Tunisian teen wins surprise Olympic swimming gold

By BETH HARRIS

1 of 4


TOKYO (AP) — Nobody was watching Ahmed Hafnaoui in lane eight of the Olympic pool.

All eyes were on the Tunisian teenager at the finish.

Hafnaoui was the stunning winner of the 400-meter freestyle at the Tokyo Games on Sunday, beating a field of faster and older swimmers. The 18-year-old finished in 3 minutes, 43.26 seconds, punctuating his victory with loud yelling that echoed in the mostly empty 15,000-seat arena.

“I believe when I touched the wall and I saw myself first,” he said. “I was so surprised.”

Australia’s Jack McLoughlin earned silver and American Kieran Smith took bronze. The top three were separated by less than a second after the eight-lap race.

“When I hit the water, I was just thinking about the medal, not the time,” Hafnaoui said.

He squeaked into the final by 14-hundredths of a second, landing him in the far outside lane. The fastest qualifiers were in the middle of the pool, without the ability to track Hafnaoui during the race.

Asked what he knew about Hafnaoui, Smith said, “Absolutely nothing.”

Hafnaoui made sure he’ll be remembered with a performance that boosted his resume considerably.

He joined Ous Mellouli as the only Tunisians to win a gold in swimming. Mellouli won the 1,500 freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Games, one of his three career Olympic medals. He reached out with a good-luck message to the teenager before the race.

“I wish to be like him one day,” Hafnaoui said.

The teen who trains in the capital of Tunis is the North Africa country’s fourth Olympic gold medalist. He’s the second-youngest athlete from an African nation to win a swimming gold; Joan Harrison of South Africa was 16 when she won the 100 backstroke at the 1952 Helsinki Games.

Standing on the podium, his coach furiously pumping his arms in triumph in the stands, the moment was overwhelming for Hafnaoui.

“I was in tears because when I see the flag of my country and I hear the anthem in the background, it was great,” he said. “I’m so proud of it. I dedicate it to all the Tunisian people.”

Hafnaoui began swimming at age 6 when his father enrolled him in a swim club. His limited international experience includes an eighth-place finish in the 400 free at the 2018 Youth Olympics.

“The best people are the ones who can come up and swim their best times at the Olympic Games,” McLoughlin said.

Hafnaoui has another chance to pull off a surprise when he competes in the 800 free on Thursday. Next year, he said he plans to attend college in the U.S.

___

More AP Olympic coverage: https://www.apnews.com/OlympicGames and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Tokyo 2020: Shock swimming gold for Japan and Tunisia
Updated / Sunday, 25 Jul 2021

Ahmed Hafnaoui claimed a stunning victory


Tunisia and Japan celebrated unexpected golds on the opening day of swimming medal events before normal service was resumed with the Australian women's 4x100m freestyle relay team smashing their own world record on the way to the title in Tokyo.

Chase Kalisz settled American nerves by delivering the country's first gold of these Games, winning the men's 400m medley as part of a US one-two with Jay Litherland.

On a day of surprises, Tunisian teenager Ahmed Hafnaoui pulled off the biggest shock of all with a stunning victory in the men's 400m freestyle.

The 18-year-old, swimming in the outside lane as the slowest qualifier, produced a blistering finish to pip Australia's Jack McLoughlin to gold with a time of 3:43.36, with American Kieran Smith taking bronze.

Hafnaoui's gold is only the fifth by a Tunisian athlete at the Olympics, but their third in swimming, and he was left stunned by his performance.

"I just can't believe it. It's a dream and it became true. It was great. it was my best race ever," he said.

While Hafnaoui's coach celebrated the victory by leaping around the edge of the pool, it was hard not to wonder what the scenes would have been like had Yui Ohashi's victory in the women's 400m medley come in front of a home crowd.

It was left to her team mates and Japanese officials to roar her home as she delivered gold for the hosts in a time of 4:32.08.

"It doesn't feel real. It is like a dream for me," she said.

"I couldn’t go to the Rio Olympics, so for the past five years this became a big dream for me. This accomplishment is amazing."

Yui Ohashi celebrates gold

American Emma Weyant took the silver medal 0.68 behind and compatriot Hali Flickinger picked up the bronze.

Ohashi pulled away from Flickinger in the breaststroke leg and went into the freestyle with a lead of 1.99 seconds, giving her a comfortable cushion to hold off Weyant's late surge.

Hungarian Katinka Hosszu, who has dominated the event in recent years and was defending champion, could finish only fifth.

The 32-year-old 'Iron Lady' was looking to become the second-oldest women’s swimming gold medallist in history, behind American Dara Torres, and she has three more chances in this Games.

In the men's 400m medley, a confident Kalisz powered to victory as the Americans finally made their presence felt.

The silver medallist from Rio went one better in Tokyo with a time of 4:09.42, Litherland trailing him home 0.86 behind. Australia's Brendon Smith was a further tenth of a second back taking bronze.

