went on strike on Thursday, after union talks with the Ministry of Education aimed at improving salaries and conditions stalled.

Teachers demanding better pay waved placards declaring “can’t afford the dentist” and “too poor to print good signs” as the one-day strike forced kindergartens as well as primary and secondary schools to close across the country.

Trade unions argued that the government’s latest pay offer did not match inflation and that the education sector is at a “crisis point” due to teacher shortages. “A quality education is a fundamental human right,” Chris Abercrombie from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association said.

“Tragically, as teachers we are seeing that right being slowly, and surely, undermined.” Improvements to teacher salaries and working conditions are essential to keep experienced staff and recruit graduates, he said.

Teachers “want to send a message to the government about how serious we are about needing change”, said Mark Potter, president of the New Zealand Educational Institute.

“We all want the best for our students but without changes to the system we can’t give it to them.” Education Minister Jan Tinetti said she was disappointed to see teachers strike and wanted the dispute resolved quickly.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2023

Nearly 50,000 teachers strike in New Zealand over cost of living

Issued on: 16/03/2023 -
AFP
Text by: NEWS WIRES

Around 50,000 teachers in New Zealand went on strike on Thursday, after union talks with the Ministry of Education aimed at improving salaries and conditions stalled.

Teachers demanding better pay waved placards declaring "can't afford the dentist" and "too poor to print good signs" as the one-day strike forced kindergartens as well as primary and secondary schools to close across the country.

Trade unions argued that the government's latest pay offer did not match inflation and that the education sector is at a "crisis point" due to teacher shortages.

"A quality education is a fundamental human right," Chris Abercrombie from the Post Primary Teachers' Association said.

"Tragically, as teachers we are seeing that right being slowly, and surely, undermined."

Improvements to teacher salaries and working conditions are essential to keep experienced staff and recruit graduates, he said.

Teachers "want to send a message to the government about how serious we are about needing change", said Mark Potter, president of the New Zealand Educational Institute.

"We all want the best for our students but without changes to the system we can't give it to them."

Education Minister Jan Tinetti said she was disappointed to see teachers strike and wanted the dispute resolved quickly.

The cost of living has become a major political issue in New Zealand as the government struggles to keep a lid on inflation.

Recent figures have suggested that New Zealand'seconomy is shrinking, fuelling fears of a looming recession.

(AFP)

FIFA
Infantino re-elected, Women’s World Cup prize money increased

Agencies Published March 17, 2023 

KIGALI: FIFA president Gianni Infantino gestures during a news conference following the 73rd FIFA Congress at the BK Arena on Thursday.—Reuters

KIGALI: Gianni Infa­ntino has been re-elected as president of FIFA until 2027 after standing unopposed at the congress of world football’s governing body on Thursday.

The 52-year-old Swiss lawyer, who succeeded the disgraced Sepp Blatter in 2016, was waved in for a third term by acclamation, just as he was four years ago, by delegates from the 211 member federations.

“To all those who love me, and I know there are so many, and also those who hate me, I know there are a few: I love you all,” Infantino told delegates in the Rwandan capital, where the voting system did not register the number of dissident voices.

While FIFA statutes currently limit a president to a maximum three four-year terms, Infantino has already prepared the ground to stay until 2031, declaring in December that his first three years at the helm did not count as a full term.

Infantino, who stau­nchly defended Qatar’s hosting of last year’s World Cup as the Gulf state’s treatment of migrant workers, women and the LGBTQ community came under the spotlight, has overseen the expansion of the men’s and women’s World Cups and huge increases in FIFA revenues.

Norwegian Football Federation president Lise Klaveness had said she would not support Infa­ntino and tabled a proposal to discuss at the congress “FIFA’s responsibilities to remedy human rights abuses” in relation to the Qatar World Cup and future tournaments.

The Norwegian and Swedish representatives in Kigali displayed their opposition by not joining the delegates who rose to applaud.

On Wednesday, German FA president Bernd Neue­ndorf said he would not back Infantino, citing a lack of transparency from FIFA and insufficient exp­la­na­tions of “why certain decisions are made and who was involved in them”.

However, Infantino’s opponents were not able to put forward a candidate to stand against the man who was once Michel Platini’s number two at UEFA.

Infantino himself took aim at media who have criticised him and world football’s governing body, saying: “I don’t understand why some of you are so mean. I don’t get it.

“Today I was re-elected after receiving more than 200 letters of endorsement, and a standing ovation, so an overwhelming majority has the feeling that I am doing a pretty good job, including in Europe,” he added.

