HEGEMON WITH NO PAID LEAVE LECTURES OTHERS

Cooperation Is Key To Advancing Critical Priority Of Women's Economic Participation

Tuesday, 28 February 2023, 
Press Release: APEC

Issued by the APEC Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy

Palm Springs, The United States, 27 February 2023

APEC members accelerate their coordinated work to tackle gender inequality in the region by diving deep into issues critical to women's full economic participation in the care economy and their role in climate mitigation.

Led by the APEC Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy (PPWE), members advance gender mainstreaming across the forum and address and remove barriers that continue to prevent women and girls from diverse backgrounds from participating in and benefiting from the economy.

Addressing the PPWE meeting in Palm Springs last week, Rachel Vogelstein, the United States’ National Security Council Special Advisor on Gender highlighted the essential role of women’s full economic participation to the prosperity, stability and security of APEC economies.

Vogelstein argued that advancing women's economic participation is not only a moral imperative, but a strategic imperative; “one that will strengthen all of our economies.”

Strengthening the care economy is one area to focus on, according to Vogelstein. “Just as roads and bridges helped facilitate labor force participation so too does the infrastructure to ensure that children and elders are healthy, safe and cared for while family members are at work.”

She also stressed that the climate crisis is inextricably linked with gender and equality, stating that left unchecked, climate change will further entrench global patterns of inequality.

“Although women and girls have been some of the most vocal advocates and supporters of environmental stewardship, they remain dramatically underrepresented in the green and blue sectors, and in leadership positions at the climate change decision making table,” Vogelstein said.

Besides climate, closing the digital gender gap exacerbated by the pandemic is deemed crucial to advance women’s economic participation. Vogelstein called for closer partnership with the private sector to address affordability and access to mobile devices and internet services, to promote digital literacy and skills training and address online safety and for freedom from technology facilitated gender-based violence and harassment.

“We simply cannot realize the full potential of our economies if women are not online,” she said. “Let us all collaborate in good faith to find common ground to help advance the critical priority of women's economic participation which will not only provide security to women and families but to entire economies.”

This year, the PPWE is looking at structural reforms to ensure women can equally access and benefit from policy efforts. APEC members discussed the economic and social outcomes for women with regard to the unequal distribution of care, including those related to workforce participation, job opportunities and the gender pay gap, as a consequence of this disparate distribution.

© Scoop Media

China dismisses latest claim that lab leak likely caused COVID pandemic

By David Pierson

February 28, 2023 

China has accused the United States of politicising the coronavirus pandemic again, in response to reports that the US Energy Department had concluded that an accidental laboratory leak had likely triggered the spread of COVID-19 worldwide.

The rebuke on Monday (US time) marks the latest salvo in a running war of words between the two countries over the origins of the virus, an issue that has taken on as much of a political dimension as a scientific one as the rivalry between the two superpowers deepens.

Security personnel guard the entrance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“COVID tracing is a scientific issue that should not be politicised,” Mao Ning, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said of the Energy Department’s conclusion. She then repeated calls for the United States to “stop defaming China” by raising the lab leak theory.

China’s response adds to the growing friction between Washington and Beijing, following a spy balloon incident and US accusations that China was considering supplying Russia with weapons and ammunition for use in Ukraine.

It also comes at a time when lawmakers in Washington are increasing their scrutiny of China with a new House select committee on competition with China. In addition, a hearing is set for Tuesday in the House Foreign Affairs Committee over how to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s “aggression”.

RELATED ARTICLE

Coronavirus pandemic
Lab leak most likely caused pandemic, says US energy department

The debate over where the coronavirus emerged from remains highly divisive, fuelled in part by distrust over the Chinese government and its lack of transparency — as well as by anti-Chinese rhetoric and conspiracy theories fanned by the Trump administration. China has also spread conspiracy theories by suggesting that COVID may have been a product of US biological weapons programs.

Some scientists say the most compelling evidence available today supports the most prevalent theory, that the virus came from live animals stored at a large market in Wuhan, China. No evidence has emerged directly linking the pandemic to a lab.

However, suspicions persist about a lab leak because of two research facilities in Wuhan that have handled highly infectious diseases: the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan CDC lab.

Some scientists say the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted risky experiments. Shi Zhengli, the head of the lab and a top Chinese virus expert, dismissed the claims of a leak in a brief interview with The New York Times in 2021.

“How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?” she said.

A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in February 2021.CREDIT:AP

China has repeatedly dismissed the lab leak theory as politically motivated misinformation designed to smear China. It says the theory has no basis in scientific fact and points to a World Health Organisation report released in 2021 that determined that it was “extremely unlikely” that the pandemic emerged accidentally from a Chinese laboratory.

The report, which set out to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, has been the subject of much debate because China is believed to have heavily influenced its findings by appointing half of the scientists involved in the project.

