The impacts of colonialism outlive the British Queen

by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan 

DEMOCRACY NOW!

September 15, 2022

With its history of slavery, concentration camps, executions and torture, what would reparations and accountability look like?

It has long been said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” referring to the United Kingdom’s colonies around the globe. Will the death of Queen Elizabeth II trigger further shrinking of the empire, as former colonies now in the British Commonwealth debate whether to permanently sever ties? With its history of slavery, concentration camps, executions and torture, what would reparations and accountability look like?

On her 21st birthday in 1947, Elizabeth, five years before her coronation as queen, said, “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”

Elizabeth was in South Africa, a British Commonwealth nation, one year before its white minority imposed the racist policies of apartheid over the majority Black and other non-white populations. Over the next half-century, South Africa’s apartheid regime, shored up by the United Kingdom and the United States, demonstrated that not all in the Queen’s “imperial family” fared well.

“I would like to see the dismantling of this notion of the Commonwealth,” Cornell University Professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi said on the Democracy Now! news hour. Mukoma was born in the U.S. but raised in Kenya, the son of renowned Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

“‘Commonwealth?’ Whose wealth?” Professor Mukoma wa Ngugi asked. “The book I’m working on now on Africans and African Americans took me to Keta in Ghana, where slaves were taken from. It’s very depressed [by] the aftershocks…or the trauma of slavery. Maya Angelou called it melancholic.”

“I left Keta. Then I went to Bristol in England. Bristol was a slave-trading port. It’s thriving…Most people know it now because of the dismantling of the statue of [Edward] Colston [during the George Floyd protests in 2020], who was one of the slave traders. We can see the effects of slavery, of colonialism. We can see how the wealth of England was built.”

In 1952, Elizabeth was in Kenya when she learned of the death of her father, King George VI, and became Queen. Kenya suffered for decades under British colonial rule. An organized armed resistance rose up in the 1950s, called the Mau Mau. Harvard historian Caroline Elkins documented Britain’s violence against Kenyans in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya.”

“Nearly 1.5 million Kikuyu, or Africans, were detained in detention camps, or emergency villages, barbed-wire villages, as a way of suppressing Mau Mau,” Elkins explained on Democracy Now! “This was a story about systematic violence, torture, murder and massive cover-up…serious crimes happened on the queen’s imperial watch. Her picture hung in every detention camp in Kenya as detainees were beaten in order to exact their loyalty to the British crown.”

Many nations still struggle with the impacts of British colonialism. “Formerly enslaved and colonized nations and people, like those of the Caribbean, including Barbados, have been inserted in that international order in a structurally subordinate and exploitative manner,” David Comissiong, Barbados’s ambassador to the Caribbean Community, said on Democracy Now! last December, just after Barbados severed its Commonwealth relationship with the UK, removing Queen Elizabeth II as head of state and declaring itself sovereign. “Barbados was the first society in human history that was built totally on the basis of slavery — its economy, its social system, its ideology. That’s our history. The royal family was deeply involved in the British slave trade and the system of African enslavement,” Comissiong said.

The Prime Minister of the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, announced this week that the country will hold a referendum within three years to decide on complete separation from the UK.

Dorbrene O’Marde, the chairperson of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Commission and an ambassador-at-large of Antigua, said this week on Democracy Now! that Queen Elizabeth II “managed to cloak the historical brutality of empire in this veneer of grandeur and pomp and pageantry and graciousness…We need to examine that history a lot more closely.”

Queen Elizabeth’s eldest son has succeeded her, and is now King Charles III. He will be confronted with rising demands for accountability and reparations for the generations of colonial exploitation that enriched the United Kingdom and the royal family, himself included. The Windsor family’s estimated wealth is in the billions of dollars.

“The CARICOM reparations plan talks of development,” Dorbrene O’Marde said. “where the hurt of enslavement and genocide continues to exist and continues to impact the lives of Caribbean people today…You have committed crimes against humanity and there is a moral and an ethical demand that you acknowledge these crimes.”

King Charles III should heed the call of these former colonial subjects, and answer for the innumerable harms inflicted worldwide in the name of the British monarchy.

This column originally appeared on Democracy Now!