His re-election followed a long speech in which he triumphantly listed his achievements, alternating smoothly between English, French, Spanish and German.

That was after he told audience members a visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which commemorates the 1994 Rwandan genocide, had inspired him to persist during his first campaign for election in 2016.

“What this country has suffered, how this country came back up, is inspiring to the entire world, so I certainly couldn’t give up,” he said.

“There is a lot to be looking forward to,” Infantino added as he turned thoughts to the next four years and declared the 2026 World Cup, the first edition to feature 48 teams, will be “the most inclusive ever”.

FIFA earlier announced that the tournament in North America will feature 104 matches, a huge incr­ease from 64 at the 2022 World Cup, as it will start with 12 groups of four teams.

The upcoming Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this year will be the first to feature 32 teams, up from 24 at the last edition.

It will also see overall prize money for participating teams increased to $150 million, up sharply from $50 million in 2019 and a huge rise on the $15 million in 2015.

Infantino is also planning to introduce a new, expanded Club World Cup to be played every four years starting in 2025 and featuring 32 teams.

“We need more, not fewer, competitions worldwide,” he told delegates.

Infantino has also announced projected income of $11 billion in the four years to 2026, compared to $7.5 billion over the last four years.

But he said that figure did not include revenues generated by the Club World Cup, suggesting the final amount will be even greater.

Those improved financial results allow FIFA to keep on increasing the amount of money it provides in subsidies to federations, in turn helping ensure many of them will continue to back Infantino.

In order to make football “truly global”, as Infantino says, at a time when leading European clubs are able to hoard talent and wealth, FIFA distributes money evenly.

That means the likes of Trinidad and Tobago and Papua New Guinea receive the same amount as Brazil, and each has one vote at the congress

VISIT SAUDI NOT TO SPONSOR WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Visit Saudi will not be a sponsor at the women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand later this year, but Infantino has not ruled out future commercial opportunities for gulf nation in women’s football.

The Saudi Arabia tourism board had been touted as a potential sponsor of the expanded 32-team tournament, which drew sharp criticism from a number of quarters, though Infantino says it is all a “storm in a tea cup”.

The greatest ire came from Football Australia (FA), who said there was an “overwhelming consensus that this partnership does not align with our collective vision for the tournament and falls short of our expectations”.

“There were discussions with Visit Saudi, but in the end these did not lead to a contract. So it was a storm in a tea cup,” Infantino said at FIFAs Congress in Kigali on Thursday.

“But having said that, FIFA is an organisation made up of 211 countries. There is nothing wrong with taking sponsorships from Saudi Arabia, China, United States of America, Brazil or India.”

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2023

What did the US war in Iraq ultimately cost?

America's years-long conflict in Iraq left hundreds of

 thousands dead, millions displaced and cost trillions of

dollars

A convoy of US marines crosses the desert near Diwaniya

 in central Iraq on April 4, 2003.

 AFP

Kyle Fitzgerald

Washington

Mar 16, 2023

The US war in Iraq cost far more than some of the most audacious forecasts in terms of both money and human lives.

Economist Larry Lindsey's $100 billion to $200 billion price tag was dismissed as an overestimate by the administration of president George W Bush, which in 2003 calculated a conflict would be closer to between $50 billion and $60 billion.

And a 2003 analysis from the Brookings Institution that same year estimated the US would face between 100 and 5,000 casualties, compared with up to 100,000 losses for Iraqi military forces and civilians.

But those estimations paled in comparison to the true costs of the war as America's projected 60-day invasion of Iraq turned into a years-long presence in the country and Middle East.

The financial cost of the war in Iraq

READ MORE

Revisiting Colin Powell's UN address that led to war in Iraq

Iraq war: The mass grave hunter who despairs of the nation's future

The US financial commitment spiralled out of control, far topping pre-invasion estimates as Washington poured more and more troops into Iraq.

By 2006 Congress had already provided the Pentagon with $303 billion to be used for direct-war costs.

In 2007 and with the war reaching its peak, Mr Bush sent another 30,000 troops into Iraq.

The Pentagon's non-base funding — funding provided outside its base budget — also peaked at 28 per cent of the department's budget that year and in 2008, the Congressional Budget Office reported.

A Flourish map

A Congressional Research Services Report in 2014 estimated that $815 billion of the $1.6 trillion for military operations were allocated for Iraq.

The CRS also reported that annual war costs decreased from $195 billion at its peak in 2008 to $95 billion in 2014.

It was not until Barack Obama began his term in 2009 that war spending in Iraq trended downwards as US troops began to withdraw from the country.