Faced with widespread criticism for not doing more to prevent the pandemic, China has also sought to deflect blame by spreading a conspiracy theory that the virus may have been the result of research at a US military lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The claim, which was first made in March 2020, was repeated by a Foreign Ministry spokesperson as recently as this month.

At the Energy Department, new intelligence prompted it to change its position from being undecided about how the virus emerged. Officials did not share that intelligence but said the agency made its conclusion with only “low confidence”.

US spy agencies are not in agreement about the origins of the virus. The FBI has concluded with moderate confidence that the virus traces back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whereas four other US intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded with low confidence that COVID most likely emerged through natural transmission, the director of national intelligence’s office announced in October 2021.

Brazil allows two Iranian warships to dock in Rio despite US pressure


One of two Iranian navy warships arrives to dock at Port Sudan in the Red Sea state 

Reuters
Published: 27 February ,2023

Two Iranian warships docked in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government granted permission despite pressure from the US to bar them.

The IRIS Makran and IRIS Dena warships both arrived on Sunday morning, Rio's port authority said in a statement.

Reuters earlier this month reported that Brazil had bowed to US pressure and declined Iran's request for the vessels to dock in Rio in late January, in a gesture from Lula as he flew to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden.

However, with Lula's trip over, the ships have been allowed to dock. Vice Admiral Carlos Eduardo Horta Arentz, the deputy chief of Brazil's Naval Staff, gave his approval for the ships to dock in Rio between Feb. 26 and March 4, according to a Feb. 23 notice in the official gazette.

The US Embassy in Brasilia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Brazilian Navy authorizes a foreign vessel to dock in Brazil, but only after authorization from the foreign ministry, which takes into account the requesting embassy's petition and logistics.

The presence of the Iranian warships on Brazilian shores continues to irk the US as it seeks to build closer ties with Lula's administration, which came into office on Jan. 1.

In a Feb. 15 press conference, US Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley urged Brazil not to allow the ships to dock.

“In the past, those ships facilitated illegal trade and terrorist activities, and have also been sanctioned by the US. Brazil is a sovereign nation, but we firmly believe those ships should not dock anywhere,” she said.

Diplomacy with Iran was one of the highlights of Lula's attempts to bolster Brazil's international standing during his previous presidential terms. He traveled to Tehran to meet then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2010 as he sought to broker a nuclear deal between Iran and the US.

BRAZIL

Carnival Redux

Forrest Hylton

27 FEBRUARY 2023

After a two-year pandemic hiatus, and with Bolsonaro still in Florida, the political temperature at carnival was much lower this year than it was in 2019 and 2020. Violence – including homicide and sexual harassment – was lower than it is ‘normally’, in everyday life and death, and participation in the blocos was massive throughout Brazil.

Among the visitors to Salvador was the US ambassador, Elizabeth Bagley, who was photographed leaning from a window to shake hands with Governor Jerônimo Rodrigues as the blocos passed below. Bagley tweeted that her first trip to the city ‘could not have been better’, thanks to the ‘contagious energy’ and the ‘music, colours and people’. Gilberto Gil performed with Margareth Menezes, the new culture minister. Other musicians included BaianaSystem and Ivette Sangalo.

An estimated million tourists came to a city with a population of less than four million in the entire metropolitan region. The circuito and the blocos are now so centralised, however, that the people who historically have given carnival its identity are today largely excluded from it. A more decentralised version might feature and invest in distinctive neighborhood traditions, promoting greater circulation and less concentration.

Three-fifths of Bahians – nine million people – lack ‘food security’, i.e. do not get enough to eat. They can only take part in carnival as dispossessed informal workers, roped off from the pay-to-play festivities of the blocos: hundreds if not thousands of unlicensed vendors camped out (with or without children) on either side of the main avenue between the Farol da Barra and Ondina five or six days before carnival started in order to secure their places to sell water, beer, soft drinks and food on the fringes of the circuito. With only their portable umbrellas to protect them from the brutal sun and occasional rain, they had no running water or access to showers. (Rows of portable toilets were everywhere available for revellers.)

Vendors had to be licensed by the city to get inside the circuito. Fifteen thousand cordeiros were paid 60 reais a day, along with food, water and transport subsidies, to handle the rope that separated the blocos, and those who had paid to party and dance near them, from everyone else. On Saturday, cordeiros from Bell Marques’s bloco protested that they had not been paid by the security firm subcontracted to employ them. BaianaSystem, exceptionally, do not use cordeiros or otherwise separate those who can pay from those who cannot, as a matter of principle.

There was one murder inside the circuito, apparently a settling of accounts between rival criminal facções. The gun was probably planted beforehand, since the police – who were out in numbers – conducted thorough searches of everyone going in. Following an incident of sexual harassment in the Muquiranas bloco – a group of men surrounded, shoved and showered a woman with water guns before the municipal police showed up – a formal investigation has been opened by the federal and state authorities.

