It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, June 01, 2023
Settler attacks on Palestinians in West Bank leave man in critical condition and draw US condemnation ABOUT TIME
By Abeer Salman and Hadas Gold, CNN Sat May 27, 2023 Israeli police take security measures at the town of Mugayyir in Ramallah, West Bank on May 26, 2023.
Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
JerusalemCNN —
Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank Friday left a man in critical condition and drew international condemnation, including from the US.
Settlers on Friday attacked local farmers and set cars and farms alight near the villages of Turmosayia and Al Mughayyer north of Ramallah, eyewitnesses told CNN and local journalists.
One man remains in critical condition in the hospital on Saturday, having been shot in the head, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Eight others were injured.
“We are deeply concerned by the rising trend of extremist settler violence, including reports of attacks against Palestinians in homes and farms in which they have lived for decades,” the US State Department said in a statement. “We unequivocally condemn all acts of extremist violence, whether Israeli or Palestinian.”
Israeli soldiers stand next to a car, reportedly burnt by Israeli settlers, in the village of Al-Mughayer, east of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on May 26, 2023.
Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images
In a statement to CNN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – which enforces security in the Israeli-occupied West Bank – acknowledged that Palestinian cars were set alight and said Israeli security forces attempted to disperse “the confrontation.”
But the IDF also blamed both sides for the incident and said both Israelis and Palestinians were injured. “A violent confrontation was instigated in the Shilo Valley, involving Palestinians and Israeli civilians,” the IDF said. “The confrontation involved mutual stone-hurling and Israeli civilians firing into the air.”
Speaking with Israeli Army Radio, an unnamed Israeli security official said that the Israeli government would work to bring the perpetrators “to justice.”
“These are a handful of criminals who are agitating the area, harming security and bringing a bad name to the entire settlement in Judea and Samaria,” the official said, using the biblical name that some Israeli Jews use to refer to the West Bank.
The European Union diplomatic mission to the Palestinians called on the Israeli government to “take decisive steps to ensure accountability and protect the Palestinian civilian population.”
The US State Department also condemned a reported attempted stabbing Friday of an Israeli in a settlement south of Hebron, also in the West Bank. The alleged assailant in that incident, 28-year-old Alaa Khalil Qaisiyah, was shot dead.
Pictures| IOF Force Palestinian Family to Demolish Their House, Pay Fine
M.S | DOP -
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) forced Saturday, May 27, 2023, a Palestinian family to self-demolish a part of their home in occupied Jerusalem and pay a fine.
Local Palestinian sources reported that Israeli forces forced the Jeruslamite Shaludi family to demolish the roof of the kitchen in their house and pay a fine of 5,000 shekels (1350$).
Settlers burn Palestinian village, deliver Israel’s arsonist agenda
A broken window at a home in Burqa village, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, after it was attacked by settlers, 25 May. Mohammed NasserAPA images
A spike in fatalities, increased settler attacks against Palestinian communities, moves to further restrict the political rights of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, a revival of the assassination of Palestinian faction leaders: five months into its existence, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, however fragile and fractious, is delivering on its hard-line agenda.
None of these policies are new, of course. But with Israel’s most openly extremist government yet, and third states providing for an environment of near total impunity, the situation on the ground for Palestinians has become ever more dangerous.
This week, the Israeli government passed a budget that, in the words of Al Jazeera, “solidifies the ruling coalition’s religious, pro-settlement agenda” for the next two years.
After weeks of negotiations, the budget was passed after a promise of $68 million was made to Itamar Ben-Gvir’s extreme-right Jewish Power party for settlements in the Naqab and Galilee regions – areas in Israel populated by Palestinians.
As the Associated Press reports, the budget also allocates “nearly $4 billion in discretionary funds, much of it for ultra-Orthodox and pro-settler parties.”
This will allow “hard-line pro-settler parties to promote pet projects through the ministries they control.”
It emboldens figures like Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, who has ordered the government to prepare for the doubling of the number of settlers in the West Bank, presenting his plans as a “core mission” for the present government.