The wars in Iraq and Syria cost $787 billion, according to a Pentagon 2022 estimate, although it does not include costs such as veteran care, interest paid on debt or other expenses.

Taking into account these costs, the total price of the US war efforts in Iraq is closer to $2 trillion, according to an estimate from Brown University's Cost of War project.

A Flourish map

But even after most troops had withdrawn from Iraq in 2011, costs of the war and other US war-related efforts continued to accumulate.

The $2 trillion price tag on US war in Iraq is only a fraction of the total spending for those counter-terrorism efforts. The entire post-9/11 wars cost the US an $8 trillion, Brown University's project estimated.

The figures include funding appropriated for the war, with veteran care alone costing $1 trillion.

Other contributing factors include State Department/USAID operations, Homeland Security spending and interest on incurred debt.

The human cost of the war in Iraq

Again, the true human costs of the war far passed original estimates before the US invasion.

A Pentagon casualty status published on March 14 reported that US military and civilian casualties totalled 4,431, another almost 32,000 military personnel wounded in action.

But that number fails to include the suicide rate experienced by Iraq war veterans and other veterans of America's post-9/11 wars.

But an overwhelming majority of deaths as a direct result of war violence came from civilians.

A Flourish map

Although not all civilian deaths were recorded, Cost of War estimates that as many as 209,000 Iraqis were killed in the conflict. Hundreds of thousands were also affected by the war's lingering effects such as water supply and sickness.

Another consequence in Iraq and America's post-9/11 wars was the displacement of millions of citizens. Iraqi civilians accounted for 9.2 million of the 38 million displaced as a result of those wars.

Nearly 1.2 million Iraqis are still displaced, the UN High Commission for Refugees reported.

Ninety per cent of Iraqis have not been able to return home for three years, and 70 per cent have not been able to return for at least five years since they left their country.

Updated: March 16, 2023, 8:30 p.m.

Families urge Philippines to work with ICC on ‘drug war’ probe

The court is looking at the deaths of thousands of people after former President Rodrigo Duterte unleashed his brutal ‘drugs war’.

Nanette Castillo grieves over the body of her son Aldrin after he was killed in October 2017 [File: Noel Celis/AFP]

By Michael Beltran
Published On 17 Mar 2023

Manila, Philippines – Families of the victims of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal “drug war” are urging the new government to cooperate after the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it would resume its investigation into the killings.

Llore Pasco, 68, lost two of her sons in May 2017.

According to the police, they were criminals and probably killed by fellow hoodlums or rivals.

Pasco never believed the story. Her sons’ bodies were peppered with bullets and torture marks.

Officially, the incident is still being investigated by the Philippine National Police (PNP) but Pasco says no officer has ever come to ask her questions or share updates on the status of the case.

Pasco joined six other family members in August 2018 to file complaints before the ICC against Duterte and the PNP for murder and crimes against humanity.


“What is Duterte afraid of? He is getting his day in court, a chance to defend himself. That’s more than our loved ones got, they were just executed,” she told Al Jazeera.

Pasco never considered filing a complaint before the Philippine courts because she says the justice system is “notoriously slow for ordinary people like me”.

“How many cops have been punished for their crimes since the drug war?” she said. “Less than the fingers on my hand and yet thousands have died.”

Thousands of people have been killed in the ‘drug war’. The ICC wants to investigate the killings as a possible crime against humanity [File: Aaron Favila/AP Photo]

According to the police, about 6,000 people have died in drug-related operations. But human rights groups and even the Philippines’s Commission of Human Rights have said the number is probably closer to 30,000.

The ICC suspended its investigation in November 2021 when Duterte’s administration said the Philippines was conducting its own review into the killings but in January, the international court said it would resume its work because it was “not satisfied” that Manila was “undertaking relevant investigations”.

Duterte, who cut ties with the ICC after it announced the original investigation, left office last May but the government of his successor Ferdinand Marcos Jr has also reacted coolly to the ICC decision.

Days after the ICC announcement, Juan Ponce Enrile, the president’s chief legal counsel, threatened to have the court’s officials arrested if they stepped on Philippine soil. Marcos Jr, a longtime ally of the Duterte family, had previously criticised the court and said its activities were an “intrusion in [the Philippines’s] internal matters and a threat to [the country’s] sovereignty”.

‘Existential threat’

The antagonism towards the ICC is shared in many areas of the Philippine political system.

In the Congress, former president Gloria Arroyo spearheaded a House Resolution, filed on February 16, for the “unequivocal defence” of Duterte.