Geoff Dembicki on How He Wrote a Big Oil Blockbuster Geoff Dembicki’s The Petroleum Papers, set for release Sept. 20, is getting raves while inspiring rage. Kirkus Media has listed it among its top anticipated books for the fall season and the Toronto Star placed the work on its own similar list. Dembicki, a widely published climate journalist who’s written for The Tyee for 15 years, pored over a mountain of historical documents and interviewed key players to expose many key moments when the oil industry and its political allies sowed disinformation about the rising threat of climate catastrophe. He names names and connects dots from Fort McMurray to Washington, D.C. The Tyee spoke with Debicki ahead of his book’s launch to learn how we could have averted disaster decades ago. You can read the full conversation and an excerpt from The Petroleum Papers on our website. The Tyee: The title of your book references a huge collection of confidential oil industry archives. What’s contained in these documents and how did you get access to them? Geoff Dembicki: So for the last few decades major oil companies have been secretly researching climate change and then writing up reports about their findings. Pretty much all the major firms with operations in the oilsands — including Suncor, Shell, BP and the Exxon-owned Imperial Oil — learned internally that their products were making climate change worse and potentially leading to catastrophic impacts around the world. They also produced reports about how to communicate this science to the public. By the early 1990s, the strategy most companies decided on was lying about the science, trying to convince the public it isn’t real. Investigative research groups like DeSmog got access to huge amounts of these documents and posted them online in vast databases. So the documents were publicly available, but no journalist had really gone in and written a book telling the explosive story contained in all those documents. Starting a few years ago, that’s what I decided to do. That sounds like a ton of work. Give me a sense of how you went about it, and maybe something you dug up that amazed you. There’s a site called Climate Files run by a group called the Climate Investigations Center that has a master collection of documents sorted by year and going back to 1953. I began the process of reading every single document on the site. Through that process I found stuff that even the disinformation experts didn’t really know about. The document that really blew my mind was a short summary of talking points about climate solutions created by Imperial Oil in 1993. Exxon had been internally studying climate solutions and learned that a national carbon price in the early 1990s could effectively stabilize the crisis without hurting the economy. It would be bad for profits though, so Imperial urged executives to essentially portray the research in the worst possible light to media and policy-makers, saying that fixing climate change was a reckless strategy that would destroy the economy. Imperial could have helped stop this emergency three decades ago, but chose not to. You are an Alberta kid who started as an intern at The Tyee right out of Carleton’s journalism program in 2008. And you’ve been a regular contributor to our pages ever since. But now you live in Brooklyn and also write for Vice and the Guardian. Why are you in New York and what’s that like? As a writer I’ve always been fascinated with New York and after my partner Kara and I got renovicted from our apartment in East Vancouver in 2019, we checked out rents in Brooklyn and they actually weren’t so much crazier than Vancouver rents. I also wanted to be here to cover the dozens of lawsuits against Big Oil moving forward in U.S. courts, as well as the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The West Coast will always feel like home to me, but New York is fun and exciting. I’ve met a lot of other writers and editors and spent much time exploring the city on my bike. I still regularly read The Tyee and the whole network of awesome climate and environment-focused writers in B.C., including Arno Kopecky, Sean Holman, James MacKinnon, Francesca Fionda, Michelle Gamage — really there’s too many to name.

Jordan Peterson, the Climate Crisis Deniers’ New Mouthpiece

Touting myths to millions is ‘highly irresponsible,’ say experts trying to avert disaster.

Geoff Dembicki 

5 Sep 2022

TheTyee.ca
Geoff Dembicki reports for The Tyee. His work also appears in Vice, Rolling Stone and the New York Times.

Peterson, who’s no climate scientist, questions models used by those 

who are, and muses that global warming is ‘beneficial.’ Photo via Wikimedia.

In mid-August, Jordan Peterson uploaded a video for his more than 5.4 million YouTube subscribers in which he referred to the growing body of science linking extreme weather events to climate change as “dubious.”

Dressed in suit and tie and seated in an austere white room with the feel of a tech startup office, the Canadian celebrity conservative influencer claimed to take aim at the “globalist utopians” forcing us “to fall in line” in order to stabilize global emissions by 2050. That goal is widely regarded by scientists as crucial for avoiding the worst damages of climate change. But Peterson referred to it as “absolutely preposterous.”

The bulk of the video, which has more than 1.2 million views, consisted of Peterson reading verbatim an article he’d recently written for the Telegraph, a major British newspaper, headlined “Peddlers of environmental doom have shown their true totalitarian colours.”