Kalisz, 27, grabbed the lead on the first length of the backstroke after France's Leon Marchand had led after the butterfly leg and never looked back.

He battled with New Zealand's Lewis Clareburt through the breaststroke but the Kiwi faded badly in the freestyle and finished seventh.

"It means the world. This is the last thing that I really wanted to accomplish in my swimming career," said Kalisz.

"It was something that was a dream of mine for as long as I could remember. I can't believe it."

Japan's Daiya Seto, the pre-Games favourite for gold, had failed to qualify from Saturday's heats.

While it was a disappointing day for Australia in the men's events, the women set a world record of 3:29.69 in the 4x100m freestyle relay, with Canada taking silver, 3:09 behind the winners, and the United States in bronze position.

The quartet of sisters Bronte and Cate Campbell, Meg Harris and Emma McKeon ensured a third straight gold in the event for Australia, taking 0.36 off their previous record of 3:30.05 set in April 2018.

Cate Campbell has featured in all three of the relay victories

Ireland have two swimmer in action in the pool on Sunday.

Danielle Hill is first out as she goes in her heat in the 100m backstroke at 11:07am, with Mona McSharry taking part in the 100m breaststroke heats at 11:45am.

FENCING & FEMINISM

Ines Boubakri: Tunisian fencer on making history for Arab women

By Katie FalkinghamBBC Sport
Last udated on14 July 2021

Ines Boubakri battled through injury to win Olympic bronze in Rio

Winning Olympic bronze in Rio allowed Ines Boubakri to realise she no longer had to prove herself to anyone.

The Tunisian had had a lifetime of doing that. But in that moment, dropping her mask to the floor and her foil to her side as she became the first African and Arab woman to win a medal in fencing, she knew every hurdle had been worth overcoming.

"You remember all that you sacrificed, how it was hard, because in fencing, we don't have this tradition," she said.

"When I started to be one of the best in the world, people were like 'oh, she's from Tunisia, how can she be one of the best ranked in the world?'.

"When I got this medal, I said 'I don't have to prove anything'. I deserved this medal."

Listen: On the Podium Podcast - How an Olympic fencer made history for Arab women

Boubakri is from a fencing family - her mother, Henda Zaouali, competed at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, while her husband, Erwann Le Pechoux, is a French Olympian. Zaouali couldn't be in Rio to watch her daughter take her place on the podium but Boubakri said she was happy because her mum "wanted that medal".

It hadn't been an easy win, though. Boubakri had battled back and knee pain in the foil bronze medal match, and was forced to fight back from a hefty deficit to defeat Russian Aida Shanayeva.

The now 32-year-old was given a "president's welcome" upon her return home to Tunisia, where she found she had a new following; followers who had realised, through Boubakri's success, that their futures could be limitless.

"It's a responsibility because there are a lot of young girls following me," Boubakri told the BBC World Service podcast On the Podium.

"I have some pressure and some responsibility because I want to show them how to get this medal, not just in sport or in other careers, to show that she can do it.

"It's not because we are Arab or from Africa that we can't, just believe in yourself, be confident and don't let people judge you. Just do what you want and believe in yourself."

Boubakri says the world changed how it viewed her. Now, she wants to help other women from similar backgrounds achieve their true potential.

"For me, it's very important that we have equality between women and men," she said.

"Unfortunately, in the Arab world, they still compare women and men, 'she cannot do this because she is a woman'.

"I want to prove that you cannot compare. Sometimes men cannot do some things that women can do. I want to stop this inequality."

She added: "I've heard a lot of girls say they don't want to do sport, or have muscles like men. When I hear this, I am shocked. I have been fencing now for more than 20 years and it's helped my body to keep fit.

"You can do whatever sport you like and you are not obliged to be at the highest level. Try lots of things and you will see what your body can do."

Ines Boubakri is a three-time Olympian, having competed in Beijing, London and Rio

Tokyo will be Boubakri's fourth Olympics, and could be her last, but regardless of what happens in Japan this summer she already has her future mapped out.

Having moved to France with the support of her family at 18-years-old for better fencing opportunities, Boubakri now wants to bring those opportunities back to the next generation of the sport who need them.

"I don't know when I will stop my career, sometimes I say it will be my last Olympics in Tokyo, sometimes I say why not [carry on]?," she said.

"I have a Masters in sport psychology and I can be a PE teacher, so after my career, I dream about making an international academy.

"I'm thinking of people like me, people who don't have a big structure, big clubs, a lot of fencers to practice [with].

"So my plan, and I hope it can work, is to build an international academy for all the people who don't have big federations, they can join our academy and I can share with them how to improve in fencing, my experiences and go with them to competitions, to be their coach."

REST IN POWER

Bangladesh: Legendary folk musician and freedom fighter Fakir Alamgir passes away



Folk music legend and freedom fighter Fakir Alamgir passed away in Dhaka on Friday night. He was suffering from Coronavirus infection and suffered a heart attack in the evening. He was 71.