Senator Robin Padilla filed a similar resolution four days later in the Senate and said Duterte was only fighting illegal drugs because “it is an existential threat to the country’s social fabric”.

At a press conference after the ICC announcement, Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla said the court was “insulting us”. Speaking on television, he said the Philippines was not shielding anyone from prosecution and insisted the involvement of the ICC was “not practical” because it would undermine the country’s courts.

Like Marcos, Remulla insists the ICC has no jurisdiction but the court says it has the authority to investigate alleged crimes that occurred in the Philippines during the nearly eight years the country was a party to the Rome Statute, under which the ICC was established.

Duterte’s drug war began and was at its height in 2016 but he only pulled the Philippines out of the Rome Statute in 2019

.

New president Ferdinand Marcos Jr (second right) is a long  time ally of the Duterte family [File: Manman Dejeto/AP Photo]

The ICC has said the Philippine government is appealing the court’s announcement that it will resume its work. Meanwhile, the court told Al Jazeera it planned to increase engagement with civil society in the Philippines and broaden cooperation in the region.

“Now that the investigation is authorised to continue, the Office of the Prosecutor will pursue its efforts to deliver justice to victims in the Philippines,” the ICC spokesperson said.

Relatives of victims like Pasco have also organised support networks that campaign for justice.

Pasco is a leader with Rise Up for Life and Rights, a large alliance that has established links with various faith-based groups and is pushing the government “to assist and welcome” the international court. It was also part of the complaint filed by the relatives of the victims.

Nanette Castillo is also cautiously optimistic about the resumption of the ICC investigation.

Her only son Aldrin, 20, was killed in October 2017 while crossing the street in Quezon City. He was allegedly attacked by seven masked men on motorcycles and shot five times; three of the bullets lodged in his head. Castillo tried for months to get the police reports on her son’s murder, which was classified as a “death under investigation” but gave up in 2018.


The Human Rights Commission has said his killing was a case of mistaken identity.

“Many of us are hoping but not too much,” she said. “We know it will take a while and we don’t want to get disappointed if nothing comes of it. I just want our officials to see our pain. Don’t they have children as well?”

Castillo says she would often travel a couple of hours to the PNP headquarters in Manila to try and get more information on her son’s case. But she says the officers at the station were uncooperative and unwilling to help her.

“After many tries, they finally gave me a copy of the spot report. But for the police report, they wanted to hand it to me at 12 midnight in the station. I was too afraid to go and so I never went back,” she said. A spot report refers to the immediate incident report while the police report is produced later and is more detailed.

Representing the victims’ families at the ICC, lawyer Kristina Conti argues that the critical failure of the administration is “the pervasive acceptance that because the ‘war on drugs’ is a government policy, it is untouchable and unassailable, and the accompanying insidious assertion that the abuses are not policy.”

Conti cautions that having a working judiciary is also no guarantee of justice.

“It’s also about how other branches of government have ensured no rights violations or abuses, how they have ascribed accountability, how they have dealt with bad policies,” she told Al Jazeera.

Catholic priest Flavie Villanueva blesses the urns of men killed in the drug war

 [File: Eloisa Lopez/Reuters]

Sheryll Ceasico, a teacher in one of the poorest districts of Manila, says “whatever cover-up they try to do, people like me are living proof of the crimes they committed”.

Ceasico’s brother surrendered himself to the police as a former drug user early on in Duterte’s drug war. He thought it would reduce the risk of violence.

Three days later, Ceasico says she saw a masked man break into their house and kill her brother with four gunshots.

“There are still so many of us. Our testimonies have not yet been heard by the ICC or any court,” she told Al Jazeera.

 KEEP READING

Philippine police officer jailed for killing teens in ‘drug war’  

ICC to resume investigation into Philippines’s deadly drug war

Senior Philippine police urged to resign to ‘cleanse’ force

ICC prosecutor to reopen Philippines ‘drug war’ investigation

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

STATE CAPITALI$M

China to create powerful financial watchdog run by Communist Party

BEIJING - China will set up a financial watchdog run by the Communist Party, state media reported on Thursday, as part of a broad reorganisation of governing bodies set to give the ruling party direct control and supervision over financial affairs.

The creation of the Central Financial Commission will see the dissolution of the state-run Financial Stability and Development Committee, a powerful body set up in 2017 and headed by former vice-premier Liu He to curb risks in China’s complex and often opaque financial system.

The new watchdog will be responsible for the top-level design, development and supervision of the financial sector, strengthening “unified leadership on financial work”, according to a plan published by state media.