Settlers set fire to village
On Thursday, settlers in the northern West Bank began leveling land ahead of construction in Homesh, an outpost near the northern West Bank city of Nablus built on privately owned land belonging to Palestinians in Burqa village.
The land leveling commenced one day after settlers accompanied by soldiers invaded Burqa, burning several homes. The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said on Thursday that the groundwork “is the direct result of the pogrom that took place yesterday … yet again, a clear example of a criminal government serving the settlers.”
Earlier on Wednesday, diplomats visited Burqa to “learn about the injustice and danger the villagers face at the hands of violent settlers from Homesh,” according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. The attack on Burqa following the diplomats’ visit was seen as a reprisal by Homesh settlers who have enacted violence against nearby Palestinian communities for years.
Such visits, led by the European Union, have become a ritual in which diplomats stage photo-ops feigning solidarity with Palestinians while their governments continue to offer Israel unconditional support and political cover for its crimes.
As the latest visit to Burqa underscores, these visits do absolutely nothing to protect Palestinians.
Violent friction
Homesh, first built as a military base on land belonging to Palestinians in Burqa in 1978, was evacuated in 2005 as part of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
As Oren Ziv writes for +972 Magazine, “the Israeli logic behind originally dismantling Homesh … was that it was an isolated community surrounded by Palestinian villages and cities which required more resources than it was strategically worth.”
Despite the withdrawal nearly 20 years ago, settlers maintained a presence at the outpost, causing violent friction between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
Ziv adds that between 2017 and 2021, the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, which petitioned Israel’s high court on behalf of Palestinian residents, “documented 27 settler attacks in the Homesh area, including both physical bodily violence and property damage.”
In August 2021, settlers from Homesh abducted and tortured a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, hitting him with their car and tying him to the vehicle before beating him and roping him to a tree in an isolated area, where they “sprayed him with pepper spray, electrocuted him, and then burned him with the car’s cigarette lighter,” according to +972 Magazine.
Rampaging settlers terrorized Qaryut, a nearby Palestinian village, after a settler was shot and killed in late 2021 while driving away from a religious school that continued to operate in Homesh.
Palestinians in communities near Homesh have also been killed and injured by the Israeli military. In March 2022, Ahmad Hikmat Seif, 23, succumbed to injuries sustained during a protest in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Burqa.
Dozens of Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated bullets and tear gas fired by the military in April last year, when thousands of Jews, including several Israeli lawmakers, among them Smotrich, marched to Homesh.
The Tel Aviv daily Haaretz notes that following the killing of the settler in late 2021, Homesh “effectively [became] a fortified army base,” with some 80 soldiers guarding 30 settlers.
In March this year, Israel’s parliament paved the way to formally recognize Homesh, along with several other outposts, despite opposition by the Biden administration in Washington, which says that a settlement at the site between Nablus and Jenin would prevent a contiguous Palestinian state.
Israel insists that it is moving Homesh from private land to what it says is state land – in other words, land that is de facto annexed in violation of international law. Israeli officials admitted to their US counterparts that the move “was in response to domestic political constraints and to prevent Netanyahu’s radical right-wing coalition partners from destabilizing the government,” the online publication Axios reported.
Haaretz observes that the supposedly “state-owned plots are not contiguous and surrounded by Palestinian-owned land.”
Thus, even if the Homesh religious school “is moved to state-owned land, the Palestinians are not expected to be able to get access to their land” and the relocation “would risk greater friction between the two sides than has been the case so far.”
Farmers attacked near Ramallah
Following their ineffectual visit, European diplomats condemned the settler attack on Burqa this week, as well as a similar assault on Palestinian farmers near Ramallah on Friday.
During Friday’s attack, a Palestinian man was shot in the head and seriously injured, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency.
Under the protection of Israeli troops, settlers burned several vehicles belonging to farmers as well as 270 bales of hay.
The United Nations meanwhile protested the forced evacuation of the Palestinian herding community of Ein Samiya near Ramallah.
