GOTCHA JOURNALISM

Giuliani denies any wrongdoing in new 'Borat' movie bedroom scene


Issued on: 22/10/2020 

Rudy Giuliani is shown in a compromising position in a hotel room with a young woman acting as a television journalist in a scene in Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest mockumentary, a sequel to his hit “Borat” film.

The scene shot in a New York hotel room in July — which resulted in Giuliani calling police — includes a moment when Giuliani is seen lying on a bed, tucking in his shirt with his hand down his pants and the young woman nearby.

Giuliani went to the hotel room thinking he was being interviewed about the Trump administration's COVID-19 response. The young woman is flirtatious with him and invites him to the bedroom, which is rigged with hidden cameras.

Giuliani then asks for her phone number and address. He lies back on the bed to tuck in his shirt after she helps remove his recording equipment, and he has his hands in his pants when Baron Cohen rushes in wearing an outlandish outfit.

Baron Cohen, who was disguised as part of the crew, screams that the young woman is 15 years old. Up to that point, there is no indication she is underage. The character, who is Borat's daughter, is played by Maria Bakalova, who is listed as 24 years old on the Internet Movie Database site, IMDb.com.

Speaking on his weekly radio program on WABC on Wednesday afternoon, Giuliani called the scene “a hit job.”

“I am tucking my shirt in, I assure you, that’s all that I was doing,” he said. He said he realized he was being set up when the woman asked whether he wanted a massage.

“At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate,” Giuliani tweeted. “If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise, he is a stone-cold liar.”

The former New York City mayor called police after that encounter, but there is no indication an investigation was launched. Giuliani spoke to the New York Post's Page Six column about the encounter in July but did not mention the bedroom aspect.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who profiled Baron Cohen ahead of the the film's release, tweeted Wednesday about the scene: “It’s even wilder than it sounds. Beyond cringe.”

I’ve seen the Giuliani moment in Borat 2. It’s even wilder than it sounds. Beyond cringe.— Maureen Dowd (@maureendowd) October 21, 2020

Trolling those close to President Donald Trump is a central theme of the new “Borat” film, a sequel to the 2006 mockumentary that saw Baron Cohen’s character travel the United States, espousing sexist, racist and anti-Semitic views and eliciting similar responses from unwitting subjects.

For “Borat Subsequent Movie film: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” Baron Cohen returns as his alter ego from Kazakhstan in a plot that involves trying to give his daughter as a gift to Vice President Mike Pence.

The closest Borat gets is the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he shouts to Pence that he’s brought a woman for him. Dressed in a Donald Trump costume and with Borat’s daughter, played by Bakalova, slung over his shoulder, Baron Cohen is swiftly escorted out by security.

That leads to a second scheme involving Giuliani that ends up in the hotel room scene.

Giuliani finalized his divorce from his wife of 15 years in December.

Baron Cohen has made a history of poking fun at conservative figures. For his 2018 Showtime series “Who Is America,” the British comedian got former Vice President Dick Cheney to sign a waterboarding kit. A sketch with former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore involved the comedian administering a “pedophile test.” Moore has sued over the encounter.

(AP)

ON THE GROUND
In Pennsylvania, fracking might not be the winning issue US presidential candidates think it is

Issued on: 13/10/2020 - 

Lois Bower-Bjornson, southwestern Pennsylvania field organiser with Clean Air Council, points out a fracking well site just over the hill from her home in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. © Colin Kinniburgh

Text by:Colin KINNIBURGH

In the battle for the White House, Pennsylvania and fracking have become all but synonymous. Yet in one of the state’s largest gas-producing counties, FRANCE 24 found residents’ relationship with the industry to be far more vexed than the national debate suggests

Rose Friend’s family has a long history with natural gas. For decades, the family’s home in rural Washington County, Pennsylvania, got a free supply of the fuel from a local conventional well, as compensation for one of the several active gas lines running across the property.

It was a straightforward, convenient arrangement for the family, and a testament to the region’s longer-running relationship with fossil fuels. Alongside coal, which powered the area’s iconic steel mills, oil and natural gas production in southwestern Pennsylvania dates back to the late 19th century. For Friend, who grew up ploughing the land with horses, and whose nephew worked in the coal mines, the benefits of the area’s abundant energy reserves were obvious.

Then, around the mid-2000s, a new variable entered the equation. In Friend’s case, it was a company called Atlas America, which was looking to capitalise on a lucrative new industry: hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. The technology allows drillers to extract oil and gas from deep inside underground rock formations by injecting them at high pressure with water and a cocktail of chemicals.

Atlas was an early player in what would soon prove to be a fossil fuel resurgence. In 2007, when Friend first signed a contract with the company, it was one of the many companies seeking to gain a stake in the Marcellus shale, the gas-rich formation on which her home sits.