Beyond the issues of crowd control and protecting women – which are serious, with millions of mostly young people drinking and taking drugs in the streets – stands the question of investment. The state government of Bahia, which has been PT since 2007, and the mayor’s office in Salvador, which is bolsonarista, provided 200 million reais. Private sector sponsors included the Ambev beer conglomerate (which spent 27 million reais), TikTok and Zé (a drink delivery app). The blocos are run like small businesses, selling the equivalents of expensive seats and T-shirts (abadás), plus the massive sound system trucks cost a small fortune to rent and set up.

President Lula, who came to Salvador before leaving to visit victims of a landslide in São Sebastião, São Paulo, has promised to reinstate the Bolsa Família, a subsidy for poor families, and the Minha Casa, Minha Vida housing scheme. These public programmes especially benefit the Afro-Bahian majority, most of whom are poor.

In Porto da Barra, renters of furnished apartments were forced out during carnival week to make way for people paying exorbitant daily rates in euros or dollars. This short-term, seasonal orientation of the neighbourhood’s landlord class meant that gentrification had stalled until recently, but now luxury apartment condos, with names like ‘Porto Privilege’ or ‘Barra Life’, are sprouting up everywhere.

The finance-driven, speculative model of urban development, backed by large insurance and construction firms, goes hand in hand with tourism, which includes the sexual exploitation of minors and young adults. ‘Tour guides’, an untold number of them unlicensed, charge (older, usually white) men from out of town a commission of 15 per cent for the sexual services of (younger, mostly darker-skinned) local women and men. Plenty of quid pro quo also takes place, via Tinder and Grindr, without the intermediary.

Rather than tourism, which doesn’t alleviate but appears to exacerbate existing inequalities, Bahia needs a robust programme of public works and reindustrialisation. When the Ford plant in Camaçari closed in 2021, it led to the loss (directly and indirectly) of 72,000 jobs. Lula is negotiating its reopening.

The president has said he would like Dilma Rouseff to be the next head of the BRICS New Development Bank. Her former chief of staff and education minister, Aloízio Mercadante, who helped form the PT in 1980, is now in charge of Brazil’s National Bank of Social and Economic Development. He has indicated that reindustrialisation will be part of a long-term planning strategy that emphasises value-added manufacturing exports, in addition to agriculture and mining, which will need to comply with environmental regulations and human rights.

Along with climate change, industrial strategy will also need to address regional inequalities, while state and municipal authorities will need to consider the problems and contradictions of urban development based on tourism, services, real estate speculation and the labour of informal workers. Mercadante has pledged a massive programme of federal loans and credits for the self-employed, which cannot arrive soon enough. ‘Now that carnival is gone, so is the investment,’ an informal parking attendant told me, ‘so it’s hunger that remains.’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/

Northern Ireland Protocol: why the changes?

Issued on: 27/02/2023 

London (AFP) – Britain and the EU struck a deal Monday to re-fashion a post-Brexit trade agreement with Northern Ireland that has become a significant political problem.

The original "Northern Ireland Protocol" was crafted so as to not have physical border checks between the province, which is part of the United Kingdom, and neighbouring Ireland, which remains in the European Union.

The border is a delicate issue that was part of a 1998 peace deal to end decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland.

However, the trade deal reached in 2020 ultimately led to political troubles in Northern Ireland and threats from London to unilaterally overhaul it.

Here are some of the key issues on the protocol:

Why no checks?

The UK and EU agreed that despite Brexit, a vital plank of the Good Friday Agreement had to be preserved -- the elimination of physical border infrastructure on the island of Ireland.

But checks had to happen somewhere -- so the UK agreed a de facto trade border in the Irish Sea to ensure goods coming from England, Scotland and Wales did not enter the EU free market unchecked via Northern Ireland.

That infuriated unionists, fearing a weakening of their ties to the rest of Britain, and led to certain foods being unavailable in the province.

What's in the protocol?

To keep the border open, Northern Ireland effectively remained in the EU's single market for goods.

That meant it had to stay in line with certain EU rules on tax and product standards, unlike the rest of the UK.

Supporters have said that gives Northern Ireland the best of both worlds, with access also to the UK's single market.

But the UK accused Brussels of applying the protocol too zealously and said the deal should be renegotiated.

What have the EU and UK agreed?

Relations between London and Brussels have improved drastically in recent months with the UK government putting on ice legislation to drastically overhaul the protocol unilaterally.

The new agreement will create "green lanes" for goods destined for Northern Ireland, and "red lanes" for goods at risk of moving on to the EU via Ireland.

Goods, including food and parcels sent to households, can travel through the green lane "without red tape or unnecessary checks", said the UK government.

"This means if food is available on supermarket shelves in Great Britain, then it will be available on supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland," said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

"We have removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea," he added.

Paving the way for such a scheme, London agreed in January to share UK data with Brussels on the flow of goods.

Sunak also announced a new settlement on medicines, so any drugs approved for use by the UK regulator will automatically be available in Northern Ireland.

- Will power-sharing resume?

Sunak faces a tough sell in getting unionists to agree to the deal and reform the executive, with DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson warning there were still "key issues of concern".

Sunak announced that the new agreement would provide an "emergency brake" that, if agreed by both sides of the power-sharing executive, would give London a veto over the application of new laws in Northern Ireland.

But Donaldson highlighted the continuing role, under the new deal, of the EU's European Court of Justice (ECJ) in policing any trade disputes involving Northern Ireland.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the ECJ will still have the "final say on EU law and single market issues" under the new deal, branded the Windsor Framework.

Sunak promised a UK parliamentary vote in due course on the new deal, with Brexit hardliners in his Conservative party threatening a revolt over the ECJ's role.

What about the US?

The United States has been watching closely. It helped broker the Good Friday Agreement and is one of its guarantors.

The administration of Irish-American President Joe Biden had warned that London could forget about a post-Brexit trade deal with the US if its actions in Northern Ireland threatened the still-fragile peace.

© 2023 AFP

From Abya Yala to Kurdistan: ¡the peoples organize the revolution!

Internationalist Felipe Mattos Johnson, from Brazil, wrote about the Long March for the Freedom of Abdullah Öcalan.

ANF
NEWS DESK
Tuesday, 28 Feb 2023

Internationalist Felipe Mattos Johnson, from Brazil, wrote about the Long March for the Freedom of Abdullah Öcalan.

The title of these few words that follow was one of the slogans chanted by the internationalists at the March for the Freedom of Abdullah Öcalan held between February 5 and 10, 2023. Coming from different territories occupied by colonial states - Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico - the Abya Yala delegations opened their hands to each other, like the jopói of the Guarani peoples, the Teko Joja (way of being based on reciprocity) of the Kaiowá, the Ayni for the Aymara. Open hands to raise the flag of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), of the Confederation of the Peoples of Kurdistan (KCK) and for the freedom of Rêber Apo. At the same time, through dialogical and dialectical links, open hands to sow wiphala sprouts, from the Ayllus and the Tekoha, from the Lof of the Wallmapu to Cauca, from the Tajimat Awajún in the Amazon jungle, where, from the small, the peoples liberate territories and lives from capitalist exploitation and extractivism in Abya Yala.

The six days of the long march were also a mobilization against extractivism. In a certain way, the Revolution in Kurdistan is a beacon to definitively overthrow capitalist modernity, as Şehîd Legêrin taught us, and to fight for the freedom of Rêber Apo, which makes it possible to keep the flame burning. This meeting of rebellions and resistance to life made it possible to reaffirm the convergences and common senses of our walk. Literally, as in the march, where we remembered the Şehîd Victor Jara: "Walking, walking/I'm looking for freedom/I hope to find paths/To keep on walking". One of the key points, therefore, was the understanding of the added ties in the multicolored loom that crosses the internationalists from the south, from the peripheries, geographies and calendars that resist and tear fissures in the framework of the war - be it the third or the fourth world war -, making it possible for some heads of the capitalist hydra to fall. We speak of the Aymara and Quechua resistances in the Andes, the Guarani and Kaiowá territorial recuperations and their martyrs, the Mapuche national liberation, the peasant struggles, the Zapatista struggles and autonomous territories in Chiapas and our political prisoners as a mirror of the rebellions in Kurdistan.

Moreover, the union of anti-colonial struggles - side by side with comrades from Africa, especially internationalists from Kenya, the place where Öcalan was arrested for the international plot in 1999 - shows that solidarity among peoples is, beyond possible, necessary to coordinate insurgencies and fight against forgetfulness. And to speak of forgetting is to speak of memory. This last part is inseparable from the Kurdish revolution, materialized in each image of the Şehîd men and women who inhabit the walls, hearts and lands where today's new spaces-times are being built and rebuilt. From the conference in Geneva, where the march began, to the city of Freiburg, where it ended, after about 300 kilometers were traveled, not only were their names intoned, the insignia they defended with their lives were also commemorated by immigrants and fellow diasporans in different streets, stores and cities, where Cerxa Şoreşê was heard as a hymn of all peoples.

Particularly, in this edition, the long march was not only in defense of the revolution and for the freedom of Öcalan, but also for the memory of the martyrs fallen in the earthquake that shook the north and west of Kurdistan on February 6, the same day the march began. In each minute of silence that inaugurated the daily activities and conferences, we also remembered with tributes to the more than 41 thousand victims that have been counted up to this moment, a number of lifeless people that has increased every day.

From the first komel to the last, mourning Kurdish families in the diaspora followed the events through various media and felt the catastrophe in each of their stories, many of which told of dead or missing relatives and friends. On the last day, more than a thousand people circulated in the Freiburg komel to pay tribute to the victims and collectively experience the mourning process. For this reason, there was no large demonstration in Strasburg, France. Our dances also made room for grief and grief also turned into revolt. In the midst of the catastrophe, the fascist Turkish state tries to advance its colonial project of extermination in alliance with the inter-imperialist forces. Not even the earthquake could stop this nefarious goal. Once again, only the people help the people, stone by stone removed from the rubble by the local population. In the Kurdish revolutionary autonomous municipalities, it was the solidarity groups of different villages and the women's communes - with the strength of Jineologî that recovered the villages throughout the war and the liberation struggles of Rojava - that mobilized to gather food, water, support the families and rebuild the cities. Meanwhile, in the midst of the electoral process in Turkey, Erdogan and his dictatorship are trying to block humanitarian access to the region, intensify threats of invasion against Rojava and continue their role as part of NATO and top-down conflicts for the control of vital forces and areas of influence for the purpose of land grabbing for capitalist accumulation.

Despite this condition, day after day, Kurdish families welcome us into their homes with great enthusiasm, hospitality and affection, sharing black tea, bread, yogurt and honey. This is how a comrade from Mexico expressed it in his sensitive contributions to the long march: "To sustain these cultural practices outside their territory is a characteristic that identifies them as part of a collective history". In this same history, we emphasize, we also take part as internationalists: we learned their welcome, with inexhaustible hope and unwavering confidence in the revolution, whose real transformations from the basis of the application of the paradigm of democratic confederalism are felt around different oceans. Not even the prohibition of the exhibition of the movement's flags or exclaiming the very name of the PKK in the streets of Freiburg were enough to prevent the twinning of the struggles as far as Abya Yala, making it possible to recognize ourselves as part of the same struggle, of a shared history by the fact of unmasking the gods and kings, by the fact of not succumbing to the plundering empires and insisting on continuing to live.

Our corn in the lowlands and the colorful potatoes in the Andes are the first wheat to sprout in Rojava after its liberation. The olives in their fields, the land of the mountains, are the budding of a sacred cedar in Guarani lands. After the tremor of mother earth in this earthquake, the next tremor will be the sound of the colonial world sinking, under the slogan of Jin, Jîyan, Azadî and the immovable roots of mutual support. After the long internationalist march, we return to our territories with the strength of a people that, although in mourning, does not give up and does not surrender, and invites us to embrace other possible worlds with the red, yellow and green flag with its guiding star.

 Berxwedan Jyiane: Resistance is life.

KURDISTAN 

Besê Erzincan: Our people can overcome any disaster by their self-organization

Besê Erzincan (KJK) says that the state has never been so cruel to the people of Turkey as it is today. Helping each other during this difficult time is the only possible approach from an ethical and humanitarian point of view.

ANF
BEHDINAN
Saturday, 25 Feb 2023

Besê Erzincan, coordinating member of the Kurdistan Women's Community (KJK), spoke in an ANF interview about the earthquake disaster in Kurdistan, Turkey and Syria.

How do you rate the earthquake catastrophe in Kurdistan and the picture that emerged afterwards?

Many cities in Turkey and north-eastern Syria were affected by this earthquake, including Pazarcık, Elbistan, Maraş, Malatya, Adıyaman, Antakya, Amed, Sehba, Aleppo, Idlib and Latakia. According to unofficial data, there are hundreds of thousands dead and wounded. The destruction, loss of life and migration following this earthquake, dubbed the Catastrophe of the Century, deeply affects all of humanity, our people, our friends and all of us. On this basis, we express our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this earthquake disaster and wish the injured a speedy recovery.

Reality of state and government exposed

This terrible earthquake has rexposed the reality of the state and government of Turkey in a very clear way. The founding principle of the Republic of Turkey is based on the policy of Turkicization and Sunniization of all peoples and faiths, especially Armenians and Kurds. Today, under the guise of political Islam, this fascist, monistic, nationalistic, religious and sexist state mentality has dogmatized and hardened even further and reached its climax with the AKP government as a special war government. The approach taken under the leadership of the fascist Erdoğan to Turkify Anatolia and Mesopotamia and expand the old Ottoman, expansionist policies in these regions is well known.

Since the AKP-MHP government has made a name for itself in this context as being hostile to people, women and religion and sees this as a principle of existence, it considers it its right to carry out all sorts of ugly practices in order to remain in power. It will not leave its policies of genocide, denial and extermination, no matter how severe the societal catastrophes. With great dishonesty and hypocrisy, state officials are now declaring that the earthquake catastrophe is destiny. However, it is not destiny. It is not destiny that leads people to death. It's not the earthquake. It is the government's anti-social, anti-grassroots policies, negligence, theft and corruption. The AKP-MHP government with its fascist nationalism is dividing and fragmenting society and turning people against each other. At the same time, it demands that society, shaped with extreme nationalism, turn a blind eye to the genocidal policy it is pursuing against the Kurds. It seeks to perpetuate its power by trying to profit from hostility toward the Kurdish people.

This inhuman government has enriched itself with its opportunistic, profit-oriented policy. It has propagated a fascist-nationalist discourse to intensify the exploitation of society. Through its profit-oriented and war-based economy, it has enriched a handful of male-dominated monopolists and impoverished society.

The government deliberately did not intervene in Kurdistan

The AKP-MHP government deliberately did not intervene after the earthquake in North Kurdistan. Although the first hours and days after an earthquake are vital, nothing serious has been done and government agencies have not been mobilized to the region in any way. Because the population in the earthquake region is predominantly Kurdish and Arab Alevis. Our people were clearly and intentionally left under the rubble.

It is well known that the region lies on the earthquake line. Earthquakes are extreme natural disasters. The level of technology that humanity has reached, however, is capable of bringing the death toll to zero. In countries like Japan, for example, earthquakes are stronger than in North Kurdistan. Despite this, the number of injured and dead remains extremely low. The fascist AKP-MHP government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, both with its settlement policy, urban planning and receivership regime before the earthquake and its grossly inadequate aid policy after the earthquake.

How do you rate the behavior of the AKP/MHP government after the earthquake?

The fascist government is not only responsible for the deaths and massacres that followed the earthquake. At the same time, it kidnapped orphans and handed them over to sects and state institutions and prevented and stole incoming aid. People who set off to help the earthquake victims are met with distrust and hatred. They are mistreated and attempts are made to dissuade them. In Pazarcık, Maraş, Adıyaman, Hatay, the Alevi Kurdish and Arab population should leave their places of residence and emigrate. The state not only fails to provide assistance; it exacerbates the situation. This policy is carried out openly and secretly and deeply hurts society.

In Turkey, never before has the state been so hostile towards society as a whole, and especially towards our people, as under the AKP government. The fascist Erdoğan government tried to take advantage of this situation in an ugliest, despicable, cruel and ruthless way at a time when the population was suffering the greatest pain. This is the end of humanity. The fact that the AKP thinks only of its own supporters, even in the worst of situations, when people are starving and freezing, shows how profoundly immoral it is.

The Erdoğan government has taken the most atrocious measures against society since it came to power. For example, before this earthquake, an amnesty for the construction of buildings was issued several times. Thousands of contractors went unpunished despite committing every irregularity. Turkey has developed into a paradise of lies, fraud, the mafia, usury, lawlessness, and arbitrariness. Already, the illegal and unjust appointment of colonial administrators for the towns and communities in North Kurdistan has shown the audacity and greed of this fascist power. It has denied society a will of its own and has relied on the power of the state to do so.

No help can be expected from the state

Therefore, to expect the bloodiest government in the history of Turkey to help the peoples, the Kurds, the Arabs, the Alevis and the women after the earthquake is really naive. We should not forget that what a government has done in the past is the basic indicator of what it will do now and in the future.

The AKP government, with its fascist, colonialist policies, has plunged Turkey into great destruction and tragedy in every respect. Although the possibility of an earthquake was noted by scientists in advance, no action was taken. On the one hand, the Erdoğan government did not take any measures and made no preparations. On the other hand, it did not let the momentum and initiative of society, local initiatives, civil society organizations and opposition parties come to the rescue and confiscated the collected aid, making the massacre even worse. Therefore, Erdoğan, Bahçeli, Soylu and other ministers at the head of the fascist government should resign immediately. However, they continue to make the most shameless statements as if nothing had happened, and on top of that, make the most serious allegations against the opposition. With this earthquake and its results, the ugly and cruel face of the AKP government was revealed. The people of Turkey, the women, are going to give the necessary answer to this fascist government in the elections. The AKP will be buried under the rubble.

PKK responds to statements by Swedish officials

The PKK Foreign Relations Committee responded to the statements by Swedish Oscar Stemsörn who linked the PKK with criminal circles.

ANF
NEWS DESK
Sunday, 26 Feb 2023, 08:51

The PKK Foreign Relations Committee said in a press release that “in recent days, a number of Swedish officials have been trying to criminalize the Kurdistan Freedom Movement by making unwarranted, baseless and untrue accusations against our party and movement.”

The statement added: “We would like to state from the outset that the PKK is a political party that works for the liberation of Kurdistan and the freedom of the Kurdish people and has paid a great price for this. Our party is a movement committed to human, moral, conscientious and democratic values. We have been doing politics based on these values for 45 years since the party´s foundation in 1978. Consequently, our party has no relations with criminal individuals and circles and is against such circles.

Despite the fact that this is the truth, the Turkish state and its collaborators do not hesitate to resort to all kinds of lies, deceit and slander in order to criminalize our party. Ambassador Oscar Stenström, the head of the delegation negotiating with Turkey on behalf of Sweden, has recently joined the bandwagon of these baseless accusations. In an interview with a Swedish radio channel, Mr. Stenström said that our party was financed by a number of criminals in Sweden who are involved in crimes such as extortion, weapons and drugs, and mentioned the name Kurdish Fox."

The statement continued: “Mr. Stenström's statement is far from the truth. There is no such thing. This is an entirely fabricated accusation to please Mr. Stenström´s Turkish interlocutors. The statement also contains inconsistencies within itself. We do not know who the "Kurdish Fox" is and we have no relationship with him. In Turkey, even a word in favor of the PKK is a criminal offense and punishable by imprisonment. There are many people who have come from Turkey and sought asylum in Sweden because they were accused of saying something in favor of the PKK or giving food to a PKK member. Mr. Stenström claims that the "Kurdish Fox" is wanted in Sweden for crimes he committed and that he helped the PKK in Sweden, but that he escaped to Turkey and is at large there. Any way one looks at it, this is a very inconsistent statement.”

The PKK underlined that “such statements are not limited to Mr. Stenström alone. Recently, in the framework of the NATO membership negotiations, in order to please the Turkish government and Erdogan, a number of government officials, such as Foreign Minister Tobias Billström, have been making similar statements. We would like to reject these accusations outright. The Swedish government can improve its relations with Turkey, nobody has anything against that. But we say: Don't negotiate and bargain over us, over the Kurds, don't support Erdogan who has blood on his hands and is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in our country.

The Kurdish people and the Swedish people have a long-standing and constantly growing friendship. We find this friendship valuable, attach great importance to it and want it to develop further. The conscientious Swedish people and public know and see for what purpose these baseless statements and accusations are made. No matter what anyone says, we will continue to protect humanitarian, moral, conscientious and democratic values, walk on the right path, liberate our country from occupation and free our people.”

Rojava academics visit universities in Germany

Dijle Haidar, one of the academics from Rojava that has visited some universities in Germany, said that they wanted to launch sister universities and joint projects.

ANF
BERLIN
Monday, 27 Feb 2023

An academic delegation representing the Rojava and Kobanê universities in North-East Syria came to Germany following the invitation of EmdenLeer University and held meetings at the universities of EmdenLeer, Alice Salomon and Bremen.

Speaking to ANF, Dijle Haidar, a lecturer in the Department of Jineology at Kobanê University, said that they first held a meeting at Alice Salamon University in Berlin: “There were two important issues in this meeting. In general, we focused on the promotion of Jineology (Woman’s Science) and its function in North-East Syria. The second issue concerned the promotion of universities in North-East Syria. In the upcoming period, we want to be a sister university to this university. Some studies carried out by Rojava and Kobanê universities were discussed and evaluated. Alice Salamon University gave a favourable opinion of our proposals. We were asked about our universities, their capacities and curricula. It was also focused on what kind of relationship could be established between us and them.”

The second meeting of the delegation took place at the University of Bremen, said Haidar, and noted that some joint seminars had already been held by the students of Bremen and Rojava universities. Haidar revealed that they focused on both Jineology and North-East Syrian universities, and the Rojava delegation spoke about the difficulties they faced. According to Haidar, Alice Salamon University also gave a favourable opinion about their visit, and they believed that official relations would be established in the future. The Rojava delegation also held a seminar at a women's institution which built the Hevrîn Xelef Garden and has relations with the Jinwar village.

FREQUENT VISITS AND PRACTICAL SUPPORT

Haidar stressed that Jineology introduced a new field of discussion in the European academic environment. She said that they renewed the cooperation between universities and that they wanted to cooperate with other universities as well. “There is close cooperation in the field of Jineology studies between Emden University in Germany and the University of Rojava. The goal of our visit is to renew this cooperation agreement. Joint seminars are held by the students of the two universities. As long as we are here, we want to visit as many universities as possible. We want to achieve some practical results. We will renew our sister university agreement with the University of Emden. We want to do the same with other universities as well. This is our goal.”

 Renewing America

To Compete With China, the United States Needs to Fix Immigration

Streamlining the immigration process for Indian talent will enable the United States both to increase its own domestic capacity and more effectively counter China.

Indian migrant workers wait inside a railway station to board trains to their home states 

Danish Ismail/ Reuters

Blog Post by Manjari Chatterjee Miller

February 27, 2023 

In the last decade, India has gone from a country with which the United States had an uneasy, prickly relationship, to one of being its most important strategic and economic partners. A significant reason for this change is their shared perception of China as an enormous threat and competitor. Consequently, the relationship has focused much attention on countering that threat through cooperation via the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the “Quad”) on issues such as health and disaster preparedness, mutual defense agreements, and emerging technologies. Yet one of the most important tools available to the United States to counter China through this partnership is in jeopardy: U.S. immigration policy vis-à-vis Indian citizens.

The history of Indian immigration to the United States dates back to the nineteenth century. Up until World War II, Indian immigrants were mostly low-skilled migrant workers. This pattern changed by the mid-twentieth century, when Indians flocked to the United States to study or work white-collar jobs. In India, this phenomenon was often dubbed the “brain drain,” as India’s best and brightest left to settle in the United States. Today, Indians constitute the second-largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexicans, and the highest-earning ethnic group in the country. But decades of legal and skilled Indian immigration have run into huge structural and bureaucratic problems, jeopardizing U.S. needs in higher education and research, particularly in the science and technology sectors.

Since 1965, when Congress abolished national-origin quotas that limited immigration to primarily European nations, Indians have immigrated to the United States through three main pathways. The first is through temporary work visas such as H-1Bs, which are employer-sponsored and issued to highly skilled workers. Currently, Indian nationals receive the majority of those visas. The second is through temporary student visas that bring Indian students to study at U.S. universities for undergraduate or graduate degrees. In 2021-22, for example, students from India made up the second-largest coterie (199,182) of international students, with the largest coterie (290,086) coming from China. The third is through converting those temporary visas into green cards, allowing their recipients to stay in the country and possibly pursue a path to U.S. citizenship.

All three routes of legal Indian immigration have important implications for the United States’ strategic competition with China. For years, the United States has relied on skilled immigrants to maintain a competitive advantage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This reliance has become more acute since the mid-2000s, as China has been consistently graduating more STEM PhDs than the United States. Even more worrying, a recent report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy found that since 2010 the United States has been losing its competitive edge in basic science research to China. This loss of competitiveness is partly due to immigration issues. The United States, which traditionally “benefited from a steady stream of talented young scientists” emigrating to the country, is seeing this supply dry up thanks to uncertainty about visas for foreign students and visiting scholars. Information technology (IT) workers from India have also been the backbone of Silicon Valley, with many companies sponsoring those workers for H-1B visas and green cards. Finally, international students at U.S. universities not only boost science research (they make up 74 percent of electrical engineering students and 72 percent of computer and information science students), they also bring in billions of dollars in tuition, helping to defray costs for American students. Chinese students are still the largest group of international students in the United States, but their numbers have drastically declined since the pandemic as the United States issues fewer visas due to worries about espionage and Chinese government influence. Universities have therefore been hoping for Indian students, the second-largest contingent of international students, to make up the shortfall.

The issue is that the legal pathways of immigration for Indians have run into a myriad of severe problems. To begin with, the wait times to get an interview for a visa, whether for studies or work, are absurdly long. Applicants at the U.S. Consulate General in Mumbai, for example, can wait up to 351 calendar days for an H-1B visa interview.  In Chennai, students can wait almost a month for a visa interview. And of course, since these wait times are just for interviews, they include neither the subsequent processing time for the visa to be issued, nor a guarantee that it will, in fact, be issued.

The H-1B visa program itself has also become severely restricted. The numerical limit is so low—only 85,000 new H-1B petitions for employers per year, or 0.05 percent of the U.S. labor force—that last April, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected 80 percent of applicants. The green card system is also massively backed up. Currently, the Cato Institute estimates that 1.4 million employment-based cases for permanent residency are winding their way through the system. This backlog is ten times the actual number of green cards issued, meaning that two hundred thousand skilled Indian immigrants are likely to die before they can receive a green card—and ninety thousand children, mostly Indian, will “age out” of the system. That is, they will turn twenty-one and become ineligible to receive a green card through their parent, making them unauthorized immigrants if they continue to reside in the United States.

The recent layoffs that have roiled the tech industry have compounded all of these issues. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon have laid off nearly twenty thousand IT workers since November 2022. About 40 percent of those skilled workers are Indians who now have to scramble to find another position in the allotted timeframe the temporary work visa gives them. Otherwise, they will have to leave the country or stay on illegally.

As a result of these issues, many skilled Indian workers are now looking to other countries as more welcoming hubs. Canada, for example, has been attracting Indian students in droves, issuing many more visas than the United States and offering a more realistic pathway to permanent residence and citizenship. At the same time, illegal Indian immigration to the United States is increasing. Once insignificant, last year illegal Indian immigration increased by 109 percent.

Immigration law reforms have languished in Congress for decades with virtually no bipartisan avenues for progress. But there is bipartisan consensus on both maintaining India as a crucial strategic partner for the United States, and regarding China as a strategic competitor. Addressing the issues in immigration policy that are affecting the United States’ ability to attract and retain skilled Indian immigrants and maintain a competitive edge over China should be a no-brainer.