The idea that “storms, wildfires, droughts, downpours and floods around the globe in the last 18 months are unique and unprecedented” is “a dubious claim,” Peterson said. And to the “power-mad utopians” pushing the supposedly false narrative of a climate emergency Peterson had this to say: “We will not allow you to steal and destroy the energy that makes our lives bearable.”


No one is out to make people’s lives unbearable by “stealing” energy from them, of course. The work being done by scientists, technologists and policy-makers to transition the global economy to conserve emissions-producing energy and shift to renewables in order to head off a climate catastrophe does invite a willingness to imaging how life can remain bearable by changing our ways.

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But bald denials of the climate crisis are increasingly rare in many mainstream media outlets. And as Peterson ramps up his naysaying, climate skeptics are delighted with the former University of Toronto psychology professor born in Alberta. A far-right U.K. website called the Conservative Woman deemed the publication of his recent essay “a first for the usually ‘conspiracy’-shy Telegraph,” and explained that Peterson was “expressing views which, to date, have been shared only on alternative social media outlets.”

Peterson in turn used his Telegraph story and the accompanying YouTube video to name and praise climate skeptics such as Matt Ridley, a journalist and conservative politician who earlier this year argued that climate change is “mostly beneficial” and that “this startling fact is kept from the public by a determined effort on the part of alarmists and their media allies who are determined to use the language of crisis and emergency.”

Trackers of climate disinformation said this potentially represents a worrying new phase in the climate crisis denial movement: skeptics who are increasingly struggling to be taken seriously by legacy media are now being exposed to millions of people via social media through their association with a celebrity conservative influencer from Canada.

“Through Peterson, who has a prominent voice, these other fringe voices are being lifted up,” Kert Davies, executive director of a U.S. research and watchdog group called the Climate Investigations Center, told The Tyee.

‘Truly irresponsible’

Actual climate scientists say it’s dangerous for Peterson, who didn’t respond to a list of questions from The Tyee, to be misleading the public at a time when we have less than a decade to halve global emissions or else risk crossing irreversible global tipping points such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest.

“It is truly irresponsible,” Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Tyee. “And it betrays the fact that Peterson is nothing more than a right-wing disinformation artist.”

Earlier this year Peterson went on The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast which has nearly 13 million followers on YouTube, and made rambling remarks about how the models used by climate scientists are flawed and incomplete.

“But your models aren’t based on everything,” Peterson told Joe Rogan. “Your models are based on a set number of variables. So that means you’ve reduced the variables — which are everything — to that set. But how did you decide which set of variables to include in the equation if it’s about everything?”

Climate scientists slammed the segment, with Mann saying at the time that “such seemingly-comic nihilism would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.”

Yet climate crisis deniers were pleased that Peterson was taking their message to a mainstream audience. “Dr. Jordan Peterson has upset climate change alarmists by claiming on The Joe Rogan Experience that long-range climate models aren’t accurate,” recounted a U.S. website called Liberty Nation News, which has referred to the climate crisis as “hysteria.”

That article’s author Caroline Adana acknowledged Peterson was being “somewhat vague” in his criticisms of climate models, but that was likely because he “needed to adapt his language to the level of the average listener. If we compensate for these adaptations, he made valid criticisms that highly schooled and decorated climate skeptics have also raised.”

Indeed, as criticism mounted over Peterson’s comments, the former University of Toronto professor cited on Twitter one source for his views on climate change: a book titled Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate by Fred Singer.

“Fred Singer was the grandfather of climate denial,” Davies told The Tyee.

The now deceased Singer was active for decades in campaigns to sow doubt and uncertainty about the science of climate change, including founding a disinformation hub in 1990 called the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which received funding from oil companies such as Shell and Exxon according to the climate disinformation watchdog group DeSmog.


A Conservative Grassroots Thick with Climate Crisis Deniers

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Singer was among six “specialists” who spoke at a 2002 news conference in Ottawa, sponsored by Imperial Oil, whose stated goal was to debunk “climate change myths.”

These days it would be difficult to find a direct reference to Singer’s work, which has been thoroughly debunked by climate experts, in a mainstream media outlet. But after the Joe Rogan appearance, alarmed observers argued that Peterson was essentially repackaging Singer’s views for a massive digital audience.