Since 2014, fracking has allowed the United States to become the largest oil and gas producer in the world. Pennsylvania alone produced more natural gas in 2019 than any country besides Russia and Iran – some 195 billion cubic metres, according to figures published by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Enerdata.

The site opposite Friend’s home, however, lay untouched for a decade after Atlas first approached her. By that time, the company had been sold to Chevron and then again to EQT, now the largest gas producer in the country. And that’s when the trouble started.

“They just moved in,” said Friend, who is in her eighties. “It was totally crazy. I looked out my window one day and they were cutting all my hedges down!”

 

Rose Friend has spent has much the last two years battling with a natural gas company that she says built a road across her property without her agreement. Still, she says fracking is “necessary”, and plans to vote for Donald Trump. © Colin Kinniburgh

Without warning, she says, the company started chopping down decades-old trees along her road, in order to clear access to a well pad on the neighbouring property. That began a more than two-year-long battle between Friend’s family and EQT, as the company sought to build an “impoundment” – a kind of storage pond for fracking wastewater – on her land, as well as the road.

The family says the company’s activity threatened not just their immediate environment, but also a Native American burial ground on the site, which had been registered with the state’s historic preservation commission since the 1980s and prompted multiple archaeological teams to intervene in their dispute with EQT.

Standing on the gravel road that EQT built across their land, overlooking the Hunter well pad, Karen LeBlanc is furious with the company and politicians alike over what she describes as their dishonesty. She plans to vote for Trump, but says, “Truly, it’s not to do with the fracking”. © Colin Kinniburgh

Ultimately, Friend and her daughter Karen LeBlanc were able to prevent the company from building the impoundment, but not the gravel road that now cuts across what they describe as the “best” of their farmland. The access road is essential for EQT, as the fracking process requires hundreds if not thousands of truck trips per well to bring materials in and out.

One day, LeBlanc says, one of those trucks blocked her mother’s car in when she needed to go to chemotherapy for her colon cancer. Another day, she says, a bulldozer ran over the active gas line that supplied free gas to the family’s home. The line cracked, cutting off Friend’s gas and leaking all night.

To this day, the family says, they haven’t reached an agreement with EQT or received any compensation for the damage to their property. LeBlanc’s anger at the company is palpable.

“It was important that they let [my mother] retire here with some kind of dignity, and putting this road here didn’t allow that,” she said.

EQT did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Fracking is necessary’

Still, Friend doesn’t harbor any ill will toward the industry as a whole.

“I think that fracking is necessary,” she said. “But done the correct way and regulated.”

Leblanc agrees.

“If they can find some way to stop contaminating the water, stop contaminating the air… that’s what they need to work for,” she said.

That’s essentially the position of local Democrats, several of whom FRANCE 24 interviewed just a few hours before meeting LeBlanc and Friend.

Yet both mother and daughter support Donald Trump, as a Trump-Pence yard sign outside Friend’s house makes clear. When asked why, she stressed the president’s signature campaign themes.

“I just don't like the way Biden’s headed... with Kamala Harris, and all the socialism,” Friend said.

“They want to take away your guns, and I have lots of guns,” she continued, with a laugh. “They’re very pro-abortion, and that is a big thing with me.”

A Trump-Pence yard sign outside Friend’s home. The house has been in her family for over 100 years. © Colin Kinniburgh

LeBlanc agreed, calling Trump the “lesser of two evils”. She said she’s not a single-party voter, and previously supported Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. But her distrust of the political class pushed her towards Trump.

“Truly, it’s not to do with the fracking,” she said. Her mother agreed.

‘JOBS!’

In the increasingly fevered battle for the White House, Pennsylvania and fracking have become all but synonymous. The state went to Democratic presidential candidates from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, but flipped to Trump by 0.7 points in 2016 – a key step to his Electoral College victory.

The result there could prove just as decisive this year. And if there’s one thing Trump and Biden’s campaigns agree on, it’s that they can’t win the state without standing by natural gas.

“How does Biden lead in Pennsylvania Polls when he is against Fracking (JOBS!), 2nd Amendment and Religion? Fake Polls. I will win Pennsylvania!” he wrote on October 6.

How does Biden lead in Pennsylvania Polls when he is against Fracking (JOBS!), 2nd Amendment and Religion? Fake Polls. I will win Pennsylvania!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 6, 2020

Vice President Mike Pence also pressed the issue at last Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate with Kamala Harris, insisting that Biden would ban fracking if elected. Biden has made it clear he has no such plans – bucking pressure from environmental groups and the progressive wing of his party, who say that continued oil and gas drilling are incompatible with a livable climate. Yet the Republicans have succeeded in putting their opponents on the defensive, forcing Harris to repeat twice that Biden “will not end fracking”.