To strengthen the ideological and political role of the party in China’s overall financial system, a separate Central Financial Work Commission will also be established.

The reorganisation of party and state-run financial bodies comes after Xi Jinping secured a precedent-breaking third term as party leader in October and also a new term as president earlier this month, making him China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

“The line between the party and the government has become decisively blurred, so there is no way that the new financial watchdogs will contradict with what the party wants,” said Mr Yan Wang, chief China strategist at Alpine Macro, a global investment firm based in Montreal.

Reuters previously reported that Beijing was planning to resurrect an elite party financial watchdog that operated between 1998 and 2003 to increase political control over the financial sector.

It would be headed by a member of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body helmed by Mr Xi, sources previously said.

The revival of the high-level oversight body comes as Chinese leaders race to inject new momentum in the world’s second-largest economy battered by three years of heavy Covid-19 curbs, a protracted property slump and weak external demand for the country’s exports.

“From investors’ point of view, the near-term impact of the regulatory overhaul is unlikely to be significant. Promoting growth is clearly Beijing’s top priority, so it is unlikely to upset the market and hurt the economy with drastic policy changes,” Mr Wang said.

A detailed reform plan for state institutions was released during China’s annual parliamentary meeting that concluded on Monday.

Under the State Council, helmed by the new Premier Li Qiang, China will establish the National Financial Regulatory Administration tasked with regulating the country’s US$57 trillion (S$76 trillion) financial industry, excluding the securities sector.

The banking and insurance regulator will be abolished, and certain functions of the central bank and securities regulator will be transferred to the new financial administration.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC
China corruption watchdog says crackdowns will continue to prevent Communist Party's decline

China’s economy shows signs of recovery, though impact of Covid-19 curbs persist

‘Party-inzation’

Separately, China will establish a new Central Technology Commission to strengthen the party’s centralised leadership over science and technology.

A Central Office for Hong Kong and Macau overseen by the party will be set up to supervise the implementation of the “one country, two systems” policy, and implement the governance of the central government in the two administrative regions.

The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office under the State Council will be abolished.

China aims to complete the reorganisation of central government institutions by the end of 2023.

Mr Carl Minzner, senior fellow at US think tank the Council of Foreign Relations, said he expected an increasing trend towards the “Party-ization” of China’s bureaucracy, with party organs steadily assuming roles once held by state bureaucracies, or even directly absorbing them.

“This both reflects Xi Jinping’s drive to reassert the party’s dominance over state and society alike, and represents a steady erasure of the limited boundaries between party and state that Chinese authorities themselves had attempted to draw during the post-1978 reform era.” REUTERS

UNFAIR COMPETITION CRIES UNCLE SAM
China's Speed in Selling Arms Prompt US Partners to Buy From Beijing, Say Officials

March 16, 2023 
Jeff Seldin

General Michael E. Kurilla testifies during a Senate committee hearing March 16, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

WASHINGTON —

China's ability to move quickly on military sales is costing the United States in two key regions and could have even more dire consequences in the years to come, top U.S. military officers are warning lawmakers.

The blunt assessments from the commanders of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East and South Asia, and from U.S. Africa Command come as a growing number of defense officials voice concerns about the rapid military modernization that has already made China the Pentagon's "pacing challenge."

"This is a race to integrate before China can penetrate," Central Command's General Michael Kurilla told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, pointing to an 80% increase in Chinese military sales to the region over the past 10 years.

"Our security partners have real security needs, and we are losing our ability to provide our equipment," he said, citing long waits for U.S. military sales to be approved and for the equipment to be delivered.

"What China does is they come in [and] they open up their entire catalog. They give them express shipping. They give them no end-user agreement. And they give them financing," Kurilla said. "They are much faster."



Africa Command's General Michael Langley shared a similar story regarding U.S. partners on the African continent.

"Even with our significant security cooperation initiative, that process is not any faster," Langley said.

"The sense of urgency, especially in West Africa, across the Sahel, across Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin and Togo, they need equipment. They need weapons now," he told lawmakers. "So, they make choices, and they make the wrong choices in going with the PRC or Russia for, especially, lethal aid."

Such concerns about China’s weapons sales are not new and have persisted despite Washington’s overall dominance in arms exports.

According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the U.S. was the world’s top weapons exporter from 2018 to 2022, accounting for 40% of all arms exports. China ranked fourth, accounting for just over 5% of sales.

State Department data released earlier this year said arms sales by the U.S. government jumped even higher, growing by almost 50% in fiscal year 2022 to $51.9 billion, buoyed in part by the war in Ukraine. Commercial arms sales also increased, hitting $153.7 billion.

Still, U.S. defense and intelligence officials have been continually warning about the impact of arms deals between Beijing and African countries, in particular, for years. One report, in February 2020, noted China even then was supplementing the sales to African countries with military and technical training.



And SIPRI data, analyzed in a report issued this month by the Washington-based Atlantic Council, showed that China is gaining a considerable edge in sub-Saharan Africa, where Beijing recorded more than $2 billion in arms sales between 2010 and 2021, trailing only Russia.

More recently, between 2017 and 2020, Chinese arms exports to sub-Saharan Africa outpaced the United States by a ratio of nearly 3-to-1, the report said.

The commanders of CENTCOM and AFRICOM told lawmakers Thursday that the more China is able to make inroads with arms sales, the more the U.S. will struggle to work with countries that would otherwise choose to be partners with Washington.

"If there's Chinese equipment there, we cannot integrate it with U.S. equipment," Kurilla said.

"Whether that's a radar or whether that's an actual air defense system, we can't let that touch our network based on what we know about the Chinese equipment," he said, describing the Chinese outreach in the Middle East as aggressive.

But there are concerns from some researchers that the data, which give many cause for alarm, do not give a full picture.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers program, said despite overall growth in Chinese arms exports over the past two decades, sales over the past five years fell by 23%.

"Expectations about Chinese arms exports based on the rapidly developing quality and advancement of the products that [they] have on offer haven't really come true yet," he said Wednesday at a webinar hosted by the Washington-based Stimson Center.

"We also see that China has not been able to become a major supplier to at least one region where you would expect it to have significant chances to develop as such, and that is in the Middle East," Wezeman said. "We haven't seen any major sales of things like submarines or combat aircraft to Saudi Arabia or Qatar or any of the other larger recipients in the Middle East. We've even seen that Chinese exports to Egypt have decreased."

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

JICA Manga! Graphic Comics Tell of Efforts to Solve Global Challenges

 JAPANESE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AGENCY

March 17, 2023

The world is facing many challenges such as unending conflicts, poverty, and natural disasters. A number of Japanese have been taking on these challenges by putting themselves on the frontlines and working with those affected.

JICA has published a series of books that celebrate these individuals and their accomplishments. Since the first was released in 2010, some 30 titles in the “Project History” series have been published, chronicling the experiences of these men and women and the successful projects they led. Four of these books have now been adapted into manga, Japanese comics, and are available in Japanese and English language versions.

From the seed of one person’s idea

The idea of manga adaptations began in the summer of 2022. JICA staff thought that the reader-friendly manga could convey the importance of Japan's aid to developing nations and JICA's work to a much larger audience. The stories of those working in the field could also be told in a more personal context. The four stories that were selected have themes that vary widely in location and context. These include a railroad development project that has changed the lives of people in India, an IT human resource development project linking Bangladesh to a regional city in Japan, a non-formal education project in Pakistan aiming to expand people's potential by improving literacy rates, and a project supporting Uganda, which is receiving a large number of refugees from neighboring South Sudan.

Each of the highlighted projects originated from the minds of a certain Japanese individual, and all have flourished as successful initiatives. They began with a passion to "aid those in need," and expanded like a ripple, drawing in more and more people as the project reached fruition. The illustrated pages of the manga seem to be a perfect way to let readers vicariously experience how these initiatives ultimately transformed into large waves that impacted society. In each story, the overcoming of obstacles is depicted not only from the viewpoint of the central Japanese protagonists, but also from the local perspective of those in the developing nations.

Thinking about people in developing countries and their lives

The manga series was produced by Suzuki Tomoko of the design company ROOM810 and two manga artist groups, birujiros and uwabami. Suzuki wrote the script, while Saito Yu and Sumita Yoko, both of birujiros, did the illustrations.

From left to right: Sumita, Suzuki, and Saito were responsible for producing the manga series. Their own experience with volunteer activities gave them a deeper understanding of the four protagonists and the challenges they faced.

Suzuki condensed each of the stories, which originally spanned nearly 200 book pages, into a 30-page manga format. She studied each project and the style of international cooperation it represented through interviews. She also engaged in detailed research, aiming to stay as faithful as possible to the perspectives and beliefs of the local people of each country. “In the stories, there are many situations in which the main characters are puzzled by the actions of the local population,” she said. “But expressing this simply through the lens of Japanese common sense could miss the truth. I always tried to be conscious of the different in values across the world."