“These families are not leaving by choice; the Israeli authorities have repeatedly demolished homes and other structures they own and have threatened to destroy their only school,” Yvonne Helle, the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza, said on Thursday.
“At the same time, land available for the grazing of livestock has decreased due to settlement expansion and both children and adults have been subjected to settler violence,” Helle added.
“We are witnessing the tragic consequences of long standing Israeli practices and settler violence.”
Nearly 30 Palestinian families left the rural village, their home for more than 40 years, “after months of escalating Israeli violence,” Basel Adra reported for +972 Magazine.
“Residents say they were compelled to leave after a fierce spate of violence over the previous five days, during which settlers attacked them at night, blocked the roads to the village, and threw stones at the old homes,” according to Adra.
“The mental toll of the attacks, especially on the children, was the decisive factor in the residents’ choice to destroy the village and move away.”
While worsened in recent days, settler harassment and physical violence against Palestinians in Ein Samiya predates the current Israeli government.
“Before this, settlers would come at night, parking their cars at the entrance to the village. They blocked us from getting in or out, and they beat anyone who walked on the road,” Hazem Ka’abneh, a resident of Ein Samiya, told +972 Magazine.
Israel denied residents building permits and destroyed homes when villagers would construct them anyways. Palestinians in Ein Samiya were not connected to basic services like water and electricity, unlike Jews living in nearby settlement outposts unauthorized by the Israeli government.
As Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, stated on Thursday, the West Bank “continues to be vandalized, torched, robbed inch by inch, its people brutalized day after day.”
And the arsonists heading the Israeli government are fueling the fire, working in tandem with the settlers to push Palestinians off of their land.
Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel by Azad Essa, Pluto Press (2023).
India has become the largest importer of Israeli weapons in the second decade of the 21st century. The world’s largest democracy and a symbol of anti-colonial resistance has turned into a key ally of the Israeli settler-colonial apartheid regime. Journalist Azad Essa traces this transformation through an analysis of the deep changes that have swept India and that have made it turn against Palestine and Palestinian rights.
Vijay Prashad’s book Namaste Sharon, from 2003, had set to address this very matter before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s time, focusing on the love affair between India and Ariel Sharon, one of the biggest war criminals in Israeli history. Though Prashad’s book was groundbreaking at the time – despite some inaccuracies regarding the Israeli side (and his choice of defining Israel’s colonial ideology as “Sharonism”) – it had been in urgent need of an update to cover India’s new political developments: the gradual rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, especially after winning the most parliamentary seats in 1996; Modi’s election to prime minister in 2014; and the annexation of Kashmir and Jammu in 2019.
Azad Essa’s book is exactly this much-needed update.
Essa, unlike Prashad, focuses his attention on India and the rise of the Islamophobic Hindutva ideology, as well as the geopolitical configuration that drove India to reconsider its position on Palestine.
Essa gets a couple of facts wrong here and there about Palestine, the Nakba and Israel, but his book is not intended as a resource to learn about Israeli colonialism and apartheid. He assumes a great deal of knowledge by readers on the topic already and focuses instead on the Indian side, which is rarely covered by books on Palestine. Next to countless books on US and European complicity with Israeli crimes, a book that sheds light on India’s interests in allying with Israel is very important.
Because of Essa’s focus on Indian politics, he sadly misses the chance to investigate the reasons why the Israeli government has courted India as an ally. Israel’s attitude toward India is conflicted, something that is not highlighted in the book. For example, Israeli arms companies have complained about the Indian requirement that arms deals take the form of technology transfer, with production lines established in India. They bemoan that Indian forces routinely reject training by Israeli “security experts,” which is crucial to the business model of many of Israel’s arms companies.
It would be very interesting if the author had reported on the notorious 2009 promotional video by Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael, spoofing a Bollywood song and dance scene. The video should have offended the Indian military brass, but somehow it didn’t sabotage Israel’s arms exports to India.