Singer, musician and songwriter, Fakir Alamgir was a leading exponent of Gono Sangeet or songs of the masses. He was known as a leading voice for the weaker sections of society.

President M. Hamid in his condolence message said that Fakir Alamgir’s music played an important role in the revival of patriotism and the development of the liberation war consciousness among the younger generation. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that he will be remembered for his great role in popularising the Gono Sangeet among people.

Fakir Alamgir studied Mass Communication and Journalism at Dhaka University. He was a member of the cultural groups Kranti Shilpi Gosthi and Gono Shilpi Gosthi during the mass upsurge of 1969 against the Pakistani government. He also worked with Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, the radio station which played a significant role during the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971.

Starting his musical journey in 1966, Fakir Alamgir was counted among the most influential artists of modern Bangladeshi music combining the folk music with the western sounds. He was also a writer having published several books in Bangla.

He was awarded the top literary award of Bangladesh Ekushey Padak in 1999 for his contribution to music.

By AIR News
INTERNATIONAL
July 24, 2021

GLOBALIZATION IS OUTSOURCING


Bangladesh draws smartphone assembly as brands eye growing market

Nokia, Samsung and Chinese makers including Vivo enticed by government incentives

Dhaka shops selling smartphones from Oppo and Vivo, two Chinese companies that are among the global manufacturers producing the devices in Bangladesh. (Photo by Syful Islam)

SYFUL ISLAM, 

Contributing writer

NIKKEI ASIA

June 30, 2021 


DHAKA -- International mobile phone brands Nokia, Samsung, Vivo and others are increasingly choosing to set up manufacturing ventures in Bangladesh to avoid the South Asian country's high import tariffs and get direct access to its large and growing population.

Bangladesh, once a perennial bottom-dweller in global league tables, has drawn increasing attention in recent years as its economy racks up high growth rates and consumer spending power in the country of 163 million people expands.

It has also taken steps to attract foreign investment and increase local production and consumption through its "Made in Bangladesh" program, nudging phone brands to enter the country by raising tariffs on imported handsets, collecting lower duties on component imports and exempting consumer purchases from the country's value-added tax.

Finland's Nokia is just the latest manufacturer to make the move, following on the heels of South Korea's Samsung as well as China's Oppo, Vivo, Transsion and Realme to adopt a strategy previously reserved for bigger markets like India and Brazil. Bangladeshi officials say other Chinese brands are expected to follow suit.

Thanks to an effective price gap of 15-26% between imported and locally assembled smartphones, domestic production has climbed, now accounting for nearly 80% of sales.

Noting the new predominance of local phones, Finance Minister A.H.M. Mustafa Kamal this month proposed extending the VAT exemption another two years. Another measure, set to come into effect on July 1, will block buyers of smuggled phones from registering their devices on local networks.

"That will shut [down the] illegal import of handsets into Bangladesh, and local manufactures will get encouraged, as their market shares will go up," Shahidul Alam, director general of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, told Nikkei Asia.

Bangladesh's economy has been growing at a rapid pace in recent years. © AP

Local manufacturing of phones only began in October 2017 when local electronics maker Walton started production under its own brand in a Dhaka suburb. It has since made 1.7 million smartphones and 4.3 million older-style feature phones.

A number of other companies now making smartphones in Bangladesh are local ventures, often arms of large conglomerates. But Vivo and Realme, both under the umbrella of China's BBK Electronics, and compatriot Transsion have set up their own factories in the country.

Tanzib Ahamed, brand manager at Vivo Bangladesh, said it had won "sizable" market share since launching its local plant in 2019 by making "global technology much more affordable for local consumers."

Citing data from research company Canalys, a local spokesman for Realme said his company is now one of Bangladesh's top three smartphone brands, with a 14% share.

"It is now possible to offer our products at a much more competitive price to the smartphone users," he said, adding that the company's factory in the city of Gazipur now has 600 employees. "We are registering phenomenal growth in Bangladesh."

Rezwanul Hoque, chief executive of Transsion's local unit, said he expects to be able to price phones even lower in the future as local factories start production of motherboards, batteries, chargers and other components.

Consumers welcome the trend.

"We are now using 'Made in Bangladesh' handsets. We are proud of it," said Atiqur Rahman, a private banker, who added that smartphone prices should go down further so that those with lower incomes also can buy high quality handsets.

The rush to produce phones in Bangladesh comes as its economy has been growing steadily. Before the pandemic, gross domestic product grew by over 7% annually for several years, and in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020, GDP expanded 5.2%, according to the finance minister. Though lower than before, it was the strongest in Asia, he said.

Bangladeshis seen outside the Bashundhara City Shopping Complex in Dhaka on Oct. 2, 2020. Producing smartphones in the country makes them more affordable to consumers. © EPA/Jiji

The country has $45 billion in foreign exchange reserves, enough to cover six months of imports, and last fiscal year received over $21 billion in remittances from citizens working abroad, a figure the finance minister expects to reach $25 billion by the end of June. The country has also racked up merchandise exports of nearly $40 billion a year.

Bangladesh's 175.27 million active mobile phone accounts at the end of May -- well within the top 10 in Asia in size -- means the country is a key attraction for brands, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

Union Group, the local conglomerate that will make Nokia phones under contract with Espoo, Finland-based brand owner HMD Global, aims to soon start producing 500,000 handsets a month, according to Mohammed Asif Alamgir, business controller of the group's mobile division.

"Nokia is a very old and trusted brand compared to Chinese makers," he said. "None will be able to match ... Nokia's brand acceptance."

Takayuki Omino, spokesman for HMD Global, said, "Consumers will be able to buy their [be]loved brand Nokia handsets at an affordable price."

An official at the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology said Xiaomi and Motorola, which is now part of China's Lenovo, are also working on plans for local production. However, Lenovo spokeswoman Genevieve Hilton denied that, while Xiaomi did not respond to queries.

Beyond the domestic market, the country's phone makers are starting to consider exporting. Walton has begun assembling phones for a foreign brand for export, with the first shipment dispatched to the U.S. in March, according to Uday Hakim, executive director at Walton Hi-Tech Industries. Walton also exported handsets under its own brand to Nepal, he said, though shipments are now suspended due to the pandemic.

Fair Group, the local conglomerate that assembles Samsung phones, also has its eye on foreign markets.

"We are expecting to start handset exports from Bangladesh by 2023 or 2024," said Chief Marketing Officer Mohammed Mesbah Uddin.

"Almost all the global brands either have received permission or [are] under process to set up factories here," he said, estimating that once that happens, 95% of smartphones for the domestic market will be produced locally.

Edison Group, another local conglomerate, makes phones under its own Symphony brand.

"We aim to turn Bangladesh into a regional hub for mobile handset production," Managing Director Jakaria Shahid told Nikkei, forecasting that exports by the industry will start to take off next year.

Bangladesh draws smartphone assembly as brands eye growing market - Nikkei Asia

Japan faces heat over Bangladesh’s coal power

Funding commitment for Matarbari scheme sits awkwardly with carbon pledges

Some 4,000km from Japan, on a verdant, mangrove-lined island in south-eastern Bangladesh, sits one of the biggest and most controversial tests of Tokyo’s commitment to help phase out fossil fuels.

Thanks to low-interest loans from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Bangladesh is currently building the Matarbari coal plant: a power complex set to be completed by 2024. And JICA, a government body, has been considering funding an expansion to the 10-year-old project, known as Matarbari Phase 2 — despite, earlier this year, saying it would work with Bangladesh “to promote a low- or zero-carbon transformation” of its energy economy.

This debate around the Matarbari plant embodies the tensions in Japan’s fossil-fuel policies. Its financing of coal power in developing countries risks falling out of step with moves to promote renewable energy at home and abroad.

In Bangladesh — a low-lying country highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and erratic rainfall — the government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina has been backing coal to meet energy needs.

However, official enthusiasm for mega-projects such as Matarbari is waning as renewable alternatives become cheaper. Hasina’s government last month scrapped 10 of the coal-power plants it had planned. While the mooted Matarbari Phase 2 project was not officially among them, analysts say it is looking less and less viable.

One activist says Japan is ‘making money transferring pollution to other countries’

“Now, [Bangladesh’s] focus is more pro-renewables, and [it] seems to be turning away from coal,” says Simon Nicholas, an analyst with US think-tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). “That’s more economics than anything else.” Bangladesh says it wants to generate 40 per cent of its power from renewable energy within 20 years.

Yesterday’s policy

Japan has long invested in Bangladeshi infrastructure, a partnership that stems back nearly as far as the South Asian nation’s independence 50 years ago. But JICA’s support for the Matarbari units has faced severe censure.

“Japan has no right to invest in coal in other countries — they have a responsibility to ensure zero emissions,” argues Hasan Mehedi, an activist with the Bangladesh Working Group on External Debt, which opposes the project. Japan is “making money . . . transferring pollution to other countries so that they can phase themselves clean,” Mehedi says.

Within Japan, too, there is belated recognition that its support for overseas coal plants has become anachronistic.

Until recently, its suppliers of coal-fired boilers and turbines were regarded as the kind of strategic national industry the country had a duty to support. Now, it has realised that there is little future in coal. That prompted a big shift in policy last year, when Japan adopted a presumption against new coal projects overseas. Banks began to question whether coal financing was worth the international opprobrium. 

“There are very few possibilities for Japanese industry to export coal power plants,” says University of Tokyo professor Yukari Takamura, who was part of a government expert panel on the topic. She adds that “almost all Japanese banks have now said they will not finance new coal plants overseas.”

While there is some ambiguity about official Japanese policy — there is still no clear ban on coal projects overseas — the government made its strongest commitment yet at last month’s G7 summit in the UK: agreeing to halt all new direct government support for unabated coal power generation abroad by the end of 2021 (that is, plants that do not capture the carbon dioxide they produce).

That has left a few pipeline projects, including Matarbari Phase 2, in a no man’s land. They now run against official policy, but commitments were made. JICA says that preparatory surveys are continuing.

Who benefits?

Local attitudes towards the Matarbari project, about 40 miles from Bangladesh’s second-largest city Chattogram, are polarised.

Supporters have touted its job-creating potential, but critics accuse it of displacing residents and polluting the adjacent Kohelia river. Sharif Jamil, of environmental group Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon, says locals complain that construction contractors are bringing in workers from outside areas. They had hoped “the area will be developed like Singapore,” he says. “But now the myth has gone.”

IEEFA’s Nicholas argues that such projects will exacerbate Bangladesh’s power overcapacity, with utilisation of the power system currently around 40 per cent. He thinks the country should instead upgrad

e its grid to make better use of its existing electricity supply and to meet its renewable energy targets.

“Until recently, Bangladesh was expected to be one of the key growth markets for seaborne thermal coal,” he says. “The potential growth markets around Asia — that were supposed to replace Japan, South Korea and China as they shift away from thermal coal imports — increasingly look like they will disappoint the coal industry.”

Additional reporting by Robin Harding

https://www.ft.com/content/0428b4b5-b3c9-4ce9-a207-c88445216a19

Bangladesh's 'banker to the poor' Yunus awarded prestigious Olympic Laurel

Xinhua/Tokyo
Filed on July 23, 2021

(Twitter)
The 81-year-old Nobel laureate accepts award via video link from his home in Dhaka.

Bangladeshi 'banker to the poor' Muhammad Yunus has written the name of his country into Olympic history, as he was awarded the Olympic Laurel at the opening ceremony of Tokyo Olympics on Friday night.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Yunus will become the second recipient of the laurel, which was introduced in 2016 to honor people who have "made significant achievements in education, culture, development and peace through sport."

A banker by trade, Yunus, has dedicated his life to fighting poverty around the world through establishing the Grameen Bank - a community development bank that makes small loans to impoverished people without requiring collateral. His work has therefore earned him the nickname of the "world's banker to the poor."

He was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

The 81-year-old man accepted the award by video link from his home in Dhaka and said it represented a significant moment for Bangladesh's Olympic history.

In addition to his work with the impoverished, Yunus has also collaborated with the IOC on a Young Leaders Programme for athletes.

IOC President Thomas Bach spoke highly of Yunus for his "extensive work" helping athletes "become socially responsible entrepreneurs" and for his work building a new sustainable Olympic model.

Born in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh in 1940, Yunus was educated at the Chittagong College and the Department of Economics at Dhaka University.

After spending 13 years lecturing at various institutions and working on his PhD in economics, Yunus in 1974 became involved in reducing poverty, championing microcredit small loans with small interest rates for poor people.

In 1983 his pilot microfinance program had 28,000 members and became the Grameen - or village - Bank.

By 2007 the bank had issued loans worth 6.38 billion US dollars to 7.4 million borrowers.

IT NEVER LEFT

The Biden Era Is Witnessing a Return of the Military-Industrial Complex

One of the top national security think tanks backing the Biden administration, the Center for a New American Security, has been taking money from every major defense contractor while pumping out a steady stream of research supporting those companies’ interests. It’s yet another sign that Biden’s promised “return to normal” has, unfortunately, arrived.  

Troops gather as the US Capitol in January before Joe Biden's presidential inauguration. (Rod Lamkey / Getty Images)


BY BRANKO MARCETIC
02.12.2021
JACOBIN

The promise of a “return to normal” under Joe Biden always meant two possibilities. It could mean a hard break from the obscene, in-your-face corruption and self-dealing that defined Donald Trump’s presidency. Or it could mean going back to the kind of run-of-the-mill, revolving-door Washington corruption that Trump had pledged to clean up, but ended up wallowing in.

According to a new report by the Revolving Door Project, titled “The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex: Conflict of Interest at the Center for a New American Security,” it looks to be the latter option that is so far prevailing in the Biden years. Released yesterday, the report charges top Democratic foreign policy think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) of “at best, a serious deficiency of accountability,” and at worst, “a systematically corrupt arrangement” that sees it promote its corporate sponsors’ interests while passing it off as a public good.

The report recounts several examples of this arrangement. In 2009, for instance, CNAS published a report maintaining that the controversial use of private military contractors was essential and “here to stay” in wars like Afghanistan, all while taking money from several different firms providing those very services. One of these firms, DynCorp, was on the receiving end of $2.8 billion of the state department’s Afghanistan operations funding from 2002 to 2013, or 69 percent of the total sum.

In another case, a 2018 CNAS report charged that the Air Force’s plans to buy a hundred B-21 bombers did “not go far enough,” pushing the military to add fifty to seventy-five more jets at an extra cost of $32.8-49.2 billion. Those profits would have gone to the bomber’s maker, Northrop Grumman, an arms manufacturer that also happened to direct more than half of its total think tank donations during the 2014–19 period to CNAS.

A year before that, CNAS had charged the UAE embassy in the United States $250,000 for a report advocating looser rules for exporting US drones (“I think it will help push the debate in the right direction,” the ambassador wrote in a thank you e-mail), before publishing a separate paper calling on Trump to loosen those restrictions. The UAE ended up signing a nearly $200 million deal for the drones with General Atomics, whose billionaire chairman and CEO, Neal Blue, is both a generous donor to CNAS and sits on its board of advisors.

In these and other examples, the report states, the center failed to disclose the conflicts of interest in their reports, despite noting the existence of a policy on such conflicts in their tax filings. It also repeatedly violated the “very clear line” CNAS cofounder Kurt Campbell — then about to serve in Barack Obama’s state department, and now serving on Biden’s national security council — testified about in his 2009 confirmation hearing: that the CNAS doesn’t write about specific products its donors make, but rather stays limited to big picture foreign policy ideas.

The center’s reliance on the corporate sector, particularly military contractors, is extensive, having taken donations from all “big five” such firms in the last decade, along with twenty-four others. According to a Center for International Policy report released last year, CNAS got more defense contractor money than any of the top fifty US think tanks it analyzed. That’s in addition to contributions from NATO, the governments of the United States and eleven other allied countries, and corporate titans spanning fossil fuel, financial, tech, and other sectors, all of whom have given generously to CNAS over the years.

As the report points out, CNAS’s own cofounder — Michèle Flournoy, tipped to be Biden’s defense secretary before her own extensive conflicts of interest derailed her — pointed out the issues with a corporate funding model in a 2014 speech.

“Every funder has intent. They’re giving you money for a reason,” she said. “There are some organizations that call themselves ‘think tanks’ that actually accept money from corporations to do very specific work that tends to advocate the programs those companies produce, and I think that sort of … makes the waters more murky.”

“The scale and scope of conflicts of interest that appear in CNAS’s work and the influence that its donors may be exerting on policy further highlights serious concerns about political corruption,” wrote Brett Heinz, coauthor of the report.

Of course, CNAS is far from unique. A whole host of think tanks, including those in the foreign policy sphere like the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic Council, regularly overlap their advocacy work with the interests of their well-heeled benefactors. But few have as much influence on the workings of the US government, with at least thirteen of the center’s alumni ending up in the Biden administration to date. As the foreign policy equivalent of the Center for American Progress, this is, after all, why CNAS exists: to serve as the future Democratic administration’s foreign policy team in waiting.

Washington, it seems, is finally back in the guiding hands of the experts who were always meant to be running the show. This also means that, true to Biden’s promise, the city has reverted back to the same, unremarkably money-driven state that Trump first used to take power four years ago.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Marvel's Newest Sponsor

Update: Marvel says that it "will not be proceeding with this partnership.

By Jordan Pearson

By Matthew Gault
6.10.17

Update: Marvel announced that it "will not be proceeding with this partnership" with Northrop Grumman. It also sent us the following statement:

"The activation with Northrop Grumman at New York Comic Con was meant to focus on aerospace technology and exploration in a positive way. However, as the spirit of that intent has not come across, we will not be proceeding with this partnership including this weekend's event programming. Marvel and Northrop Grumman continue to be committed to elevating, and introducing, STEM to a broad audience."

The original story follows below:

Up until now, Marvel Comics only had one arms manufacturer in its roster of superheroes: Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. Now, it has two.

On Friday, Marvel announced that the company is "joining forces" with Northrop Grumman, manufacturer of the Global Hawk surveillance drone and the fifth-largest arms manufacturer in the world.

The company has already released a comic book starring a new team of heroes who work for Northrop Grumman, called Northrop Grumman Elite Nexus, or N.G.E.N. You know, like "engine," as in the engine of the B-2 Spirit, a stealth bomber that Northrop manufactured for the US government and dropped bombs over Kosovo and the Middle East.

The comic is titled "Start Your N.G.E.N.S! Part 1," which means that there's at least one more part coming in this series, god help us, if not more. The first instalment sees Northrop Grumman operatives teaming up with the cast of the Avengers, one of Marvel's hottest properties at the moment.

The comic is also marked "all ages," which means that children can and probably will read this. In short, it's a marketing tool aimed at kids to get them to think favorably of the military-industrial complex. Nice.

Neither Northrop Grumman nor Marvel Comics immediately responded to Motherboard's request for comment.

In case this wasn't already all painfully on the nose, the comic also features a backpage ad that places photos of the fictional Stark Industries and the very real Northrop Grumman next to each other with the text, "Dream vs. Reality." The implication being that Stark Industries is the Marvel version of Northrop Grumman, which already has a Marvel version of itself? Ugh, my head hurts.

Fans and commentators have already taken to Twitter to voice their disgust regarding the partnership, an early indication that this will continue to not go well for Marvel. Still, at the very least, they probably made a lot of money.

Philosophical Soup: The glorification of the U.S. military-industrial complex in film

April 14, 2021  by Max Ferrandino


The following article contains spoilers for “Outside the Wire.”

Action movies are undeniably entertaining and captivating, and the genre is typically defined by big, strong military heroes. Take “Outside the Wire,” all of the “Captain America” movies or basically any Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film for example.

In reality, however, superheroes such as Captain America and Captain Marvel are just figures who are glorifying the United States’ military-industrial complex. And Marvel movies aren’t the only films that do this.

In the recent Netflix movie “Outside the Wire,” Anthony Mackie plays a U.S. robot soldier fighting against Russia in a civil war in Ukraine. Captain Leo, Mackie’s character, is the latest in the line of supersoldiers in films. At the end of the movie, he goes rogue and tries to prevent future wars and the super-soldier program by launching nuclear missiles against the United States.

Ultimately, Thomas Harp, the hero of the movie, stops Leo from launching the missile. Framing Leo as the well-meaning villain only serves to glorify the United States’ endless wars. Netflix tries to make a complex point, yet it falls short once again by letting the U.S. hero win.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is another example. While the action sequences in this film are excellent, it, too, glorifies the military-industrial complex.

“Avengers: Endgame,” another action movie, was the second highest-grossing film ever, raking in only around $46 million less than “Avatar.”

It raises the question: What does the United States love so much about action movies that are steeped in military themes?

I watch action movies simply because I enjoy watching them, not out of any sense of patriotism. However, I think this may be too simple of an explanation. If you think about it more, action movies — perhaps similar to all forms of media — help us escape the mundane nature of our lives.

I do not seek to take my mundane life for granted. I am incredibly lucky to be able to go to college and have a set routine. Places that are currently being destroyed by the U.S. military are not so lucky.

Just last week for my Introduction to International Relations class, I watched a video in which a Syrian mother described how a berry tree was able to protect her and her children from the shrapnel of a Russian bomb that dropped on their village.

The United States, and other countries, has been pulled into a humanitarian crisis in Syria. The lives of those who live in Syria have been affected by near-constant war for the last 10 years. This in turn has become a sort of proxy war between the United States and other countries.

I know the damage our military-industrial complex causes, yet I still unintentionally support it through watching action movies. Can I reconcile my enjoyment for movies such as “Lady Bird” with my enjoyment of “Captain America” and the violence it helps to normalize?

The depiction of U.S. exceptionalism in films have influenced cultural perceptions of enemies in these movies and real-life U.S. adversaries. In most films, these enemies are the Russians or Soviet Union — a remnant of the Cold War — North Koreans or Islamic extremists.

The United States has fought so many different countries around the globe that there is no shortage of enemies for action filmmakers to use. By using a biased narrative and blurring the line between real and fictional wars, the United States gains control of who is perceived as the enemy of the people. This can be dangerous if used to misguide or miseducate the public to garner support for wars.

To sum up, our perception of the United States cannot be separated from how action movies depict the country. One feeds the other.

The military thrives upon the media industry portraying the institution in a positive light. To understand the United States, all you need to do is watch an action movie to get a sense of what the country thinks of itself as: the shining beacon of light in a sea of chaos.

Yet the United States image as a world power has been tainted, which is why it is so necessary for action movies to show a U.S. perception of reality and why it is doubly more crucial for us to recognize and be aware of this propaganda the next time we indulge in the MCU and other films.

Fed up, Argentina’s domestic workers demand a better deal

Argentina’s domestic workers, badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, are forming and joining unions to demand better pay and conditions.

Domestic worker Angelica Lopez at a labour protest in Buenos Aires, standing in front of a banner bearing the name of the union she co-leads [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

By Natalie Alcoba
24 Jun 2021

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Buenos Aires, Argentina — Angelica Lopez takes three buses to work.
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She could take two buses, but her left knee hurts. It has hurt for a long while and she doesn’t have paid sick leave to rely on while she has an operation.

“Whenever I walk, it makes this sound. Tok tok tok.” She grins through the pain, as she approaches the household cleaning job that will keep her on her feet all day.

Lopez counts herself among those to still have work in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has been merciless, especially for women in her position.

Her commute tells you a lot about the world in which she lives. It starts down a laneway around the corner from a tyre shop in Bajo Flores, one of the poorest enclaves of the capital city. She lives on the top floor of a two-story building, in a single room with her grown son who is studying. They share a bathroom and kitchen with the other residents.

The mother of four, and grandmother of seven, takes the same route every day out of her neighbourhood, past the police post and the officer in army fatigues. She skirts a park and murals exalting Jesus, and a grocery store selling ribs at 750 pesos a kilogramme ($7.85), until the stop for the 34 bus. It will take her on a ride, literally and figuratively, past the changing face of Buenos Aires and the chasm that traps its subjects.

The commute ends at the white gates of an exclusive high-rise in the city’s trendy Las Canitas neighbourhood, where Angelica will work for six hours, two days a week. That earns her 10,000 pesos a month, or the equivalent of $105. Her rent costs double that.

“Basically, we’re surviving on luck,” said Lopez, 52, originally from Peru. “Even now, we’re still living in poverty. It’s just not enough.”

That “not enough” has become a galvanising force for a wide and often invisible sector of Argentina’s workforce.

Household workers do a variety of jobs – mostly cleaning tasks, but also caring for children or the elderly. Before the pandemic, the government estimated some 1.4 million women worked in what is known as the domestic sector. The pandemic has almost surely diminished their ranks, and most definitely worsened their working conditions.

A long and strict lockdown prohibited most of them from going out to work. Many lost income, even though they should have received it. Others endured a higher risk of COVID-19 exposure after their employers misclassified them as essential workers in order to dodge shutdown orders.

As COVID-19 restrictions stacked the deck even further against them, these women met each other on the streets of Buenos Aires, fearful of the risks they were taking, but determined to have their voices heard.

Since October, there have been at least seven marches by household workers in Buenos Aires to put pressure on the government to do more to help them.

Household worker Angelica Lopez takes three buses to work [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

Collective action

While unions for household workers predated COVID-19, few labourers actually signed up – until now.

“The changes during the pandemic were brutal. Economically, psychologically, morally,” said Lopez, who turned to soup kitchens to survive. “The workers – all of us – lost work. Many of us worked in an informal way, and, to be honest, many of us ended up on the streets, we were evicted… we need a union that is formed by workers, that represents us.”

Household workers represent 8 percent of Argentina’s total workforce and just over 17 percent of all working women. Almost half of these women are the breadwinners in their homes.

Legislation passed in 2013 mandated that all household workers be registered, so their employers would have to pay social insurance, make pension contributions, and give workers paid maternity, sick and bereavement leave. But the vast majority — 77 percent, according to a 2018 study — remain unregistered.

“If you don’t protest, if you don’t make noise, they won’t listen to you. You can’t achieve much by staying silent,” said Estela Avila, 59, who has worked for 40 years cleaning houses and is now the president of a new union called Asociación de Trabajadoras del Hogar y Afines (Association of Household and Related Workers).

It’s not enough, say activists, to scrape by on a meagre salary, which the government sets at 25,000 pesos a month or $262 – less than half of what a family in Argentina needs to survive on without falling below the nation’s official poverty line.

There have been some small victories. This month, a union representing workers and groups representing employers negotiated a 42 percent wage increase over the next year. But the pay bump is not expected to keep up with inflation in the financially volatile country.

But more unions are forming, spearheaded by the women themselves, including one co-led by Lopez under the Partido Obrero (Workers’ Party) of Argentina.

Lopez, who spends a lot of time these days on Zoom and WhatsApp strategising with her fellow union members, has become comfortable standing behind a megaphone at demonstrations.

Natividad Obeso is the founder of AMUMRA, an organisation that helps and supports immigrant women in Argentina [Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting]

The most vulnerable

About 9 percent of the household workforce in Argentina are migrants from other countries, a 2018 government study found.

The undocumented are perhaps the most vulnerable workers in the domestic sector. Many, for example, couldn’t access pandemic aid offered by the government. But many see the renewed emphasis on collective action spawned by the pandemic as an opportunity to bring these workers out from the shadows.

“The crisis caused by the pandemic is also an opportunity to make visible the precarious conditions that this labour force lives through,” said Macarena Romero, a political scientist who researches issues related to migration, gender and care work.

“The empowerment that is taking place is not just about a political position. It’s about unmasking the discriminatory, stigmatising and racist xenophobia of many societies, in this case Argentina, that creates the conditions that put these women in vulnerable positions to begin with,” she told Al Jazeera.

Natividad Obeso is the founder of United Migrant and Refugee Women in Argentina – AMUMRA, an organisation dedicated to promoting the rights of migrant women. Originally from Peru, she worked as a cleaning lady in Buenos Aires until the day her employer told her she wasn’t entitled to take a holiday off.

“I removed my uniform that day and put it in the garbage,” she told Al Jazeera.

Obeso helped draft recommendations that shaped the 2013 law. While that represented an important advance for household workers, she says the government has fallen down on enforcement – something she’s working to change.

A major obstacle to holding employers accountable, she says, is that household workers, especially migrants, often lack proof of employment. They may not know their employers’ full names, or even the exact address where they are working.

“So we give them tools – we tell them to take a photo in the bathroom while they’re at work, in the living room, in the bedroom, so that when they stop working, they can show that they were there,” she said.

“We’ve had situations where the superintendent of the building, who is friendly and supports them while they are working, suddenly no longer recognises them once they are fired,” Obeso said. “The things household workers live through is very painful.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA