Profiteers of war

Syrians gather at the scene of a double attack in Syria's northwestern jihadist-held city of Idlib, on February 18, 2019. - A twin bomb attack killed more than ten people, including civilians, in Idlib where Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took administrative control last month, a war monitor said.

(Photo by MUHAMMAD HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

On Nov 23, 2020

During his presidential campaign in 2008, Barack Obama asserted repeatedly that “the sources of Afghan instability are in Pakistan; those in turn are linked to Islamabad’s conflict with New Delhi, at the heart of which is Jammu and Kashmir”. If elected, he pledged to help resolve the Kashmir issue.

In his Nobel acceptance speech, Obama said that the US must uphold moral standards when waging wars that are necessary and justified. He said: “Meeting future challenges would require new ways to think about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace”.

Ironically, a willing hostage to the MIC, President Obama was absolutely antithetical to Obama the candidate. His two terms saw the continuation, in some cases upping the ante, of the Bush led neocon brigand. He initiated unjust wars and shunned peace. He remains the only person to win a Nobel Peace Prize based on the mere rhetoric of undelivered promises. A stark reminder for those who think Obama’s two-term Vice President and President elect Joe Biden will prove a dove.

Donald Trump, true to himself, kicked up a storm when he accused the Pentagon of wanting “to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy”. Trump oversaw historic increases in defense budgets. He supervised the sale of 55.6 billion dollars worth of military hardware in 2018 alone. He also appointed key defense industry insiders to top positions at the White House and the Pentagon. His three Defense Secretaries had remained on the payroll of Depart of Defense (DOD) contractors.

The scale of death and suffering in Syria alone is monumental. The war initiated by the Peace Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, has spiraled into a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions

Jim Mattis was a member of the General Dynamics board of directors, a position he immediately rejoined after his resignation. Patrick Shanahan, who took overas Secretary Defense from Mattis, was a Vice President Boeing Missile Defense Systems. Mark Esperremained Raytheon’s top lobbyist at a reported salary of 1,524,018 dollars. These three companies are the Pentagon’s largest contractors. A ProPublica analysis found that the Trump administration hired 281 lobbyists, most of them regulating their parent corporations.

The defense budget increase under President Trump was the largest in more than a decade. The US military outlays stood at 732 billion dollars as against China’s 178.6 and Russia’s 65.1 billion dollars. The US accounts for 43 percent of the world’s total military spending. This exceeds the combined amount spent by the 15 most developed countries. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has nearly 1000 military bases world-wide.

A Government Accountability Office survey of contractors and Internal Revenue Service data found that 52 contractors employed 2,435 former DOD officials who had “previously served as generals, admirals, senior executives or in other acquisition positions which made them subject to restrictions on their post-DOD employment”.

The Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent body that exposes corruption and abuse of power, has created a database dubbed the Pentagon Revolving Door. It tracks and reports former government officials working for the very corporations they oversaw or regulated. The Revolving Door data shows that in 2016 alone, the top 20 defense contractors hired 645 former senior government officials, military officers and Congress members as lobbyists, board members or senior executives.

380 high-ranking DOD officials and military officers became lobbyists, board members, executives or consultants for defense contractors. Of the former DOD officials, 95 went to work at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman; DOD’s top five contractors. Military officers who went to cushy contracting jobs included 25 Generals, 43 Lieutenant Generals, 9 Admirals and 23 Vice Admirals.

Going through the data, one can clearly establish the MIC’s strangle-hold on Washington regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. It has resulted in wars that hadmillions murdered,countries reduced to rubble andhumanitarian tragedies of unimaginable proportions.

SirajuddinHaqqani was feted at the White House with Reagan likening him to America’s founding fathers. When not needed, Haqqani and his sons became ‘terrorists’. Mullah Baradar and Mullah Nabi Omari too were ‘terrorists’ the latter having remained incarcerated for 12 years (2002 – 2014) at Guantanamo without ever being charged. The same Baradar and Omari recently sat across the table at Doha with Mike Pompeo devising a fervently Washington sought face saving exit from Afghanistan.

Addressing a group of US governors after assuming office Trump lamented, “Now, we never win a war”. Wars are not murdering rampages; they are the final means to achieve a clear set of national objectives. Since 1945, the US waged major wars in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. It remained unsuccessful in all four. These wars had nothing to do with national objectives; the atrocities were initiated to enrich the MIC with American taxpayer money. It resulted in a world ravaged by chaos, conflict and tragedies.

The scale of death and suffering in Syria alone is monumental. The war initiated by the Peace Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, has spiraled into a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions. More than 400,000 Syrians have perished. Out of a total Syrian population of 21 million, over 12.7 million have been forced to flee their homes. The UN cites 6 million Syrian children in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Libya and Yemen too face the same tragedy.

Queen Elizabeth recently stripped Harvey Weinstein of his OBE. Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth’s son, has been named in the Weinstein sordid saga of the sexual abuse of 87 women. He remains untouched and unquestioned. In this dichotomous world can one, in the symbolic least, expect Obama to be stripped of his absolutely unjust Nobel peace title?

The Nuremberg Tribunal declared: “To initiate a war of aggression is the supreme international crime”. Washington’s wars of aggression violate US and international law. They are crimes against humanity, outlawed by the Geneva Convention and the UN Charter. In a more just world these atrocities would have been declared war crimes and those who perpetrated them tried as war criminals.

Gen LeMay is revered as a hero and Washington endlessly proclaims its being the torchbearer of humanity. This does nothing to alter the LeMay confession of war-criminals being hailed as war heroes and Washington, perennial hostage to the profiteers of war, being the initiator of many wars of genocidal aggression.

The United States of America exists on a planet where, it believes, its self-professed goodness ends at its shore-lines. The result, as famed psychologists Abraham Maslow encapsulated, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

Can President-elect Joe Biden, having borne personal losses and tragedies in life, nullify the heart-wrenching agony of millions of subjugated Muslims from Kashmir to Palestine? He has the burden of blood drenched history on his shoulders. Shall he be a MIC goaded trigger happy president or one that heals wounds within and outside the US shore-lines? Only time will tell.


The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views and editorial stance of the SOHR.

Source: Profiteers of war – Daily Times

AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine promise to low income countries should be copied by other ‘Big Pharma’ firms

Decision brings hope to people around the developing world that they will not have to wait at the back of the queue for their turn

By Paul Gallagher
November 23, 2020 

AstraZeneca said it will produce close to a billion doses of its coronavirus vaccine over the next few months (Photo: University of Oxford/John Cairns/AP)

If the applause that welcomed the late-stage coronavirus vaccine trial results from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna was long and loud, then the response to the UK’s leading candidate should ring in the ears for quite some time.

Not only is the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine up to 90 per cent effective but the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical giant (2019 net revenue: $24.4bn) has promised “broad and equitable access” to it for all, bringing hope to people around the developing world that they will not have to wait at the back of the queue for their turn.

The partners are the only vaccine developers to have a deal with the global COVAX facility, which most low and middle income countries will rely on for much of their vaccine supply. In June, they committed to produce one billion doses for low and middle income countries, via a partnership with the Serum Institute of India. Now they have promised to sell the vaccine for no profit – between $2 and $3 per dose – for the duration of the pandemic.

Oxford vaccine makers AstraZeneca pledge to always sell £2.25 Covid jab at cost price to developing countries

The EU has already secured 400 million doses of the Oxford vaccine, followed by the US (300 million), China (200 million) Japan (120 million), and 100 million by the UK – four million of which are already here and waiting to be used pending regulatory approval. It led to a group of UN human rights experts calling on governments two weeks ago to stop hoarding vaccine supplies.

The WHO welcomed the efforts of Oxford/AstraZeneca to make the vaccine affordable

 (Photo: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/AFP)

Although the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine will provide a major boost to access in a number of countries, Amnesty International warned that committed supplies for most low and middle income still only cover a fraction of these countries’ populations.

Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation welcomed the efforts of Oxford/AstraZeneca to make the vaccine affordable and easy to store, which its chief scientist told me “will be good for countries and people everywhere”. Let the global rollout commence.

Public health strategy needed after vaccine rollout to ‘protect most vulnerable’, says Imperial College vaccinologist

Krishnan Guru-MurthyPresenter

Dr Katrina Pollock is a senior clinical research fellow in vaccinology at Imperial College London.

Interview: Mike Africa Jr. on the Struggle and the Legacy of MOVE (with Amanda Knox)
By Amanda Knox with Christopher Robinson
-November 19, 2020


The Standoff: An Interview with MOVE member Mike Africa Jr.

LISTEN HERE
https://the-crime-story-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/interview-mike-africa-jr-on-the-struggle-and-the-legacy-of-move-with-amanda-knox

Today, Philadelphia-based activist Mike Africa Jr. benefits from a kind of aura.

Mike Africa Jr.

I’ll give an example. During the RNC Republican National Convention in 2000, we were protesting across the street from the Philadelphia City Hall, and the police were arresting people by the hundreds. And one of the police officers grabbed me, zip-tied my hands behind my back, lifted me up off the ground, and started walking me to the wagon. They never gave me a reason. When I got inside the wagon, I could hear people outside saying, “They’re trying to take him. They’re trying to take him.” So one of the supporters went to the police captain and said, “Captain Fisher, one of your men just arrested a MOVE member.” And Captain Fisher’s response was, “Please don’t start that rumor.” So Captain Fisher walked over to the truck and he said, “We’re going to get you out of here.” And I said, “I’m sure you are.”

Mike is a member of MOVE, a political and religious organization founded in 1972 upon principles of environmental and social justice. It is perhaps best known, however, for how it was almost obliterated ― quite literally blown off the face of the earth ― when the Philadelphia P.D. dropped a bomb onto its headquarters, a rowhouse on a suburban street in West Philadelphia, in 1985, killing 11 people, including five children.

The 1970s was a ripe period for social justice activism and experimentation with alternative lifestyles. Riding the waves of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, the 1970s saw a sharp rise of interest in social progressive movements like feminism, environmentalism, and socialism, and alongside them, new age spirituality.

MOVE fit neatly into this backdrop. The organization was founded by an illiterate Korean war veteran named John Africa, who proselytized an anarcho-primitivist ideology. He and his followers identified as a family, took the surname Africa, and lived communally. They kept to a raw diet and composted their refuse, home-birthed and -schooled their children, and did not comb or cut their hair. They advocated for black liberation, animal rights, and environmental protections.

Mike Africa Jr.

The organization’s mission is to protect life, and to encourage other people to protect life, too. And when we say life, we’re talking about people, animals, and the environment.

And our guide is nature.

MOVE also advocated against many things. Africa and his followers were “anti-system” ― anti-government, anti-technology, and anti-corporation. And they made their opposition known. They staged raucous, bullhorn-amplified protests opposing everything from puppy mills and zoos to police departments, corporations, and capitalism. And it was this activity for which they were most visible.

Mike Africa Jr.

Our work is to expose the system for the corruption in it.

Amanda Knox

What is the “system” that MOVE is fighting against?

Mike Africa Jr.

The entire reformed world system. So when we say “reformed,” we’re talking about anything that is outside of the natural, original form. So, nature created the sun, and the system created the lightbulb. We’re not just talking about the political system, or the police system. We’re talking about the entire system. It is a global system that has been built, that is working against life.

Amanda Knox

Where do we draw the line?

Mike Africa Jr.

Probably when people started to want to make money. Everybody has to have shelter, right? That’s natural. Birds build nests, animals create dens. That’s natural. But when they take these things, and they try to hoard it, and then make you pay for it, and you can’t live unless you pay for it, like, you have to go to the system for every basic necessity… There’s a system that intentionally created obstacles for us so that we can’t live independently. Because there’s this money that the government stands to make, they don’t care about what the people want.

Today, the movement for a reversion to a more environmentally friendly, post-capitalist, hunter-gatherer-like existence (not just paleo diets) is becoming more widespread and mainstream in response to growing concerns about climate change, automation, and the rise of tribalism and fake news due to social media. Less disruptive responses to these concerns have been championed and popularized even by presidential nominees ― Andrew Yang in particular, whose universal basic income, the Freedom Dividend, would be step one in the evolution of capitalism towards measuring success by human and environmental wellbeing as opposed to profit at all costs.

Mike Africa Jr.

So, the things that we, in the early ‘70s, talked about, that was frowned on, are now becoming topics at the forefront of many conversations, right? In the ‘70s, when MOVE first started, the ethical treatment of animals did not exist. People never considered that a tiger is not supposed to be jumping through rings of fire in a circus. But that tiger was brought from the endless acres of freedom, and shipped to Philadelphia, and beaten and starved to be trained to be jumping through rings of fire. The MOVE organization connected that treatment to Africans being brought to this country as slaves. As long as there’s a mentality of enslavement, then you’re always going to have a problem of slavery. The same is true for the environment. All of this stuff about going green, these things didn’t exist back in the 1970s. So to see these things talked about on a global scale is really, really powerful to me. And the stance that MOVE took, that was seen as so extreme, you can now understand a little better why we took that type of stance.

The 1970s was also a period rife with violence, the likes and extent of which we do not witness today. The violent crime rate increased by 126% between 1960 and 1970, and by another 64% between 1970 and 1980. Not only were serial killers like Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer, the Dating Game Killer, Son of Sam, the Hillside Stranglers, and the Death Angels (just to name a few) piling up victims during these years, but death cults were fresh in the public consciousness as well. They might be overtly hostile, like the Manson Family, but also, death lurked behind even the most benign appearances and best intentions, as was the case with Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, which advocated for social justice, but ended with the mass suicide and murder of nearly a thousand people.

Terrorism was also more prevalent. Between 1968 and 1972, more than 130 American airplanes were hijacked. In 1975, there were two assassination attempts against President Ford in less than a month.

In Philadelphia, MOVE’s disruptive activism and lifestyle drew complaints from neighbors and were scrutinized by law enforcement, particularly under the administration of Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner. There were violent, and sometimes even fatal, altercations.

We were always under surveillance or scrutiny. We couldn’t even walk to the store. It wasn’t just the police that were harassing us. It was neighbors. You could get spit on on your way to the store. Or a cop pick you up by your hair and throw you across the street.

Amanda Knox

[What] was the first major tragedy to befall MOVE?

Mike Africa Jr.

I guess it depends on what “major” means.

Amanda Knox

Hmm.

Mike Africa Jr.

I mean, we had situations where the police attacked MOVE women that were visibly pregnant, and caused miscarriages.

Amanda Knox

What?

Mike Africa Jr.

Yeah, and that was before August 8. There were four miscarriages at the hands of the police before the MOVE confrontation on August 8, 1978.

The MOVE confrontation of August 8, 1978 marked their transition towards militancy. Following years of targeted, aggressive policing, MOVE members armed themselves in the same spirit as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Then, in 1977, when the Philadelphia P.D. obtained a court order demanding MOVE members vacate their commune…

MOVE took a stand and said, “You’ve been beating and killing our family behind closed doors. The world is going to see what happens now.” So MOVE took a defensive stance around our headquarters armed with every type of weapon that existed at the time ― rifles, shotguns, machine guns, handguns ― and Delbert Africa read a statement, saying, “If you come in here with fists, we’ll fight you back with fists. If you come at us with clubs, we’ll use clubs. If you come in here shooting and killing our brothers and sisters, we will shoot back in defense of our lives.” That led to a standoff where the police built a barricade around the house. Frank Rizzo ordered everything to be shut off. Shut off the phone, shut off the water, shut off the food. Rizzo said, “We’re going to put a barricade around this property so tight that a fly won’t get in.” They even shut off the U.S. mail. That lasted for almost a year. It ended because the city decided to make an agreement. MOVE’s demands were, number one, free our political prisoners; there were four members of the organization that were unjustly imprisoned, and we wanted them out. Demand number two was for Jimmy Carter to be in a helicopter accompanying the MOVE members when they released them. The government’s demand was for MOVE to turn over all of the weapons and vacate the premises.

Amanda Knox

Mm hmm.

Mike Africa Jr.

MOVE received one demand, for our people to be free, but Jimmy Carter wasn’t with them. So MOVE gave one demand to the city, turned over the weapons, but they did not leave the premises.

The city of Philadelphia was not obligated to negotiate with MOVE members, but tellingly, the way Mayor Frank Rizzo and the Philadelphia P.D. responded to MOVE’s resistance was less like authorities serving a legal eviction, and more like an exterminator flushing out a nest of rats.

According to prosecutors at the time, when police officers attempted to enter the MOVE house to enforce the eviction, shooting erupted from within. A shootoff ensued, lasting a full hour before the MOVE members surrendered, but not before an officer, James Ramp, was killed in the crossfire. But MOVE members remember the fatal encounter very differently.

So the police, on August 8, 1978, surrounded the house with hundreds of cops, and they shot tear gas and smoke grenades and high pressure water cannons. Those hoses were shot directly at children inside of the house. The police cut a hole in the first floor of the building and shot the water down on top of the people in the basement of the house. And when that didn’t drive the members out of the house, the police opened fire. They shot hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the house. Police admitted to shooting in corners where they heard babies crying. They were trying to kill Phil Africa, one of the members. He talked about how he picked up a sheet plywood and put it up to the window with his back to it, trying to stop the water from coming in, and he could see the bullets going through the plywood, tracing around his body like some type of a cartoon.

Amanda Knox

I mean, it sounds like a war zone.

Mike Africa Jr.

It was a war zone. Nine members of the organization were arrested. While they were in jail, they learned that a police officer had been killed. A police officer was shot with one bullet from one gun, and many witnesses said it came from the police.

Mike wasn’t present to witness these events, but he did witness the consequences. Despite testimony that contradicted the state’s version of the events and suggested Officer Ramp may have been the victim of friendly fire, the nine arrested MOVE members were collectively charged and convicted of Officer Ramp’s murder, and were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison. Mike’s father, Mike Africa Sr., and mother, Debbie Africa, were two of the nine. Debbie was pregnant at the time, and gave birth to Mike alone in her jail cell. From the first moments of his life, and with his parents effectively sentenced to life, Mike was at the mercy of the very system his parents had so passionately protested against.

My grandmother came and got me from the prison a couple of days after I was born, and she took me to what was our sister chapter, the Seeds Of Wisdom. It was a portion of the organization that John Africa created to get the children away from the confrontational atmosphere in the city. So we went there to regroup and seek refuge. While we were there, the Philadelphia Police drove from Philadelphia to Richmond, Virginia, which is a six hour drive, completely out of their jurisdiction, arrested the members of the organization, and put the children in foster care. That was probably the worst experience of my life. We were beaten, and when we fought back, we were beaten worse. The children that I still talk to today, they recall the nuns throwing us down the basement steps because we would not cooperate. We were starved. These people did not change my diaper for 11 days. I had a diaper rash almost to my knees, up to my stomach. And so, to go through that at three years old, no mother, no father, and none of the family members that were caring for us, that experience was gruesome.

Amanda Knox

How did you get out of that system?

Mike Africa Jr.

Some of our family members were not willing to follow the court order and watch us be abused. They got us out of there.

And then we get back to Philadelphia, we feel like this may be the turning point. We were going to the park every day. We were eating our raw food. It was good, we loved it. And then the government decided to drop a bomb.

That’s not a metaphor. The MOVE organization had relocated their headquarters in 1981 to a rowhouse in West Philadelphia. They were not welcome. Neighbors complained to the city about trash, confrontations, and bullhorn announcements. This led the Philadelphia P.D. to obtain arrest warrants charging four MOVE members with parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terrorist threats.

But when they refused to vacate their home once again, on the evening of May 13, 1985, the city of Philadelphia dropped a satchel bomb of Tovex and C-4 on the MOVE headquarters, knowing full well that the building was occupied by men, women, and children.

The blast killed eleven people, five of them children. Only two MOVE members survived, a woman and her minor-aged brother, who narrowly escaped volleys of gunfire and emerged severely burned. The offensive destroyed sixty-one nearby homes, and left hundreds of citizens homeless.

It’s so unfair. I mean, it’s unfair for adults, too, but the adults could make decisions, whereas with us, we were at the mercy of the system. There was nowhere we could go. People ask me all the time, “Why don’t you just leave?” And go where? We went to Virginia to leave. And they came and tracked us there. What could we have done? So to just know that my brothers and sisters never found that peace, that’s the worst part of this whole experience.

Amanda Knox

Why do you think all of this happened?

Mike Africa Jr.

I think all of this happened because John Africa, the founder of MOVE, found a way to be not dependent on the system, and that was a huge threat. If you don’t support their systems, their systems can’t exist. John Africa didn’t pay taxes. He didn’t have a water bill. He didn’t have a heating bill, an electric bill. The system wants you to be completely dependent on them for everything. Where you learn, where you eat, where you drink, where you live. Everything that you do, your complete and entire life is wrapped up into the system from the day you get a birth certificate to the day you get a death certificate. And John Africa had a way of extracting himself and others outside of that system, so that you not only don’t depend on the system, but you work to get rid of it, because it’s not working for you.

He was on federal trial facing 100 years in jail because the government said that he was making bombs to blow up the ice caps in the north pole to flood the earth. John Africa went to court dressed in dungarees and a sweatshirt, with his hair in natural locks, and told the prosecutor, “You know you’re not gonna win this case, don’t you? You ain’t gonna convict me because I’m innocent and I’ll prove it.” John Africa represented himself. He said, “It ain’t me that that’s guilty. I’m not the one making bombs. The government don’t even really care about who’s making bombs and who’s not making bombs. The only thing they care about is who can control the bombs? This country has stockpiled enough explosives to blow up the entire earth, and they talking about me. I don’t have a bomb. Bombs are disruptive and they backfire on the people that make them. But if you want to call life a bomb, then I got the biggest bomb that existed, and the MOVE organization is constantly dropping it. That is my bomb. I’m about promoting life, not destroying life.” And the jury found him not guilty. That is why they came after us the way they did. I believe that the instant he walked out free, they decided to drop a bomb on him.

John Africa has mythic, if not messianic, status within the MOVE community. And he became that way in no small part due to the actions of the authorities he defied. His and his followers’ violent end at the hands of the state left a mark on the consciousness of Philadelphia, and on Mike Africa Jr.

I believe people are awakened when they see these tragic things happen, but then, after seeing it so much, they become desensitized. Change will not happen unless the people actually does something to affect the change. And what I believe needs to happen is people got to fight back. They got to fight back.

Amanda Knox

How so?

Mike Africa Jr.

Any way possible. Because we’re not dealing with a system that is kind or fair. We’re not dealing with a system of justice. The people have to fight back, however it takes to be free. And I mean, whatever it takes, because, as Martin Luther King said, “America is the biggest purveyor of violence on the face of the earth,” and you see what happened to him. You see what happened to Malcolm X. Anybody that speaks to truth, that tries to evoke some type of change, becomes a target. And even people that are not trying to evoke change, they’re just living their lives, are targets, too. As John Africa said, “You don’t have to be a criminal to become a victim of the system. The only thing you need to be is available.” We’re available because we’re here and the system is here. We’re in trouble. Even if you’re not talking about the police killing people, the air is more polluted than ever. Everything’s all out of balance. We got to fight back on every level, all the time.

You don’t have to agree with MOVE’s vision of a just society to understand the power of stepping outside the social constructs that frame our problems, the power of reimagining the world from scratch. In this regard, the modern day technologists are surprisingly aligned with the radical activists of the ‘70s. The difference is in how such radical visions are framed and responded to. Are ideas that challenge the very foundations of our society “innovative” or “terrorist”? And why?

The standoff continues. On the one hand, we have our democratic government and its institutions of law enforcement ― the culmination of enlightenment ideals imperfectly put into practice by flawed systems and individuals. And on the other hand, we have people who were born into a world they didn’t create, who would opt out, or even uproot, the corruption they see as threats to our wellbeing and very survival. At the heart of this conflict is a fundamental breakdown of trust. How exactly to reestablish that trust isn’t clear, but it is necessary, and chances are, it will take some radical reimagining and unorthodox thinking to do so.

Pope derides anti-mask protesters

Issued on: 23/11/2020 

Pope Francis, pictured October 2020 wearing a protective face mask, railed against people who claim "that being forced to wear a mask is an unwarranted imposition by the state" 

Andreas SOLARO AFP/File

Vatican City (AFP)

Pope Francis took aim Monday at protests against coronavirus restrictions, contrasting them with the "healthy indignation" seen in the global demonstrations against racism after the death of George Floyd.

"Some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions -- as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!" he wrote in a new book.

In "Let Us Dream", derived from conversations with his British biographer Austen Ivereigh, he railed against those who claim "that being forced to wear a mask is an unwarranted imposition by the state".

"You'll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd, or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education, or because there are whole families who have lost their income," he said.

He added: "On such matters they would never protest; they are incapable of moving outside of their own little world of interests."

The book, sub-titled "A Path to a Better Future", is largely centred on his response to the coronavirus crisis.

"With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives," the pope said.

However, he added that some have put the economy before public health, saying: "Those governments have mortgaged their people."

The death in police custody of Floyd a 44-year-old African-American man, triggered a wave of anti-racism protests in the United States and around the world.

The pope again condemned his "horrendous" death and hailed how "many people who otherwise did not know each other took to the streets to protest, united by a healthy indignation".

However, he cautioned against pulling down historical statues, a by-product of some of the protests, describing it as "amputating history".

"A free people is a people that remembers, is able to own its history rather than deny it, and learns its best lessons," he said.

© 2020 AFP

Migration does not threaten Christianity: pope

Issued on: 23/11/2020 

Pope Francis (pictured November 22, 2020), the grandson of Italian immigrants, regularly expresses solidarity with migrants who cross the Mediterranean, mourning those who lose their lives and denouncing rich countries that fail to welcome them

 Vincenzo PINTO AFP/File

Vatican City (AFP)

Pope Francis, a strong advocate of the rights of refugees, said in a new book published Monday that migration does not pose a threat to Christianity.

"To reject a struggling migrant, whatever his or her religious belief, out of fear of diluting a 'Christian' culture is grotesquely to mispresent both Christianity and culture," he said.

"Migration is not a threat to Christianity except in the minds of those who benefit from claiming it is.

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"To promote the Gospel and not welcome the strangers in need, nor affirm their humanity as children of God, is to seek to encourage a culture that is Christian in name only, emptied of all that makes it distinctive."

The pontiff made the comments in "Let Us Dream", a new book written in conversation with British biographer Austen Ivereigh.

The pope, the grandson of Italian emigrants who settled in Argentina, regularly expresses solidarity with migrants who cross the Mediterranean, mourning those who lose their lives and denouncing rich countries that fail to welcome them.

"The dignity of our peoples demands safe corridors for migrants and refugees so they can move without fear from deadly areas to safer ones," he said in the book.

"It is unacceptable to deter immigration by letting hundreds of migrants die in perilous sea crossings or desert treks. The Lord will ask us to account for each one of those deaths."

He condemned leaders who "channel their resentments and hatreds against imagined enemies to distract from the real problems", the 83-year-old pontiff wrote.

"A fantasy of national-populism in countries with Christian majorities is its defence of 'Christian civilisation' from perceived enemies, whether Islam, Jews, the European Union or the United Nations," he said.

"The defence appeals to those who are often no longer religious but who regard their nation’s inheritance as a kind of identity.

"Their fears and loss of identity have increased at the same time as attendance at churches has declined," Francis said.

© 2020 AFP

Turning away from Afghanistan will have ‘disastrous consequences’, warns UN refugee chief
Issued on: 23/11/2020 

Relatives gather at a graveyard of the victims who were killed in a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, September 14, 2020. © رويترز.

Text by:NEWS WIRES


The international community must continue aiding Afghanistan or face the risk of "disastrous consequences," UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi urged ahead of a donors conference starting Monday.

Grandi's appeal also comes after his visit to the Asian nation that is struggling with growing violence, a US pullout and flagging peace talks.

Grandi said the future of millions of Afghans depends on the outcome of peace negotiations and on the international community's commitment to develop the country, including at the two-day donors conference in Geneva.

"Failure on either account would see Afghanistan slide backwards with disastrous consequences, including further displacement possibly on a large scale," Grandi warned in a statement.

He said the nearly 300,000 Afghans who have been displaced inside the country because of conflict this year remain in "acute need" of humanitarian support.

The same goes for the nearly three million previously displaced and the nine million people who have lost their livelihoods due to the Covid-19 crisis.

Grandi also said it was urgent to conclude peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which are fighting to topple it and retake the power they lost during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The peace talks are flagging and a withdrawal of some of the US forces that the Trump administration announced this week are further weakening the Kabul government.

(AFP)

Covid-19 pandemic triggers global spike in violence against women

Issued on: 23/11/2020 - 

Activists demonstrate against femicides and violence towards women in Guadalajara, Mexico, on September 16, 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic. AFP - ULISES RUIZ

No country has been spared the coronavirus epidemic, nor the scourge of domestic violence, which has surged during lockdowns as the day marking such violence approaches on Wednesday.

From a spike in rapes in Nigeria and South Africa, increased numbers of women missing in Peru, higher rates of women being killed in Brazil and Mexico and overwhelmed associations in Europe: the pandemic has aggravated the plague of sexual violence.

According to UN data released in late September, lockdowns have led to increases in complaints or calls to report domestic abuse of 25 percent in Argentina, 30 percent in Cyprus and France and 33 percent in Singapore.

In essentially all countries, measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus have resulted in woman and children being confined at home.

"The house is the most dangerous place for women," Moroccan associations noted in April as they pressed authorities for "an emergency response".

In India, Heena -- not her real name -- a 33-year-old cook who lives in Mumbai, said she felt "trapped in my house" with a husband who did not work, consumed drugs and was violent.

As she described what she had endured, she frequently broke down in tears.

After buying drugs, "he would spend the rest of his day either hooked to his phone playing PubG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) or beating me up and abusing me," she told AFP by telephone.

Insufficient measures

On August 15, her husband beat Heena worse than before, in front of their seven-year-old son, and threw her out of the house at 3:00 am.

"I had nowhere to go," she said. "I could barely move my body -- he beat me to pulp, my body was swollen."

Instead of going to the police, she made it to a friend's home and then to her parents.

She is now fighting for custody of her son, "but courts are not working in full capacity due to Covid".

She has not seen her son in four months, though he manages to call her in secret from time to time.

It is not the just the courts that are hobbled by the virus. The closure of businesses and schools, as well as cultural and athletic activities, have deprived victims already weakened by economic insecurity of ways to escape violence.

Hanaa Edwar of the Iraqi Women's Network, told AFP there had been "a dangerous deterioration in the socioeconomic situation for families following the lockdown, with more families going into poverty, which leads to violent reactions".

In Brazil, 648 murders of women were recorded in the first half of the year, a small increase from the same period in 2019 according to the Brazilian Forum for Public Security.

While the government has launched a campaign to encourage women to file complaints, the forum says that measures designed to help victims remain insufficient.

'Mask-19'

Worldwide, the United Nations says that only one country in eight has taken measures to lessen the pandemic's impact on women and children.

In Spain, victims could discreetly ask for help in pharmacies by using the code "mask-19", and some French associations established contact points in supermarkets.

"The women who came to us were in situations that had become unbearable, dangerous," said Sophie Cartron, assistant director of an association that worked in a shopping mall near Paris.

"The lockdown established a wall of silence," she said.

Mobilisation on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women remains uncertain owing to restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Marches for women's rights have nevertheless taken place recently in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Liberia, Namibia and Romania.

"We will not be able to demonstrate to express our anger, or march together," said the Paris-based feminist group Family Planning.

"But we will make ourselves heard all the same, virtually and visually."

Tamara Mathebula of the South African Commission for Gender Equality described a chronic "toxic masculinity" that was "everywhere you look".

"There are gender pay gaps which are widening and continue to widen during the Covid-19 pandemic," she told AFP.

"Gender-based violence worsened" as a result, she said, and the potential consequences were very serious.

In July, the UN estimated that six months of restrictions could result in 31 million additional cases of sexual violence in the world and seven million unwanted pregnancies.

The situation was also undermining the fight against female genital mutilation and forced marriages, the UN warned.

(AFP)

Poorest must not be trampled in vaccines stampede: WHO


WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (pictured March 2020) said the latest batch of promising results from final-phase candidate vaccine trials showed there was light at the end of the "long dark tunnel" of the coronavirus pandemic

 Fabrice COFFRINI AFP/File


Geneva (AFP)

With Covid-19 vaccines on the horizon, the planet's poorest must not be trampled as countries scramble to get their hands on them, the World Health Organization said Monday.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the latest batch of promising results from final-phase candidate vaccine trials showed there was light at the end of the "long dark tunnel" of the coronavirus pandemic.

But he said the world had to ensure they were distributed fairly across the globe.

"Every government rightly wants to do everything it can to protect its people," Tedros told a virtual press conference.

"But there is now a real risk that the poorest and most vulnerable will be trampled in the stampede for vaccines."

AstraZeneca and Oxford University said their prospective vaccine had proved on average 70 percent effective at stopping the virus after trying it on 23,000 people, days after tests of two other candidate vaccines suggested they had more than 90 percent effectiveness.

"With the latest positive news from vaccine trials, the light at the end of this long dark tunnel is growing brighter. There is now real hope that vaccines in combination with other tried and tested public health measures, will help to end the pandemic," said Tedros.

"The significance of this scientific achievement cannot be overstated. No vaccines in history have been developed as rapidly as these. The scientific community has set a new standard for vaccine development."

- Pooled vaccines project -

The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 1.39 million people and more than 58.6 million cases have been registered since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.

Anticipating the huge demand for any approved vaccine, the WHO has helped create the so-called Covax facility to ensure equitable distribution. Tedros said 187 countries were now on board.

The international vaccine procurement pool aims to lay its hands on two billion doses of safe and effective vaccines by the end of next year.

However, it is struggling to raise the funds needed to provide for the 92 low-income countries and other economies that quickly signed up.

Tedros said $4.3 billion was needed immediately to support the mass procurement and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, while a further $23.8 billion would be needed in 2021.

"The real question is not whether the world can afford to share Covid-19 vaccines and other tools; it's whether it can afford not to," said Tedros.

Leaders at the virtual G20 summit said Sunday they would "spare no effort" to ensure fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines, but the united front was punctured by Angela Merkel who voiced concern about slow progress.

The German chancellor said she was concerned that no major vaccine agreements had yet been struck for poorer nations, even as rich countries have already bought up huge numbers of doses from pharmaceutical firms.

The summit pledged to support poor countries whose economies have been ravaged by the crisis, but offered little detail.

© 2020 AFP

Guatemala suspends budget that sparked violent protests

Issued on: 23/11/2020 -

Demonstrators burn an effigy representing Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei during a protest demanding his resignation

 Johan ORDONEZ AFP

Guatemala City (AFP)

Guatemala's parliament on Monday backed away from approving a business-friendly 2021 budget after demonstrators in the impoverished Central American nation torched the Congress building and demanded the resignation of President Alejandro Giammattei in weekend protests.

Widespread indignation against Giammattei's administration and Congress have been caused by a lack of resources for battling the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the new spending plan.

"In order to maintain the governability of the country and social peace, we have agreed to suspend the processing of the budget," said Congress president Allan Rodriguez.

The suspension would create "space for discussion of the country's governance," he said.

The country's only state-run university, the University of San Carlos, had earlier called for a national strike on Monday.

Meanwhile, powerful farmers' union Codeca appeared to back away from an earlier call to its members to block roads around the country.

With the budget suspended, a decree endorsing it will no longer be sent to the president who is responsible for approving or vetoing it, Rodriguez said on the Congressional television channel.

Congress, dominated by conservative pro-government parties, last week approved an almost $13 billion budget, the largest in the country's history.

Lawmakers have until November 30 to approve a new budget, otherwise the government will continue to operate under the existing budget of $10.4 billion.

- Torching Congress -

Thousands of Guatemalans took part in a peaceful demonstration in the capital on Saturday, but hundreds broke away and partly burned the Congress building, setting fire to several offices after smashing windows to get inside.

Hundreds of people returned to the streets on Sunday to demand Giammattei's resignation.

Rodriguez accused the protesters of using the budget as a pretext to commit "terrorist acts" against the Congress, which "had the objective of breaking the constitutional order and gaining access to power."

The Congress speaker said he would ask Attorney General Consuelo Porras to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the attack on the Congress building, pledging that those responsible would face justice.

Giammattei, 64, issued a statement Sunday afternoon reproaching Saturday's violent demonstrations, saying he considered the protesters to be "minority groups that seek to force a true coup d'etat."

They are angry over the budget in which most of the funds were to go to infrastructure tied to big business in a country where poverty is widespread and half of children under five years old are malnourished.

Giammattei's vice president Guillermo Castillo, with whom he has repeatedly clashed, said Friday night he had asked the president to resign with him "for the good of the country".

Castillo asked the public prosecutor's office on Sunday to investigate the burning of the Congress building but also police repression of the protests, in which dozens of people were injured in clashes.

A former prisons chief, Giammattei took office in January but his management of the health crisis has been criticized by Castillo, the opposition and social sectors.

All have denounced deficiencies in the hospital system as well as in taking care of groups affected by lockdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

Congress approved $3.8 billion to fight the coronavirus pandemic, but less than 15 percent of those funds have been invested.

Guatemala has recorded nearly 120,000 cases of the virus and more than 4,000 deaths.

© 2020 AFP