Another point sorely missing from the book is a discussion of corruption. Essa makes an offhand mention of corruption scandals tied to India’s arms deals with Israel, but does not cover the scandals themselves. We hear nothing about the type and extent of bribes paid and how India once blacklisted the state-owned Israel Military Industries (IMI), which was later purchased by Elbit Systems, for bribing an Indian business executive. IMI (now known as IMI Systems) was only removed from the blacklist following quiet lobby efforts by the Israeli government.
Another issue missing from the book is how Israeli politicians consider India to be an alternative market to Europe and a way to avoid the impact of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
In 2013, as the Israeli government panicked about EU guidelines on financing Israeli projects in settlements, Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economy minister at the time, traveled to India, claiming that Israeli agricultural expertise had shepherded in a new boom crop of cucumbers in India.
The high point of the book is the comparison of the Indian rule of Kashmir with the Israeli occupation regime in the West Bank and Gaza. The story of Sandeep Chakravorty, the Indian consul general in New York who explained on the record in 2019 that India would use Israel as a “model” for its own policy in Kashmir, is shocking. So is the mass blinding of hundreds of Kashmiris by pellet guns – a so-called non-lethal tactic seemingly straight from the playbook of Israeli occupation forces in East Jerusalem.
Beyond the shock value of these stories, however, the book offers a deep analysis and understanding of how the values of freedom and equality, which were once so strongly tied to India’s anti-colonial heritage, have eroded. This erosion has taken place through the Indian government’s othering of Muslims and its right-wing populism, which, at times, becomes unabashed admiration of fascism by the RSS – a Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization – and its vigilante violence, which catapulted Narendra Modi to power.
Azad Essa finds the root of the decline in India’s democratic and anti-colonial values in Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency in 1975. Although she was the leader of the Congress party and a friend to Yasser Arafat, utilizing fear to crack down on freedoms is a door that, once opened, is very difficult to close again.
Dr. Shir Hever is the military embargo coordinator of the Palestinian BNC (Boycott National Committee) of the BDS Movement
In the summer of 2022, 70 Gambian babies and young children died from kidney failure after ingesting cough syrup spooned out by their caregivers. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert that four tainted paediatric products had originated in India, as local health authorities continue to investigate how this tragedy unfolded.
This feature, which focuses on the illegal trade in substandard and fake medicines, is part of a UN News series exploring the fight against trafficking in the Sahel.
From ineffective hand sanitizer to fake antimalarial pills, an illicit trade that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is being meticulously dismantled by the UN and partner countries in Africa's Sahel region.
Substandard or fake medicines, like contraband baby cough syrup, are killing almost half a million sub-Saharan Africans every year, according to a threat assessment report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The report explains how nations in the Sahel, a 6,000-kilometre-wide swath stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, which is home to 300 million people, are joining forces to stop fake medicines at their borders and hold the perpetrators accountable.
Health care is scarce in the region, which has among the world's highest incidence of malaria and where infectious diseases are one of the leading causes of death.
"This disparity between the supply of and demand for medical care is at least partly filled by medicines supplied from the illegal market to treat self-diagnosed diseases or symptoms," the report says, explaining that street markets and unauthorized sellers, especially in rural or conflict-affected areas, are sometimes the only sources of medicines and pharmaceutical products.
Fake treatments with fatal results
The study shows that the cost of the illegal medicine trade is high, in terms of health care and human lives.
Fake or substandard antimalarial medicines kill as many as 267,000 sub-Saharan Africans every year. Nearly 170,000 sub-Saharan African children die every year from unauthorized antibiotics used to treat severe pneumonia.
Caring for people who have used falsified or substandard medical products for malaria treatment in sub-Saharan Africa costs up to $44.7 million every year, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.
Motley trafficking
Corruption is one of the main reasons that the trade is allowed to flourish.
About 40 per cent of substandard and falsified medical products reported in Sahelian countries between 2013 and 2021 land in the regulated supply chain, the report showed. Products diverted from the legal supply chain typically come from such exporting nations as Belgium, China, France, and India. Some end up on pharmacy shelves.
The perpetrators are employees of pharmaceutical companies, public officials, law enforcement officers, health agency workers and street vendors, all motivated by potential financial gain, the report found.