Mega-influencer in an echo chamber

“This latest episode reveals a growing trend, whereby ‘non-climate influencers’ are becoming central nodes of mis- and disinformation for a mainstream public and exposing them to views which either deny the reality and impacts of climate change, or explicitly undermine trust in the science and institutions working to marshal a response,” Jennie King, head of civic action and education at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, told DeSmog.



Fact Checking Patrick Moore, Climate SkepticREAD MORE

This is the dynamic that such observers saw in Peterson’s recent Telegraph essay, which argued that “there are clearly more important priorities than costly and ineffective emergency climate change reductions.”

To bolster that point Peterson referred to the work of Bjorn Lomborg, a political scientist and economist who acknowledges that climate change is real but says it won’t be as bad as many scientists predict, arguing in 2021 that “rapid hyperbole scares us witless.”

Peterson also cited Marian Tupy, editor of the conservative website HumanProgress, which is a project of the Cato Institute, a think tank founded by Charles Koch. Last year Tupy said that climate change “is not an existential crisis.”

When a mega-influencer such as Peterson lends a platform to such fringe views, Mann argues, it has real world impacts on our ability to solve the climate crisis.



Come to Our Launch of Geoff Dembicki’s ‘The Petroleum Papers

’READ MORE

“As a result of the denialist echo chamber, people tend to perceive that a far greater proportion of the public denies climate change than actually does,” he writes in his recent book The New Climate War. “That flawed perception, in turn, inhibits people from engaging their friends, neighbours and acquaintances on climate.... The less we talk about the issue, the less prominent it is in our larger public discourse, and the less pressure that is brought to bear on policy-makers to act.”

Peterson isn’t primarily known for his reactionary views on the climate crisis. But Mann argues it’s about time the public sees him for what he truly is — the latest in a long line of skeptics delaying society’s response to a crisis that is only getting worse and worse.

“He is promoting climate change denial at a time when it is increasingly untenable,” Mann said.

 

Poilievre attempts overnight shift to  a new political persona On the night of his victory as the new Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre presented a softer version of himself than what Canadians have come to identify the politician with.  Suddenly, parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg writes, Poilievre wasn’t the nasty and ruthless Darth Vader of Canadian politics — chanting to defund the CBC, calling to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, and urging Canadians to support the so-called ‘freedom convoy.’ He was acting as your empathetic neighbour, who understands how inflation is making your life intolerable.  But despite Poilievre’s new political strategy to turn into a kind, gentle and folksy guy-of-the people, Nerenberg argues Canadians and the media should not gloss over the politician Poilievre has shown himself to be in the past. "If media observers and commentators let him get away with it, Poilievre will have accomplished an identity quick-change more dramatic than that of Clark Kent to Superman." — Karl Nerenberg, Parliamentary reporter Poilievre has an anti-choice record despite now claiming to be pro-choice, his attacks on reporters are ‘antithetical to democratic values,’ and he has marched and taken photos with far-right extremists. Poilievre is not your neighbour, Nerenberg writes: he’s a professional politician using Trump-style tactics. Nerenberg isn’t the only one to criticize the new leader. In a speech from the Liberal caucus retreat on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulated Poilievre on his leadership victory and said that the government has been making “every effort” to work with all politicians. However, Trudeau took a dig at Poilievre by adding “this doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be calling out highly questionable, reckless economic ideas.”  Ahead of the return to Parliament on September 19, Nerenberg says we should remember Poilievre’s backstory, which he now seems to want Canadians to forget. Nerenberg concludes: “We have a duty to tell the whole truth about the new leader of the opposition.”  Read more on rabble.ca

The Attack on Freeland Sprouts from ‘Rage Farming’

Reached by The Tyee, the bully caught on video echoes messages fomented by right-wing politicians. Expect more threats, says an expert.

Charles Rusnell

27 Aug 2022

TheTyee.ca

A screen shot of right-wing conspiracy believer Elliot McDavid from a video taken in Grand Prairie Friday and widely circulated. He confronts Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, shouting vulgar epithets. Image via TikTok.

The Grande Prairie man who verbally attacked and intimidated Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Friday told The Tyee he is proud of his behaviour and isn’t concerned by the public condemnation of those who say he is a deluded conspiracy theorist, a bully and a coward.


“Why did I do that? Because I want the rest of the country to wake up and realize that she is a traitor to the country. She is selling out the country,” Elliot McDavid said in a phone interview Saturday.

A political scientist told The Tyee he expects aggressive attacks on politicians to increase in Canada as right-wing politicians continue to engage in “rage farming” by advancing false and misleading conspiracy narratives.

“They know how to feed those narratives,” said University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley.

“It is little half-truths, sometimes more blatant lies, that kind of plant the seeds for this rage farming,” he said.

Freeland, according to her official itinerary, had been in Grande Prairie to meet with local farmers and skilled tradespeople. She was at city hall to meet with Mayor Jackie Clayton.

In a video posted by one of his associates on Friday, McDavid, a big-bearded man dressed in a white sleeveless T-shirt, is seen approaching Freeland as she was about to enter an elevator at Grande Prairie’s city hall.

McDavid calls Freeland’s name, she stops and acknowledges him and he shouts, “What the fuck are you doing in Alberta?”

Freeland and her entourage of women enter the elevator and McDavid continues shouting: “Get the fuck out of this province,” he says, later twice calling her a traitor and a fucking bitch and a c***. Freeland did not respond.

McDavid is then confronted by a man who tells him to leave the building and McDavid gets in the man’s face, telling him not to touch him. Out in the parking lot, McDavid and a woman gleefully celebrate the attack on Freeland.

Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland faces the oncoming, shouting Elliot McDavid

 in this screen shot from the video posted on social media. Image via TikTok.

In the interview with The Tyee, McDavid, one of the organizers of a truck convoy in Grande Prairie, ranted about the Trudeau government being part of a conspiracy involving the World Economic Forum. He also claimed the government was trying to starve the public by forcing fertilizer limitations on farmers and was killing thousands of people, including children, with vaccinations.

“I’m a proud Canadian and I have had enough,” McDavid said, mouthing a trope favoured by conspiracy theorists who view themselves as patriots while viewing the rest of the population as unquestioning sheep.

Asked what he would say to those people who are calling him a thug, and a bully and coward for attacking Freeland, McDavid said, “They got problems. Tell them to go get another vaccine.”

Asked what he would say to those people who say he is too stupid and gullible to realize he has bought into bizarre conspiracy theories, McDavid said:

“I’m fighting for the country and the people, unlike the media, unlike the government,” he said, adding that people won’t wake up until it is too late.

This latest attack on Freeland is part of ongoing verbal harassment and physical intimidation of politicians by protesters, many of whom harbour far-right anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and believe the government is taking away their freedoms.

During the federal election last September, a man threw gravel at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a campaign stop in London, Ontario. Trudeau has had to cancel public appearances due to security concerns.

In May, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was aggressively verbally harassed by protesters in Peterborough, Ontario.

After Friday’s attack, politicians of all stripes, including Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, condemned the harassment of Freeland.

“The verbal harassment and threats directed at Minister @cafreeland during her visit to Alberta yesterday is reprehensible,” Kenney tweeted. “If you disagree with a politician, by all means, exercise your right to protest. But screaming threatening language [and] intimidation cross the line.”

But political scientist Jared Wesley said it is politicians like Kenney, Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre and UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith who are actively advancing narratives that serve to encourage this behaviour.

Even before former U.S. president Donald Trump brought his brand of populist politics to the world, he said politicians in Canada were stoking resentment of so-called elites.

“This time around, it’s not just anti-elitism, it’s what we call anti-pluralism,” Wesley said, explaining that United Conservative Party politicians in Alberta in particular advance the narrative that there are “pure people out there, pure Albertans.”

And so when people like Freeland come to their town, they are targets for abuse because they are not viewed as real Albertans or real Canadians, he said. Freeland is from Peace River, Alberta, north of Grande Prairie.


Danielle Smith Isn’t Nuts, Says Kenney. Just Her Policies

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All three politicians have, for example, been pushing the narrative that Trudeau is somehow attempting to punish farmers by searching for ways to lower emissions from fertilizer.

Smith in particular, has made numerous statements about how vaccine mandates were an unnecessary intrusion on people’s freedoms and she has threatened to fire the board of Alberta Health Services and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta.

She has advanced the idea of an Alberta Sovereignty Act that she says would allow Alberta to opt out of federal laws, including those governing guns.