Each manga frame is carefully researched, from the language to the description of the local area and the facial expressions of the characters.

Saito discovered some things that could only have been communicated through manga illustrations. “For example, I learned that young Muslim women prefer fashionable hijabs with vibrant colors and patterns, whereas those living in poverty-stricken areas wear subdued colors or, for economic reasons, do not wear hijabs at all,” she said. “Illustrations can easily portray such disparities, and show each country’s culture more clearly.”

Sumita believes that the advantages of manga are their ability to illustrate difficult concepts and visualize complex issues in an easy-to-understand way. “Above all,” she said, “they have the ability to immerse readers in the story by focusing on individual characters. I was primarily responsible for the characters, and as the story progresses, I was careful to have their expressions evolve over time. I hope readers will notice those changes.”

Detailed coloring and expressive characters are also part of manga's charm.

What most resonated with the members of the production team were the emotions of the local people who are portrayed in the stories. “The Japanese individuals who were inspired by the locals turned that inspiration into tangible action. It is a consistent theme across all the stories,” said Suzuki. “We would be happy to see the manga used not only as a resource for learning about developing countries, but to convey the unique qualities of the people who live there.”

Four Specially Selected Stories

• “Madam, This is Our Metro!—India and Japan Committed to a Better World and Future” Online version (PDF)

India is projected to soon replace China as the country with the largest population. Advancing access to public transportation for the booming population is a formidable task. The Delhi Mass Rapid Transport System Project (widely known as the Delhi Metro) opened in 2002, and the city now boasts one of the world's largest subway networks, surpassing even the Tokyo Metro in size. The key person in this massive national project has been Abe Reiko, the protagonist of this manga. As a civil engineer, she worked on safety measures and human resource development on Delhi Metro construction sites. The manga portrays not only the success of the subway project, but also the life of Abe, who persisted in pursuing her aspirations despite gender bias and prejudice.

• “Regional Revitalization in Japan Brought About by Bangladeshi IT Professionals: A New Form of International Cooperation Connected from Volunteers to Industry, Government and Academia” Online version (PDF)

Bangladesh has been faced with the challenge of creating job opportunities for its young generation of talented IT professionals, while regional cities in Japan has been struggling with a shortage of digital talent. One project initiated by the members of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCVs) in Bangladesh was to introduce a national certification system for IT professionals. It was a catalyst that brought people from these two distant countries together, and eventually paved the way for another initiative that would help young engineers from Bangladesh find work in Japan. These projects, which developed over the course of 14 years, are noteworthy for establishing a new model of international cooperation that directly aligns the needs of both the supporter and the recipient.

• “Non-Formal Education—Learning for Future: Redefine Education—Beyond Learning Crisis!” Online version (PDF)

Pakistan‘s literacy rate is 60 percent. Many of the country citizens come from impoverished backgrounds. They live in areas with no access to education and are forced to work from a young age. The lack of literacy skills gives these people additional difficulties. The “Non-formal education” project that is the subject of this manga refers to the creation of an environment in which people from all backgrounds can learn through a flexible and diverse education system. It relates the stories of the numerous individuals that were involved in helping to improve literacy rates. It also vividly portrays the stories of those whose lives were changed forever through their ability to read and write, emphasizing the importance of life-long education.

• “Linking Humanitarian and Development Assistance in Refugee Response: A New Approach to Refugee Crises in Africa” Online version (PDF)

Soon after the country of South Sudan gained its independence in 2011, civil war broke out, causing many refugees to flee to neighboring Uganda. The areas where the evacuees took refuge, however, were underdeveloped, and the local residents also needed assistance. Although refugee assistance is not a part of the kinds of development cooperation that make up JICA’s primary task, the protagonists in this manga took action during this prolonged conflict, believing in a unique kind of cooperation that only JICA could offer. As the number of refugees and displaced people continues to increase around the world, this story inspires readers to reflect on their support for and coexistence with refugees.

All of the manga are available on the JICA website, and are distributed free of charge at JICA offices throughout Japan and at JICA Global Plaza in Tokyo. Two more works will be published soon.

“They were geniuses, but didn’t know how to build a f—king thing,”

Abraham Zarem, one of the last surviving Manhattan Project scientists, dies at 106

Jewish engineer joined landmark program to develop atom bomb in his 20s, later developed ‘miracle’ high-speed camera, regularly attended Los Angeles synagogue into old age

By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL 

Today, 3:58 am


An item about Abraham Zarem appears in the January 1949 issue of "Engineering and Science Monthly," a magazine for alumni of the California Institute of Technology. (Courtesy/JTA)


JTA — Abraham Zarem was 28 when he joined the Manhattan Project, the vast US government effort to develop the atom bomb during World War II.

Engineers like him gathered in secret laboratories in New Mexico, California, New York City and elsewhere to provide the practical know-how the theorists lacked.

“They were geniuses, but didn’t know how to build a f—king thing,” Zarem said, according to his longtime rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, David Wolpe.

Zarem, who went on to a distinguished career in technology, business development and leadership management training, died on March 8 in Los Angeles. He was 106, and one of the last surviving members of the army of scientists, technicians, bureaucrats and clerks who helped build the weapon that would force Japan’s surrender in World War II and usher in the Atomic Age.

After the war, Zarem joined the staff of the United States Naval Ordnance Test Station at Pasadena, California, where as head of the electrical section of the physical research division he developed a high-speed camera used to study intense light sources and other phenomena. Popular Mechanics called the Zarem camera — 25,000 times faster than any movie camera then available — a “miracle.”

In 1963, Zarem served as senior vice president of Xerox, leaving in 1970 to launch a consulting business. He returned to Xerox as founder and CEO of its Xerox Development Corporation in 1975. He later served as founder and managing director of Frontier Associates, a technology consultancy.

Born in Chicago on March 7, 1917, Zarem was valedictorian of his undergraduate class at the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) and earned his doctorate on the physical properties of the electric spark at the California Institute of Technology. He headed the Stanford University Research Institute in Los Angeles while still in his 30s.

Later he served as distinguished senior adviser for Neuroscience Technology Transfer for the UCLA Brain Research Institute and a member of the Urology Advisory Board of the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. He also served as distinguished visiting executive in Science and Technology for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Scientists and workmen rig the world’s first atomic bomb developed in the Manhattan Project at the Trinity bomb test site in the desert near Alamagordo, New Mexico, July 1945. (AP)

One of Zarem’s companies, Electro-Optical Systems, developed the “world’s first practical ion engine” — an experimental high-energy thruster for spacecraft. It now resides in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

Zarem was also a regular at Sinai Temple, where Wolpe said Zarem mentored him as a young rabbi. Zarem and his wife Esther were generous contributors to the congregation; Wolpe remembered Zarem chanting from the book of Jonah on Yom Kippur when he was 99.

“Abe Zarem was a brilliant, buoyant, passionate, pious and philanthropic person,” Wolpe told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week. “He had a central role in some of the key scientific events of human history — the atomic bomb, the moon landing — and yet took an interest in everyone lucky enough to meet him.”

Unlike some of his collaborators on the Manhattan Project, there is no public record of Zarem grappling publicly with the moral implications of the weapon he helped develop. Years after their war work at Caltech, a man who worked under Zarem as a lab assistant said he felt no guilt, because without the detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he told a local newspaper, “We would have lost 500,000 Americans in the invasion of Japan.”

But Zarem did go on the record in 1952 on a different topic, in advice he shared with a labor and management magazine: “Keep your feet warm, and your head cool. And watch out for the hotheads with cold feet.”

His survivors include his children Janet, David and Mark.

Assad rules out Erdogan talks till Turkiye leaves Syria

Agencies

Published March 17, 2023 

MOSCOW: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said he will only meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan if Turkiye withdraws troops from northern Syria, according to a Russian media interview published on Thursday.

His comments come one day after he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seeking to repair ties between Erdogan and Assad severed after the Syrian war broke out in 2011.

Visiting Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad told Russian TV station Sputnik that there was no point in a meeting with Erdogan until Turkiye’s “illegal occupation” ended.

“This is linked to arriving at a stage Turkiye would clearly be ready and without any ambiguity to exit completely from Syrian territory and end its support of terrorism and restore the situation that prevailed before the start of the war on Syria,” Assad told in an interview.

“This is the only situation when it would then be possible to have a meeting between me and Erdogan. Aside from that what’s the value of such a meeting and why would we do it if it would not achieve final results for the war in Syria,” he added in the clearest remarks on the recent rapprochement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “work continues” on a potential meeting between Assad and Erdogan. “A meeting like that has to be preceded by a whole range of preparatory contacts, which are now underway,” Peskov said.

Diplomats from Iran, Russia, Turkiye and Syria were to meet in Moscow this week to pave the way for a foreign ministers’ meeting, according to Turkish media.

Assad acknowledged the role played by Russia in encouraging a rapprochement between Erdogan and himself.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2023

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