Traffickers are finding ever more sophisticated routes, from working with pharmacists to taking their crimes online, according to a UNODC research brief on the issue.
While terrorist groups and non-State armed groups are commonly associated with trafficking in medical products in the Sahel, this mainly revolves around consuming medicines or levying "taxes" on shipments in areas under their control.
Snip supply, meet demand
Efforts are under way to adopt a regional approach to the problem, involving every nation in the region. For example, all Sahel countries except Mauritania have ratified a treaty to establish an African medicines agency, and the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization initiative, launched by the African Union in 2009, aims at improving access to safe, affordable medicine.
All the Sahel countries have legal provisions in place relating to trafficking in medical products, but some laws are outdated, UNODC findings showed. The agency recommended, among other things, revised legislation alongside enhanced coordination among stakeholders.
States taking action
Law enforcement and judicial efforts that safeguard the legal supply chain should be a priority, said UNODC, pointing to the seizure of some 605 tonnes of fake medicines between 2017 to 2021 by authorities in the region.
Operation Pangea, for example, coordinated by UN partner INTERPOL in 90 countries, targeted online sales of pharmaceutical products. Results saw seizures of unauthorized antivirals rise by 18 per cent and unauthorized chloroquine, to treat malaria, by 100 per cent.
"Transnational organized crime groups take advantage of gaps in national regulation and oversight to peddle substandard and falsified medical products," UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly said. "We need to help countries increase cooperation to close gaps, build law enforcement and criminal justice capacity, and drive public awareness to keep people safe."
The World Customs Organization (WCO) and UNODC launched a container control programme in 70 nations to assist authorities in intelligence sharing and supply chain security.
Tunisia: Over Three Million Tunisians Face Food Insecurity Threat
Tunis — Over 3 million Tunisians are faced with the threat of food insecurity, said President of the Tunisian Centre for Global Security Studies (French: CTESG) Ezzedine Zayani.
This includes 1.5 million who will have to deal with this, Zayani further said referring to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022.
Speaking at a conference held Saturday in Tunis under the theme of "Food Security and Sovereignty and the Right to Food in Tunisia," Zayani warned against the current food situation worldwide and especially in Tunisia "which is at considerable risk."
To this end, the official called for taking necessary measures to address this real threat. The " simplest dishes are very expensive these days due to inflation and the worsening purchase power."
He likewise called on stakeholders to urgently consider new solutions and "renew with the foundations of Tunisia's agricultural policy dating back to the early years of independence".
In this respect, he reminded of the changes in the agricultural situation due to climate change which has resulted in a major water shortage. Seawater desalination is recommended along with the need to support farmers to encourage them to keep up their activities so as to avoid "food poverty."
"We are now witnessing the emergence of a new world, following the Russia-Ukraine war, in which countries suffering from food insecurity have to align their policies with those of major wheat-producing powers," he added. .
To avoid such pressures, Zayani called for focusing on agriculture in Tunisia.
Marcos says banning Filipino migrant workers from Kuwait ‘overreaction’
Published: 27 May 2023 -
The Peninsula Online
Doha, Qatar: Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., President of the Philippines, is not in favor of banning the deployment of Filipino migrant workers to Kuwait, reported the Philippine Star.
Kuwait had suspended visa grants to Filipinos over issues related to labor agreement signed between the two countries in 2018.
Marcos was quoted by the Philippine Star as having said that he does not want to “burn bridges” and that the ban might have been an “overreaction” that “is not right.”
Inquirer, another Philippines news site, reported that the chair of the House committee on foreign affairs had earlier proposed a total deployment ban to Kuwait due to “ugly offenses” against overseas Filipino workers.
Earlier this year, the Philippines stopped deploying domestic workers to Kuwait after the death of Jullebee Ranara, an overseas Filipina worker, in January.
Ranara’s death was what had prompted revisions to the aforementioned 2018 agreement.
Earlier this month, Gulf media reported that an official source in the Kuwaiti Public Authority of Manpower said that the Philippines would resume sending its workers to Kuwait beginning of next June after procedures are finalized and an official delegation visit to the country concludes at the end of this month.
The source confirmed that the Philippine delegation, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prepared special procedures related to the file of Filipino domestic workers and specialized workers.
Brands embracing pride month confront a volatile political climate in US
ByJordyn Holman and Julie Creswell May 28, 2023 —
For years in the US, Pride Month, the annual celebration for LGBTQ Americans in June, has afforded companies a marketing opportunity to tap into the buying power of a group with growing financial, political and social clout.
Yet, while these efforts have always faced some opposition, brands and marketers say the country’s current political environment – especially around transgender issues – has made this year’s campaigns more complicated. Last week, Target became the latest company to rethink its approach after facing criticism for its Pride collection, which included clothes and books for children that drew outrage from some on the right.
Companies have long embraced Pride month as a marketing opportunity.
CREDIT:IDOHO STATESMAN
The retailer moved its Pride displays – including rainbow-striped collared shirts, yellow hoodies reading “Not a Phase” and baby clothing and accessories – from the entrances of some Target stores around the country and placed them in the back.
Target said it was concerned “about threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work” after some customers had screamed at employees and thrown the Pride-themed merchandise on the floor.
Among the items angering some customers was a one-piece bathing suit that has extra material for the crotch area for individuals who want to conceal their genitalia. Some critics erroneously claimed that the swimsuit was being sold to children; Target said it was available only in adult sizes. The collection also includes children’s books about transgender issues and gender fluidity.
One woman recorded a TikTok video in a Target store last Monday in which she became angry at seeing a greeting card that read “So Glad You Came Out” and a yellow onesie that said “¡Bien Proud!” Pride month merchandise at Target. The retailer is removing certain items from sale.
CREDIT:AP
“If that doesn’t give you a reason to boycott Target, I don’t know what does,” she said.
In a statement, a company spokesperson said, “Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the centre of the most significant confrontational behaviour.” She added that the company, which has been selling Pride Month merchandise for a decade, remained committed to the LGBTQ community “and standing with them as we celebrate Pride Month and throughout the year”.
While Target said its decision had been made in the interest of employee safety, many said its actions – along with a conservative backlash against Bud Light after it worked with a transgender influencer – might alienate the community it was seeking to support. And those who criticised Target and Bud Light in the first place may now feel further emboldened to attack inclusive initiatives by other companies.
“We’re in a new space here with safety and employee safety being threatened by policy and purpose,” said Vanitha Swaminathan, professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh. “I can’t say that you can disregard employee safety. That’s very core to what a company has to do. At the same time, Target can still, from a policy standpoint, be supportive of their initial stance. It’s sad to see that we’ve reached this point in our culture wars.”
Employee safety is prompting the removal of some Pride items from Target shelves.
CREDIT:AP
Marketing campaigns around Pride Month in June have become routine for many companies, with opposition cropping up at times. Last year, for instance, Pizza Hut faced calls for a boycott after it recommended Big Wig, a book featuring drag performers, as part of its children’s summer reading program.
Yet companies and marketers say the political climate makes this year different – primarily because a number of Republican-led states have introduced and passed legislation restricting transition care for transgender minors and adults, and transgender rights has become a galvanising issue for many conservative
GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy group that works with more than 160 companies, is considering having communications professionals in its GLAAD Media Institute work with brands that are planning Pride Month celebrations so they can better respond to criticism.
“We do feel like we’re at a moment where, with the politicisation of trans and gender-nonconforming folks, that we probably need to assemble a Pride war room for brands so that we can push back,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the group’s chief executive, said in an interview.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and chief executive officer of GLAAD.
CREDIT:BLOOMBERG
On Thursday, GLAAD and six other advocacy groups called on Target to return to its stores and its website any Pride merchandise it had removed and to release a statement “in the next 24 hours reaffirming their commitment” to the LGBTQ community.
When faced with criticism and social media calls for boycotts in the past, most companies learned that the declarations of outrage soon faded away.
Then Bud Light happened. Owned by the beer giant Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light continues to struggle with the fallout from a social media campaign in mid-March with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. After calls for a boycott of the beer, sales in the four weeks ending in mid-May dropped more than 23 per cent from a year earlier, according to data from the research firm NIQ and Bump Williams Consulting, which works with the alcoholic beverage industry. Bud Light sales have not recovered from the backlash to a social media campaign with Dylan Mulvaney.
In some markets in the South, such as Jacksonville, Florida, and New Orleans, Bud Light’s sales were down 40 per cent in those four weeks.
Anheuser-Busch, which in recent years has released rainbow-hued bottles and cans of Bud Light for Pride Month, did not respond to a question about its plans for this year.
Some marketing and communications consultants said the negative reaction to Bud Light’s campaign with Mulvaney was a product of the beer’s generally more politically conservative customer base. Companies like Nike or Starbucks can more easily create products or campaigns around gay and transgender issues or Pride Month because their consumers tend to be younger and more progressive, said David Johnson, chief executive of Strategic Vision PR Group in Atlanta. “When they embrace the gay or transgender community, it’s not out of line with their core beliefs,” he said.
A number of companies are moving forward with their Pride Month plans. In June, the Coors Light Denver Pride Parade will weave its way through the city. Advertisements for a one-piece Adidas swimsuit created by South African queer designer Rich Mnisi feature a transgender man as the model. Levi’s has a campaign showing a half-dozen gay and transgender people talking about how they show up while wearing the company’s denim and tops.
But a number of other companies are being much less forthcoming about specific Pride Month plans. And some LGBTQ advocates criticised Target for seeming to cave to pressure. (The company’s decision did come as employees in the retail industry have faced increasingly aggressive behaviour from customers since the start of the pandemic.)
Target also removed a Pride line from Abprallen, an LGBTQ fashion and accessories company based in London, some of whose designs have been criticised for depicting satanic symbols like pentagrams and a shirt that reads “Satan respects pronouns”. Abprallen did not respond to a request for comment.
“We’ll find out in the next week which companies are continuing to make a push and do Pride Month campaigns,” said Matt Skallerud, the president of Pink Media, which specialises in LGBTQ online marketing. “If companies we know have been supportive of Pride Month don’t show up this year, their absence will be noticed, and I’d be concerned that could harm them.”
Advocacy groups are wary that all of this could create a chilling effect, especially when it comes to attaining a broader representation of LGBTQ people in advertising. “White gay men are the one segment that are most likely represented on our screens, whether it’s programing or ads,” said Lisette Arsuaga, co-founder of the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing. “We now started moving forward with a greater representation of all of the letters within the LGBTQ.”
The overall consumer sentiment for seeing trans representation on TV and in advertising hasn’t changed, according to recent GLAAD research. In a survey that was conducted in February, GLAAD said 75 per cent of people who did not identify as LGBTQ were comfortable seeing those people represented in marketing campaigns.
“You can absolutely roll out an ad campaign and include LGBTQ folks in it,” Ellis of GLAAD said. “And at the same time, there is this political right-wing arm that you have to be aware of when you’re doing it and just be prepared for.”
Germany aims to recruit care workers from Latin America. Labor Minister Hubertus Heil and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will fly to Brazil and Mexico in June as part of the effort.
What's it like for health care workers in Germany? What do I need to know before trying to get a job? And how good does my German need to be? These are the questions that keep popping up on Facebook, Instagram and especially an ever-expanding WhatsApp group.
Thaiza Maria Silva Farias can answer these questions from fellow Brazilians in her sleep. As a trained nurse from Rio de Janeiro, who came to Germany in October of 2016, she's a bit of a pioneer in that respect.
Soon after her arrival, she started working in the operating room at a clinic in Darmstadt. After seeing the lack of staff in German hospitals and its daily impact on patients, she decided last year to use her experience to start the Nursewelt, or Nurse World, recruitment agency that aims to entice care workers in Brazil to come to Germany.
"I can provide Brazilian applicants with professional help. Beyond that, I know very well who would be useful in German clinics," Silvia Farias told DW. More and more people need caring for in Germany
Nursewelt seems to have the potential to be a success story because Silva Farias and her company help fill a gap in the market that gets bigger every year.
Thaiza Maria Silva Farias helps foreign nursing staff find their feet in Germany
Image: privat
There were almost 2 million people in Germany who needed caring for in 1999, according to the Federal Statistical Office. By 2055, experts estimate that number will rise to 6.8 million.
At the same time, the number of people providing care has shrunk. Last year 53,300 people in Germany began training to be specialized nurses. That's 4,000 trainees fewer than in 2021 and represents a decline of 7%, the Federal Statistics Office said. 'Hand pick the work you want'
For each unemployed care worker in Germany, there are currently three open positions. Or, as Germany's Federal Employment Office put it, "There's a clear lack of nurses."
"You can pick what job you'd want to have as a nurse in Germany. You can look and decide where you would most like to work. When you're unemployed, it only takes one or two days until you've got another offer," Silva Farias said.
In Brazil, it's much more difficult to get a position, she added.
"The competition there is enormous. There are people that studied for five years and sometimes have master's or even doctoral degrees who still can't find jobs due to a lack of work," Silva Farias said.
According to German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, Germany and Brazil seem to be a perfect match when it comes to nursing and care work. He will travel to Brazil with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in June.
The trip is part of a recruitment strategy that stretches to other countries, including Mexico and Indonesia.
"We'll be very sensitive in our approach, so we do not take workers from countries where they're needed," Heil told the daily Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
Heil added that the appeal to care workers could be mutually beneficial. "We benefit, the countries of origin benefit from us engaging in training there, and the people who come to us benefit by having a well-paying job and maybe even the chance to provide financial support to their family members at home."
A win-win situation for everyone? Patient advocates have doubts about filling the care-worker gap with nurses from other countries and that Germany's lack of nurses can be solved by hiring from foreign countries. In 2022, there were 656 foreign nurses hired in Germany, primarily from the Philippines, according to the Federal Employment Agency. 'A domestic German problem'
"At its core, the lack of nursing staff is a domestic German problem, and . the few hundred Brazilian nurses won't fix it," Foundation for Patient Rights head Eugen Brysch told the dpa news agency.
And what about countries like Brazil and Mexico? Are there really just winners, or is it the case that Germany is relying on brain drain in Latin America to take away qualified workers from countries that might eventually need them in the future?
Germany's care worker problems are bigger than a few hundred extra nurses, patient advocates said
Image: Jens Büttner/dpa/picture alliance
Mexican surgeon Xavier Tello, a leading Latin American health care expert, took a pragmatic view of people's decision to look for employment abroad.
"This brain drain is completely normal in a globalized world," he told DW. "If I'm very well trained, and this is appreciated more in a foreign country than at home where working conditions are often bad and the wages are low, than it makes sense to take this step."Tello added, however, that few people in the region are aware of foreign efforts to recruit them.
"But when people are exposed to it, their approach is more like, 'Well, at least in foreign countries our nurses get the appreciation they don't get at home."
Silva Farias knows why nurses in Latin America decide to try their luck in Germany: The quality of life is better and they have more security; pay can be six times higher than at home while working for just one employer instead of for two or three hospitals in Brazil.
Still, Tello said he is not afraid countries like Mexico would soon struggle with a lack of nurses.
"Mexicans are very connected to their home," he said. "Emigrating to Germany and learning a new, difficult language would be quite the culture shock, so for them it's really the last option. Interestingly, people here do not regard it as a big career opportunity with a good salary."
Silvia Farias said the nurses sending her questions regarding a move to Europe as just one phase in their life and career plans rather than a professional endgame.
If Heil and Baerbock want to attract more workers from Latin America, Farias said there are changes they should make in Germany as well.
"Hospitals have to be better prepared for their new employees," she said. "Staff often has no patience when people don't speak German well. [Foreign nurses] should get a year to get a handle on the language. Germany needs to work on integrating foreign care workers."