“What these narratives do for conspiracy theorists, is that it helps them make sense of, first of all, complex things that don’t otherwise make sense; it’s boiled down into something really simple,” Wesley said.

“And secondly, it gives [conspiracy theorists] an out of sorts, where it allows them to see other people as being either the source of their problems or as being less moral or less worthy.”

Portraits of Elliot McDavid posted on his Facebook page. Among the falsehoods he shared with The Tyee in an interview was his claim vaccines had killed thousands of people. Photos via Facebook.

As part of his ongoing political research, Wesley has been conducting focus groups around rural Alberta and he said people just want to be heard, to have their views listened to.


This Is ‘Kenneyism’

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Ironically, he said, this extreme behaviour by people like McDavid will make it less likely that politicians will come to hear them out in their communities because they don’t wish to be abused and they legitimately fear for their safety.

When an incident like the attack on Freeland happens, it takes a politician away from the message they were there to deliver.

“So this creates a spiral; a populist spiral where people say they are not listening to us.” Wesley said. “Well, of course, they are not listening to you. Look at what is happening when they try to listen. It is just a self-perpetuating cycle.”


The Dangerous Rewiring of Canadians’ Minds

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Wesley said the escalating harassment of politicians is dangerous. He referenced the 2016 murder of Jo Cox, a British labour politician who was shot and stabbed repeatedly by a man who wanted to advance white supremacism and nationalism.

“It is dangerous,” he said. “People are saying, ‘Well [Freeland] should be travelling with security.’ But that is a short-term solution.

“I hate to be a pessimist, but I think it is only going to get worse before it gets better.”

On Saturday, Freeland tweeted she will keep coming back “because Alberta is home, and because I want to keep meeting with Albertans from across this great province and visiting my family and friends here.

“What happened yesterday is wrong. Nobody, anywhere, should have to put up with threats and intimidation,” Freeland said, adding that she met many warm and welcoming people in Alberta and “one unpleasant incident doesn’t change that.”

Charles Rusnell is an independent investigative reporter based in Edmonton.

Violent attack against Myanmar unionists



15 September, 2022

Five unionists, including two from IndustriALL affiliate Industrial Workers’ Federation of Myanmar (IWFM), were violently attacked and arrested by military security officers in Yangon on 13 September.

The unionists were arrested on their way to a peaceful a protest, calling on the United Nations to recognize the National Unity Government of Myanmar and its permanent representative at the UN, U Kyaw Moe Tun.

A group of security officers in plain clothes appeared, using sticks to beat the protestors and firing a few shots.

29 protestors were arrested, including a few student and youth activists. Daw Zuu Zuu Ra Khaing and Daw Yamin Kay Thwe Khaig from IWFM, U Nay Min Tun and U Than Aung from Building and Wood Workers Federation of Myanmar (BWFM), and the driver of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar (CTUM) U Than Zaw, were among the 29.

CTUM president Maung Maung has issued a press statement condemning the inhuman and cruel attack, expressing his respect for the revolutionary comrades who are devoted to the non-violent democratic struggle.

“We demand that the illegitimate junta releases all protestors immediately. The international community must take action quickly, or the protestors will be interrogated and tortured by the military. Please support the democratic struggle of Myanmar workers; a peaceful protest is not a crime,”

says IWFM president Khaing Zar.

This is not the first violent attack against IndustriALL members in Myanmar. The junta killed a member of Mining Workers' Federation of Myanmar (MWFM), Chan Myae Kyaw, in March 2021.

Five months ago, a military vehicle rammed into a taxi carrying unionists, CTUM staff Khaing Thinzar Aye and IWFM member Ei Phyu Phyu Myint are still detained.

"The Myanmar junta must stop oppressing the people and workers. We wholeheartedly support the demand of the protestors that the NUG must be recognized at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly,”

says IndustriALL general secretary Atle Høie.

The 77th session of the UNGA is convening on 13-26 September. Together with other global unions, IndustriALL is urging the credentials committee and the general assembly to recognize NUG as the legitimate government.

IndustriALL is continuing its campaign for comprehensive economic sanctions against the Myanmar junta and that companies divest from Myanmar.

Apple supplier in Malaysia must immediately stop union busting



13 September, 2022

Malaysia’s Electronics Industry Employees’ Union Northern Region (EIEUNR) is launching an online petition to call on Apple supplier Molex to stop union-busting and to respect, workers' right to choose their own union and bargain collectively with the employer.

