How women are changing the face of Canada’s union leadership

About 150 nursing union members show support for long-term care workers at the Orchard Villa Long-Term Care in Pickering, Ont., in June 2020. The facility was hit hard by COVID-19 infections. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

August 26, 2020 


As Labour Day approaches, close your eyes and picture the typical union member in Canada. If you conjured an image of a man wearing a hard hat or working in a factory, you missed the mark.

The typical union member in Canada is actually a woman who works in the public sector. She may be a teacher, a nurse, an office clerk at city hall or a mail carrier. All of these jobs are more likely to be unionized than those in the majority-male manufacturing, warehousing or construction sectors. In fact, Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey data reveals that, as of 2019, women made up 53.1 per cent of union members. That’s up from 45.8 per cent in 1998 and 29 per cent in 1978.

There’s no question that women benefit from unionization. Being unionized boosts women’s wages more than it does men’s, when both are compared to their non-union counterparts.

Unionized women also experience a much smaller gender pay gap when compared to unionized men. In other words, unions help women overcome the effects of gender discrimination in the workplace. This “union advantage” is even greater for women who are affected by other forms of systemic discrimination.

Despite becoming numerically dominant within unions, women are still under-represented in positions of union leadership. The number of women leading national unions in Canada today can be counted on one hand. And women currently lead only three of the country’s provincial and territorial federations of labour.
Glass ceiling persists

The under-representation of women in positions of leadership is not unique to the labour movement. We see similar imbalances in corporate and political spheres.

Chrystia Freeland recently broke the glass ceiling by becoming the first woman to hold the position of finance minister in Canadian history. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Although unions are doing better than Canada’s corporate sector, organized labour still has a long way to go when it comes to fully shattering the glass ceiling for women.

The glass ceiling is an often-used metaphor that refers to an invisible barrier that prevents women and other equity-seeking groups, regardless of their skills or qualifications, from advancing into leadership positions within organizations. While in theory, nothing prevents a woman from being elected to a top leadership position, the glass ceiling represents the subtle ways that organizations devalue and doubt women’s leadership skills based on gender stereotypes.

Despite these barriers, women have periodically risen to top leadership positions within individual public sector unions or labour federations over the years. But securing positions of leadership within unions has been a long, hard-fought struggle for women workers.

And even while being severely under-represented in positions of leadership, union women have undeniably had an impact. Their activism paved the way for the labour movement to campaign for and secure pay equity, employer-paid daycare, paid maternity leave and rules banning gender-based discrimination in the workplace.

Unions could do much more to fight gender discrimination by having more women in senior leadership positions.
Public sector unions are trail-blazers

Not surprisingly, public sector unions, where women have always been most concentrated, were the first to see women elected to significant leadership roles.
Grace Hartman, right, then the president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, speaks at a news conference in July 1983. CP PHOTO/Chuck Stoody

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) elected Grace Hartman as its national president in 1975. She was the first woman to lead a national union in North America. In 1986, CUPE’s Shirley Carr was the first woman elected to the presidency of the Canadian Labour Congress, Canada’s largest labour umbrella organization.

Public sector unions continue to be trail-blazers. In November 2014, Irene Lazinger of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation was the first woman elected to the presidency of the B.C. Federation of Labour.

In May 2019, Jan Simpson became the first Black woman to lead a national union in Canada when she was elected president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. And in November 2019, Patty Coates of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation became the first woman to lead the Ontario Federation of Labour.
Private sector unions lag

In contrast, a woman has yet to be elected to the presidency of any major private sector union in Canada. However, there are signs that a long overdue breakthrough may be in the works.

Some private sector unions have redesigned their leadership structures to help women break the glass ceiling within their own ranks. In 2013, Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, adopted an executive structure that guarantees the number of women on the union’s executive board be at least equal the proportion of women in the union overall.

In 2017, the Canadian section of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union achieved equal representation of women and men on its national executive board for the first time after delegates to the union’s convention adopted a resolution mandating the expansion of women’s representation.
Two women vying for top union job

Later this year, two women — Bea Bruske of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and Linda Silas of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions — are expected to compete for the presidency of the Canadian Labour Congress. It will be the first election in the history of the congress where both major contenders are women

Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, talks with reporters in St. Andrews, N.B., in July 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Why does gender representation matter now, more than ever?

So many of the issues we now face because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting disruptions in work, home and school are borne by women. Racialized and poor women are even more at risk of COVID-19 exposure because of the service and care work they do and the lack of choices they have to engage in social distancing.

More than ever, we need a gendered and equity lens in leadership to understand how the pandemic is being experienced differently, and how union responses can protect those who are most vulnerable.

Unions must continue to enhance efforts to recruit and sustain a critical mass of women, particularly visible minority and LBGTQ women, into leadership roles in the years to come. These efforts cannot be mere tokenism. Rather, they must reflect a commitment to ensuring that the changing face of Canada’s unionized workers is reflected in the leadership of the union movement.

Authors
  

Stephanie Ross

Associate Professor and Director, School of Labour Studies, McMaster University

Larry Savage
Professor, Labour Studies, Brock University

Tony Abbott: why Boris Johnson would want Australia’s controversial ex-PM as a trade envoy

September 3, 2020 

Tony Abbott: the future face of UK trade. EPA/Joel Carrett

The rumour that Tony Abbott, the controversial former prime minister of Australia, is being lined up as a trade envoy for the UK was a summer news story few saw coming.

Appearing before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Abbott confirmed that he has had some discussions with members of the British government. However, while he said he is “more than happy to help”, he insisted that nothing is official “as yet”.

Abbott is notorious in Australia for his “ocker” manner and outlook. He is regularly photographed in a pair of “budgie smugglers” with surfboard under arm at his beloved Queenscliff beach in Manly, Sydney.

He is on record with statements concerning indigenous Australians, the environment and the role of women in society that would make the most hardened miner in a local pub wince at the insensitivity. Not many public figures embraced the label “dinosaur”, but even his supporters recognise that Abbott is an unreconstructed example of Australian chauvinist manhood.

What on Earth, then, could drive the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and his advisers to reach out to someone whose toxicity matches Donald Trump in many quarters?

Opinions vary. Some insist that with the UK in dire need of expertise in its trade negotiations, it makes perfect sense to employ someone highly familiar with the Asia-Pacific economic terrain. The only problem with this hypothesis is that even according to his close confidants Abbott had very little to do with trade during his term of office, or indeed at any time before or after.

Others smell something more suspicious. Abbott is of course an international figure who has moved in influential circles and has strong connections, not least with the conservative establishment in the US. He moves in high places among the policy wonks, thinktanks and institutes with lavish funds at their disposal to entertain friends and allies. Could this appointment reflect the fact that Abbott is a useful ally in these circles?
Flying the flag

Surely there’s a more obvious explanation. This is that Abbott stands symbolically for a set of values and a political orientation which the Johnson government wishes to endorse and align itself with.

In terms of values, Abbott represents a US style of conservatism based on a belief in “family values”, patriotism and the flag. But within that broad appellation we can also identify a distinctively neoconservative stance in terms of the assertion of “western” values and the superiority of the European inheritance, including but not limited to the value of colonialism and imperialism, and what international relations scholars term “offensive realism”. This is the view that, in a world of competing ideologies, military conflicts are inevitable.

In short, Abbott’s world view is not at all dissimilar to that of Steve Bannon, the controversial architect of the first phase of Trump’s administration. Like Bannon, Abbott is an unapologetic culture warrior. He believes that western societies have lost their way and lost confidence in themselves. He thinks the west needs to refind its mojo and reassert the superiority of its values and way of life, particularly in relation to the Islamic world and China.

Johnson is looking to establish ‘Global Britain’ after Brexit. PA

All this implies a kind of permanent war against the forces of the left – such as antifa, the left-liberal establishment of universities and the media and the apologists for identity politics, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. It also means committing to permanent conflict externally, on the hostile terrain that is global politics. It is a hawkish, unfashionable view of the world with metropolitan elites, but one virulently supported in Australia by its leading newspaper, the Australian, and by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News.
Culture war

The question remains then, what possible use are all these associations to Johnson? He has strived to confect an image of harmless amiability with a “big tent” politics. He has sought to be a lot of different things to a lot of different groups in order to secure the hallowed middle ground of British electoral politics.

The answer is surely that “culture war” of a kind articulated quite crudely by Abbott and Trump but also in Europe by the likes of France’s Marine Le Pen, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Italy’s Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orban has shown itself to be popular with voters who don’t normally vote for the right. The theme is a great way to draw in working class and precariously employed people who are looking for stronger “authority” figures to deal with what they perceive to be increasingly lawless societies surrendering themselves to immigrants and the multicultural left.

It also serves to insulate a regime from the vagaries of public policy outcomes, of which COVID-19 is the most recent and obvious example. The pandemic is a classic no-win scenario for most governments. Play too lax and one gets blamed for too many deaths. Play it too hard and one suffers the economic consequences of lockdown. A culture war, on the other hand, presents a win-win for conservative regimes across the world looking to maintain power.

Hiring Abbott will not inoculate the UK government against policy failure, as such. But it sends a strong signal to Tory MPs and the wider public that this government wants to be judged less on the flimflam of policy outcomes, over which it has uncertain control, and more on the defence of a certain outlook and a certain way of life that it hopes will chime with the electorate.

Author

Simon Tormey
Professor of Politics, University of Bristol

Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty Are Interconnected

I’m a guest in the Black Lives Matter movement, and making images is how I show my support.

By Josué Rivas, The Nation and Magnum Foundation
JUNE 29, 2020


Black Lives Matter demonstration in Portland, Oregon. June 12, 2020. (Josué Rivas)


The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on a visual chronicle of untold stories of the coronavirus crisis and the struggle for racial justice—read more from The Invisible Front Line.—The Editors

PORTLAND, ORE.—I haven’t seen this kind of energy since Standing Rock. In the weeks since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, my city has exploded with anger, empathy, and a level of organizing that is long overdue. With Black youth leading the fight, this movement is demanding justice for Floyd, justice for Breonna Taylor, justice for Ahmaud Arbery, justice for all African Americans whose lives have been cruelly cut short by the police and vigilantes.
Scenes from a Black Lives Matter demonstration on June 2. (Josué Rivas)


At first I joined these demonstrations just to show my support. As a photographer, I believe strongly that my work should give rather than take, and I didn’t want to be jumping in to document a movement without understanding what my role could be in it. There were plenty of Black photographers already documenting the protests across the country; how did I fit in as an Indigenous storyteller? So I showed up: I went to the marches and listened, talked to activists, and slowly started making images that I thought could be helpful for the movement.

A woman walks in the snow during a blizzard during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests on the Standing Rock Native American reservation, Cannon Ball, North Dakota, November, 2016. (Josué Rivas)

Usually, my work focuses on stories about Indigenous peoples. The seven months I documented the Standing Rock movement created the foundation for how I now approach any story: Intention is crucial. At Standing Rock, we had hundreds of photographers at some points, most of them parachuting in for a weekend and then heading out. The images they made were superficial, relying on stereotypes and clichés and staying on the surface of the movement. That experience cemented my belief that your intention as a photographer matters to the quality of the images you make: the amount of work you do to educate yourself on the issue you’re documenting, the time you spend making connections with the people you’re photographing, always shows itself in the images. And if you believe, as I do, that photographs don’t simply document our world but can also help bring new possibilities into being, that work is worth it.

Indigenous peoples for Black Lives Matter demonstration, June 5, 2020. Portland. (Josué Rivas)


Black Lives Matter demonstration, June 16. (Josué Rivas)


Images have power, but that power can be for good or for bad. I know the pain racist, stereotypical mascots cause for me, I know the shameful example those set for my son. So while I can’t fathom the particular pain that my Black relatives feel when, year after year, videos of Black people being murdered by police are repeated ad nauseam and lead to only piecemeal reforms, I know that if we’re going to create the change we need for all of our liberation, we’ll need images that serve the movement.

Left: A raised fist at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, June 2. Right: A United States Flag hangs and burns on the “Promised Land” statue in Chapman Square, Portland. The statue was commissioned by the Oregon Trail Coordinating Council to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail in 1993. The Promised Land depicts a “pioneer” family—father, mother, and son—at the end of their journey. The plaza in front of the statue is sandblasted with footprints reminiscent of pre-settlement days: jackrabbit, black bear, porcupine, grouse, coyote, elk, and moccasin prints. The father was holding the burning flag. June 3. (Josué Rivas)


When I began to document the demonstrations in Portland, I saw similarities between Black and Indigenous movements. I’m a guest in their movement. It’s not my story to tell; it’s my story to contribute to as best I can. In the first few days, I made sure to share copies of the photos with Black relatives in the demonstrations. I wasn’t on assignment; I wasn’t making the work for a publication or a brand; I was there to make images for the people. After a few days, some of the folks I had taken photos of agreed to let me enlarge several of the images to paste them in downtown Portland. I asked people on my Instagram stories if they knew of any large walls to paste on, and the response was overwhelming: I found multiple spaces to put up the photos. This is my way of showing solidarity with Black lives and bringing these images and the people in them beyond our screens and into our daily lives.

I pasted some of my images across the city to show support for the Black Lives Matter demonstrations (Josué Rivas)


The way this movement is represented will have a big impact on whether it succeeds. We need to take care with our image making; we need to build trust; we need to get consent whenever possible; we need to understand the goals the movement is fighting for. Ultimately, our sovereignty as Indigenous peoples is interwoven with Black liberation. When their image is honored, we are all honored.

Black Lives Matter demonstration. June 10, 2020. (Josué Rivas)


Josué RivasJosué Rivas (Mexica/Otomi) is a creative director, visual storyteller, and educator working at the intersection of art, journalism, and social justice.


The Nation TWITTERFounded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.


Magnum FoundationMagnum Foundation is a nonprofit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new audiences and ideas through the innovative use of images.

Alberta oil shipped through Panama Canal to Atlantic Canada to avert COVID-19 threat to energy supply

An oil tanker passes fishermen as it moves through a channel in Port Aransas, Texas, in May 2020. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

August 27, 2020 

On July 20, the tanker Cabo de Hornos delivered an estimated 450,000 barrels of crude oil to the Irving Oil refinery’s Canaport storage facilities in Saint John, N.B.

What made Cabo de Hornos’s delivery different was that it was the first time crude oil had arrived in Saint John by ship from Alberta. It came via the Trans Mountain pipeline to the Westbridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C., and then through the Panama Canal.

By the end of April next year, a second tanker will arrive at Canaport carrying 350,000 to one million barrels of Western Canadian crude oil. In this case, the oil will have come via pipeline from Alberta to a crude oil exporting terminal in Texas or Louisiana.

For most of the Saint John refinery’s 50 years of operation, it has relied on crude oil from sources outside Canada, including Saudi Arabia, the United States, Norway and Nigeria, to meet most of its demand. In 2019, about 80 per cent came from non-Canadian sources, with the remainder from offshore Newfoundland and Labrador by tanker and Western Canada by rail.

Any event — such as a COVID-19 outbreak in any of these oil-supplying countries — that disrupts the flow of crude oil to the refinery threatens the energy security of most people in Atlantic Canada.

Crude oil supply

Relying on non-Canadian suppliers has never been an issue for the refinery. Even during the low points of Canadian-Saudi relations in the summer of 2018 and periods of increased tension in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has been one of its principal suppliers. (Part of this may be attributable to the fact that about 60 per cent of the refinery’s output is shipped to New England and U.S.-Saudi relations could be affected if Saudi Arabia’s supplies to the Saint John refinery were disrupted.)

However, COVID-19 is a concern for those running the refinery. In April, Irving Oil applied to the Canadian Transportation Agency to use tankers from unspecified, non-Canadian suppliers for these two shipments, as per the requirements of the Coasting Trade Act. In each application it was made clear that the company’s overriding concern was the impact COVID-19 could have on about 80 per cent of its crude oil supply shipped from non-Canadian sources.

This is a legitimate concern.

Cargo ships navigate through Panama Canal waters in Gamboa, Panama, in June 2020. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

Globally, the health of ships’ crews has become an increasingly critical issue since the start of the pandemic. In many countries, fear of COVID-19 on ships has stopped shipboard crews from disembarking and returning home to their families, and new crews from boarding ships.

This is forcing shipboard crews to continue working well beyond the end of their contractual period of employment. Reports of mental anguish, self-harm and suicide have also been reported.

A COVID-19 outbreak in an oil-producing country or on board a tanker could disrupt the flow of crude oil to the Saint John refinery and, consequentially, disrupt the flow of its refined products to most of Atlantic Canada and New England.
Oil consumption in Atlantic Canada

Atlantic Canadians consume about 20 per cent more gasoline per capita than Canadians as a whole. With limited access to natural gas, about 31 per cent of the energy used for space heating in the region comes from heating oil (compared with 5.1 per cent nationally).

Irving Oil’s decision to find alternate ways to access Western Canadian crude oil from British Columbia via the Panama Canal or the U.S. Gulf Coast will undoubtedly increase the diversity of its supply. However, Irving’s concerns over COVID-19 and its international suppliers and shippers are equally applicable to Western Canada’s oilfields and any ships used to carry the crude oil.

To be fair, Irving has few other choices: crude-by-rail is a possibility, but there is limited capacity in its rail yard; TransCanada killed the Energy East project and even if it could be revived, it would take years to complete.

Read more: Regulations alone didn't sink the Energy East pipeline

While restructuring Atlantic Canada’s energy system to become less reliant on oil is the obvious answer, there are few short-term solutions. For example, although Churchill Falls could meet part of the region’s energy demand for electricity, heating and transportation, it will not be available until 2041, when the electricity sales contract between Newfoundland and Labrador and Québec comes to an end.

Without access to low-cost electric vehicles and easily accessible charging stations, gasoline will remain the principal fuel of choice for transportation in Atlantic Canada. On the other hand, there are alternatives for space heating, notably electricity and wood, each of which already meet about 30 per cent of the region’s residential demand for heating.

In the meantime, Atlantic Canadians can hope for an effective, widely accepted vaccine and prepare for periodic oil supply disruptions 

AUTHOR

Larry Hughes
Professor and Founding Fellow at the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance, Dalhousie University
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‘Trying to Get Free’
A conversation about the radical politics of looting with Vicky Osterweil.


A broken store window in Chicago, 2020. (Photo by Ashlee Rezin Garcia /Chicago Sun-Times via AP)


The looter, like most American figures, exists in a state of mythical distortion. When looters emerge from social movements, the press depicts them as opportunists and outsiders; when looters destroy property in response to police violence or the silent horrors of capitalism, they are deemed lawless aggressors. Talking heads and commentators cast looters as mindless and apolitical, as if looting were not a risky, calculated act. Vicky Osterweil’s In Defense of Looting corrects those misconceptions, reclaiming looters as conscious actors and heirs of a radical tradition stretching back to chattel slavery.

Expanded from a 2014 New Inquiry essay published during the Ferguson riots, the book robustly defends looting and compounds its definition. Osterweil’s looters are fugitive slaves and beleaguered workers, victims of police violence and armed black militias. Looting is for anyone trying to get free, in other words, and as Osterweil’s defense moves deftly through American history—from the colonial era, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and all the way to this year of insurrection and plague—liberation becomes material and tactile, always tied to bodies and contexts rather than philosophical ideals.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discuss how the book developed, the many thinkers and texts that helped Osterweil scale up her essay, and the legacy of Ferguson.—Stephen Kearse

STEPHEN KEARSE: The book feels more like a manifesto and a call to arms than your 2014 essay did. During the writing of the book, how did tone and form factor into how you were shaping your argument?

VICKY OSTERWEIL: I’m a writer who, through researching and thinking through things, can in a way discover the form and the mode that the writing will take. I have had to consider not only the incredible violence against predominantly Black communities by the police and the prison system, but also the climate crisis. We desperately need to be making radical changes to the way our society is organized. So I think that truth may play into the urgency or the “manifesto-y” nature of the book.

SK: One of the main goals of your book, one of many, is to show that looting is a conscious political choice, whether looters are radicals or reactionaries. Why is the looter such an important political figure to reclaim?

VO: They are conscious political actors. And I think they are important because the figure of the looter has emerged somewhat spontaneously through the last, well, we can say 50 years of struggle. I trace the looter back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, and I frame the slave revolts and the general strike of the enslaved as W.E.B. Du Bois does. There’s a Sylvia Wynter quote in the introduction, where she says, and I’m paraphrasing, “It’s necessary that we think through things with these classes of people that are rising up against and resisting the system as it exists.”

That’s what inspires this work: people moving to get free or, indeed, just moving politically in the street—they know what they’re doing. So rather than starting from a theory of what revolutions should look like, and then trying to fit movements into that, post facto, I think it’s very important that we look at the way that people are moving now and did in the past and take it seriously.

A big part of the book is my indebtedness to the rebels in Ferguson, who made this all visible and possible for me. These were thoughts that were already percolating around the UK riots in 2011, but the way in which the rebels in Ferguson combined a certain form of holding space, attacking the things that oppressed them, and of looting and then sharing the goods in order to flourish and to have fun as well, was the basis for all my understanding.

SK: When you wrote the essay, Ferguson was on the national stage and in the national discourse. As it has faded from the spotlight, how has your relationship to Ferguson changed?

VO: Well, there’s been some frustration as Ferguson has faded, and you know, it wasn’t just Ferguson. It was also Charlotte, North Carolina. and Minneapolis. There were a number of big, big moments of rebellion and one thing that has happened, I think since the election of Trump, there has been a big explosion of the electoral socialist left. The DSA [Democratic Socialists of America], which when I was in the process of being radicalized in 2010 was a tiny organization that was largely about endorsing Democratic candidates, bloomed into this massive organizing force. And we’ve also had the Bernie Sanders movements of 2016 and 2019.
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Some people in those movements, I have noticed, seem to want to erase the role of Ferguson. You hear them say, “Oh, you know, there isn’t really any rebellion on the left. There was Occupy and then Bernie Sanders.” They draw this line that cuts out not only Black Lives Matter, but also Standing Rock, both of which have been incredibly important. But there are still sectors of the left, people clustered around mostly cultural production, podcasts, and magazines, who are still insisting that race is the wrong thing to look at. And in this moment, a lot of those people have been silent. Because their analysis is not just racist; it’s incorrect.

SK: It’s also often not actionable for people looking at the streets and wanting to mobilize and seize the moment. A lot of these liberal modes don’t really provide any way forward other than voting.


VO: Yes, there have been a tremendous number of Wildcat strikes and a lot of labor action involved in this as well. But I think there are some people who fantasize that a movement has to directly call itself a labor movement to have any revolutionary validity. And I think that doesn’t square with the history of even the successful revolutions. Cedric Robinson, in Black Marxism, talks about the ways the most successful revolutions of the 20th century were largely peasant-led, anti-colonial uprisings, including in Russia. They weren’t industrial-proletariat movements.

There is still a certain kind of classical Marxism, as well as a kind of social democratic liberal electoralism, that imagines that the only route to power is through the shop floor. And in order to say that, and argue that, you have to erase the last decade of struggle, which has seen incredible movements, from Occupy to Black Lives Matter. There were also the prison strikes and riots of 2016, the largest prison movement in American history, as well as the Standing Rock indigenous blockades and the massive militant antifascist organizing. All of these forms of revolutionary struggle have reemerged in the last two months and been innovated on. It’s as Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor says in From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation: when the Black movement goes into motion, it upsets all of American politics. And I think we’re really seeing that.

SK: I’m interested in the composition and drafting of the book and how you scaled up from the essay to the book, because Ferguson was the catalyst for the essay, but in the book, you write of Ferguson only toward the end. That sequencing really escalates the stakes of Ferguson.

VO: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction is incredibly important for talking about this: The way that he cracks open that timeline, the way that he shows that there was a revolutionary moment that has largely been ignored and removed from history and how we’re really living in its shadow, really changed me. So I guess, at that point, it became a practical question: How do I tell the story? How do I get from the general strike of the enslaved to now? How do I get from the figure of the fugitive and Harriet Tubman to the struggle for Mike Brown? And, what things do I need to say on the journey there?

One thing that was very important to me in this book was the part—two chapters—about the formation of the police and white race riots. I really think there is a certain tendency among a very small group of ultra-left or anarchist commentators to do the same thing that nonviolence people do, but in reverse, where if there is looting and rioting it’s considered [inherently] good. And I really wanted to think about the ways in which looting and rioting have functioned in our history, often in the area of reactionary politics and, much less often, liberatory politics. For example, right now in India, race rioting is one of the key tactics of the fascist movement. So I really don’t want to romanticize what is in my opinion a tactic. And that relates to the other main thread of the book. I wanted to resist the idea that nonviolent tactics can be considered in the abstract outside of context and judged morally good or bad. We should be keeping our toolbox as big and varied as possible, and not falling into these moral traps concerning tactics.

SK: In your chapter on the civil rights movement’s under-acknowledged use of armed self-defense, you use the term “not nonviolence” a lot. And that term also appears in the original essay. What is the value of the term for you in regard to carving out an area between violence and nonviolence?

VO: “Violence” and “nonviolence” are a lot like the terms in the “pro-life” versus “pro-choice” debate, which is to say, in the framing of it; the argument that I want to make is already lost. I don’t want to oppose nonviolence to violence; I don’t think it’s a very helpful way to think about the world. If you can describe both the murder of Mike Brown and the breaking of a cop car window in response as “violent,” then that is a meaningless word, or certainly morally meaningless, right? So for me, “not nonviolence,” which is a clunky phrase I picked up from the work of Lorenzo Raymond, who’s an activist historian from New York, points to the idea that this nonviolence is actually an ideological container for a certain kind of action without submitting to the moral blackmail of having to call yourself “violent,” which is a loaded word.

One thing I talk about in the book is the moment when the Brooklyn Congress on Racial Equality, CORE, wanted to have a stall-in on the BQE at the 1964 World’s Fair. They wanted to just stall out a bunch of junk cars on the highway and cause a massive traffic jam that would force the people coming to the World’s Fair, mostly from Manhattan or from the suburbs, to look directly off the highway into the ghettos that had been carved out for the highway. And critics called this action “violent” for weeks. They really tried to take down this action by calling it that. And a traffic jam is a completely normal part of everyday life. So I just want to reject the violence/ nonviolence dichotomy in general. So “not nonviolent” is a term that successfully threads that needle.

SK: As you recount in your book, the police and also proto-police like slave catchers and city guards play crucial roles in protecting property during and outside of riots. How would you describe the looter’s relationship to property outside the riot zone?

VO: That’s an interesting question. In the vast majority of cases the looters’ relationship to property is probably that they don’t have much of it and they have to spend their whole life scraping together what little bit of money they can. Many of them are probably deep in debt: rent, medical, credit card, student debt, some form of debt. They have to work maybe 40 hours a week, maybe more. Or if they don’t have work, they have to either commit crime or live on benefits. In short, they are dispossessed of property, and their daily life is a constant reenactment of that dispossession.

In the case of Black people in America, there’s an even deeper relation of propertylessness. As Cheryl Harris argues in her incredibly important essay “Whiteness as Property,” whiteness is the ur form of property from which all other forms of property come. So you have to have whiteness to really own property. And if you own property then you likely have some proximity to whiteness. So when people attack property and loot, they are precisely attacking that connection between white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and the police, which is the core argument of the book. But in our discourse, property has been the unnamed but implicit part of that equation.

SK: You describe looting as as “femme” and “reproductive,” and throughout the book you highlight women and queer people’s participation in looting and political organization. Why was it important to you to decenter the image of the angry male mob?

VO: The main reason is that it’s true. Riots are largely carnival spaces where people find it easier to reproduce their lives and where people care for one another and are having fun and are expressing grief and rage and exhaustion and all of these feelings. Femme versus masc is hardly a great way to think about the world, but things like social reproduction and emotion are coded as feminine even though they are the way that this struggle happens—through rioting and through looting. A common slander of militant activity in general is that it’s macho, that it’s “bro-y,” that it’s patriarchal. For me, that is a really damaging myth because there’s no way queers and women, and certainly not black queer women and black trans women, are going to get free without being able to have all of these tactics available to them. So it’s both practically slanderous and incorrect, but it’s also untrue.

SK: One thing that really stood out to me in the book is that once we start thinking of fugitive slaves as looters, Harriet Tubman’s legacy is changed in some sense.

VO: I had a whole huge section on her that didn’t end up making it into the final book. She’s incredibly important to me and American history. One thing that I think we’re seeing right now is that the current uprising has been so widespread and so many people have participated, that there has been some shift in the way people who support the movement talk about looting and rioting. There has been an increase in people who are willing to say, “I don’t think it was wrong.” But the way that they seem to revert to defending property is by saying, “Just attack the box store. Don’t attack small businesses. Don’t attack mom and pop businesses.” One thing that’s very liberatory for genuinely understanding the incredible power of the fugitives is that the idea of a small slave owner is ridiculous. The notion that this person would be more deserving of their property than a plantation owner is obscene, right? There were many slave owners in the South who enslaved one or two people, who, if their slave were to go fugitive, they’d be ruined.

I think once you really start to understand property, private property and business, as a continuation of those slave owning systems by different means, in the form of prison labor, through the chain gangs of the Jim Crow era and the pre–Jim Crow era, and in colonies across the globe, you understand that slavery is a constant form of relation in our society. You begin to be free from these ideas that are really frankly Republican talking points about small businesses and about entrepreneurs, and about job creators and all this shit that has become really common discourse in the last 15 years.

SK: It’s interesting you mention that, because you start off the book by taking down these common talking points and showing how they serve this hegemonic understanding of property. That really sets the stage for the rest of the book, because you can’t actually see looting as political if you hold those beliefs.

VO: All those slanders come down to the idea that people who are rioting don’t know what they’re doing. I think when people look at a movement and they say, “Those people don’t know what they’re doing,” they’re telling on themselves. So I wanted to really demonstrate the racist, classist, and just historically misinformed nature of these slanders. All of this stuff really reveals contempt more than it reveals anything true about the people acting.

SK: You have written extensively about video games and movies, but the arts aren’t mentioned that much in the book. Did fictional portrayals of looting inform your argument in any way? You mentioned All Involved by Ryan Gaddis in a footnote.

VO: Yes, I was very upset, that book was so terrible. I was excited. I used Terry Bisson’s Fire on the Mountain as well. As someone who has watched movies pretty widely, I’ve found that there just isn’t much fictional portrayal of revolutionary direct action. Most of the films about riots are either some sort of documentary, many of which, in my opinion aren’t very useful, or riots are like a side note or it’s something happening off to the side. I’ve watched a lot of those movies, and I’ve liked a lot of them, from Eisenstein’s Strike up to the 2018 Suspiria remake, which is arguably about the German Autumn in the ’70s. I love movies. [Watching movies] is my favorite hobby. And I read a lot of novels as well, and play video games. But ultimately I felt like I had enough on my plate just looking at the history.

SK: Are there any works that attempt to capture the essence of looting or speak to politics of rioting and fail? I’m thinking about movies like Selma, Detroit, and Queen & Slim. And even Dark Knight Rises. Those movies have representations of protests, but they tend to present protesters as noble and almost weirdly apolitical.

VO: I did myself a favor. I love Kathryn Bigelow’s early movies, but I didn’t even watch Detroit because I knew I would just have an aneurysm. Maybe that makes me a bad researcher, but I was just being nice to myself. Fun fact about Dark Knight Rises: They were filming it when Occupy was literally in the streets. And they were filming in the financial district. Occupy Wall Street marched through their set.

SK: Every trope you mentioned about looters has appeared this year in the media, in response to the protests against police brutality, and as we discussed earlier, sometimes among protesters. What do you imagine your book says to people who believe they’re against looting, but they’re also anti-police. You mentioned the idea of small-business slave owners earlier. Do you think your book pushes them toward—

VO: Toward accepting the role of looters in the movement? Small-business owners have a vested interest in not seeing the value of looting, so they’d be hard to convert. But I think that in some ways this book really is written for them. It is for people who have sympathy for looters but haven’t really thought about it. It’s also for my comrades and accomplices and people in the street, to feel supported and seen. It is a thank-you to the rebels of Ferguson for everything that they showed us and sacrificed. Many of them have been murdered, probably by the police or vigilantes, in the last five years, since that uprising. It’s been horrible. A lot of really visible activists have been murdered in Ferguson, and it isn’t talked about much. So it’s an act of grief and thanks to them.

Why Every Job in the Renewable Energy Industry Must Be a Union Job
We need millions of union jobs that are good for both workers and the climate.
MINDY ISSER SEPTEMBER 3, 2020


Following a rally in Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza Park, hundreds of union members march across the Brooklyn Bridge in support of IBEW Local 3 on September 18, 2017 in New York City.DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

The renewable energy industry in the United States is booming. Prior to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has put millions out of work, over 3 million people worked in clean energy—far more than those who worked in the fossil fuel industry. And though the decline of fossil fuel jobs appears unstoppable, the unions that represent those workers are very protective of their members’ jobs. Similarly, they’ve also been resistant to legislation like the Green New Deal, which would create more green jobs while also transitioning away from work in extractive industries. Environmental activists believe that green jobs are the future—for both workers and our world—but unionization rates in the renewable energy industry are extremely low. In order to get unions on board with green jobs, the environmental movement will have to fight for those jobs to be union. And unions will have to loosen their grip on fossil fuels in an effort to embrace renewables.

Fossil fuel jobs can pay well (both oil rig and refinery workers can take home around $100,000 per year), but due to automation and decreased demand, the number of jobs is shrinking. And so are the unions that represent them. At its peak, the United Mine Workers of America boasted 800,000 members, but hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off in the last few decades. Now UMWA is mostly a retirees’ organization and only organizes a few thousand workers in the manufacturing and health care industries, as well as workers across the Navajo Nation. When a union like UMWA hemorrhages members, many see it as an insular problem that doesn’t concern anybody else—environmentalists may even celebrate the closure of mines and refineries, potentially paying lip service to lost jobs, without doing much to create new ones.

“An injury to one is an injury to all” is not just a slogan in the labor movement because it sounds good, but because it’s true. When union density is low and unions are weak, the jobs that are created are more likely to have low pay, lack benefits, and be unsafe. And because union density in this country is already so low (33.6% in the public sector, 6.2% in the private), every time an employer of union labor outsources or shuts down, it affects not only those newly unemployed workers, but all workers, union and not. When oil refineries and other fossil fuel employers close their doors, union members and other workers lose their jobs. And while that may feel like a win for environmentalists, it’s also a loss for all working people, even those concerned about climate change. Unions are one of the only ways working people have power in this country—without them, there will be very few organizations equipped to fight for the programs and services we deserve, including ones that are tasked with fighting climate change. These kinds of contradictions have caused tension between both movements, and corroded trust between them. And while there have been some inroads made in the last few years—including unions endorsing the Green New Deal—there’s still a long way to go until unions eschew fossil fuels.

Upton Sinclair once said that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” When you’re able to feed your family on wages paid for by fossil fuels, it’s hard to see those same fossil fuels as a direct threat to your life. Most of us can understand why fossil fuel workers want to hold onto their jobs. And we can also understand why a majority of Americans want to significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels.

But between these two conflicting needs is a real opportunity: green jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the two fastest growing jobs through 2028 will both be in the renewable energy sector. While an economic downturn due to Covid-19 could slow job growth, pre-pandemic reports showed that solar installers and wind turbine technicians were set to grow by 63%. None of the 20 jobs projected to grow over 20% in the next eight years are in the fossil fuel industry. But the opening created by the renewable industry for a partnership between the environmental and labor movements is being squandered: Unions aren’t engaging in enough new organizing, and environmentalists aren’t encouraging them. There are, of course, some heartening examples of unions and greens working together, like the Reversing Inequality, Combating Climate Change report out of the Worker Institute at Cornell University, which convened unions and policy experts to develop recommendations for new union jobs which would also fight climate change. But most of the green jobs being created are not union: Only 6% of workers in both wind power generation and solar power concentrating system work are unionized, and 4% of workers in photovoltaics, which create solar cells to convert light to electricity.

There are currently nearly 335,000 solar workers in the country, representing a huge opportunity for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which admits that “a disturbingly small percentage of the electrical workers who install residential solar panels in North America belong to a union.” Workers on solar farms are more likely to be unionized than rooftop solar installers, who can make as little as $12 per hour doing a dangerous job and risking electrocution or a deadly fall.

In These Times spoke with a former solar installer, J., at Solar States, a solar installer and educator in Philadelphia. Installers there start at $16 an hour and are offered paid time off, retirement and health care benefits. Most are Black and brown, and according to J., there’s a mandate for 50% of installers to live in the city limits. Lead installers can go up to $22 to $25, but that’s about the highest they can make on residential jobs. This is why, according to J., solar installers try to get commercial work on large buildings owned by the city, state or businesses, because it pays more and the jobs are longer—and they often work alongside union members.

On a recent installation job on a city-owned building, which triggered the prevailing wage provision, Solar States installers worked next to members of IBEW Local 98, laying the solar panels while the union electricians wired them. J. (who still works in the industry and wants to remain anonymous) told In These Times that “there’s a lot of bad blood with the union, but I tried to tell my co-workers that the only reason we get prevailing wage is because of them.” According to him, the tension stems from interpersonal issues when they work closely together, and the differences in their wages—IBEW can members make $72 an hour. Relatedly, the union is predominately white, and workers at Solar States are mostly people of color, which has also caused tension between the two groups.

According to residential solar installers, Local 98 also hasn’t expressed any interest in bringing these workers into their union. (Local 98 didn’t return a request for comment.) J. told In These Times, “They don’t care about new organizing. They want to make sure that all the white men that have been in IBEW forever continue to command a high wage. They have never once tried to reach out to us, and we work side by side!” This may be because there is no cohesive mandate from the international union. In fact, different IBEW locals in California have had conflicting opinions on green jobs: Local 18 has slammed the Green New Deal, while Local 428 has embraced job opportunities in the renewable sector. And while unions struggle internally over these issues, many environmentalists remain indifferent or uninterested in solar workers’ labor conditions. J. said that “especially customers who are wealthy, they don’t really think about it at all. Their question is not how much installers get paid, but how much is my carbon footprint offset.”

If environmentalists are truly concerned about offsetting carbon footprints and growing the renewable sector, they’ll have to fight for government intervention—and to do so successfully, they’ll need unions on their side. In Philadelphia, a Solar States customer can pay an average of anywhere between $21,000 and $26,000 for solar installation on their home. Without rebates, tax breaks and other incentives, residential solar is financially out of reach for most people, making it seem more like a hobby for the wealthy and less like an important step to fight climate change. The Green New Deal, which calls for “meeting 100% of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources,” could close this access gap. And with more than 12.5 million members, the AFL-CIO (the country’s largest labor federation) is well poised to get more moderate Democrats on board with the legislation, which, if passed, would create millions of jobs and expand unions’ ranks. But most unions see the Green New Deal as an attack on union jobs, rather than an opportunity to create more. And yet if renewable energy got the same kinds of subsidies fossil fuel companies have, members of building trades unions would be clamoring to install solar panels or wind turbines.

In the meantime, if there’s a shared agreement between both the environmental movement and the labor movement that creating millions of union jobs is a priority, both need to actually prioritize it. Jobs that are good for the environment aren’t necessarily good for workers, and jobs that are good for workers aren’t necessarily good for the environment. We need jobs that are good for both, and to get there we need unions and environmental organizations fighting for investment, incentives and jobs—together. This could involve tying subsidies to a certain percentage of union jobs, or fighting for project labor agreements at every potential green job site. Whatever form it takes, this coalition must begin at the premise that a loss of union jobs is detrimental to all working people in this country—and if we want to fight climate change, the labor movement must take the lead, before it’s too late.


MINDY ISS­ER works in the labor move­ment and lives in Philadelphia.

Anti-capitalists who started the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011 have vowed to 'draw wind' from BLM protests tearing through the country and 'lay siege to the White House' for 50 days

Adbusters called on activists to lay siege to the White House on 17 September

The organization kicked off the Occupy movement near Wall Street during 2011 

The activists say: '#Whitehousesiege will electrify the U.S. election season [...] Drawing wind from #BLM, #MeToo, and #ExtinctionRebellion and protests against Trump's lethal bungling of coronavirus'

By RYAN FAHEY FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 3 September 2020

An anti-capitalist organization who started the Occupy movement in 2011 have vowed to 'draw wind' from BLM protests tearing through the country and 'lay siege to the White House' for 50 days.

Adbusters, a non-profit environmentalist organization based in Canada - who are known for spurring the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 - have announced plans to 'lay siege' to the White House from September 17 until November 3.

The group describe themselves as 'a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs' whose goals involve advancing a 'new social activist movement'.


In a post on their website titled '#WhiteHouseSiege – Tactical Briefing #1', the activists say: 'It's time again for dramatic, decisive action.

'Which is why, on September 17th, in the original and enduring spirit of Occupy, we and tens of thousands of our fellow citizens will stream into Lafayette Square, in Washington. D.C.'

Adbusters posted this image with their 'tactical briefing', which details a plan to 'lay siege' to the White House on 17 Sept


Who are Adbusters?

Adbusters Media Foundation is a non-profit organization based in British Columbia, Canada.

It describes itself as a 'a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.'

Since 1989, it has published a bi-monthly issue of the consumerism-challenging magazine 'Adbusters'.

The organization has sparked numerous campaigns including Occupy Wall Street.

In mid-2011 they sent out an email to their subscriber list suggesting a peaceful occupation of Wall Street.

Their goal was to challenge corporate influence, wealth disparities, and the failure of officials to hold those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis to account.

The group said the date was chosen to coincide with the ninth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, when thousands of protesters occupied NYC's Zuccotti Park to demonstrate against economic inequality.

It is due to finish on the same day as the Presidential election.

The movement set off a chain reaction with similar demonstrations carried out across the globe.

Adbusters named BLM in their call to action, who are currently embroiled in protests across the US.

'#Whitehousesiege will electrify the U.S. election season — and it doesn't stop there. Drawing wind from #BLM, #MeToo, and #ExtinctionRebellion and protests against Trump's lethal bungling of coronavirus, we'll inspire a global movement of systemic change — a Global Spring — a cultural heave towards a true world order.'

The Canada-based activists claim that 'inequality has soared' and that 'not a single Wall Street CEO spent a night in jail for his role in the 2008 financial meltdown' in the years since 2011.

The focus of their campaign, however, is US President Donald Trump, who they call a 'howling void of a president' with 'sins too many to name [...] sitting smugly atop a corona death-toll that may surpass two-hundred thousand Americans by Christmas'.

According to their website, the group hopes their movement - which they say will be nonviolent - will go global.

'A siege only works if it is sustained,' their post reads.

Occupy Wall Street members stage a protest march near Wall Street in New York, on October 12, 2011

'We witnessed this — the multiplying power of a strategic occupation — nine years ago. You dig in, hold your ground, and the tension accumulates, amplifies, goes global.'

Adbusters kicked off the Occupy movement in 2011 by proposing the peaceful protest near Wall Street through their email subscriber list.

However, they are not in control of the movement, which is now represented worldwide.
Occupy Wall Street protesters reflect on the movement in 2012

 

Arrest of Australia anti-lockdown activist sparks outcry BY AFP  Australian police on Thursday defended arresting a pregnant woman in her home for a Facebook post promoting a rally against virus lockdowns, as footage of the incident went viral and triggered a civil liberties debate. The livestreamed video shows officers handcuffing the woman in front of her two children and has racked up millions of views online. The woman Zoe Buhler, told local media Thursday that she had posted the protest plans without knowing it was illegal in the locked-down state of Victoria, which is battling a major outbreak of Covid-19. Buhler, whose Facebook page is awash with posts arguing against lockdowns and some even labelling the virus a hoax, described her actions as a "bimbo" moment. "I am just a passionate person and I am sick of the lockdowns," Buhler said. Australia has moved to arrest activists who organise demonstrations defying a ban on mass gatherings to try to control the spread of the virus. Victoria is currently trying to bring its second wave of Covid-19 infections under control with a mix of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. The video shows police telling the incredulous and distraught woman -- who is still in her pyjamas -- that she is under arrest "in relation to incitement". "Excuse me, incitement for what? What the... what on Earth?" she asks the officers, instructing someone to film what is happening. "I have an ultrasound in an hour," she remonstrates, as she is read her rights and becomes tearful. The footage has prompted a civil liberties debate in Australia, with critics from across the political spectrum voicing concerns about the balance between rights and obligations. Amnesty International Australia said police were guilty of overreach while rights group Liberty Victoria called the arrest disturbing. "The prospect of pre-emptive arrest and the laying of criminal charges to prevent engagement in peaceful protest is a disturbing development," Liberty Victoria said. Conservative pundits, politicians and conspiracy theorists -- who have continually criticised virus restrictions in the country -- seized on the video as evidence of what they called a "police state" in Victoria. The arrest is the latest in a string of confrontations between police and anti-lockdown activists ahead of a planned protest in Melbourne, which remains under lockdown. Victoria Police assistant commissioner Luke Cornelius stood by the officers' actions and said authorities had been clear about their ban on public protests. "I mean the optics of arresting someone who's pregnant is terrible," Cornelius said. But Australians inciting protests during a pandemic were being selfish and their actions threatened the state's recovery, he added. People would "have to have been on Mars" not to know the rules were in place, the assistant commissioner said.

French journalist recounts police violence, racism as undercover officer

BY GUILLAUME DAUDIN, TIPHAINE LE LIBOUX (AFP) 10 HOURS AGO IN WORLD

Racial or homophobic insults, gratuitous violence, a colleague's suicide: a journalist on Thursday detailed his undercover experience in France's police force where he said abuse was commonplace, if only among a handful of officers.

In his new book "Flic" (Cop), Valentin Gendrot recounts two years as a junior officer in the capital's northeast, which has several rough neighbourhoods where crime and drug use is rife.

Its publication comes as French police are facing growing calls for reform after years of claims of systematic abuse, in particular against the country's black and Arab minorities.

"The violence is recurrent -- it's not a daily thing, I wouldn't go that far, but in any case it is recurrent," Gendrot told AFP in an interview.

The 32-year-old, who has made a career of infiltrating tough jobs such as a factory line or supermarket worker, says he was given only a cursory three months of training after applying to the national police force -- using his real name -- in 2017.

"At no point did they do an internet search of my name, at no point did they dig a little deeper into my background," he said.

He eventually joined a police station in the 19th district of Paris in March 2019, just as the force was being roiled by claims of heavy-handed tactics against the "yellow vest" protesters staging weekly rallies against the government.

- 'Absolutely stunned' -

Gendrot spent much of his time on neighbourhood patrols, where he says he was "absolutely stunned" from the start.

On his first day, he said, "an officer struck a man in custody for questioning" because he was making too much noise, and a woman was sent home when she tried to file a complaint over "death threats" by her husband.

Valentin Gendrot says his book is not "against the police" but takes on the "big police taboos."
JOEL SAGET, AFP

Yet he also recounts the daily strains for officers dealing with ageing cars and decrepit locales, and facing an often hostile population during long workdays -- and how one of his colleagues committed suicide.

In one of the book's most explosive incidents, Gendrot recalls a confrontation that quickly escalates with a group of youths playing loud music in front of an apartment block.

An officer who begins by tapping one person on the face eventually starts punching him several times before bringing him to the station for an ID check.

After the teenager files a complaint, Gendrot admits that he helped falsify an internal report exonerating the officer, so as not to blow his cover.

"I saw plenty of violent and racist behaviour, but it was always on the part of a minority. In my brigade, the J3, there were 32 of us, and maybe four, five or six who acted this way," he said.

"But the most shocking thing is that the majority of officers cover up this behaviour."

The Paris Police Department said in a statement it had informed prosecutors of Gendrot's claims as well as its own internal investigations division, "in order to establish the veracity of the incidents recounted in this book."

"The inquiry should also determine why these alleged incidents were not reported to prosecutors immediately," it said.

 

Pakistan plans hemp production with eye on global cannabis market    Pakistan has unveiled plans to allow the industrial production of hemp, spurring hopes farmers and businesses in the conservative Islamic country will be able to tap into the lucrative global cannabis market. The move comes as Prime Minister Imran Khan's government struggles to boost the country's foreign exchange coffers that have been drained by a struggling economy, fiscal deficits and inflation. "This hemp market could provide Pakistan with some $1 billion in the next three years and we are in a process of making a full-fledged plan for this purpose," science and technology minister Fawad Chaudhry told reporters Wednesday. Hemp is a type of cannabis plant containing cannabidiol (CBD) which advocates say has numerous medicinal and relaxing properties. It does not contain signficant quantities of high-inducing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Chaudhry said the industrial hemp market was worth some $25 billion globally and several countries were relaxing laws targeting cannabis-based products such as CBD oils. Initially, the government will control hemp production, Chaudry said, but private businesses and farmers will be allowed to enter the market at a later date. He added that with cotton production in Pakistan declining due to various factors, hemp provided farmers with a viable alternative. A Pakistani smoker holding a match to a clump of hashish to soften it before mixing it with cigarette tobacco ABDUL MAJEED, AFP In conservative Pakistan, where the consumption of alcohol is strictly forbidden for Muslims, many people are surprisingly open to using cannabis, with the spongy, black hash made from marijuana grown in the country's tribal belt and neighbouring Afghanistan the preferred variant of the drug. Across the subcontinent people have been cultivating cannabis and smoking hash for centuries. The plant predates the arrival of Islam in the region, with reference to cannabis appearing in the sacred Hindu Atharva Veda text describing its medicinal and ritual uses. Hemp grows almost as a weed in parts of Pakistan -- including in great abundance in the capital, where huge bushes can be seen sprouting at traffic roundabouts.

Warships join fight to put out fire on oil tanker off Sri Lanka

AMAL JAYASINGHE (AFP)

Indian warships on Thursday aided Sri Lanka's navy to extinguish a fire on a massive oil tanker off the island's eastern coast, officials said.

Sri Lankan authorities said there was no immediate danger to the coastline should there be a leak from the New Diamond, which was carrying 270,000 tonnes of crude and 1,700 tonnes of diesel, but they remain concerned about the possibility.

The vessel -- which had a crew of 18 Filipinos and five Greek nationals -- issued a distress call Thursday after an engine room explosion, navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said.

One Filipino crew member was missing, another was injured, and the rest were rescued from the Panama-flagged vessel, the navy said.

The ship's third officer, also a Filipino, had suffered serious burn injuries and was taken to the Kalmunai hospital, 360 kilometres (225 miles) east of the capital Colombo.

"An Indian coast guard vessel and one of our ships are now in the process of dousing the flames that have spread to the deck of the tanker's service area," de Silva told AFP.

The goal was to keep the fire from reaching the cargo.

He said two Russian anti-submarine ships, Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov, had also reached the stricken vessel, but later withdrew as they could not effectively battle the fire.

Two tugboats from Sri Lanka's southern port of Hambantota, loaded with firefighting equipment, were expected at the scene to join the battle against the fire.

- Fears of a spill -

One crew member suffered serious injuries in the tanker fire
Handout, Sri Lanka Navy/AFP

Disaster management officials said computer simulations based on current weather conditions showed no immediate threat to Sri Lanka's coastline in case of a major oil spill.

The New Diamond is classified as a very large crude carrier (VLCC), and is about 330 metres (1,080 feet) long.

The stricken vessel is a third larger than the Japanese bulk carrier MV Wakashio, which crashed into a reef in Mauritius last month leaking over 1,000 tonnes of oil into the island nation's picturesque waters.

Sri Lankan officials said they were hopeful of containing the New Diamond fire and eventually putting it out.

But they warned they could need help if a major spill were to occur, as they lack the proper equipment to deal with that.

Neighbouring India was sending three navy vessels and two more coast guard vessels in addition to providing aerial reconnaissance to deal with the fire and possible marine pollution.

The New Diamond had been travelling from Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip.

Warships join fight to put out blaze on oil tanker off Sri Lanka

New Diamond, travelling from Kuwait to Paradip, is carrying cargo of 270,000 tonnes of crude and 1,700 tonnes of diesel.



The New Diamond was some 60km off Sri Lanka's eastern coast where it reported a fire inside the engine room [Sri Lankan Air Force/AFP]

A new fire broke out on a supertanker carrying about two million barrels of oil in the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka's eastern coast as Russian and Indian warships joined the battle to put out the blaze.

The New Diamond, travelling from Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip with a cargo of 270,000 tonnes of crude and 1,700 tonnes of diesel, issued a distress call on Thursday, navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said.

The vessel had a crew of 18 Filipinos and five Greeks. One crew member was missing, another was injured, and the rest were rescued from the Panama-flagged vessel, according to the navy.

"An Indian coastguard vessel and one of our ships are now in the process of dousing the flames that have spread to the deck of the tanker's service area," de Silva told AFP news agency.

There was no immediate danger of a leak from the stricken vessel, he added, which was 60km (38 miles) from the coastal town of Sangamankandi Point.


Three vessels from Indian cost guard including Indian aircraft and two Russian war ships which was berth at Hambantota Port left to help with recuse operations of New Diamond oil tanker has caught fire 38 Nautical Miles off the coast of Sri Lanka. pic.twitter.com/tfGr0kRuo5— Yasiru Ranaraja (@YRanaraja) September 3, 2020

Photographs taken by Sri Lanka's air force showed extensive damage to the tanker's funnel, and thick black smoke and flames coming from the bridge, which is just behind the cargo area.

Two Russian warships, which were at Sri Lanka's southern port of Hambantota to take on food and water, were now headed to the New Diamond's location to help with the rescue.

India was sending three navy vessels and two more coastguard vessels in addition to providing aerial reconnaissance.

De Silva said rescuers were trying to prevent the fire from spreading to the cargo area and ensuring there was no leak.

Sri Lanka's Marine Protection Authority said it would take measures to prevent any possible oil leak.

Such a spill could cause an "environmental disaster" Ashok Sharma, managing director of shipbroker BRS Baxi in Singapore, told Reuters news agency.

Thursday's incident happened just over a month after a state of "environmental emergency" was triggered by the spill of about 1,000 tonnes of fuel oil from a Japanese bulk carrier, MV Wakashio, when it ran aground on a reef in Mauritius.


SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

Philippines delays release of US marine in transgender killing

AFP 

A US marine convicted of killing a transgender woman will stay in detention in the Philippines while a court reviews its earlier ruling to free him halfway into his 10-year jail term, officials said Thursday.

Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton has been in prison since the October 2014 killing of Jennifer Laude, whom he met at a bar while on a break from military exercises in the northern city of Olongapo.

An Olongapo court ruled on Tuesday that Pemberton qualified for early release due to good behaviour while detained in a special jail at the Philippine military headquarters in Manila.

He has served half of a 10-year sentence for homicide.

His release has now been suspended after a sister of the victim challenged the ruling in a filing that asked the court to reconsider, Bureau of Corrections spokesman Gabriel Chaclag said.

Pemberton's lawyer Rowena Flores pressed for his immediate release.

"Every day that he stays in jail is a violation of his constitutional right," Flores told AFP.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, a lawyer who represented the Laude family during the trial, said the court had committed "judicial overreach".

"Do not release him yet. The decision is not yet final and executory," Roque said.

Pemberton's conviction fell under the Philippines and United States' Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which covers the legal liability of US troops taking part in military operations in the Southeast Asian country.

President Rodrigo Duterte has shifted away from the US to pursue greater economic cooperation with China since assuming power in 2016. In February, he notified Washington that the Philippines would terminate the VFA for alleged US interference in his war on drugs.

But Manila later put the abrogation on hold, citing "political and other developments in the region".

France leads criticism of US 'attack' on ICC
BY VALÉRIE LEROUX AND ADAM PLOWRIGHT (AFP) 

France led criticism of US sanctions on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Thursday, saying Washington had launched a "serious attack" on the global body.

The ICC, a special multilateral court set up to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity cases, has become the latest issue to split Europe and United States under President Donald Trump.

Since its creation, the US has never recognised the court's authority, but the Trump adminstration took the unprecedented step of sanctioning its chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, on Wednesday along with another senior ICC official.

"The measures announced on September 2 amount to a serious attack on the court and signatory states of the Treaty of Rome and, beyond this, a challenge to multilateralism and the independence of the judiciary," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday.

The International Criminal Court was set up in The Hague in 2002 to prosecute the world's worst crimes
VINCENT JANNINK, AFP/File

A total of 120 states signed up to the Treaty of Rome in 1998 which laid the basis for the creation of the ICC four years later.

The US was not among them, unlike its Western partners, putting it alongside a handful of states such as Russia, China and Israel which refused the ICC's authority.

Reacting to the US sanctions on Thursday, the European Union said it would defend the court against attempts to undermine it.

"The International Criminal Court is facing persistent external challenges and the European Union stands firm against all attempts to undermine the international system of criminal justice by hindering the work of its core institutions," Peter Stano, spokesman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell, told reporters.

Human Rights Watch said that the Trump administration’s action showed "an egregious disregard for victims of the world’s worst crimes."

- Afghanistan probe -

The United States placed sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (L)
EVA PLEVIER, POOL/AFP/File

At the heart of the dispute are efforts by prosecutor Bensouda to pursue an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan, which could implicate US soldiers.

Afghanistan is a signatory to the ICC which has the power to investigate the most serious human rights abuses when member countries are unable or unwilling to bring perpetrators to justice themselves.

Trump had authorised sanctions on the ICC on June 11.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called the institution a "kangaroo court" at the time, announced that the sanctions in the form of asset freezes would be enacted.

The court, which has been criticised for concentrating its efforts on African countries in the past, has opened investigations into alleged atrocities in 12 countries, including Myanmar and Afghanistan more recently.

It has also angered Israel by mooting an investigation into alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories.

In a statement on Wednesday, the ICC slammed the US sanctions as "coercive acts" which it said were an attack on "international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally."

In 2002, the US Congress passed the so-called "Hague Invasion Act" allowing the US president to authorise military force to free any US personnel held by the ICC, in theory making an invasion of the Dutch city that is home to the ICC a possibility.

Trump's "America First" nationalism and opposition to multilateral institutions have led to tensions with the European Union on a host of issues from trade to the Iran nuclear programme, climate change, and the role of the NATO defence alliance.