Bob Sabot, supervisor of North Franklin Township, a suburb of the county seat of Washington, says that fracking has become a “dangerous issue” for Democrats, “because Donald Trump has politicised it so much”.

Biden’s official climate plan does not mention fracking explicitly, but says that if elected, he would ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters”. Sabot stands by this position.

“He wants to make sure it’s clear that in the future we are going to move in a different direction,” he said. “Cause … if we don’t start to deal with climate issues, we are going to continue to see wildfires and hurricanes, and oceans are going to continue to rise.”

Bob Sabot, supervisor of North Franklin Township, a suburb of the county seat of Washington, says that fracking has become a “dangerous issue” for Democrats. 

© Colin Kinniburgh

“Joe Biden wants to use fracking as a change of type of fuel to the future,” he continued. “Biden does not want to throw people out of work. He does not want to close the fracking industry and the coal mines.”

The actual number of jobs that fracking brings to the Pennsylvania are highly disputed. The Trump campaign says that shutting down the industry would “kill 609,000 jobs” in the state, citing a study from the country’s largest business lobby, the US Chamber of Commerce.

However, the national Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counted less than 20,000 jobs directly linked to shale industry in Pennsylvania in 2019 – just 0.3 percent of all jobs in the state.

Industry proponents typically argue that such figures do not account for indirect or “induced” jobs supported by the industry, which are notoriously difficult to count. (The Chamber of Commerce provides no sources or methodology for its job estimates.)

What’s clearer from the employment numbers is the boom and bust nature of the industry, which shed some 10,000 direct jobs in just two years when oil and gas prices crashed in 2015-16. They haven’t recovered since.

Larry Maggi, a Democratic Commissioner for Washington County, is confident that the energy sector will bounce back.

“We are just in a down cycle since one or two years,” he said. “No matter who is president, we are going to come out of it.”

As for environmental concerns, Maggi maintains that fracking today is “done safely” in the state.

“We’ve been able to collaborate with the energy sector here without sacrificing our environment,” he said.

‘Lies and lies and lies’

LeBlanc, the Trump supporter, doesn’t share his assessment.

“They don’t need to preach how safe it is when you can see how many other lies I’ve caught them in,” she said of EQT. “We’ve seen video of the emissions coming from there. We’ve seen the water leaking out… It’s lies and lies and lies.”

Lois Bower-Bjornson has seen the videos too – a lot of them. A school classmate of LeBlanc’s, she is a dancer by trade and an anti-fracking activist by “necessity”. She now works as the southwestern Pennsylvania field organiser with Clean Air Council, serves on the board of the Washington County-based Center for Coalfield Justice and gives tours of local fracking sites to anybody who’s willing to listen.

She’s collected testimony from a wide swath of her neighbours who’ve been harmed by fracking, and brought their stories to state and national regulators. Besides Friend and LeBlanc, she’s worked with people like Janice and Kurt Blanock, who lost their son to a rare bone cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma in 2016, when he was just 19; his case and a string of other diagnoses of the same cancer in the area led the state to open an investigation into possible links to fracking.

Bjornson’s own children have experienced a range of symptoms that she attributes to the many gas wells within walking distance of her home in the town of Scenery Hill.

“My third son has the absolute worst health impacts, because he was the youngest and he grew up in it more, she said. “He will have severe nosebleeds, sometimes two a day, to the point that he has clots coming out of his nose and out of his mouth.”

Lois Bower-Bjornson says she has become an anti-fracking activist by “necessity”, after seeing the impacts on her own family and the surrounding community. Yet she believes it’s unrealistic to think that fracking could be banned in the area. © Yona Heloua

Studies conducted in both Pennsylvania and Colorado have linked headaches, nosebleeds and respiratory symptoms to local pollution created by shale gas wells.

Bjornson is disgusted with the way the natural gas industry operates in her state, and at the ways that it has influenced politicians of both parties, including Biden himself. But she agrees with pro-gas Democrats on at least one thing: “They’re not banning fracking here. It’s not happening.”

She agrees that calling for a ban would doom Biden’s chances in the state, too. And she cautions liberals from states like New York, which have banned fracking, and want to “shame” Pennsylvania for not doing the same.

“You can sit up there on your little high horse, and say stupid stuff like that, but this is what we have to work with,” she said. “And that’s not our fault.”

Economics could trump politics

The sentiment may sound surprising coming from someone who has been wrangling with the industry for the better part of the past decade. Yet for Bjornson, it makes sense that the fracking fight doesn’t fall along straightforward partisan lines.

“People want to make this political when it’s not a political issue. It’s a human rights issue. It’s a, hey, species issue,” she said, referring to the threat of climate change. “Do you want to live? That’s what it is.”

Statewide, a CBS/YouGov poll conducted in August found that a slim majority (52 percent) “oppose the process of fracking”, with Black, Democratic and young voters most likely to oppose it.

Bjornson has seen that split even in predominantly rural, white, conservative Washington County, where she says the issue is “straight down the middle, completely divisive”.

Those divisions may only deepen if the industry’s current financial woes continue. Over the years, Bjornson says she’s encountered a few people who have profited handsomely from fracking, whether by finding a high-paying technical job or earning hefty royalties from drilling underneath their land. Others “made a lot of money, and now aren’t making any money because of the price of gas”.

Wall Street is flashing warning signs, too, as author Bethany McLean and others have explained. Oil giants Chevron and Shell are in the process of selling off their assets in the region. EQT disclosed a major writedown of its assets in January.

That was even before Covid-19 hit, contributing to an unprecedented oil price crash in April and casting further uncertainty over the market.

Ultimately, it’s these economic forces, not politicians, that may decide the future of fracking in the state. The question is: if Pennsylvania’s gas industry goes the way of coal and steel, will either party be able to offer a viable alternative?

The same blood: indigenous Canadians decry racism in health care

Issued on: 23/10/2020 

People hold a "Justice for Joyce" sign during a demonstration in Montreal on October 3 2020, to demand action for the death of Joyce Echaquan, a Canadian indigenous woman subjected to live-streamed racist slurs by hospital staff before her death 

Eric THOMAS AFP/File

Montreal (AFP)

After years fighting for fair treatment, indigenous Canadian Uliipika Kiguktak is finally ready to open up about her experiences in a health care system facing a growing outcry over accusations of racism.

Raised in the country's vast Nunavut territory, the University of Montreal student says she has spent much of her adult life battling hostility and resistance from medical professionals when she has sought help and advice.

"We should feel safe when we go to a hospital, feel that we are all equal. Our blood is the same color," Kiguktak told AFP.

The 26-year-old -- whose bitter recollections include having to threaten to harm herself before a doctor would treat her -- is part of a growing backlash from the country's First Nation communities over a harrowing case of mistreatment in a Quebec hospital.

Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old indigenous patient, was subjected to vicious racist abuse by a nurse shortly before her death, sparking an outcry that has emboldened indigenous people across the nation to speak out.

On Twitter, reactions multiplied under the hashtag #JusticePourJoyce ("Justice for Joyce"), and antiracism protests brought thousands of people to the streets of Montreal.

Echaquan, an Atikamekw who was admitted to the Joliette hospital near Montreal with stomach pain, posted a video on Facebook shortly before her death showing the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her caregivers.

She was subjected to "the worst form of racism," said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has made "reconciliation" with indigenous peoples a priority of his government.

- Loss of confidence -

Echaquan's case was far from a one-off, according to indigenous rights activists.

Kiguktak recalls having to fight, at age 19, with a doctor at a Montreal hospital who wouldn't remove her birth control device, an IUD. She says she had to go as far as threatening to remove it herself before he finally agreed to the procedure.

"With a history of aboriginal women forcibly sterilized in Canada, I really saw it as abuse: they don't want me to have children and refuse to remove my IUD," she explained.

In another bitter experience, Kiguktak says she waited hours last April before being treated for vaginal bleeding -- but not before she was interrogated by a doctor about whether she was abusing drugs.

"For me... what I lived, if I had been white, if I had not been native, it would not have happened like that," she said, adding that the experience caused her to "lose confidence in the health care system."

Racism exists "everywhere," she says, including in searches for an apartment or a job.

- A turning point -

Echaquan's death came a year after the publication of a public inquiry report that concluded that "members of First Nations and Inuit of Quebec are indeed subjected to systemic discrimination when accessing public services."

"When aboriginals describe their experiences, the majority of people do not believe them," said Carole Levesque, an anthropologist specializing in aboriginal issues at the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS).

Echaquan's suffering, witnessed by millions online and through media coverage, could mark a turning point in Canadian race relations, she added, noting that "there will be a before, there will be an after."

Indigenous people encountering discrimination have been using the government-funded universal health care system less and less, and as a result find themselves more often in emergency situations, according to experts.

"We think that this person will be automatically violent, aggressive, we will put forward a diagnosis which presumes an intoxication with psychoactive substances," says Doctors of the World Canada president David-Martin Milot, who points to the "double burden" of aboriginal people in precarious and homeless situations.

The NGO, also known by its French name "Medecins du Monde," set up three "indigenous navigators" in 2019 to help get more equitable health care in Montreal.

The group is pleased to have created "better bonds of trust and to meet their needs," Milot said.

"There is systemic racism or systematic discrimination against indigenous populations which comes into play each time an indigenous person accesses health services," the public health specialist told AFP.

For Odile Joannette, director of Wapikoni Mobile, a Montreal non-profit that raises awareness of indigenous rights through workshops and film screenings, it's not always about out-in-the-open racist abuse.

"I don't need there to be an explicitly racist statement to know that there are unconscious biases that exist everywhere," she says, adding that "you have to experience racism to really understand."

The 45-year-old Innu says she shunned Canada's health care system in favor of natural care after receiving a misdiagnosis in her youth linked to suspected alcoholism.

"It has been going on in silence for generations and generations," says Joannette, while welcoming increased "pressure" put on authorities since the death of Echaquan to set things right.

"We must denounce the racism we see," she told AFP. "We must not stop speaking up,"

© 2020 AFP

Chileans set to call time on Pinochet-era constitution

Issued on: 23/10/2020 

A woman with a face mask reading 'Yes, I do approve the new constitution' takes part in a rally in support of amending the charter established under the military rule of General Augusto Pinochet Martin BERNETTI AFP

Santiago (AFP)

A year after the start of a mass wave of social unrest, Chileans vote Sunday in a referendum to change a dictatorship-era constitution seen as the bedrock of the nation's glaring inequalities.

Demonstrators were gathering Friday in Santiago's Plaza Italia, the epicenter of the protests, amid a heavy police presence for the last chance to voice their demands before Sunday's historic vote.

The referendum was a key requirement from protesters during months of social unrest unseen since the South American's country's return to democracy in 1990.

President Sebastian Pinera has called on Chileans to vote in numbers in the historic plebiscite, and to reject the violence that marred last Sunday's anniversary of the start of the protests, after two Catholic churches in central Santiago were set ablaze and police stations attacked.

Pinera, a conservative billionaire, has remained publicly neutral during the campaign.

Chileans will be asked two questions on Sunday; to approve or reject a new constitution, and if so, what kind of body should draft it -- a mixed assembly composed equally of lawmakers and citizens, or a convention made up entirely of citizens.

Opinion polls show more than 70 percent support a new constitution, with just 17 percent voting for rejection. Polls also indicate 70 percent will back a constituent all-citizen convention, to be elected in April 2021.

- Persistent inequalities -

For those supporting change, mainly the leftist opposition parties, a new charter would allow a fairer social order to replace the persistent inequalities of the constitution forged under the 1973-1990 rule of Augusto Pinochet.

"One way or another changes are coming and it would be better to feel it was thanks to a new constitution that we all participated in -- and not a constitution created by a small group during a dictatorship so that another small group would stay in power forever," said Alejandra Pizarro, a 23-year-old student at an "Approve" rally outside the presidential palace late Thursday.

The new constitution would expand the role of the state in providing a welfare safety net, and in the process add further pressure on an economy struggling to emerge from the Covid-19 health crisis.

Some conservatives reject the proposed change, saying the constitution has been key to Chile's decades of economic growth and stability.

"I don't want my country to fall into the same hands that Argentina, Venezuela and a lot of other disastrous countries have," said Hernan Allende, 63, a property broker at a "Reject" rally.

President Sebastian Pinera caved in to protesters when he agreed on a constitutional referendum in November after three weeks of protests, he said.

"That's where this whole disaster comes from, he hasn't had a strong enough hand to stop crime and terrorism," Allende said, alluding to rioters who have regularly faced off against the police.

- Progressive oasis -

Just over a year ago, when Harvard-educated billionaire Pinera vaunted Chile as a progressive "oasis" in a Latin America convulsed by unrest, little could he know that within 10 days his country would ignite in flames.

The billionaire conservative made a speech in early October holding his copper-rich country up as a symbol of regional stability, but then a student protest against a hike in public transport fares lit the fuse on a tinderbox of long-festering inequality.

It began on October 18 as a protest in the Santiago metro, but protesters' grievances in massive anti-government protests quickly expanded to include demands for better health, pensions, salaries and education.

Some 30 people died, most in street clashes with militarized Carabineros forces in the resulting months of turmoil, and thousands were wounded.

A year later, protesters have yet to be assuaged by reforms, but voters are expected to embrace a chance to throw out Pinochet-era laws that concentrated economic power in the hands of a core of Chile's wealthiest families.

© 2020 AFP

Poles take to streets against near-total abortion ban
Issued on: 23/10/202

Protestors scuffle with riot police guarding the house of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party (PIS) Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP

Warsaw (AFP)

Braving the pandemic, thousands of Poles took to the streets on Friday to protest against a near-total ban on abortion in a country that already has some of the EU's most stringent restrictions.

Demonstrators rallied in several cities, furious with Thursday's ruling by Poland's constitutional court that existing legislation which allows for the abortion of malformed foetuses was "incompatible" with the protection of life.

The verdict drew an outcry from rights groups in and outside the deeply Catholic country.

"It's war" or "We're coming to get you, you sadists" read some of the banners decked with a red lightning image that has become a symbol of the protesters' anger.

"Yesterday's decision represents a total ban on abortion in Poland as 98 percent of legal terminations in Poland are related to foetal malformations," Krystyna Kacpura, head of the Federation for Women and Family Planning, told AFP.

"It's a disgrace from the Polish state towards half of the population, women. We'll never forget it."

Kacpura said the situation for women with modest means was particularly concerning.

"They will just be left with various dangerous methods like abortions performed by non-qualified people with methods I don't even want to discuss," she said.

"We've simply been imposed Ceausescu's era," she added, referring to Romania's late dictator who severely restricted abortions to try and boost fertility rates.

The court verdict drew immediate condemnation from the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organisation, whose Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic called it "a sad day for #WomensRights".

Donald Tusk, a Pole who currently leads the European People's Party after presiding the European Council, called the timing of the abortion issue "political wickedness".

"Throwing the topic of abortion and a ruling by a pseudo-court into the middle of a raging pandemic is more than cynical," he tweeted.

The verdict is in line with what the governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party wanted.

From now on, abortions will only be allowed in instances of rape or incest, or if there is a threat to the mother's life.

The Polish presidency and Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the head of the Polish Episcopal Conference, welcomed the verdict.

The constitutional court has been reformed by the PiS government, and has since been accused of counting many judges loyal to the party in its ranks.

The country of 38 million people sees fewer than 2,000 legal abortions a year, but women's groups estimate that up to 200,000 procedures are performed illegally or abroad.

© 2020 AFP

Hungary students hold 'freedom' rally on anniversary of 1956 uprising

Issued on: 23/10/2020 - 
  

The demonstration, called "For all of our freedom!", also marked the anniversary of Hungary's anti-Soviet uprising in 1956

Hungary '56 - Andy Anderson - Libcom.org

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ibcom.org › library › hungary-56-andy-anderson

Mar 27, 2005 — Hungary '56 - Andy Anderson ... in 1964 and published by Solidarity is invaluable as a guide to the events of the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

 ATTILA KISBENEDEK AFP

Budapest (AFP)

A rally held by students blockading Hungary's top arts university for over 50 days in protest at a reform by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's on Friday drew thousands of supporters in Budapest.

Students from the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) led a candlelit march and rally before a crowd estimated at around 10,000 by an AFP photographer.

The demonstration, called "For all of our freedom!" by the organisers, also marked the anniversary of Hungary's anti-Soviet uprising in 1956.

Speakers accused Orban of restricting academic freedom and pushing through an overhaul of SZFE's structure without the consent of students or staff.

"You have to talk, accept if others think differently, and listen to others," said Noemi Vilmos, a theatre direction student at SZFE, while the crowd chanted "Free country! Free university!"

The campus blockade began on September 1, a day after it's former management resigned in protest, claiming the government had stripped it of autonomy.

The students at the 155-year-old university, and many staff who went on strike in solidarity, say the government imposed a new board whose pro-Orban trustees are appointed indefinitely.

The reform is seen by critics of Orban as the latest step in his attempt to reshape Hungary's public life to fit his own nationalist and culturally conservative agenda.

Since the campus blockade began the new board's Chancellor, Gabor Szarka, a former army colonel, has been prevented from entering the building by students blocking the entrance.

Szarka has described the building occupation as "anarchy" and switched off the internet at the building, as well as changing door locks inside.

Last week, the students defied an order by the new management to vacate the premises for "maintenance and sanitation" purposes.

Also Friday a Budapest court ruled that the staff strike is "unlawful".

The new board insists that the changes -- including moving SZFE's ownership from state to private hands -- will improve infrastructural and educational standards.

Earlier this month the government doubled the university's budget for next year.

But the protesters, who guard the building's entrance and hold classes inside in what they call an "educational republic," say they will not move until the institution's autonomy is restored.

The blockade presents a rare physical challenge to the self-styled "illiberal" premier Orban, 57, whose control in Hungary has steadily grown since he won a landslide election a decade ago.

In 2018 he declared that "big changes" were also afoot for Hungary's cultural and academic scenes, considered in pro-government circles as hotbeds of liberalism.

Since then, laws have reformed how theatres are managed and removed autonomy from the leadership of the prestigious Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

© 2020 AFP

Police patrol Nigeria's Lagos after days of unrest


Issued on: 23/10/2020 

People are obliged to walk with their hands above their heads at security checkpoints in Lagos Sophie Bouillon AFP

Lagos (AFP)

Barricades and police checkpoints dotted the empty streets of Lagos Friday as authorities tried to restore order to Africa's biggest city, under curfew following days of violent unrest.

Sporadic gunfire was heard Friday morning but the centre of Nigeria's economic hub appeared calmer by the afternoon, and Lagos governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu announced he was easing the curfew.

From Saturday, he said, "people can go out between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm".

The shooting of peaceful protesters by security forces in Lagos on Tuesday triggered two days of unrest with shops and buildings looted and vandalised.

Heavily armed police stopped a handful of cars left driving in the deserted streets on Friday while a few people tried to find their way home after the city was put under lockdown.

A warehouse was looted on Friday in Ojo, near Lagos, witnesses told AFP.

"They looted everything on site. They took everything they could lay their hands on," a witness who asked to be identified as Rafiki told AFP.

Protests against police abuse first erupted in Nigeria on October 8 after a video of an officer allegedly killing a civilian went viral.

Despite the disbanding of the police unit accused of brutality, the federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), protests spread and violence escalated.

Anger spread further after pictures and videos on social media showed security forces shooting at a crowd of around 1,000 protesters on Tuesday at Lekki toll gate, a key Lagos protest site.

Amnesty International said 12 people were killed in the incident, with a total of 56 people dead across the country since demonstrations began.

- 'Rushing to judgement' -

President Muhammadu Buhari warned demonstrators in a televised address on Thursday not to "undermine national security" -- while not directly addressing the Lekki shooting.

The 77-year-old leader called for an end to the protests and appealed on the youth to "resist the temptation of being used by some subversive elements to cause chaos".

"For you to do otherwise will amount to undermining national security and the law and order situation. Under no circumstances will this be tolerated," Buhari said.

The Lagos governor on Friday published a list of 21 cases of policemen being prosecuted "for offences related to the violation of human rights in Lagos".

"We are working to stabilise things across the state as we look to rebuild," he said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an investigation into violence by security forces in Nigeria, which also triggered condemnation from the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and others.

Buhari shrugged off the international concern.

"We thank you and urge you all to seek to know all the facts available before taking a position or rushing to judgement and making hasty pronouncements," Buhari said.

The spreading of "deliberate falsehood and misinformation, in particular through social media" was, he said, "a ploy to mislead the unwary within and outside Nigeria into unfair judgement and disruptive behaviour."

- What next? -

After the president's speech, a key protest group told its followers to stay home.

"The past two weeks have been tough for many Nigerians, most specifically the last two days," the Feminist Coalition said in a statement.

"We hereby encourage all young Nigerians to stay safe, stay home, and observe the mandated curfew in your state."

The days of unrest have risked seeing the message of the initial protests get drowned out as looters and vandals took advantage of the chaos.

But those involved insist they would keep the momentum going to ensure the demonstrations were just the start of broader changes.

"'What next' is us collectively building the type of country we want to live in brick by brick," said one of the organisers, Moe Odele.

"I am energised and do not feel defeated at all," she wrote on Twitter. "We strategise and we move."

"This was just practice. We go again! Now we must deploy our unity and experiences in every sector to design the country that we want," said Adetola 'Tola' Onayemi, a lawyer involved in the protest movement.

The demonstrations have received backing from major celebrities, including Beyonce, Rihanna, Cardi B and others.

"The youth of the largest black nation in the world came together and decided enough is enough."

© 2020 AFP

Sudan street protests after death of demonstrator

Issued on: 23/10/2020 

Sudanese protesters block access to the Mansheiya bridge over the Blue Nile in Khartoum during a demonstration demanding justice for a man killed in protests earlier this week over a deepening economic crisis Ebrahim HAMID AFP

Khartoum (AFP)

Hundreds of protesters marched in Sudan Friday for a third day running, demanding justice for a man killed in earlier demonstrations over a deepening economic crisis, an AFP correspondent said.

Protests began Wednesday in Sudan's capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman.

Sudan has embarked on a rocky transition under a joint civilian-military administration since the ouster of president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, but it has struggled with severe economic woes and skyrocketing consumer prices.

On Wednesday, a 20-year-old protester was shot dead by police and at least 14 others were injured, according to a committee of doctors linked to a protest movement that led to Bashir's downfall.

On Friday, the Sudanese Professionals Association, a trade union alliance that spearheaded the demonstrations against Bashir, called for the rallies to demand justice for the protester who was killed.

Protesters blocked access to a key bridge over the Blue Nile, and set up makeshift checkpoints across roads with rocks.

Mohammed Hassan, a protester manning a checkpoint, said they would only reopen the bridge if the person responsible for killing the demonstrator was arrested.

"If the government wants the bridge to be reopened... it must arrest him," Hassan said.

Ayman Nimr, the governor of Khartoum, called on Thursday for an investigation into the death.

In a statement released Friday, the victim's family announced their support for the protesters, and said the family would find "peace only with fair punishment".

A chronic shortage of hard currency in Sudan has led to long queues for staple foods and fuel, and power cuts last up to six hours a day.

The inflation rate hit 212 percent last month, sapping the purchasing power of ordinary Sudanese.

Meanwhile, state news agency Suna said Sudan and the World Bank on Friday signed in Khartoum an agreement worth $370 million, specifying it was a grant.

Sudan's Finance Minister Heba Ali said $200 million came from the World Bank and the rest was from European countries.

© 2020 AFP

Bolivia confirms Arce presidential election win

Issued on: 23/10/2020 

Socialist candidate Luis Arce waving to his supporters ahead of the election that propelled him to Bolivia's presidency AIZAR RALDES AFP

La Paz (AFP)

Bolivia's electoral tribunal on Friday published official results from last weekend's presidential election, confirming leftist Luis Arce's landslide victory.

With all ballots now counted, Arce finished with 55 percent of the vote, meaning he won with no need for a run-off.

Centrist former president Carlos Mesa, who conceded defeat on Monday, polled just under 29 percent, with right-wing conservative Luis Fernando Camacho taking 14 percent.


Arce, 57, who served as finance and economy minister under exiled former president Evo Morales, claimed victory after exit polls late on Sunday showed he was heading for a huge win.

Electoral Tribunal president Salvador Romero said Arce and the newly elected Congress would assume their functions in the first half of November, without specifying an exact date.

It was a stunning result, as opinion polls leading up to the election had predicted Arce would come out on top but not garner enough votes to avoid a run-off.

The electoral tribunal will officially announce the results later on Friday.

It marks a return to power for Arce's Movement for Socialism party just under a year after Morales resigned and fled Bolivia following weeks of protests over his controversial reelection.

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, served for almost 14 years but last year stood for -- and initially won -- an unconstitutional fourth consecutive term. Bolivia's constitution limits a president to two successive terms.

Morales resigned after an Organization of American States audit found the October 2019 election had been marred by fraud.

This time, the top electoral body abandoned the planned rapid count to avoid a repeat of last year's controversy and concentrated on the arduous manual count of votes that took more than five days to complete.

Some right-wing supporters have taken to the streets in protest at suspected fraud but international observers including the OAS, the European Union and the Carter Center confirmed the election was clean and transparent.

The electoral body said there had been a record 88 percent turnout amongst the 7.3 million eligible voters. Voting is mandatory in Bolivia for adults under 60.

© 2020 AFP

Frail' Palestinian hunger striker sent to prison from hospital

Issued on: 23/10/2020 

Palestinian hunger-striker Maher al-Akhras, shown here on the poster carried by a protester in Gaza, was moved on Friday from an Israeli hospital to prison 

MOHAMMED ABED AFP

Jerusalem (AFP)

A Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike for 12 weeks was moved from an Israeli hospital back to prison on Friday, the prisons service said, despite international concern for his health.

Maher al-Akhras, 49, was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in July, and has since been detained without charge.

He is being held in what is known as administrative detention, a policy that Israel uses to hold suspected militants without charge for periods of up to six months, renewable indefinitely.

He is suspected by Israel of links to the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.

The married father of six went on hunger strike in protest at the practise of detention without trial.

"Mr. Al-Akhras is now in very frail condition," Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement Friday.

"Recent visits by doctors to his hospital bed in Israel indicate that he is on the verge of suffering major organ failure, and some damage might be permanent," Lynk wrote.

Al-Akhras was transferred from prison to a civilian hospital near Tel Aviv in September as his health deteriorated, but on Friday he was taken to the medical wing of a nearby prison.

His lawyer said the reasons given for the move were "the pretext that he refused to cooperate with the medical staff" of the hospital, and that his numerous visitors posed a risk to the spread of coronavirus there.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement Thursday it had been "closely monitoring" the situation, including visiting Akhras on Thursday.

"From a medical perspective, he is entering a critical phase," wrote Yves Giebens, head of the ICRC's health department in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

"We are concerned about potentially irreversible health consequences."

Lynk called for Israel's administrative detention policy to be abolished.

"It is a penal system that is ripe for abuse and maltreatment," he wrote.

Israel says the procedure allows authorities to hold suspects and prevent attacks while continuing to gather evidence, but critics and rights groups say the system is abused.

Around 355 Palestinians were being held under administrative detention orders as of August, including two minors, according to Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

© 2020 AFP