Seven months ago, EIEUNR exposed union busting at Molex Malaysia, who are a supplier to tech giant Apple, as workers were preparing for a secret ballot on joining IndustriALL affiliate EIEUNR.

Management organized a town hall meeting with workers, threatening them not to vote for the union, or else they risk losing bonus and benefits.

The Industrial Relations Department initiated an investigation and put the secret ballot on hold. EIEUNR submitted a voice recording containing the threats of the company management, but has since declined the department’s request for interviews, as it may expose the unionists to further intimidation.

“We urge brothers and sisters all over the world to support this online petition. Without a win in the secret ballot the workers are denied their right to bargain collectively. The union busting is violating Malaysian law as well as international labour standards, but so far no stern action has been taken against the company,”

says EIEUNR general secretary David Arulappen.

“It is outrageous that Molex workers cannot enjoy the right to freely choose their own union. There is clear evidence of workers' rights being denied and Molex should address it immediately. At the same time, IndustriALL reminds Apple to check their own code of conduct about respect of workers’ rights in their supply chain and make sure EIEUNR is voluntary recognized without further delay at the Molex site in Penang,“

says IndustriALL electrical and electronics director Alexander Ivanou.

Molex is a multinational company focussing on electrical, electronics and fiber optic products. The company's code of conduct states that it adheres to the non-discrimination principle and lawful employment practices, including respect for workers' freedom of association. Apple is one of Molex’ major customers.

Kenya glass workers win after strike for living wages and safety gear


15 September, 2022

After a strike for living wages and personal protective equipment, workers at Future East Africa Cooperation (FEAC) negotiated a collective bargaining agreement to improve wages and health and safety at work.

According to the collective agreement the company will pay the minimum wages of 15201 Kenyan Shillings (US$125) as announced by the government and provide work suits and safety boots. In May, the minimum wages were increased by twelve per cent, which the workers say is not enough to cater for living expenses. However, in addition to the twelve per cent, the employer agrees to further increases of five per cent per year in the next two years, and that the workers will receive housing allowances.

KGWU said one of the clauses in the collective agreement stresses that in the case of an injury caused by an accident at work, an employee will be entitled to compensation in accordance with the provisions of the Work Injury and Benefit Act (2007). Further, personal protective equipment that includes uniforms and overalls and safety boots will be provided free of charge to workers. The agreement also includes clauses to protect workers’ rights to maternity and paternity leave as well as retirement.

The agreement also establishes an occupational health and safety committee made up of the employer and union representative as per the labour laws. On HIV and AIDS, workers are protected against discrimination by the employer that is based on their HIV status. Further, awareness campaigns will be carried out on HIV and AIDS.

Maurice Okoth, general secretary of the KGWU says:

“Most of the workers at FEAC are casual workers, and the union is recruiting and organizing them. We are demanding that the casual workers be given permanent jobs so that they can enjoy job security and the other benefits that we negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement.”

“With the rising cost of living in Kenya, wages must also be increased to enable workers to look after their families. We commend KGWU for demanding better wages. Additionally, implementing occupational health and safety at work standards at FEAC is important for accident prevention and a safe working environment,”

says Paule France Ndessomin, IndustriALL regional secretary for Sub Saharan Africa.

FEAC is a Nairobi based Chinese owned company that manufactures aluminium and glass products for the construction industry.

South Asia’s wage crisis


14 September, 2022

Workers across the globe face soaring inflation, supply chain disruptions and a climate crisis. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the inflation rate in March 2022 was more than double that of March 2021.

According to the ILO Global Wage Report 2020-2021, labour productivity in South Asia rose between 2010 and 2019, but actual minimum wage growth trailed behind. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have seen the biggest declines in real minimum wages globally. The report also highlights that in 2019, minimum wage in Bangladesh did not even reach the lowest international poverty line. Wages in India and Sri Lanka were also close to the mark.

Union experience show that even in workplaces where workers can negotiate a long-term wage settlement, in reality employers delay for months and sometimes years before finalizing the agreement. By then the wage rise has already fallen behind the inflation it was supposed to neutralize.

IndustriALL affiliates have relentlessly worked to secure better pay for workers. In Pakistan, after a sustained campaign by IndustriALL affiliates and workers in the carpet industry, the Punjab government announced a wage increase of 2,500 PKR (US$14) in June 2021. But the workers’ struggle did not end there as, despite the government order, employers refused to comply. It took six months before employers agreed to increase wages.

In August 2022, Pakistani affiliates stopped work for over a month in Faisalabad to demand a 16 per cent rise in wages, given the soaring inflation in the country. Pakistan's inflation rate shot up to 27.26 per cent in August, as the country struggled with massive floods compounding already surging prices.

Niaz Khan, general secretary of ILUCIP, says:

“Workers’ wages are not sufficient to meet the rising prices of food and fuel. Employers and governments must acknowledge this and take strong steps to address the issue.”

In Sri Lanka, affiliates have demanded a wage increase of LKR10,000 (US$34) for workers whose monthly salary is below LKR60,000 (US$206), and that the minimum wage should be raised from LKR16,000 (US$55) to LKR26,000 (US$89) per month. The demands have yet to be met. Food inflation in the country reached 93.7 per cent in August. According to the latest World Bank assessment, Sri Lanka is ranked fifth among the ten countries with the highest food price inflation in the world. Affiliates are organizing community kitchen programmes to address the massive food inflation.

Bangladeshi affiliates have demanded an increase in the national minimum wage, which was last revised four years ago and currently stands at 8000 BDT (US$84).

In Nepal, people have taken to the streets to protest a surge in food and fuel prices.

Contract workers at Singareni Collieries Company Limited in India, who earn a fraction of what permanent workers do, called for an indefinite strike for over their demands, which include a wage increase and regularisation of work.

SQ Zama, general secretary of Indian National Mine Workers’ Federation, says:

“It's a very sad situation that while company profits are soaring, workers’ salaries are increasing at a sluggish rate. What makes matters worse is that even for a modest wage increase, workers have to put up a strong fight.”

Apoorva Kaiwar, south-Asia regional secretary of IndustriALL, says:

“Representing workers, we need to fight to ensure that workers get their rightful share in profits. We cannot accept that on one hand profits are soaring while on the other hand workers’ wages are not sufficient to maintain decent standards of living.”

Photo: copyright : Marcel Crozet / ILO

 

...new from Monthly Review Press A graphic novel about three friends who set out from Brooklyn, determined to make Spain the tomb of fascism

"The boundless courage and abiding heroism of Americans who risked everything to fight against fascism—in this moving and unforgettable account of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.” ―Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick

!BRIGADISTAS! AN AMERICAN ANTIFASCIST IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

In this exhilarating graphic novel about the Spanish Civil War, three American friends set off from Brooklyn to join in the fight—determined to make Spain “the tomb of fascism” for the sake of us all. Together they defy the U.S. government and join the legendary Abraham Lincoln Brigade, throw themselves into battle, and conduct sabotage missions behind enemy lines.

As Spain is shattered by the savagery of combat during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), readers see the darkening clouds of the World War to come.

!Brigadistas! will stir the memories of older audiences familiar with the Spanish Civil War as a time of unparalleled international solidarity and heartbreak.... ...and it will expose young audiences to the passions, politics, and conflicts of a bygone era with striking contemporary relevance.

HEAD HERE FOR !BRIGADISTAS!

“Anne Timmons has wonderfully captured the drama and tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, the heroism of the Lincoln. Battalion volunteers, and the life of one working class American who offered his life to fight fascism.” ―Sharon Kahn Rudahl, illustrator of Ballad of an American: The Story of Paul Robeson

“¡Brigadistas! offers a stunning presentation of the struggles of ordinary blue collar American youngsters in the American Lincoln Battalion   joining with an international crew of volunteers to stop fascism   before it could spread beyond Germany and Italy. Young readers especially will appreciate   the combination   of clear narrative and the brilliant art of Anne Timmons.” ―Daniel Czitrom, Ford Foundation History Professor at Mt. Holyoke College, and Chair Emeritus of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives

“One of the most dramatic social conflicts of the twentieth century conveyed in compelling graphic form. At marches and demonstrations, the old guys always captured our attention: “Hey it’s the Lincoln Brigade.” And here we have the story of these “premature anti-fascists” who started the long struggle to defend democracy a little early in Spain.” ―James Barrett, famed historian of labor and the Left, Professor Emeritus of History and African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign