the real world
exposing how greed, corruption, injustice, and imperialism impacts the world
and exposes the leaders who benefit
OCT 20, 2020
*Boris Johnson referred to police watchdog over alleged relationship with American businesswoman The prime minister of Great Britain may be facing an investigation as impeachment grips America.
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men
Mahatma Gandhi
articles
*Bolivians Return Evo Morales’s Party to Power One Year After a U.S.-Applauded Coup
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Revealed: chaining, beatings and torture inside Sudan's Islamic schools
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Geneva to introduce minimum wage of £3,500 a month
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Covid-19 tests that give results in minutes to be rolled out across world
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Stained relations? Israeli PM accused of taking dirty laundry on state trips
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Why Kenya’s urban poor are exploited by informal water markets
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Retail industry Sexual assault, forced labor, wage theft: garment workers in Jordan suffer for US brands(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Black Met inspector stopped by police while driving home from work
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Vitamin D helps us fight Covid-19, major study finds
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Sweden's sobering coronavirus death toll bodes ill for the laissez-faire pandemic approach(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Scientists: Prepare for coronavirus to be around for decades
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Archbishop of Canterbury says portrayal of Jesus as White should be reconsidered in light of Black Lives Matter protests(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Global report: China suspends US poultry imports from Covid-19-affected business
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*China finds heavy coronavirus traces in seafood, meat sections of Beijing food market(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Boris Johnson defends England’s racist past as UK boards up statues to protect them from protesters(ARTICLE BELOW)
*COVID-19 is deadlier for black Brazilians, a legacy of structural racism that dates back to slavery(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Indian philosophy helps us see clearly, act wisely in an interconnected world
(EXCERPT BELOW)
*China, Russia and Iran Chide U.S. Over Racism While Persecuting Minorities in Their Own Countries(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Thousands in Paris protest racial injustice as George Floyd killing resonates beyond US(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Global report: new clues about role of pangolins in Covid-19 as US severs ties with WHO(excerpt BELOW)
*Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu professes innocence at start of corruption trial
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*COVID-19: Neglected by government, Amazon tribes turn to traditional medicine
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Hungary Voters choose to end legal recognition of trans people
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*QUEENSLAND CRITICISED FOR HOLDING BACK RAPID COVID-19 TESTING IN REMOTE ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Spraying disinfectants does not work — and can be ‘harmful’: World Health Organization(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Commemorating the abolition of slavery in France: "This is our history"
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Crisis lays bare poverty in Geneva, Switzerland as thousands queue for food
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Not the World’s Number One’: Chinese Social Media Piles On the U.S.
(excerpt BELOW)
*This State in India Shows Us Why Fighting COVID-19 Requires Working-Class Power
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CORONAVIRUS STARTED IN CHINA, BUT EUROPE BECAME THE HUB FOR ITS GLOBAL SPREAD
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Gender equality: Most people are biased against women, UN says
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The super-rich: another 31,000 people join the ultra-wealthy elite
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*DELHI PROTESTS: DEATH TOLL CLIMBS AMID WORST RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE FOR DECADES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*No 10 refuses to comment on PM's views of racial IQ
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Germany Sees Political Fallout From Chancellor Merkel’s Alliance With Far Right
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Vietnam accused of teaching young people that being gay is a ‘disease’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Canada: thousands of travelers affected as Indigenous-led rail blockade continues
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Illegal Chinese Chef Charged for Caning Black Employee In Kenya
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Abbas blasts Trump’s ‘Swiss cheese’ plan for Palestine in UN speech
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Botswana Selling Licenses To Kill Elephants At $39,000 A Head
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Women Perform 12.5 Billion Hours of Unpaid Labor Every Day
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Here’s What Workers of the Global South Endure to Create Corporate Wealth
(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
*World Highlights*
*
Bolivians Return Evo Morales’s Party to Power One Year After a U.S.-Applauded Coup
Right-wing forces cheered by the U.S. tried to destroy one of Latin America’s most
vibrant democracies. Voters just restored it.
Glenn Greenwald - the intercept
October 19 2020,
IN NOVEMBER 2019, Bolivia’s three-term President Evo Morales was forced under threat of police and military violence to flee to Mexico, just weeks after he was declared the winner of the October presidential election that would have sent him to his fourth term. Installed in his place was an unelected right-wing coup regime, led by self-declared “interim President” Jeanine Áñez, who promptly presided over a military massacre that killed dozens of Morales’s Indigenous supporters and then granted immunity to all the soldiers involved. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the time cheered the coup by citing subsequently debunked claims of election fraud by the Organization of American States, or OAS, and urging “a truly democratic process representative of the people’s will.”
But after the Áñez regime twice postponed scheduled elections this year, Bolivians went to the polls on Sunday. They delivered a resounding victory to presidential candidate Luis Arce, Morales’s former finance minister and the candidate from his Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, Party. Although official results are still being counted, exit polls from reputable firms show Arce with a blowout victory — over 50 percent against a centrist former president and a far-right coup leader — and Áñez herself conceded that MAS has won: “We do not yet have an official count, but from the data we have, Mr. Arce and [MAS Vice Presidential candidate] Mr. Choquehuanca have won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern with Bolivia and democracy in mind.”
It is difficult to remember the last time a U.S.-approved military coup in Latin America failed so spectacularly. Even with the U.S.-dominated OAS’s instantly dubious claims of electoral fraud, nobody disputed that Morales received more votes in last October’s election than all other candidates (the only question raised by the OAS was whether his margin of victory was sufficient to win on the first round and avoid a run-off).
Despite Morales’s election win, the Bolivian police and then military made clear to Morales that neither he, his family, nor his closest allies would be safe unless he immediately left the country, as Morales detailed in an interview I conducted with him just weeks after he was driven into exile in Mexico City. In that interview, Morales blamed not only the U.S. for giving the green light to right-wing coup leaders but also attributed the coup to Western anger over his decision to sell some of the country’s valuable lithium supply to China rather than to the West.
After 12 years in office, Morales was not free of controversy or critics. As the first elected Indigenous leader of Bolivia, even some of his core supporters grew wary of what they regarded as his growing reliance on quasi-autocratic tactics in order to govern. Several of his most prominent supporters — both in Bolivia and in South America — were critical of his decision to secure judicial permission to seek a fourth term despite a constitutional term-limits provision of two terms. Even Morales’s long-time close Brazilian ally, former President Lula da Silva — who correctly predicted in a 2019 interview with me that “you can be certain that if Evo Morales runs for president, he’ll win in Bolivia” — nonetheless called Morales’s pursuit of a fourth term a “mistake.”
But none of those criticisms changed a central, unavoidable fact: More Bolivians voted for Morales to be their president in 2019 than any other candidate. And in a democracy, that is supposed to be decisive; for those purporting to believe in democracy, that should be the end of the matter. That is why Lula, in his Guardian interview shortly after the coup where he criticized Morales’s bid for a fourth term, nonetheless emphasized the far more important point: “what they did with him was a crime. It was a coup – this is terrible for Latin America.”
And whatever critiques one can legitimately voice about Morales — it is hard to imagine any leader ruling for more than a decade without alienating some supporters and making mistakes — there is no question that Morales’s presidency, by almost every metric, was a success. After decades of instability in the country, he ushered in a stable and thriving democracy, presided over economic growth that even western financial institutions praised, and worked to ensure a far more equitable distribution of those resources than ever before, particularly to the country’s long-oppressed Indigenous minority and its rural farmers. That success is what was destroyed, on purpose, when the Bolivian presidency was decided in 2019 not democratically but by force.
The West’s reaction to the 2019 Bolivian coup featured all of its classic propaganda tropes. Western officials, media outlets, and think tank writers invoked the standard Orwellian inversion of heralding a coup of any democratically elected leader they do not like as a “victory for democracy.” In this warped formula, it is not the U.S.-supported coup plotters but the overthrown democratically elected leader who is the “threat to democracy.”
Depicting U.S.-supported coups as democratic and democratically elected leaders disliked by the U.S. as “dictators” has been a staple of U.S. foreign policy propaganda for decades. That is the rubric under which the Obama administration and its Secretary of State John Kerry somehow celebrated one of the world’s worst despots, Egyptian Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, as “restoring democracy” following the brutal military coup he carried out.
But thanks to Sunday’s stunning rebuke in Bolivia, the standard tactics failed. Ever since Morales’s election victory almost exactly one year ago today, Bolivians never stopped marching, protesting, risking their liberty and their lives — even in the middle of a pandemic — to demand their rights of democracy and self-governance. Leading up to the election, the coup regime and right-wing factions in the military were menacingly vowing — in response to polls universally showing MAS likely to win — that they would do anything to prevent the return to power of Morales’s party.
At least as of now, though, it looks as though the margin of victory delivered to MAS by the Bolivian people was so stunning, so decisive, that there are few options left for the retrograde forces — in Bolivia, Washington, and Brussels — which tried to destroy the country’s democracy. Anyone who believes in the fundamentals of democracy, regardless of ideology, should be cheering the Bolivians who sacrificed so much to restore their right of self-rule and hoping that the stability and prosperity they enjoyed under Morales expands even further under his first democratically elected successor.
But after the Áñez regime twice postponed scheduled elections this year, Bolivians went to the polls on Sunday. They delivered a resounding victory to presidential candidate Luis Arce, Morales’s former finance minister and the candidate from his Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, Party. Although official results are still being counted, exit polls from reputable firms show Arce with a blowout victory — over 50 percent against a centrist former president and a far-right coup leader — and Áñez herself conceded that MAS has won: “We do not yet have an official count, but from the data we have, Mr. Arce and [MAS Vice Presidential candidate] Mr. Choquehuanca have won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern with Bolivia and democracy in mind.”
It is difficult to remember the last time a U.S.-approved military coup in Latin America failed so spectacularly. Even with the U.S.-dominated OAS’s instantly dubious claims of electoral fraud, nobody disputed that Morales received more votes in last October’s election than all other candidates (the only question raised by the OAS was whether his margin of victory was sufficient to win on the first round and avoid a run-off).
Despite Morales’s election win, the Bolivian police and then military made clear to Morales that neither he, his family, nor his closest allies would be safe unless he immediately left the country, as Morales detailed in an interview I conducted with him just weeks after he was driven into exile in Mexico City. In that interview, Morales blamed not only the U.S. for giving the green light to right-wing coup leaders but also attributed the coup to Western anger over his decision to sell some of the country’s valuable lithium supply to China rather than to the West.
After 12 years in office, Morales was not free of controversy or critics. As the first elected Indigenous leader of Bolivia, even some of his core supporters grew wary of what they regarded as his growing reliance on quasi-autocratic tactics in order to govern. Several of his most prominent supporters — both in Bolivia and in South America — were critical of his decision to secure judicial permission to seek a fourth term despite a constitutional term-limits provision of two terms. Even Morales’s long-time close Brazilian ally, former President Lula da Silva — who correctly predicted in a 2019 interview with me that “you can be certain that if Evo Morales runs for president, he’ll win in Bolivia” — nonetheless called Morales’s pursuit of a fourth term a “mistake.”
But none of those criticisms changed a central, unavoidable fact: More Bolivians voted for Morales to be their president in 2019 than any other candidate. And in a democracy, that is supposed to be decisive; for those purporting to believe in democracy, that should be the end of the matter. That is why Lula, in his Guardian interview shortly after the coup where he criticized Morales’s bid for a fourth term, nonetheless emphasized the far more important point: “what they did with him was a crime. It was a coup – this is terrible for Latin America.”
And whatever critiques one can legitimately voice about Morales — it is hard to imagine any leader ruling for more than a decade without alienating some supporters and making mistakes — there is no question that Morales’s presidency, by almost every metric, was a success. After decades of instability in the country, he ushered in a stable and thriving democracy, presided over economic growth that even western financial institutions praised, and worked to ensure a far more equitable distribution of those resources than ever before, particularly to the country’s long-oppressed Indigenous minority and its rural farmers. That success is what was destroyed, on purpose, when the Bolivian presidency was decided in 2019 not democratically but by force.
The West’s reaction to the 2019 Bolivian coup featured all of its classic propaganda tropes. Western officials, media outlets, and think tank writers invoked the standard Orwellian inversion of heralding a coup of any democratically elected leader they do not like as a “victory for democracy.” In this warped formula, it is not the U.S.-supported coup plotters but the overthrown democratically elected leader who is the “threat to democracy.”
Depicting U.S.-supported coups as democratic and democratically elected leaders disliked by the U.S. as “dictators” has been a staple of U.S. foreign policy propaganda for decades. That is the rubric under which the Obama administration and its Secretary of State John Kerry somehow celebrated one of the world’s worst despots, Egyptian Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, as “restoring democracy” following the brutal military coup he carried out.
But thanks to Sunday’s stunning rebuke in Bolivia, the standard tactics failed. Ever since Morales’s election victory almost exactly one year ago today, Bolivians never stopped marching, protesting, risking their liberty and their lives — even in the middle of a pandemic — to demand their rights of democracy and self-governance. Leading up to the election, the coup regime and right-wing factions in the military were menacingly vowing — in response to polls universally showing MAS likely to win — that they would do anything to prevent the return to power of Morales’s party.
At least as of now, though, it looks as though the margin of victory delivered to MAS by the Bolivian people was so stunning, so decisive, that there are few options left for the retrograde forces — in Bolivia, Washington, and Brussels — which tried to destroy the country’s democracy. Anyone who believes in the fundamentals of democracy, regardless of ideology, should be cheering the Bolivians who sacrificed so much to restore their right of self-rule and hoping that the stability and prosperity they enjoyed under Morales expands even further under his first democratically elected successor.
BARBARISM IN THE NAME OF RELIGION!!!
Revealed: chaining, beatings and torture inside Sudan's Islamic schools
Two-year BBC News Arabic investigation uncovers horrific conditions, with boys as young as five facing violence and sexual abuse
Fateh Al-Rahman Al-Hamdani - THE GUARDIAN
Mon 19 Oct 2020 02.15 EDT
An April evening in the suburbs of Khartoum. After months of undercover work, I had learned to time my visits to khalwas, Sudan’s Islamic schools, to coincide with evening prayers. I entered while the sheikhs (teachers) and 50-odd boys dressed in their white djellabas were busy praying. As they knelt, I heard the clanking of chains on the boys’ shackled legs. I sat down behind them and started filming, secretly.
I began investigating after allegations emerged of abuse inside some of these schools: children kept in chains, beaten and sexually abused. Khalwas have existed in Sudan for centuries. There are more than 30,000 of them across the country where children are taught to memorise the Qur’an. They are run by sheikhs who usually provide food, drink and shelter, free of charge. As a result, poor families often send their children to khalwas instead of public schools.
I had been working as a journalist in Sudan for five years, but this was the first time an assignment really felt personal. I was taught at a khalwa: a place where I would try to get through each day without being beaten.
In 2018, I began what would become a two-year investigation with BBC News Arabic and take me to 23 khalwas across Sudan. Before proper undercover equipment from the BBC arrived, I taped my phone inside a notebook, to secretly film.
Despite having gone to a khalwa myself, I was shocked by what I found. I saw children – some as young as five – beaten and shackled like animals. One boy with deep, raw wounds around his ankles told me: “We can be in groups of six or seven all chained together, and they [the sheikhs] make us run around in circles. Whenever one of us falls over we have to get up again because they keep whipping us … They say that this is good for us.”
One of the worst experiences I had was in 2018 at Ahmed Hanafy, a well-respected khalwa in Darfur. In a study room, under a hot corrugated iron roof, a small boy was held down and whipped more than 30 times by a teacher. The only sound in the room was the lashing of the whip and the boy’s anguished cries. I wanted to grab the whip and hit the sheikh, but I knew I couldn’t. When I later contacted the school, the sheikh confirmed they do beat children but denied this incident ever took place.
Another disturbing case was that of two 14-year-old boys, Mohamed Nader and Ismail. When I visited them in hospital they were lying on their stomachs, unconscious, their backs stripped of flesh. They were beaten and tortured so badly they nearly died.
“They kept them in a room for five days without food or water,” Mohamed Nader’s father, Nader, told me.
“They rubbed tar all over their bodies. [Mohamed Nader] has been so badly beaten you can even see his spine.”
I had filmed inside the same khalwa where this had happened, al-Khulafaa al-Rashideen, run by a man called Sheikh Hussein. The conditions there were the worst I had seen. Most of the boys were shackled and teachers hovered over them with whips in case they made any mistakes. One student pointed out a room with barred windows, which he described as a prison. It was the room in which Ismail and Mohamed Nader had been kept.
I kept in regular contact with the boys. Several months after the attack, as we played on a PlayStation together, Mohamed Nader began to tell me what happened when he was caught trying to escape with Ismail.
“They tied me up and laid me on my stomach before whipping me”, he said. The beatings went on for days. “A lot of people came to beat us while the rest of the khalwa was asleep. After that, I don’t know what happened, I woke up in the hospital.”
The police charged two teachers with assault, who were later released on bail. The khalwa remained open.
As he stared at the screen, Mohamed Nader said: “There is rape in the khalwa. They would call you for it, in a macho way.” He said the smaller or weaker boys were abused by older students.
Mohamed Nader and Ismail were not sexually assaulted, but several other people also told me that rape happened in the khalwa under the management of Sheikh Hussein.
When I returned to the khalwa to talk to him, Sheikh Hussein admitted that it was wrong to imprison children, but maintained that shackling was “packed with benefits” and that “most khalwas use chaining, not just me”. He told me he had stopped using chains and that “the prison” was now a storeroom. When I asked about allegations of sexual abuse he became angry, categorically denying these claims and accusing me of attacking the Qu’ran.
The sheikh died in a car accident earlier this year.
The new transitional government is now conducting a survey of all khalwas in Sudan. The minister of religious affairs, Nasreddine Mufreh, said they would be reformed. There should be “no beating, torture, violation of human rights or children’s rights whatsoever” inside khalwas.
When I told him about the abuse I had seen, he replied: “The old regime didn’t have laws regulating khalwas. I can’t solve a problem caused by 30 years of the old regime overnight.”
With the influence that sheikhs hold, it’s rare for families to seek justice. However, Mohamed Nader’s parents have decided to press charges. Although the public prosecutor’s office is obliged to look into all cases of violence against children, Mohamed Nader’s parents have had to hire a lawyer to fight their case.
On the way into court his mother, Fatima, said the 2018 revolution had made her more optimistic: “In the past, we had no rights but now it’s different. With the new government, we will get our rights, God willing.”
After several hours inside she emerged disappointed. One of the defendants had failed to turn up and the hearing was postponed. The teachers accused of beating the boys still haven’t entered a plea. The khalwa is now run by Sheikh Hussein’s brother who told me that under his management the beating of children would not be tolerated.
Mohamed Nader and Ismail are on a slow road to physical recovery. But thousands of other children across Sudan are still at risk.
I began investigating after allegations emerged of abuse inside some of these schools: children kept in chains, beaten and sexually abused. Khalwas have existed in Sudan for centuries. There are more than 30,000 of them across the country where children are taught to memorise the Qur’an. They are run by sheikhs who usually provide food, drink and shelter, free of charge. As a result, poor families often send their children to khalwas instead of public schools.
I had been working as a journalist in Sudan for five years, but this was the first time an assignment really felt personal. I was taught at a khalwa: a place where I would try to get through each day without being beaten.
In 2018, I began what would become a two-year investigation with BBC News Arabic and take me to 23 khalwas across Sudan. Before proper undercover equipment from the BBC arrived, I taped my phone inside a notebook, to secretly film.
Despite having gone to a khalwa myself, I was shocked by what I found. I saw children – some as young as five – beaten and shackled like animals. One boy with deep, raw wounds around his ankles told me: “We can be in groups of six or seven all chained together, and they [the sheikhs] make us run around in circles. Whenever one of us falls over we have to get up again because they keep whipping us … They say that this is good for us.”
One of the worst experiences I had was in 2018 at Ahmed Hanafy, a well-respected khalwa in Darfur. In a study room, under a hot corrugated iron roof, a small boy was held down and whipped more than 30 times by a teacher. The only sound in the room was the lashing of the whip and the boy’s anguished cries. I wanted to grab the whip and hit the sheikh, but I knew I couldn’t. When I later contacted the school, the sheikh confirmed they do beat children but denied this incident ever took place.
Another disturbing case was that of two 14-year-old boys, Mohamed Nader and Ismail. When I visited them in hospital they were lying on their stomachs, unconscious, their backs stripped of flesh. They were beaten and tortured so badly they nearly died.
“They kept them in a room for five days without food or water,” Mohamed Nader’s father, Nader, told me.
“They rubbed tar all over their bodies. [Mohamed Nader] has been so badly beaten you can even see his spine.”
I had filmed inside the same khalwa where this had happened, al-Khulafaa al-Rashideen, run by a man called Sheikh Hussein. The conditions there were the worst I had seen. Most of the boys were shackled and teachers hovered over them with whips in case they made any mistakes. One student pointed out a room with barred windows, which he described as a prison. It was the room in which Ismail and Mohamed Nader had been kept.
I kept in regular contact with the boys. Several months after the attack, as we played on a PlayStation together, Mohamed Nader began to tell me what happened when he was caught trying to escape with Ismail.
“They tied me up and laid me on my stomach before whipping me”, he said. The beatings went on for days. “A lot of people came to beat us while the rest of the khalwa was asleep. After that, I don’t know what happened, I woke up in the hospital.”
The police charged two teachers with assault, who were later released on bail. The khalwa remained open.
As he stared at the screen, Mohamed Nader said: “There is rape in the khalwa. They would call you for it, in a macho way.” He said the smaller or weaker boys were abused by older students.
Mohamed Nader and Ismail were not sexually assaulted, but several other people also told me that rape happened in the khalwa under the management of Sheikh Hussein.
When I returned to the khalwa to talk to him, Sheikh Hussein admitted that it was wrong to imprison children, but maintained that shackling was “packed with benefits” and that “most khalwas use chaining, not just me”. He told me he had stopped using chains and that “the prison” was now a storeroom. When I asked about allegations of sexual abuse he became angry, categorically denying these claims and accusing me of attacking the Qu’ran.
The sheikh died in a car accident earlier this year.
The new transitional government is now conducting a survey of all khalwas in Sudan. The minister of religious affairs, Nasreddine Mufreh, said they would be reformed. There should be “no beating, torture, violation of human rights or children’s rights whatsoever” inside khalwas.
When I told him about the abuse I had seen, he replied: “The old regime didn’t have laws regulating khalwas. I can’t solve a problem caused by 30 years of the old regime overnight.”
With the influence that sheikhs hold, it’s rare for families to seek justice. However, Mohamed Nader’s parents have decided to press charges. Although the public prosecutor’s office is obliged to look into all cases of violence against children, Mohamed Nader’s parents have had to hire a lawyer to fight their case.
On the way into court his mother, Fatima, said the 2018 revolution had made her more optimistic: “In the past, we had no rights but now it’s different. With the new government, we will get our rights, God willing.”
After several hours inside she emerged disappointed. One of the defendants had failed to turn up and the hearing was postponed. The teachers accused of beating the boys still haven’t entered a plea. The khalwa is now run by Sheikh Hussein’s brother who told me that under his management the beating of children would not be tolerated.
Mohamed Nader and Ismail are on a slow road to physical recovery. But thousands of other children across Sudan are still at risk.
3,500 Pound Sterling = 4,526.20 US Dollar!!!
Switzerland
Geneva to introduce minimum wage of £3,500 a month
Voters back measure amid reports of growing poverty linked to Covid-19 pandemic
Kim Willsher in Paris - the guardian
Wed 30 Sep 2020 08.55 EDT
Geneva is to introduce a minimum wage of almost £3,500 a month, reported to be the highest in the world, after locals approved the measure in a surprise vote result sparked by reports of growing coronavirus-linked poverty in the Swiss city.
The canton’s 500,000 voters passed the minimum wage proposed by local unions and leftwing parties, after twice rejecting it in 2011 and 2014.
The minimum hourly wage will be set at just under £19.50 an hour, more than twice the rate in neighbouring France, with a guaranteed minimum monthly salary of 4,086 Swiss francs (£3,457) based on a 41-hour working week, or 49,000 Swiss francs (£41,430) a year, in one of the world’s most expensive cities to live.
France 3 television reported that the measure came after the Swiss city, whose economy depends on tourist and business visitors, had been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 epidemic with concern about growing queues of people outside food banks.
Michel Charrat, the president of the Groupement transfrontalier européen, an independent organisation that supports those living and working across the French-Swiss border, described the vote result as a “mark of solidarity” with the city’s poor.
“Covid has shown that a certain section of the Swiss population cannot live in Geneva … 4,000 (Swiss francs) is the minimum to not fall below the poverty line and find yourself in a very difficult situation,” Charrat said. He added the measure would benefit 30,000 low-paid workers, two-thirds of them women.
Before Sunday’s vote, Alexander Eniline of the Swiss Labour party (PST-POP) said: “The introduction of a minimum wage is a fundamental requirement of justice, and an essential measure against precariousness.”
He added that opposition claims that the minimum wage would destroy jobs and increase unemployment were “baseless”.
While the unions and leftwing politicians pointed out the high cost of living in Geneva, classed the third most expensive city in the world after Zurich and Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, the 300,000 cross-border workers living in neighbouring France were reported to be the biggest winners.
Wages in Switzerland can be regulated, or not, by authorities in the country’s 26 cantons. Two other cantons, the Jura and Neuchâtel, have already introduced the same 20 Swiss franc (£18.51) hourly wage. The rest of the country has no such measure.
The UK’s national living wage, the minimum paid to workers over the age of 25, is £8.72. The minimum wage for those younger and apprentices ranges from £4.15-£8.20 an hour.
In France, the minimum wage is €10.15 (£9.28) an hour and €1,539,42 (£1,407.25) a month for a 35-hour working week.
According to Expatistan, which uses crowdfunded data to produce a cost of living index for world cities, Geneva is the world’s second most expensive city in which to live. London is listed ninth.
The minimum wage rise was approved by just over 58% of Geneva voters and the measure come into effect on 17 October. In a national vote, also on Sunday, the Swiss rejected a rightwing proposal to limit immigration from European Union member states.
The canton’s 500,000 voters passed the minimum wage proposed by local unions and leftwing parties, after twice rejecting it in 2011 and 2014.
The minimum hourly wage will be set at just under £19.50 an hour, more than twice the rate in neighbouring France, with a guaranteed minimum monthly salary of 4,086 Swiss francs (£3,457) based on a 41-hour working week, or 49,000 Swiss francs (£41,430) a year, in one of the world’s most expensive cities to live.
France 3 television reported that the measure came after the Swiss city, whose economy depends on tourist and business visitors, had been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 epidemic with concern about growing queues of people outside food banks.
Michel Charrat, the president of the Groupement transfrontalier européen, an independent organisation that supports those living and working across the French-Swiss border, described the vote result as a “mark of solidarity” with the city’s poor.
“Covid has shown that a certain section of the Swiss population cannot live in Geneva … 4,000 (Swiss francs) is the minimum to not fall below the poverty line and find yourself in a very difficult situation,” Charrat said. He added the measure would benefit 30,000 low-paid workers, two-thirds of them women.
Before Sunday’s vote, Alexander Eniline of the Swiss Labour party (PST-POP) said: “The introduction of a minimum wage is a fundamental requirement of justice, and an essential measure against precariousness.”
He added that opposition claims that the minimum wage would destroy jobs and increase unemployment were “baseless”.
While the unions and leftwing politicians pointed out the high cost of living in Geneva, classed the third most expensive city in the world after Zurich and Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, the 300,000 cross-border workers living in neighbouring France were reported to be the biggest winners.
Wages in Switzerland can be regulated, or not, by authorities in the country’s 26 cantons. Two other cantons, the Jura and Neuchâtel, have already introduced the same 20 Swiss franc (£18.51) hourly wage. The rest of the country has no such measure.
The UK’s national living wage, the minimum paid to workers over the age of 25, is £8.72. The minimum wage for those younger and apprentices ranges from £4.15-£8.20 an hour.
In France, the minimum wage is €10.15 (£9.28) an hour and €1,539,42 (£1,407.25) a month for a 35-hour working week.
According to Expatistan, which uses crowdfunded data to produce a cost of living index for world cities, Geneva is the world’s second most expensive city in which to live. London is listed ninth.
The minimum wage rise was approved by just over 58% of Geneva voters and the measure come into effect on 17 October. In a national vote, also on Sunday, the Swiss rejected a rightwing proposal to limit immigration from European Union member states.
Coronavirus outbreak
Covid-19 tests that give results in minutes to be rolled out across world
Global initiative will supply 120m rapid antigen tests to low- and middle-income countries
Sarah Boseley Health editor - the guardian
Mon 28 Sep 2020 11.49 EDT
Tests for Covid-19 that show on-the-spot results in 15 to 30 minutes are about to be rolled out across the world, potentially saving many thousands of lives and slowing the pandemic in both poor and rich countries.
In a triumph for a global initiative to get vital drugs and vaccines to fight the virus, 120m rapid antigen tests from two companies will be supplied to low- and middle-income countries for $5 (£3.90) each or even less.
The tests, which look like a pregnancy test, with two blue lines displayed for positive, are read by a health worker. One test has received emergency approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the other is expected to get it shortly.
The quick and easy but high-quality tests will allow mass screening of health workers, who are dying in disproportionate numbers in low income countries.
Wealthy countries that have signed up to the Access to Covid tools initiative (ACT accelerator), as the UK has, will also be able to order the tests. The initiative was launched in March by the WHO, the European commission, the Gates Foundation and the French government.
In return for a volume guarantee from the Gates Foundation, the companies are making 20% of their production available to low- and middle-income countries and 80% to the rest. Germany has already ordered 20m tests and France and Switzerland are following suit.
The UK government is keen to get rapid virus tests, which were central to the “moonshot” proposals leaked recently, but it is not clear if they intend to buy these tests. It has invested in British-made saliva tests as well as rapid antigen tests, both of which take about 90 minutes. Saliva tests are being trialled in Salford and Southampton, while DnaNudge, which uses a swab read by a Nudgebox, is in use in some NHS hospitals.
But the WHO-approved rapid antigen tests are faster and easier, as well as cheaper, and could be used for screening in schools, universities and workplaces. Countries that can afford it could screen more generally. While the tests will not pick up all cases, they could allow many infectious people to be identified before they have symptoms and go into quarantine.
One of the tests, from the South Korean company SD BioSensor, has just been given emergency approval by the WHO, while the other, from the US company Abbott, is expected to get it shortly for a test it manufactures in South Korea.
Catharina Boehme, CEO of the non-profit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (Find), a key player in the initiative, said they had put in bulk orders for the tests quickly so that low- and middle-income countries would not lose out in the global scramble for rapid tests, as they did when the PCR tests came out. “We see the pressure of supply building rapidly. That’s why we need this volume guarantee. We needed to secure volumes for low- and middle-income countries, before all the other countries place their orders and the poor populations again lose out.
“For us the message is about unprecedented collaboration. We are really able to show what can be achieved when the world and leading global health partners come together with a shared priority.”
Also in the partnership that has secured the deal are the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and Unitaid.
The companies claim their tests are about 97% accurate, but that is in optimal conditions. Find puts their sensitivity between 80% and 90% in real-world conditions. That would pick up most infections. There is relatively little testing in most low- and middle-income countries at present. While North America tests 395 people per 100,000 population daily and Europe tests 243, Africa tests fewer than 16 – and most of those are in Morocco, Kenya and Senegal.
There are rapid antigen tests available for sale online, but these are the first to meet the WHO’s specifications and some tests have fallen short. Spain had to send back two batches of rapid tests it bought from unlicensed companies in China in March, because they were said to be faulty.
The ACT accelerator initiative is also working on bulk-buying and distributing drugs to treat Covid-19 around the world – and will share its global portfolio of vaccines when one of them is proved to work.
In a triumph for a global initiative to get vital drugs and vaccines to fight the virus, 120m rapid antigen tests from two companies will be supplied to low- and middle-income countries for $5 (£3.90) each or even less.
The tests, which look like a pregnancy test, with two blue lines displayed for positive, are read by a health worker. One test has received emergency approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the other is expected to get it shortly.
The quick and easy but high-quality tests will allow mass screening of health workers, who are dying in disproportionate numbers in low income countries.
Wealthy countries that have signed up to the Access to Covid tools initiative (ACT accelerator), as the UK has, will also be able to order the tests. The initiative was launched in March by the WHO, the European commission, the Gates Foundation and the French government.
In return for a volume guarantee from the Gates Foundation, the companies are making 20% of their production available to low- and middle-income countries and 80% to the rest. Germany has already ordered 20m tests and France and Switzerland are following suit.
The UK government is keen to get rapid virus tests, which were central to the “moonshot” proposals leaked recently, but it is not clear if they intend to buy these tests. It has invested in British-made saliva tests as well as rapid antigen tests, both of which take about 90 minutes. Saliva tests are being trialled in Salford and Southampton, while DnaNudge, which uses a swab read by a Nudgebox, is in use in some NHS hospitals.
But the WHO-approved rapid antigen tests are faster and easier, as well as cheaper, and could be used for screening in schools, universities and workplaces. Countries that can afford it could screen more generally. While the tests will not pick up all cases, they could allow many infectious people to be identified before they have symptoms and go into quarantine.
One of the tests, from the South Korean company SD BioSensor, has just been given emergency approval by the WHO, while the other, from the US company Abbott, is expected to get it shortly for a test it manufactures in South Korea.
Catharina Boehme, CEO of the non-profit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (Find), a key player in the initiative, said they had put in bulk orders for the tests quickly so that low- and middle-income countries would not lose out in the global scramble for rapid tests, as they did when the PCR tests came out. “We see the pressure of supply building rapidly. That’s why we need this volume guarantee. We needed to secure volumes for low- and middle-income countries, before all the other countries place their orders and the poor populations again lose out.
“For us the message is about unprecedented collaboration. We are really able to show what can be achieved when the world and leading global health partners come together with a shared priority.”
Also in the partnership that has secured the deal are the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and Unitaid.
The companies claim their tests are about 97% accurate, but that is in optimal conditions. Find puts their sensitivity between 80% and 90% in real-world conditions. That would pick up most infections. There is relatively little testing in most low- and middle-income countries at present. While North America tests 395 people per 100,000 population daily and Europe tests 243, Africa tests fewer than 16 – and most of those are in Morocco, Kenya and Senegal.
There are rapid antigen tests available for sale online, but these are the first to meet the WHO’s specifications and some tests have fallen short. Spain had to send back two batches of rapid tests it bought from unlicensed companies in China in March, because they were said to be faulty.
The ACT accelerator initiative is also working on bulk-buying and distributing drugs to treat Covid-19 around the world – and will share its global portfolio of vaccines when one of them is proved to work.
real klassy!!!
Benjamin Netanyahu
Stained relations? Israeli PM accused of taking dirty laundry on state trips
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife said to pack soiled clothes to be cleaned on foreign trips
Oliver Holmes - the guardian
Thu 24 Sep 2020 09.07 EDT
While black-tie banquets, lavish royal receptions and priceless gifts are the most obvious extravagances of international diplomacy, Israel’s leader and his wife have spotlighted a lesser-known perk of the state visit: free dry cleaning.
Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu have developed a reputation for lugging bags and suitcases of dirty clothes on foreign trips to be laundered at another country’s expense, a practice noticed by staff at the White House guesthouse, according to the Washington Post.
“The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean,” the paper quoted an unnamed US official as saying. “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.”
The Israeli prime minister’s office has denied the allegation, but it is not the first time the 70-year-old leader has been accused of taking soiled clothes abroad for a rinse.
In 2018, leaked transcripts emerged containing allegations that Sara Netanyahu packed “four or five” suitcases worth of laundry for state trips. Two years previously, the prime minister successfully launched a legal bid to have his domestic laundry bills remain private.
The Israeli embassy in Washington said in a statement the allegations were “groundless and absurd”, and aimed at distracting from Netanyahu’s recent US visit, where he signed accords to normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
“On this visit, for example, there was no dry cleaning, only a couple of shirts were laundered for the public meeting, and the prime minister’s suit and Mrs Netanyahu’s dress were ironed also for the public meeting,” the embassy statement said. “Oh yes, a pair of pyjamas that the prime minister wore on the 12-hour flight from Israel to Washington was also laundered.”
In its report, the Washington Post said last week’s visit did not include multiple suitcases of laundry, but that “political and career officials spanning the Trump and Obama administrations” had confirmed several previous mass cleaning incidents.
The allegations have compounded domestic accusations that the Netanyahus have sought to exploit the benefits of high office, no matter how small.
Last year, Sara Netanyahu was convicted of illegally misusing tens of thousands of pounds of public funds on lavish meals, despite having an in-house cook provided by the state.
Meanwhile, the prime minister is on trial in three corruption cases, including charges he accepted expensive gifts including champagne, jewellery and cigars. Netanyahu denies all accusations.
Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu have developed a reputation for lugging bags and suitcases of dirty clothes on foreign trips to be laundered at another country’s expense, a practice noticed by staff at the White House guesthouse, according to the Washington Post.
“The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean,” the paper quoted an unnamed US official as saying. “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.”
The Israeli prime minister’s office has denied the allegation, but it is not the first time the 70-year-old leader has been accused of taking soiled clothes abroad for a rinse.
In 2018, leaked transcripts emerged containing allegations that Sara Netanyahu packed “four or five” suitcases worth of laundry for state trips. Two years previously, the prime minister successfully launched a legal bid to have his domestic laundry bills remain private.
The Israeli embassy in Washington said in a statement the allegations were “groundless and absurd”, and aimed at distracting from Netanyahu’s recent US visit, where he signed accords to normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
“On this visit, for example, there was no dry cleaning, only a couple of shirts were laundered for the public meeting, and the prime minister’s suit and Mrs Netanyahu’s dress were ironed also for the public meeting,” the embassy statement said. “Oh yes, a pair of pyjamas that the prime minister wore on the 12-hour flight from Israel to Washington was also laundered.”
In its report, the Washington Post said last week’s visit did not include multiple suitcases of laundry, but that “political and career officials spanning the Trump and Obama administrations” had confirmed several previous mass cleaning incidents.
The allegations have compounded domestic accusations that the Netanyahus have sought to exploit the benefits of high office, no matter how small.
Last year, Sara Netanyahu was convicted of illegally misusing tens of thousands of pounds of public funds on lavish meals, despite having an in-house cook provided by the state.
Meanwhile, the prime minister is on trial in three corruption cases, including charges he accepted expensive gifts including champagne, jewellery and cigars. Netanyahu denies all accusations.
Why Kenya’s urban poor are exploited by informal water markets
the conversation
August 30, 2020 4.31am EDT
Residents of Kibera slum carry jerrycans to fill them with water from a bowser. Gordwin Odhiambo/AFP via Getty Images
Informal urban water markets – as opposed to piped water – have long supported many of Kenya’s urban areas. Those that use them are either unserved, or inadequately served, by public utilities.
A large number of people depend on them as only about 20% of the Nairobi residents who live in low income areas have piped water. The rest depend on uncovered wells, rivers, open springs and informal water markets.
There are different types of informal water markets. Some sell water legally, some illegally. There are also different ways in which people buy water. If they have water storage facilities, and live in an area accessible to water vendors, water can be bought in bulk from vendors who source it from private boreholes.
But most people won’t have storage facilities and will usually buy water from water vendors and carry it home. These water vendors get their supplies from a variety of sources including; rivers, wells, households with connections, communal standpipes and water ATMs. Water ATMs, installed by NGOs, provide users with cheap, clean water on demand. They swipe a smart-card and collect.
Water vendors also sometimes get water illegally by cutting through municipal piped networks.
In a recent study I looked at how informal water markets operate and how they serve the urban poor. My research focused on Mathare, a large informal settlement in Nairobi. About 206,000 people live there.
I found that – despite high water prices (in comparison to water sold in standpipes and water ATMs), poor quality and inconvenience – the urban poor continued to buy water from private vendors because it’s still their best option. The other options were either too unreliable or hard to reach.
Nairobi’s county government is taking steps to formalise informal water vendors as a way of providing more people with water. Though urban informal water markets have the potential to deliver water to the unserved poor, they can also trap the poor in highly unjust water delivery arrangements. More must be done to prevent this from happening.
Last, better option
Mathare is characterised by unsafe and overcrowded housing. Most people live in shacks made of corrugated iron and lack access to essential services, such as sanitation and electricity. Around 90% of residents do not have piped water.
I conducted interviews, surveys and focus group discussions with 258 households and 20 water vendors in Mathare in 2016 and 2017. I also interviewed six key government officials.
More than half of the residents from my survey accessed water from informal water vendors. And about 36% households depended exclusively on them.
But the quality of water was inconsistent. Residents I interviewed said they sometimes found debris in the water, or that it sometimes tasted bad. This could be because when vendors illegally cut municipality pipes, the water becomes contaminated.
High prices
The water vendors’ prices also fluctuated. They ranged from Ksh2 (US$0.02) to Ksh50 (US$0.50) per 20 litres depending on where the clients lived and the availability of alternative sources of water. During periods of drought, when their water supplies might run dry, vendors would recoup costs by driving up prices.
In some cases, high prices were artificially created. Water vendors sometimes cut municipal pipes to create artificial shortages or colluded with cartels who controlled community yard taps.
The vendors also had erratic schedules. People would sometimes be late for work or miss work and forgo their daily wages to buy water.
While some clients reported having strong bonds with their vendors, the majority said they were rude and inconsiderate.
Differential treatment among different clients belonging to a particular tribe or of a particular economic status was another major bone of contention. Nevertheless, the customers were fearful about questioning the vendors.
Last option
There were several reasons why, despite these issues, people opted to use water vendors.
Water ATMs, though cheapest (about US$0.50 for 20 litres of water), were very few in number and located around the main road of the slum. It’s very difficult to carry heavy water over the undulating slum terrain. The ATM tanks were also often empty, making them an unpredictable and unreliable supply source. As for the standpipes, they operated only twice or three times a week but with no fixed timing or price.
And, even if in-house municipality connections are available, many poor households cannot afford the initial set-up cost. A new connection fee can vary between Ksh2500 (about US$25) and Ksh15000 (about US$150). The average household income in Mathare is less than US$3 a day.
Water vendors are a last option but residents depend on them. They’re more easily accessible and give people more control over their daily costs. For instance, people may use Mathare river to wash clothes or flush toilets, and buy water just for drinking and cooking.
Policy implications
The main reason for the growth of the informal water market is government failure to deliver adequate public services. To address the deficit, private vendors are gradually being regulated. Kenyan municipalities have asked authorised private water providers to make supply arrangements in informal settlements a compulsory prerequisite for licence renewals.
But more must be done to prevent corruption and the creation of cartels. Vendors must also develop their strength through association and business training to help them lobby and defend their rights. Creating a union will also create rules for water transactions and prices.
Finally, when providing licences, the government should demarcate the areas where vendors operate to reduce conflict between vendors. This will also make it easier for utility officers to monitor their prices and modes of water transactions.
A large number of people depend on them as only about 20% of the Nairobi residents who live in low income areas have piped water. The rest depend on uncovered wells, rivers, open springs and informal water markets.
There are different types of informal water markets. Some sell water legally, some illegally. There are also different ways in which people buy water. If they have water storage facilities, and live in an area accessible to water vendors, water can be bought in bulk from vendors who source it from private boreholes.
But most people won’t have storage facilities and will usually buy water from water vendors and carry it home. These water vendors get their supplies from a variety of sources including; rivers, wells, households with connections, communal standpipes and water ATMs. Water ATMs, installed by NGOs, provide users with cheap, clean water on demand. They swipe a smart-card and collect.
Water vendors also sometimes get water illegally by cutting through municipal piped networks.
In a recent study I looked at how informal water markets operate and how they serve the urban poor. My research focused on Mathare, a large informal settlement in Nairobi. About 206,000 people live there.
I found that – despite high water prices (in comparison to water sold in standpipes and water ATMs), poor quality and inconvenience – the urban poor continued to buy water from private vendors because it’s still their best option. The other options were either too unreliable or hard to reach.
Nairobi’s county government is taking steps to formalise informal water vendors as a way of providing more people with water. Though urban informal water markets have the potential to deliver water to the unserved poor, they can also trap the poor in highly unjust water delivery arrangements. More must be done to prevent this from happening.
Last, better option
Mathare is characterised by unsafe and overcrowded housing. Most people live in shacks made of corrugated iron and lack access to essential services, such as sanitation and electricity. Around 90% of residents do not have piped water.
I conducted interviews, surveys and focus group discussions with 258 households and 20 water vendors in Mathare in 2016 and 2017. I also interviewed six key government officials.
More than half of the residents from my survey accessed water from informal water vendors. And about 36% households depended exclusively on them.
But the quality of water was inconsistent. Residents I interviewed said they sometimes found debris in the water, or that it sometimes tasted bad. This could be because when vendors illegally cut municipality pipes, the water becomes contaminated.
High prices
The water vendors’ prices also fluctuated. They ranged from Ksh2 (US$0.02) to Ksh50 (US$0.50) per 20 litres depending on where the clients lived and the availability of alternative sources of water. During periods of drought, when their water supplies might run dry, vendors would recoup costs by driving up prices.
In some cases, high prices were artificially created. Water vendors sometimes cut municipal pipes to create artificial shortages or colluded with cartels who controlled community yard taps.
The vendors also had erratic schedules. People would sometimes be late for work or miss work and forgo their daily wages to buy water.
While some clients reported having strong bonds with their vendors, the majority said they were rude and inconsiderate.
Differential treatment among different clients belonging to a particular tribe or of a particular economic status was another major bone of contention. Nevertheless, the customers were fearful about questioning the vendors.
Last option
There were several reasons why, despite these issues, people opted to use water vendors.
Water ATMs, though cheapest (about US$0.50 for 20 litres of water), were very few in number and located around the main road of the slum. It’s very difficult to carry heavy water over the undulating slum terrain. The ATM tanks were also often empty, making them an unpredictable and unreliable supply source. As for the standpipes, they operated only twice or three times a week but with no fixed timing or price.
And, even if in-house municipality connections are available, many poor households cannot afford the initial set-up cost. A new connection fee can vary between Ksh2500 (about US$25) and Ksh15000 (about US$150). The average household income in Mathare is less than US$3 a day.
Water vendors are a last option but residents depend on them. They’re more easily accessible and give people more control over their daily costs. For instance, people may use Mathare river to wash clothes or flush toilets, and buy water just for drinking and cooking.
Policy implications
The main reason for the growth of the informal water market is government failure to deliver adequate public services. To address the deficit, private vendors are gradually being regulated. Kenyan municipalities have asked authorised private water providers to make supply arrangements in informal settlements a compulsory prerequisite for licence renewals.
But more must be done to prevent corruption and the creation of cartels. Vendors must also develop their strength through association and business training to help them lobby and defend their rights. Creating a union will also create rules for water transactions and prices.
Finally, when providing licences, the government should demarcate the areas where vendors operate to reduce conflict between vendors. This will also make it easier for utility officers to monitor their prices and modes of water transactions.
Retail industry
Sexual assault, forced labor, wage theft: garment workers in Jordan suffer for US brands
Activist groups work towards improving labor conditions in textile factories but abolishing the industry’s ‘norms’ is an uphill battle
Noor Ibrahim in Jordan - the guardian
Sat 29 Aug 2020 03.00 EDT
Mehedi Mehedi, a 36-year-old Bangladeshi garment worker who had spent 14 years working in Jordan, left the country forever last December. It was not an easy decision to make: Mehedi had met his wife in Jordan, he had no guarantees of finding a job back in Bangladesh, and he was desperate to work in order to support his chronically ill father.
In Jordan, Mehedi had been working for a subcontracting factory that supplies apparel to brands like Ralph Lauren, Under Armour and American Eagle. But after spending his last six months without regular pay, he had reached a breaking point.
“I would work 24-hour days at least twice a month,” Mehedi said. He explained that every time he would confront his supervisor about his delayed salary, the supervisor would reassure him that he would get paid the following week, which would ultimately result in going months without compensation. Mehedi said that after complaining to several labor rights organizations – including the National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) in Jordan and Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services (BOESL) – to no avail, he decided to cut his losses and return to Bangladesh.
“What can I do?” says Mehedi with a sigh, “This country isn’t for me.”
Mehedi’s ordeal is a far cry from the hopeful vision that was cemented on the evening of 24 October 2000, when the then-president, Bill Clinton, and King Abdullah II of Jordan signed the first ever free trade agreement between the United States and an Arab nation.
“It will be good for the United States, good for Jordan, and good for the long-term prospects for peace in the Middle East,” said Clinton, standing in the East Room of the White House as he delivered his preceding remarks. “It will eliminate duties and break down commercial barriers. It will also cement the bonds of friendship that already exist between Jordan and the United States.”
Fueled by migrant workers and a duty-free market, what followed over the course of two decades was the transformation of Jordan’s garment industry into a “magnet for apparel manufacturing”, as the Wall Street Journal described it. American companies such as Walmart and Target established factories in Jordan’s Al-Hassan industrial zone in the city of Irbid. Five years after the agreement had gone into effect, Jordan’s garment exports to the US had already surged twentyfold, ultimately comprising 95% of the country’s overall apparel exports. Today, dozens of American fashion brands, including Nike, Gap and Hanes source apparel from factories in Jordan.
But the rapid growth of Jordan’s garment sector thrust another issue into the limelight: a labor violations crisis that dominated headlines in both Jordan and the US.
In 2006, the National Labor Committee (NLC) published a 126-page exposé detailing cases of rampant sexual assault, physical abuse, grueling work hours and human trafficking in major Jordanian factories producing apparel for Victoria’s Secret, Kohl’s, JCPenney and other American retailers. “These are the worst conditions I’ve ever seen,” Charles Kernaghan, NLC executive director, told the New York Times in 2006. “You have people working 48 hours straight. You have workers who were stripped of their passports, who don’t have ID cards that allow them to go out on the street. If they’re stopped, they can be imprisoned or deported, so they’re trapped, often held under conditions of involuntary servitude.”
In February 2008, the Better Work Jordan (BWJ) initiative was launched as a response to this crisis. Created as a partnership between the International Labor Organization and the International Finance Corporation, and supported by the Jordanian Ministry of Labor and the US Department of Labor, BWJ has steadily worked towards improving labor conditions in Jordanian factories that export to the US. Through a combination of research, training programs and random compliance assessments, BWJ has made significant strides in dealing with issues such as the confiscation of workers’ passports and the use of forced labor tactics.
“Better work is now part of the ecosystem here. We have this kind of mutual trust that we’ve gained over a long period of time,” says Tariq Abu Qaoud, BWJ’s program manager, who has held multiple positions in the garment sector over the past 20 years. “But the most challenging part is figuring out how to change the mindset of some stakeholders in order to improve working conditions,” said Abu Qaoud. “There are some norms that have been in the country for many years, and that’s what we need to change.”
Abolishing these “norms” has proven to be a herculean task. Despite the progress introduced by BWJ in recent years, labor rights activists and researchers around the world continue to highlight cases of sexual misconduct, physical and verbal harassment, wage theft and hazardous work environments that continue to plague the sector.
Last year, in a study conducted by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) about the working conditions for female Bangladeshi garment workers in Jordan, all participating focus groups reported having experienced some form of verbal abuse.
The report noted that workers “… are meant to function like pieces of the machinery they are required to handle”. In one interview, a participant described the physical abuse she had experienced during peak season: “When I made a mistake, the supervisor took me to the floor-in-charge to complain. He got very upset with me and punched me in my face.” Another described the racist language directed toward her, “Bangladeshis are cheap. If I send back one, I can get back 10!”
The report also emphasized the impact these abuses had on the psychological wellbeing of workers. Last year alone, four migrant garment workers in Jordan committed suicide. “I don’t want to get up in the morning and go to work. I wish I would never have to wake up again,” one woman told a researcher – a quote that was later chosen as the title of the study.
The activists who spoke to the Guardian described these abuses as the result of a systemic problem. “The people here, the ones with connections, they don’t joke around with this. And they won’t go easy on the people who bring it up,” said one woman, a labor rights activist at the Workers Center in the industrial zone. Having worked closely with migrant workers over the years, she has faced multiple lawsuits from factory owners and their counterparts for protesting labor violations and leaking information to the press (“The government of Jordan and America combined have not done as much for us as she has,” Mehedi had declared at one point, laughing).
A former garment worker herself, she told the Guardian about other incidents migrant workers have come to her with; of the crowded, often bedbug-infested workers’ dormitories and the unhygienic food they are provided with; supervisors taking off their shoes and threatening to throw it at employees who don’t meet their demands; a worker who was choked and his toes bloodied after a manager stomped on his feet, who refused to report the incident to police despite her urging him to do so.
“I can guarantee you, 1 million per cent, that the brands know about the situation,” said a Workers Center employee. “They read reports about it. They come in and they search and they look at the residences and the food. And it’s never up to par. And even with that, they don’t do anything. They take no action. They just want to run their businesses.”
The issue of American brand accountability in Jordan was also highlighted by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRC) in 2017. After approaching 21 US brands – including Nike, JC Penney, Under Armor, and Costco – on how they tackle abuse against migrant workers making their clothes in Jordan, only six brands responded to the survey, and the report concluded, “Low engagement on the situation in Jordan by brands … indicating brands may not be prioritizing action in a region where serious abuses – including forced labor – are known to occur.”
The Guardian reached out to 12 American brands who source, or have sourced, products from the Jordanian garment factories where such labor abuses reportedly occurred. Only three responded, and none addressed the specific allegations. In an email, a spokesperson for Costco declined to comment. In another email, an Under Armour spokesperson said that when they detect issues with partner factories in Jordan, “including any issues regarding foreign migrant workers, we work with the supplier … to ensure that applicable laws and these codes of conduct are complied with and respected.” A representative for Walmart wrote that they hold suppliers accountable “… using independent third parties to evaluate supply chain practices and, when necessary, investigating allegations of wrongdoing by our suppliers or the facilities they use”.
Although auditors do come in for random checks on behalf of the brands, Ahlam Al Teerawi, a representative for the trade union’s office in the industrial zone, described how these audits are often viewed as a formality. “Unfortunately, when the auditors come by for routine checks, and choose 10-15 workers to interview at random, HR often gets to them first and lectures them on what to say.” She describes a system in which workers who give positive feedback are rewarded with bonuses, while those who report violations or concerns are at risk of getting fired and deported.
Beyond these existing issues, the Covid-19 pandemic has been particularly detrimental to the Jordanian garment industry’s migrant-majority workforce. Recent local media reports have shed light on the mass layoff of hundreds of garment workers who were left stranded in Jordan for months without pay. Former Burmese, Cambodian and Sri Lankan migrants workers at Vega Textile, which has produced apparel for American brands including Gap and Banana Republic, and Camel Textile, which has sold garments to Ralph Lauren and Talbots, were among those laid off, prompting protests from migrants in Jordan and rights groups abroad.
Farhan Ifraim, the chairman of the Jordan Garments, Accessories & Textiles Exporter’s Association (JGATE) acknowledges the problems that persist in Jordan’s garment industry, but maintains that they are isolated in nature, and do not speak to a larger pattern. “There is nothing that is 100% perfect. We are improving every day. Obviously we have issues, we have challenges, but we are hacking them,” he says. “It is a regulated sector, it’s a sector that is – I hate for somebody to call it a sweatshop or anything near a sweatshop.”
Ifraim, a 25-year garment industry veteran and factory CEO, moved from the United Arab Emirates back to Jordan in 2005. Like many others in the apparel sector at the time, he wanted to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the Free Trade Agreement that first launched Jordan into the spotlight as a global textile hub.
“In today’s world, developing countries can achieve growth without making some of the mistakes developed nations made on our path to industrialization,” said President Clinton, before signing the landmark agreement 20 years ago. “The idea that to grow more you had to exploit both workers and the environment, is simply no longer true.”
Whether that statement rings true for garment workers in Jordan, however, remains unclear.
In Jordan, Mehedi had been working for a subcontracting factory that supplies apparel to brands like Ralph Lauren, Under Armour and American Eagle. But after spending his last six months without regular pay, he had reached a breaking point.
“I would work 24-hour days at least twice a month,” Mehedi said. He explained that every time he would confront his supervisor about his delayed salary, the supervisor would reassure him that he would get paid the following week, which would ultimately result in going months without compensation. Mehedi said that after complaining to several labor rights organizations – including the National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) in Jordan and Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services (BOESL) – to no avail, he decided to cut his losses and return to Bangladesh.
“What can I do?” says Mehedi with a sigh, “This country isn’t for me.”
Mehedi’s ordeal is a far cry from the hopeful vision that was cemented on the evening of 24 October 2000, when the then-president, Bill Clinton, and King Abdullah II of Jordan signed the first ever free trade agreement between the United States and an Arab nation.
“It will be good for the United States, good for Jordan, and good for the long-term prospects for peace in the Middle East,” said Clinton, standing in the East Room of the White House as he delivered his preceding remarks. “It will eliminate duties and break down commercial barriers. It will also cement the bonds of friendship that already exist between Jordan and the United States.”
Fueled by migrant workers and a duty-free market, what followed over the course of two decades was the transformation of Jordan’s garment industry into a “magnet for apparel manufacturing”, as the Wall Street Journal described it. American companies such as Walmart and Target established factories in Jordan’s Al-Hassan industrial zone in the city of Irbid. Five years after the agreement had gone into effect, Jordan’s garment exports to the US had already surged twentyfold, ultimately comprising 95% of the country’s overall apparel exports. Today, dozens of American fashion brands, including Nike, Gap and Hanes source apparel from factories in Jordan.
But the rapid growth of Jordan’s garment sector thrust another issue into the limelight: a labor violations crisis that dominated headlines in both Jordan and the US.
In 2006, the National Labor Committee (NLC) published a 126-page exposé detailing cases of rampant sexual assault, physical abuse, grueling work hours and human trafficking in major Jordanian factories producing apparel for Victoria’s Secret, Kohl’s, JCPenney and other American retailers. “These are the worst conditions I’ve ever seen,” Charles Kernaghan, NLC executive director, told the New York Times in 2006. “You have people working 48 hours straight. You have workers who were stripped of their passports, who don’t have ID cards that allow them to go out on the street. If they’re stopped, they can be imprisoned or deported, so they’re trapped, often held under conditions of involuntary servitude.”
In February 2008, the Better Work Jordan (BWJ) initiative was launched as a response to this crisis. Created as a partnership between the International Labor Organization and the International Finance Corporation, and supported by the Jordanian Ministry of Labor and the US Department of Labor, BWJ has steadily worked towards improving labor conditions in Jordanian factories that export to the US. Through a combination of research, training programs and random compliance assessments, BWJ has made significant strides in dealing with issues such as the confiscation of workers’ passports and the use of forced labor tactics.
“Better work is now part of the ecosystem here. We have this kind of mutual trust that we’ve gained over a long period of time,” says Tariq Abu Qaoud, BWJ’s program manager, who has held multiple positions in the garment sector over the past 20 years. “But the most challenging part is figuring out how to change the mindset of some stakeholders in order to improve working conditions,” said Abu Qaoud. “There are some norms that have been in the country for many years, and that’s what we need to change.”
Abolishing these “norms” has proven to be a herculean task. Despite the progress introduced by BWJ in recent years, labor rights activists and researchers around the world continue to highlight cases of sexual misconduct, physical and verbal harassment, wage theft and hazardous work environments that continue to plague the sector.
Last year, in a study conducted by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) about the working conditions for female Bangladeshi garment workers in Jordan, all participating focus groups reported having experienced some form of verbal abuse.
The report noted that workers “… are meant to function like pieces of the machinery they are required to handle”. In one interview, a participant described the physical abuse she had experienced during peak season: “When I made a mistake, the supervisor took me to the floor-in-charge to complain. He got very upset with me and punched me in my face.” Another described the racist language directed toward her, “Bangladeshis are cheap. If I send back one, I can get back 10!”
The report also emphasized the impact these abuses had on the psychological wellbeing of workers. Last year alone, four migrant garment workers in Jordan committed suicide. “I don’t want to get up in the morning and go to work. I wish I would never have to wake up again,” one woman told a researcher – a quote that was later chosen as the title of the study.
The activists who spoke to the Guardian described these abuses as the result of a systemic problem. “The people here, the ones with connections, they don’t joke around with this. And they won’t go easy on the people who bring it up,” said one woman, a labor rights activist at the Workers Center in the industrial zone. Having worked closely with migrant workers over the years, she has faced multiple lawsuits from factory owners and their counterparts for protesting labor violations and leaking information to the press (“The government of Jordan and America combined have not done as much for us as she has,” Mehedi had declared at one point, laughing).
A former garment worker herself, she told the Guardian about other incidents migrant workers have come to her with; of the crowded, often bedbug-infested workers’ dormitories and the unhygienic food they are provided with; supervisors taking off their shoes and threatening to throw it at employees who don’t meet their demands; a worker who was choked and his toes bloodied after a manager stomped on his feet, who refused to report the incident to police despite her urging him to do so.
“I can guarantee you, 1 million per cent, that the brands know about the situation,” said a Workers Center employee. “They read reports about it. They come in and they search and they look at the residences and the food. And it’s never up to par. And even with that, they don’t do anything. They take no action. They just want to run their businesses.”
The issue of American brand accountability in Jordan was also highlighted by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRC) in 2017. After approaching 21 US brands – including Nike, JC Penney, Under Armor, and Costco – on how they tackle abuse against migrant workers making their clothes in Jordan, only six brands responded to the survey, and the report concluded, “Low engagement on the situation in Jordan by brands … indicating brands may not be prioritizing action in a region where serious abuses – including forced labor – are known to occur.”
The Guardian reached out to 12 American brands who source, or have sourced, products from the Jordanian garment factories where such labor abuses reportedly occurred. Only three responded, and none addressed the specific allegations. In an email, a spokesperson for Costco declined to comment. In another email, an Under Armour spokesperson said that when they detect issues with partner factories in Jordan, “including any issues regarding foreign migrant workers, we work with the supplier … to ensure that applicable laws and these codes of conduct are complied with and respected.” A representative for Walmart wrote that they hold suppliers accountable “… using independent third parties to evaluate supply chain practices and, when necessary, investigating allegations of wrongdoing by our suppliers or the facilities they use”.
Although auditors do come in for random checks on behalf of the brands, Ahlam Al Teerawi, a representative for the trade union’s office in the industrial zone, described how these audits are often viewed as a formality. “Unfortunately, when the auditors come by for routine checks, and choose 10-15 workers to interview at random, HR often gets to them first and lectures them on what to say.” She describes a system in which workers who give positive feedback are rewarded with bonuses, while those who report violations or concerns are at risk of getting fired and deported.
Beyond these existing issues, the Covid-19 pandemic has been particularly detrimental to the Jordanian garment industry’s migrant-majority workforce. Recent local media reports have shed light on the mass layoff of hundreds of garment workers who were left stranded in Jordan for months without pay. Former Burmese, Cambodian and Sri Lankan migrants workers at Vega Textile, which has produced apparel for American brands including Gap and Banana Republic, and Camel Textile, which has sold garments to Ralph Lauren and Talbots, were among those laid off, prompting protests from migrants in Jordan and rights groups abroad.
Farhan Ifraim, the chairman of the Jordan Garments, Accessories & Textiles Exporter’s Association (JGATE) acknowledges the problems that persist in Jordan’s garment industry, but maintains that they are isolated in nature, and do not speak to a larger pattern. “There is nothing that is 100% perfect. We are improving every day. Obviously we have issues, we have challenges, but we are hacking them,” he says. “It is a regulated sector, it’s a sector that is – I hate for somebody to call it a sweatshop or anything near a sweatshop.”
Ifraim, a 25-year garment industry veteran and factory CEO, moved from the United Arab Emirates back to Jordan in 2005. Like many others in the apparel sector at the time, he wanted to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the Free Trade Agreement that first launched Jordan into the spotlight as a global textile hub.
“In today’s world, developing countries can achieve growth without making some of the mistakes developed nations made on our path to industrialization,” said President Clinton, before signing the landmark agreement 20 years ago. “The idea that to grow more you had to exploit both workers and the environment, is simply no longer true.”
Whether that statement rings true for garment workers in Jordan, however, remains unclear.
DRIVING WHILE BLACK IN ENGLAND, JUST LIKE AMERICA!!!
Black Met inspector stopped by police while driving home from work
Charles Ehikioya, who has served for 22 years, says he has no choice but to sue for racial harassment
PA Media
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 18 Aug 2020 03.44 EDT
A black police inspector has said he has no choice but to sue the Metropolitan police for racial harassment after two white officers stopped him while he was driving.
Charles Ehikioya said he recorded the incident, which happened as he returned from work in south London on 23 May, because he could see that an officer’s body-worn camera was not switched on.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said he was pulled over for no other reason than being black.
When asked why he had decided to sue the force for racial harassment Ehikioya, 55, said that he had “no choice” because his complaint had not been taken seriously.
He added: “In my view it’s not the whole organisation that’s like that, it’s only a few individuals that are causing this issue. It’s just sad that some people don’t want to hear it ... I feel that has not been taken seriously and has not been listened to, but instead I am being persecuted, and I am not prepared to sit quietly. Therefore I have no choice but to react in the way I am reacting. Enough talk – action speaks louder than words.”
The Met said in a statement to PA Media that it had received an internal complaint on 24 May but a review “found no evidence of misconduct”.
The incident took place in Croydon as Ehikioya was driving home. One of the officers said he had been stopped because of his speed and because “it looked like he had gone through a red light”.
The officer asked Ehikioya for his driving licence as well as proof he was insured to drive the car, that the vehicle had not been stolen, that he was not intoxicated and that he not been using his phone.
He said Ehikioya’s driving was “unusual”, which the inspector strongly disputed, according to the recording, seen by the BBC.
The inspector was also accused of being obstructive, with the 22-year veteran of the force telling the broadcaster: “These were alleged offences that could have ended my whole career.”
The two officers left the scene after Ehikioya informed them he was a serving colleague and showed them his police badge.
The Met said in its statement that no action had been taken against the inspector as a result of the stop.
Ehikioya said: “I believed I was racially profiled and received no apology. I have kids and a grandson, I would not want them treated like this.”
The complaint comes amid renewed criticism of police use of stop and search powers, with the Labour MP Dawn Butler saying she was racially profiled by officers in Hackney, east London, who pulled her and a black friend over.
The Met defended the officers who stopped her car, with the deputy commissioner, Sir Steve House, complaining they had faced “trial by social media” after the incident.
Charles Ehikioya said he recorded the incident, which happened as he returned from work in south London on 23 May, because he could see that an officer’s body-worn camera was not switched on.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said he was pulled over for no other reason than being black.
When asked why he had decided to sue the force for racial harassment Ehikioya, 55, said that he had “no choice” because his complaint had not been taken seriously.
He added: “In my view it’s not the whole organisation that’s like that, it’s only a few individuals that are causing this issue. It’s just sad that some people don’t want to hear it ... I feel that has not been taken seriously and has not been listened to, but instead I am being persecuted, and I am not prepared to sit quietly. Therefore I have no choice but to react in the way I am reacting. Enough talk – action speaks louder than words.”
The Met said in a statement to PA Media that it had received an internal complaint on 24 May but a review “found no evidence of misconduct”.
The incident took place in Croydon as Ehikioya was driving home. One of the officers said he had been stopped because of his speed and because “it looked like he had gone through a red light”.
The officer asked Ehikioya for his driving licence as well as proof he was insured to drive the car, that the vehicle had not been stolen, that he was not intoxicated and that he not been using his phone.
He said Ehikioya’s driving was “unusual”, which the inspector strongly disputed, according to the recording, seen by the BBC.
The inspector was also accused of being obstructive, with the 22-year veteran of the force telling the broadcaster: “These were alleged offences that could have ended my whole career.”
The two officers left the scene after Ehikioya informed them he was a serving colleague and showed them his police badge.
The Met said in its statement that no action had been taken against the inspector as a result of the stop.
Ehikioya said: “I believed I was racially profiled and received no apology. I have kids and a grandson, I would not want them treated like this.”
The complaint comes amid renewed criticism of police use of stop and search powers, with the Labour MP Dawn Butler saying she was racially profiled by officers in Hackney, east London, who pulled her and a black friend over.
The Met defended the officers who stopped her car, with the deputy commissioner, Sir Steve House, complaining they had faced “trial by social media” after the incident.
Vitamin D helps us fight Covid-19, major study finds
Israeli population-based study supports research showing that vitamin D supplements could help people avoid serious respiratory effects of Covid-19.
By ISRAEL21c Staff
JULY 27, 2020, 7:00 AM
A low level of vitamin D in blood plasma appears to be an independent risk factor for Covid-19 infection and hospitalization, say scientists from Israeli HMO Leumit Health Services and the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University.
The researchers came to their conclusion using real-world data and an Israeli cohort of 782 Covid-19 positive patients and 7,025 Covid-19 negative patients.
A low level of vitamin D in blood plasma appears to be an independent risk factor for Covid-19 infection and hospitalization, say scientists from Israeli HMO Leumit Health Services and the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University.
The researchers came to their conclusion using real-world data and an Israeli cohort of 782 Covid-19 positive patients and 7,025 Covid-19 negative patients.
“The main finding of our study was the significant association of low plasma vitamin D level with the likelihood of Covid-19 infection among patients who were tested for Covid-19, even after adjustment for age, gender, socio-economic status and chronic, mental and physical disorders,” said Dr. Eugene Merzon, head of Leumit’s Department of Managed Care.
“Furthermore, low vitamin D level was associated with the risk of hospitalization due to Covid-19 infection, although this association wasn’t significant after adjustment for other factors,” he added.
The scientists’ research follows a few worldwide studies that have shown the pronounced impact of vitamin D metabolites on the immune system response and on the development of Covid-19 infection by the novel SARS CoV-2 coronavirus.
“Our finding is in agreement with the results of previous studies in the field. Reduced risk of acute respiratory tract infection following vitamin D supplementation has been reported,” said Dr. Ilan Green, head of Leumit’s Research Institute.
As for the amount of vitamin D required, Merzon says it should be “personalized and take into account patients’ age, gender, race and ethnicity, nutritional status and health condition.”
Their report on the study was published in The FEBS Journal and is expected to make a wide impact because of the study’s size and population-based structure.
Fascinating findings
Dr. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern, leader of the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine research group, added that the analysis showed people who were Covid-19 positive were older than non-infected people.
“Interestingly, the two-peak distributions for age groups were demonstrated to confer increased risk for Covid-19: around ages 25 and 50 years old,” she said.
“The first peak may be explained by high social gathering habits at the young age. The peak at age 50 years may be explained by continued social habits, in conjunction with various chronic diseases.”
Leumit Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shlomo Vinker said he was surprised to discover that “chronic medical conditions, like dementia, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung disease that were considered to be very risky in previous studies, were not found as increasing the rate of infection in our study.”
However, he added, “this finding is highly biased by the severe social contacts restrictions that were imposed on all the population during the Covid-19 outbreak. Therefore, we assume that following the Israeli Ministry of Health instructions, patients with chronic medical conditions significantly reduced their social contacts. This might indeed minimize the risk of Covid-19 infection in that group of patients.”
Now this joint Israeli research team is planning to evaluate factors associated with Covid-19 mortality in Israel.
“We are willing to find associations to the Covid-19 clinical outcomes — for example, pre-infection glycemic control of Covid-19 patients — to make the assessment of mortality risk due to Covid-19 infection in Israel,” said Merzon.
The researchers came to their conclusion using real-world data and an Israeli cohort of 782 Covid-19 positive patients and 7,025 Covid-19 negative patients.
A low level of vitamin D in blood plasma appears to be an independent risk factor for Covid-19 infection and hospitalization, say scientists from Israeli HMO Leumit Health Services and the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University.
The researchers came to their conclusion using real-world data and an Israeli cohort of 782 Covid-19 positive patients and 7,025 Covid-19 negative patients.
“The main finding of our study was the significant association of low plasma vitamin D level with the likelihood of Covid-19 infection among patients who were tested for Covid-19, even after adjustment for age, gender, socio-economic status and chronic, mental and physical disorders,” said Dr. Eugene Merzon, head of Leumit’s Department of Managed Care.
“Furthermore, low vitamin D level was associated with the risk of hospitalization due to Covid-19 infection, although this association wasn’t significant after adjustment for other factors,” he added.
The scientists’ research follows a few worldwide studies that have shown the pronounced impact of vitamin D metabolites on the immune system response and on the development of Covid-19 infection by the novel SARS CoV-2 coronavirus.
“Our finding is in agreement with the results of previous studies in the field. Reduced risk of acute respiratory tract infection following vitamin D supplementation has been reported,” said Dr. Ilan Green, head of Leumit’s Research Institute.
As for the amount of vitamin D required, Merzon says it should be “personalized and take into account patients’ age, gender, race and ethnicity, nutritional status and health condition.”
Their report on the study was published in The FEBS Journal and is expected to make a wide impact because of the study’s size and population-based structure.
Fascinating findings
Dr. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern, leader of the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine research group, added that the analysis showed people who were Covid-19 positive were older than non-infected people.
“Interestingly, the two-peak distributions for age groups were demonstrated to confer increased risk for Covid-19: around ages 25 and 50 years old,” she said.
“The first peak may be explained by high social gathering habits at the young age. The peak at age 50 years may be explained by continued social habits, in conjunction with various chronic diseases.”
Leumit Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shlomo Vinker said he was surprised to discover that “chronic medical conditions, like dementia, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung disease that were considered to be very risky in previous studies, were not found as increasing the rate of infection in our study.”
However, he added, “this finding is highly biased by the severe social contacts restrictions that were imposed on all the population during the Covid-19 outbreak. Therefore, we assume that following the Israeli Ministry of Health instructions, patients with chronic medical conditions significantly reduced their social contacts. This might indeed minimize the risk of Covid-19 infection in that group of patients.”
Now this joint Israeli research team is planning to evaluate factors associated with Covid-19 mortality in Israel.
“We are willing to find associations to the Covid-19 clinical outcomes — for example, pre-infection glycemic control of Covid-19 patients — to make the assessment of mortality risk due to Covid-19 infection in Israel,” said Merzon.
when fools govern!!!
Sweden's sobering coronavirus death toll bodes ill for the laissez-faire pandemic approach
A new report by the Swedish Public Health Agency sheds light on the toll of the country's lax policies
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
JULY 22, 2020 10:53PM (UTC)
Public health officials in Sweden projected that anywhere from 1,100 to 4,400 more coronavirus-related deaths are to be expected in their country. The death projections are likely a consequence of the Scandinavian nation's controversial hands-off response to the pandemic, one which many right-leaning Americans have sought to emulate.
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell from the country's Public Health Agency told reporters on Tuesday that the most likely scenario is that there will be clusters of new cases which will quickly subside. He added, "we've seen [this increase in cases] now in different parts of the world, and which seems like something that COVID-19 is creating more than most other diseases." He also claimed that "in Sweden, the positive trend with a fairly quick decline in cases continues."
The report itself laid out several possible scenarios for the coronavirus' path through Sweden. If the virus continues to spread in accordance with current trends, the report projects that only 1,100 more people will die. If there is a brief spike due to people abandoning safety procedures and then resuming them, the death toll is expected to increase by roughly 3,250. If COVID-19 follows a traditional pandemic trajectory, more than 4,400 deaths related to the virus may occur.
Sweden's death toll is already the highest in Scandinavia. Since the outbreak there have been 5,667 reported deaths out of 78,504 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. By contrast Denmark has only had 611 reported deaths out of 13,554 confirmed cases, Norway has 255 deaths out of 9,059 confirmed cases and Iceland has 10 deaths out of 1,840 confirmed cases. Sweden has a population of 10.2 million people compared to 5.5 million for Norway, 5.9 million for Denmark and 350,000 for Iceland.
Infamously, Tegnell denied that wearing face masks would make a difference, stating that there was "little scientific evidence" that masks would do anything. That is untrue, and contradicts the scientific consensus on face masks as a preventative public health measure.
Tegnell defended himself last month when confronted about Sweden's death toll, telling the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Sweden's Public Health Agency "didn't know that there would be such a big potential for the disease to spread in elderly care homes, with so many deaths" and that "we knew that group was very fragile and that we would get a lot of deaths if they got infected. But we didn't know that the disease would enter so easily and for the spread to be so big."
Despite these sobering facts, Tegnell insisted that the social distancing recommendations "worked well," that he did not believe Sweden should have done things "completely" differently and that "if we were to encounter the same disease, given exactly what we know about it today, I think we would reach a conclusion to act somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did."
Indeed, Sweden has not enacted as many public health restrictions as most other European countries, including not mandating face masks despite the World Health Organization's recommendation and evidence that masks can effectively reduce transmission of the virus. The country has urged citizens to work from home if possible, for individuals above 70 to stay at home and to avoid unnecessary travel, as well as to practice social distancing. The country did also close universities and ban gatherings of more than 50 people.
Sweden has become something of a rallying cry for conservatives who oppose the economic shutdown and other measures that have been taken to address the pandemic. Sweden decided not to issue stay-at-home orders or forcibly close businesses like restaurants and cafes. It has kept open schools for children under the age of 16 and has only recommended masks for healthcare personnel. As Professor Olle Kampe, a senior consultant in endocrinology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told Business Insider in May, "We are sacrificing old people and people with diseases, so I don't [think] that it's something that anyone should copy."
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell from the country's Public Health Agency told reporters on Tuesday that the most likely scenario is that there will be clusters of new cases which will quickly subside. He added, "we've seen [this increase in cases] now in different parts of the world, and which seems like something that COVID-19 is creating more than most other diseases." He also claimed that "in Sweden, the positive trend with a fairly quick decline in cases continues."
The report itself laid out several possible scenarios for the coronavirus' path through Sweden. If the virus continues to spread in accordance with current trends, the report projects that only 1,100 more people will die. If there is a brief spike due to people abandoning safety procedures and then resuming them, the death toll is expected to increase by roughly 3,250. If COVID-19 follows a traditional pandemic trajectory, more than 4,400 deaths related to the virus may occur.
Sweden's death toll is already the highest in Scandinavia. Since the outbreak there have been 5,667 reported deaths out of 78,504 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. By contrast Denmark has only had 611 reported deaths out of 13,554 confirmed cases, Norway has 255 deaths out of 9,059 confirmed cases and Iceland has 10 deaths out of 1,840 confirmed cases. Sweden has a population of 10.2 million people compared to 5.5 million for Norway, 5.9 million for Denmark and 350,000 for Iceland.
Infamously, Tegnell denied that wearing face masks would make a difference, stating that there was "little scientific evidence" that masks would do anything. That is untrue, and contradicts the scientific consensus on face masks as a preventative public health measure.
Tegnell defended himself last month when confronted about Sweden's death toll, telling the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Sweden's Public Health Agency "didn't know that there would be such a big potential for the disease to spread in elderly care homes, with so many deaths" and that "we knew that group was very fragile and that we would get a lot of deaths if they got infected. But we didn't know that the disease would enter so easily and for the spread to be so big."
Despite these sobering facts, Tegnell insisted that the social distancing recommendations "worked well," that he did not believe Sweden should have done things "completely" differently and that "if we were to encounter the same disease, given exactly what we know about it today, I think we would reach a conclusion to act somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did."
Indeed, Sweden has not enacted as many public health restrictions as most other European countries, including not mandating face masks despite the World Health Organization's recommendation and evidence that masks can effectively reduce transmission of the virus. The country has urged citizens to work from home if possible, for individuals above 70 to stay at home and to avoid unnecessary travel, as well as to practice social distancing. The country did also close universities and ban gatherings of more than 50 people.
Sweden has become something of a rallying cry for conservatives who oppose the economic shutdown and other measures that have been taken to address the pandemic. Sweden decided not to issue stay-at-home orders or forcibly close businesses like restaurants and cafes. It has kept open schools for children under the age of 16 and has only recommended masks for healthcare personnel. As Professor Olle Kampe, a senior consultant in endocrinology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told Business Insider in May, "We are sacrificing old people and people with diseases, so I don't [think] that it's something that anyone should copy."
Scientists: Prepare for coronavirus to be around for decades
SAGE member Jeremy Farrar warns MPs that there will be no quick recovery.
By ASHLEIGH FURLONG - politico
07/21/2020 10:54 AM EDT
LONDON — The U.K. will not be back to normality by Christmas, with the coronavirus set to be around for “decades” to come, Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies member and director of the Wellcome Trust Jeremy Farrar told MPs on Tuesday.
This is contrary to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s assertion that the country would be able to return to normality by Christmas.
“Things will not be done by Christmas," said Farrar, while addressing the House of Commons health and social care committee. “Even actually if we have a vaccine or a very good treatment, humanity will still be living with the virus for many, many years to come.”
John Bell, Oxford University’s regius professor of medicine, went further, saying that the “reality is that this virus will be with us forever.” “It is going to come and go,” he said.
Criticisms of the U.K. government’s delay in implementing lockdown following advice SAGE have expounded in recent weeks, with Farrar admitting that the lockdown was “too late.”
However, Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, defended the delay, saying it was “no more than you would reasonably expect for what are really very difficult things to operationalize and decide.”
Farrar also admitted that it was a “mistake” to move from community testing to focusing on hospital patients. Pointing to time in January and February, Farrar said, “I think there was not enough urgency... I regret that SAGE wasn't more blunt in its advice,” he said. “But it didn't have a job in holding people to account."
Also defending the move away from community testing early on in the epidemic, Whitty said that this decision was “entirely practical” given the capacity that the U.K. had.
This is contrary to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s assertion that the country would be able to return to normality by Christmas.
“Things will not be done by Christmas," said Farrar, while addressing the House of Commons health and social care committee. “Even actually if we have a vaccine or a very good treatment, humanity will still be living with the virus for many, many years to come.”
John Bell, Oxford University’s regius professor of medicine, went further, saying that the “reality is that this virus will be with us forever.” “It is going to come and go,” he said.
Criticisms of the U.K. government’s delay in implementing lockdown following advice SAGE have expounded in recent weeks, with Farrar admitting that the lockdown was “too late.”
However, Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, defended the delay, saying it was “no more than you would reasonably expect for what are really very difficult things to operationalize and decide.”
Farrar also admitted that it was a “mistake” to move from community testing to focusing on hospital patients. Pointing to time in January and February, Farrar said, “I think there was not enough urgency... I regret that SAGE wasn't more blunt in its advice,” he said. “But it didn't have a job in holding people to account."
Also defending the move away from community testing early on in the epidemic, Whitty said that this decision was “entirely practical” given the capacity that the U.K. had.
wow, a country with intelligent leaders!!!
Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear
By FRANK JORDANS - ap
7/3/2020
BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers have finalized the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, backing a plan that environmental groups say isn’t ambitious enough and free marketeers criticize as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.
The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ - an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources. Achieving that goal is made harder than in comparable countries such as France and Britain because of Germany’s existing commitment to also phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022.
“The days of coal are numbered in Germany,” Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said. “Germany is the first industrialized country that leaves behind both nuclear energy and coal.”
Greenpeace and other environmental groups have staged vocal protests against the plan, including by dropping a banner down the front of the Reichstag building Friday. They argue that the government’s road map won’t reduce Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet the targets set out in the Paris climate accord.
“Germany, the country that burns the greatest amount of lignite coal worldwide, will burden the next generation with 18 more years of carbon dioxide,” Greenpeace Germany’s executive director Martin Kaiser told The Associated Press.
Kaiser, who was part of a government-appointed expert commission, accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of making a “historic mistake,” saying an end date for coal of 2030 would have sent a strong signal for European and global climate policy. Merkel has said she wants Europe to be the first continent to end its greenhouse gas emissions, by 2050.
Germany closed its last black coal mine in 2018, but it continues to import the fuel and extract its own reserves of lignite, a brownish coal that is abundant in the west and east of the country. Officials warn that the loss of mining jobs could hurt those economically fragile regions, though efforts are already under way to turn the vast lignite mines into nature reserves and lakeside resorts.
Schulze, the environment minister, said there would be regular government reviews to examine whether the end date for coal can be brought forward. She noted that by the end of 2022, eight of the country’s most polluting coal-fired plants will have already been closed.
Environmentalists have also criticized the large sums being offered to coal companies to shut down their plants, a complaint shared by libertarians such as Germany’s opposition Free Democratic Party.
Katja Suding, a leading FDP lawmaker, said the government should have opted to expand existing emissions trading systems that put a price on carbon, thereby encouraging operators to shut down unprofitable coal plants.
“You just have to make it so expensive that it’s not profitable anymore to turn coal into electricity,” she said.
This week, utility companies in Spain shut down seven of the country’s 15 coal-fired power plants, saying they couldn’t be operated at profit without government subsidies.
But the head of Germany’s main miners’ union, Michael Vassiliadis, welcomed the decision, calling it a “historic milestone.” He urged the government to focus next on an expansion of renewable energy generation and the use of hydrogen as a clean alternative for storing and transporting energy in the future.
Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.
The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ - an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources. Achieving that goal is made harder than in comparable countries such as France and Britain because of Germany’s existing commitment to also phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022.
“The days of coal are numbered in Germany,” Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said. “Germany is the first industrialized country that leaves behind both nuclear energy and coal.”
Greenpeace and other environmental groups have staged vocal protests against the plan, including by dropping a banner down the front of the Reichstag building Friday. They argue that the government’s road map won’t reduce Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet the targets set out in the Paris climate accord.
“Germany, the country that burns the greatest amount of lignite coal worldwide, will burden the next generation with 18 more years of carbon dioxide,” Greenpeace Germany’s executive director Martin Kaiser told The Associated Press.
Kaiser, who was part of a government-appointed expert commission, accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of making a “historic mistake,” saying an end date for coal of 2030 would have sent a strong signal for European and global climate policy. Merkel has said she wants Europe to be the first continent to end its greenhouse gas emissions, by 2050.
Germany closed its last black coal mine in 2018, but it continues to import the fuel and extract its own reserves of lignite, a brownish coal that is abundant in the west and east of the country. Officials warn that the loss of mining jobs could hurt those economically fragile regions, though efforts are already under way to turn the vast lignite mines into nature reserves and lakeside resorts.
Schulze, the environment minister, said there would be regular government reviews to examine whether the end date for coal can be brought forward. She noted that by the end of 2022, eight of the country’s most polluting coal-fired plants will have already been closed.
Environmentalists have also criticized the large sums being offered to coal companies to shut down their plants, a complaint shared by libertarians such as Germany’s opposition Free Democratic Party.
Katja Suding, a leading FDP lawmaker, said the government should have opted to expand existing emissions trading systems that put a price on carbon, thereby encouraging operators to shut down unprofitable coal plants.
“You just have to make it so expensive that it’s not profitable anymore to turn coal into electricity,” she said.
This week, utility companies in Spain shut down seven of the country’s 15 coal-fired power plants, saying they couldn’t be operated at profit without government subsidies.
But the head of Germany’s main miners’ union, Michael Vassiliadis, welcomed the decision, calling it a “historic milestone.” He urged the government to focus next on an expansion of renewable energy generation and the use of hydrogen as a clean alternative for storing and transporting energy in the future.
Archbishop of Canterbury says portrayal of Jesus as White should be reconsidered in light of Black Lives Matter protests
By Sara Spary, CNN
6/27/2020
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, has said the church should reconsider its portrayal of Jesus as a White man.
Speaking to the BBC Today Programme, Welby was asked whether the way the western church "portrays Jesus" needed to be "thought about again" and "re-imagined" in light of recent Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd.
"Yes, of course it does," he said, adding that Jesus was portrayed differently in countries around the world. He was regularly in touch with Anglican Church leaders from around the world, he said, who did not portray Jesus as White.
"You go into their churches and you don't see a White Jesus -- you see a Black Jesus, or Chinese Jesus, or a Middle Eastern Jesus -- which is of course the most accurate.
"You see a Fijian Jesus -- you see Jesus portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings."
Welby added that the representations of Jesus were not, however, "who we worship" but rather served as a "reminder of the universality of the God who became fully human."
Addressing calls for monuments with links to the UK's imperialist history and slave trade to be removed, he said statues in Canterbury Cathedral would be put under review.
"We're going to be looking very carefully, and putting them in context and seeing if they all should be there," he said.
"The question [about whether they should all be there] arises, of course it does, and we've seen that all over the world."
The movement to take down and deface controversial statues has gained traction in the UK, as well as Europe and the US but has divided public opinion -- with critics slamming it as "mob rule" while others applaud it as a way of addressing "systematic racism."
Speaking to the BBC Today Programme, Welby was asked whether the way the western church "portrays Jesus" needed to be "thought about again" and "re-imagined" in light of recent Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd.
"Yes, of course it does," he said, adding that Jesus was portrayed differently in countries around the world. He was regularly in touch with Anglican Church leaders from around the world, he said, who did not portray Jesus as White.
"You go into their churches and you don't see a White Jesus -- you see a Black Jesus, or Chinese Jesus, or a Middle Eastern Jesus -- which is of course the most accurate.
"You see a Fijian Jesus -- you see Jesus portrayed in as many ways as there are cultures, languages and understandings."
Welby added that the representations of Jesus were not, however, "who we worship" but rather served as a "reminder of the universality of the God who became fully human."
Addressing calls for monuments with links to the UK's imperialist history and slave trade to be removed, he said statues in Canterbury Cathedral would be put under review.
"We're going to be looking very carefully, and putting them in context and seeing if they all should be there," he said.
"The question [about whether they should all be there] arises, of course it does, and we've seen that all over the world."
The movement to take down and deface controversial statues has gained traction in the UK, as well as Europe and the US but has divided public opinion -- with critics slamming it as "mob rule" while others applaud it as a way of addressing "systematic racism."
Coronavirus outbreak
Global report: China suspends US poultry imports from Covid-19-affected business
WHO reports record daily increase in coronavirus cases; Beijing doubles its daily
testing capacity to identify cluster-related cases
Alison Rourke agencies
the guardian
Mon 22 Jun 2020 04.57 EDT
China has suspended imports of poultry products from a plant owned by an Arkansas-based meat processor, Tyson Inc, that has been hit by coronavirus, as authorities struggle to bring an outbreak in Beijing under control.
China’s general administration of customs said on its website it had decided on the suspension after the company confirmed a cluster of Covid-19 cases at the plant, which is located in the town of Springdale.
Tyson’s spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company was looking into the issue, adding that the company works closely with US authorities to ensure its food complies with government safety requirements.
“It is important to note that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USDA and the US Food and Drug Administration agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of Covid-19 associated with food,” he said in an email. China also suspended pork products from German pork processor Toennies last week following a coronavirus outbreak among hundreds of its workers.
The move came as the WHO reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period.
The biggest increase was from North and South America with more than 116,000 new cases, according to its daily report. Total global cases are over 8.7 million with more than 461,000 deaths, according to the WHO. The previous record for new cases was 181,232 on 18 June. Most - more than 50,000 - came from Brazil, followed by the US and India.
Imports of US poultry to China have surged since Beijing ended an almost five-year ban on the trade in November 2019.
But authorities in the capital have stepped up oversight of imported foods after a new cluster of coronavirus cases were linked to a sprawling wholesale food market in Beijing just over a week ago. The city began testing meat, seafood and fresh produce last week and some ports were opening all containers of meat to carry out coronavirus tests.
On Friday, customs asked food exporters to sign a declaration that their produce is not contaminated by the virus.
The new Covid-19 outbreak, centred on the Xinfadi market in Beijing, prompted the swift reintroduction of restrictions in the capital, including residential lockdowns in 40 communities, travel restrictions, and school closures. More than 2 million people have been tested for the virus in Beijing in the past two weeks, according to the state-run Global Times. It said more than 200 people have now been confirmed with Covid-19 in the capital.
On Monday, China reported 18 new coronavirus cases, nine of which were in the capital. Local authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping up other measures to prevent the virus from spreading following a series of local infections.
Health authorities said Beijing had doubled its nucleic acid testing capacity from 100,000 a day to 230,000 a day.
China and the European Union will hold a video summit on the coronavirus on Monday, their first formal talks since ties soured over European accusations that Beijing has spread disinformation about the coronavirus.
“We are ready to work with China. But we also expect China to assume its responsibilities as one of the world’s largest economies,” said a senior official helping prepare the summit.
China’s People’s Daily said the meeting was a chance to “inject more confidence” into the global economy. In a barely veiled slight to the US, the People’s Daily said the “mutual support between China and Europe has set an example for the global epidemic battle”.
At Donald Trump’s first campaign rally since the pandemic, he again blamed China for the coronavirus, calling it “kung flu”. Last week Washington questioned China’s credibility on accurately reporting the new Covid-19 cluster in Beijing.[...]
China’s general administration of customs said on its website it had decided on the suspension after the company confirmed a cluster of Covid-19 cases at the plant, which is located in the town of Springdale.
Tyson’s spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company was looking into the issue, adding that the company works closely with US authorities to ensure its food complies with government safety requirements.
“It is important to note that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USDA and the US Food and Drug Administration agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of Covid-19 associated with food,” he said in an email. China also suspended pork products from German pork processor Toennies last week following a coronavirus outbreak among hundreds of its workers.
The move came as the WHO reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 183,020 in a 24-hour period.
The biggest increase was from North and South America with more than 116,000 new cases, according to its daily report. Total global cases are over 8.7 million with more than 461,000 deaths, according to the WHO. The previous record for new cases was 181,232 on 18 June. Most - more than 50,000 - came from Brazil, followed by the US and India.
Imports of US poultry to China have surged since Beijing ended an almost five-year ban on the trade in November 2019.
But authorities in the capital have stepped up oversight of imported foods after a new cluster of coronavirus cases were linked to a sprawling wholesale food market in Beijing just over a week ago. The city began testing meat, seafood and fresh produce last week and some ports were opening all containers of meat to carry out coronavirus tests.
On Friday, customs asked food exporters to sign a declaration that their produce is not contaminated by the virus.
The new Covid-19 outbreak, centred on the Xinfadi market in Beijing, prompted the swift reintroduction of restrictions in the capital, including residential lockdowns in 40 communities, travel restrictions, and school closures. More than 2 million people have been tested for the virus in Beijing in the past two weeks, according to the state-run Global Times. It said more than 200 people have now been confirmed with Covid-19 in the capital.
On Monday, China reported 18 new coronavirus cases, nine of which were in the capital. Local authorities are restricting movement of people in the capital and stepping up other measures to prevent the virus from spreading following a series of local infections.
Health authorities said Beijing had doubled its nucleic acid testing capacity from 100,000 a day to 230,000 a day.
China and the European Union will hold a video summit on the coronavirus on Monday, their first formal talks since ties soured over European accusations that Beijing has spread disinformation about the coronavirus.
“We are ready to work with China. But we also expect China to assume its responsibilities as one of the world’s largest economies,” said a senior official helping prepare the summit.
China’s People’s Daily said the meeting was a chance to “inject more confidence” into the global economy. In a barely veiled slight to the US, the People’s Daily said the “mutual support between China and Europe has set an example for the global epidemic battle”.
At Donald Trump’s first campaign rally since the pandemic, he again blamed China for the coronavirus, calling it “kung flu”. Last week Washington questioned China’s credibility on accurately reporting the new Covid-19 cluster in Beijing.[...]
The Nazi massacre of African soldiers in French army, 80 years on
france 24
21/06/2020
As France crumbled under the Nazi invasion in June 1940, the German army engaged in a series of massacres against African soldiers in the Lyon region, in the southeast of the country. After shining a light on these atrocities thanks to the discovery of new photos, historian Julien Fargettas discussed them with FRANCE 24.
...This was not the first time Nazis massacred African soldiers. “It started at the end of May 1940, in the Somme region,” Fargettas explained. “There was no order from high up saying that colonial prisoners of war should be killed or even ill-treated. It was impulsive, but the German military hierarchy did nothing to even try to stop it.”
A history of propaganda
This hatred of black soldiers goes back to the First World War, Fargettas continued: “The Germans used them to accuse the Allies of savagery on the battlefield. The German army had itself been rightly accused of atrocities against civilians, especially in Belgium. Consequently, in response they used the image of the African sharpshooter as a propaganda weapon.”
The peace settlement adumbrated in the Treaty of Versailles meant that the Ruhr and Rhineland, along Germany’s western border, were occupied by France. Many troops from French colonies were stationed there. “In Germany there was a very intensive, mendacious propaganda campaign accusing African soldiers of mass rape and kidnapping. This is what the Germans called the “black horror on the Rhine”; slander which the Nazis would reuse.”
When many Wehrmacht soldiers entered France in May 1940, they had memories of this propaganda. African soldiers were abused by the invaders throughout the country. “These troops often fought very well, while of course the Germans sustained many losses despite their success in the Battle of France, so that produced anger which added to all the resentment already stored up,” said Fargettas.
On June 19, 1940, the violence culminated in the Chasselay massacre. This was two days after Marshal Philippe Pétain’s notorious announcement that he would seek an armistice with the Nazis. The 25th regiment of Senegalese riflemen was posted to the northwest of Lyon, to delay the enemy’s entry into France’s third largest city.
“The Germans expected to seize Lyon quite easily,” Fargettas recounted. “But on the morning of June 19, they faced very strong resistance, in battles lasting for several hours. After the Wehrmacht won the first battles in the afternoon, they executed French as well as African prisoners. But on the next day – after the last pockets of resistance were defeated – they divided the prisoners into two: The French on one side, the Africans on the other. They led the latter down an isolated road. They were sent to a field and machine-gunned.” During these massacres, some French soldiers were also executed or wounded for trying to intervene.
‘Sacred land’
The Senegalese riflemens' bodies were left on the ground. Despite the Germans forbidding it, people from Chasselay buried the remains in a mass grave. One man then took an interest in their fate: Jean-Baptiste Marchiani, head of the local office for victims of the war. In the summer of 1940, he offered to give them a proper burial, suggesting a memorial in the model of an African cemetery using red ochre.
“At first, he was faced with polite indifference from the Vichy authorities,” said Fargettas. “It’s clear why they didn’t want a tribute to riflemen massacred by the Germans. But Marchiani framed it as a potential propaganda tool to show Vichy’s attachment to the French Empire.”
On November 8, 1942, the project was finished. Chasselay’s Senegalese “tata” was inaugurated. In this “enclosure of sacred land” in the Wolof language, the bodies of 188 Senegalese riflemen found in the region are buried. “Vichy officials said they were killed in battle, and carefully avoided any mention of the massacres.”
The riflemen who escaped these massacres endured a long period of captivity afterwards. French soldiers were sent to prisoner of war camps in Germany; African soldiers were kept in France. “The Germans refused to transfer them; they did not want what they called ‘racial contamination’,” said Fargettas. “Therefore they kept them in the occupied zone, in particular camps they called Frontstalags, where incidents of abuse were common. Many were then dispatched to work in logging, farms or factories.”
In Chasselay, their fallen comrades were gradually being forgotten. Contrary to the wishes of Jean-Baptiste Marchiani, the tata did not become a place where thousands of people regularly flocked to pay their respects to the Senegalese riflemen who were massacred, even though an annual ceremony was organised there after the war. Often, their families, living thousands of miles away, cannot make the trip – and some don’t even know the fate of their loved ones.
“Even today, there are dozens of graves of unknown soldiers, while the archives show that there are plenty of soldiers still classed as missing, probably including those buried in Chasselay,” Fargettas said.
As well as writing books, Fargettas also works to try and find the specific identities of those soldiers killed in 1940. His ambition is for a plaque with all of their names to be put on the tata.
...This was not the first time Nazis massacred African soldiers. “It started at the end of May 1940, in the Somme region,” Fargettas explained. “There was no order from high up saying that colonial prisoners of war should be killed or even ill-treated. It was impulsive, but the German military hierarchy did nothing to even try to stop it.”
A history of propaganda
This hatred of black soldiers goes back to the First World War, Fargettas continued: “The Germans used them to accuse the Allies of savagery on the battlefield. The German army had itself been rightly accused of atrocities against civilians, especially in Belgium. Consequently, in response they used the image of the African sharpshooter as a propaganda weapon.”
The peace settlement adumbrated in the Treaty of Versailles meant that the Ruhr and Rhineland, along Germany’s western border, were occupied by France. Many troops from French colonies were stationed there. “In Germany there was a very intensive, mendacious propaganda campaign accusing African soldiers of mass rape and kidnapping. This is what the Germans called the “black horror on the Rhine”; slander which the Nazis would reuse.”
When many Wehrmacht soldiers entered France in May 1940, they had memories of this propaganda. African soldiers were abused by the invaders throughout the country. “These troops often fought very well, while of course the Germans sustained many losses despite their success in the Battle of France, so that produced anger which added to all the resentment already stored up,” said Fargettas.
On June 19, 1940, the violence culminated in the Chasselay massacre. This was two days after Marshal Philippe Pétain’s notorious announcement that he would seek an armistice with the Nazis. The 25th regiment of Senegalese riflemen was posted to the northwest of Lyon, to delay the enemy’s entry into France’s third largest city.
“The Germans expected to seize Lyon quite easily,” Fargettas recounted. “But on the morning of June 19, they faced very strong resistance, in battles lasting for several hours. After the Wehrmacht won the first battles in the afternoon, they executed French as well as African prisoners. But on the next day – after the last pockets of resistance were defeated – they divided the prisoners into two: The French on one side, the Africans on the other. They led the latter down an isolated road. They were sent to a field and machine-gunned.” During these massacres, some French soldiers were also executed or wounded for trying to intervene.
‘Sacred land’
The Senegalese riflemens' bodies were left on the ground. Despite the Germans forbidding it, people from Chasselay buried the remains in a mass grave. One man then took an interest in their fate: Jean-Baptiste Marchiani, head of the local office for victims of the war. In the summer of 1940, he offered to give them a proper burial, suggesting a memorial in the model of an African cemetery using red ochre.
“At first, he was faced with polite indifference from the Vichy authorities,” said Fargettas. “It’s clear why they didn’t want a tribute to riflemen massacred by the Germans. But Marchiani framed it as a potential propaganda tool to show Vichy’s attachment to the French Empire.”
On November 8, 1942, the project was finished. Chasselay’s Senegalese “tata” was inaugurated. In this “enclosure of sacred land” in the Wolof language, the bodies of 188 Senegalese riflemen found in the region are buried. “Vichy officials said they were killed in battle, and carefully avoided any mention of the massacres.”
The riflemen who escaped these massacres endured a long period of captivity afterwards. French soldiers were sent to prisoner of war camps in Germany; African soldiers were kept in France. “The Germans refused to transfer them; they did not want what they called ‘racial contamination’,” said Fargettas. “Therefore they kept them in the occupied zone, in particular camps they called Frontstalags, where incidents of abuse were common. Many were then dispatched to work in logging, farms or factories.”
In Chasselay, their fallen comrades were gradually being forgotten. Contrary to the wishes of Jean-Baptiste Marchiani, the tata did not become a place where thousands of people regularly flocked to pay their respects to the Senegalese riflemen who were massacred, even though an annual ceremony was organised there after the war. Often, their families, living thousands of miles away, cannot make the trip – and some don’t even know the fate of their loved ones.
“Even today, there are dozens of graves of unknown soldiers, while the archives show that there are plenty of soldiers still classed as missing, probably including those buried in Chasselay,” Fargettas said.
As well as writing books, Fargettas also works to try and find the specific identities of those soldiers killed in 1940. His ambition is for a plaque with all of their names to be put on the tata.
China finds heavy coronavirus traces in seafood, meat sections of Beijing food market
reuters
JUNE 18, 2020 / 4:57 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has found the trading sections for meat and seafood in Beijing’s wholesale food market to be severely contaminated with the new coronavirus and suspects the area’s low temperature and high humidity may have been contributing factors, officials said on Thursday.
Their preliminary report comes as the country’s capital tackles a resurgence of COVID-19 cases over the past week linked to the massive Xinfadi food center, which houses warehouses and trading halls in an area the size of nearly 160 soccer pitches.
The latest outbreak infected more than 100 people and raised fears of wider contagion in China.
Among the patients who work at the Xinfadi market, most serve at seafood and aquatic product stalls, followed by the beef and mutton section, and patients from the seafood market showed symptoms earlier than others, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a daily briefing on Thursday.
Low temperatures favorable to viral survival as well as high humidity might be possible explanations for why seafood markets could be a source of outbreaks based on a preliminary assessment, Wu said, cautioning that further investigation was necessary.
China has halted imports from European salmon suppliers this week amid fears they may be linked to the recent outbreak in Beijing.
Health officials have also warned against eating raw salmon after the virus was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon, although the origin of the outbreak is not known.
Low standards of hygiene in wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said this week.
Their preliminary report comes as the country’s capital tackles a resurgence of COVID-19 cases over the past week linked to the massive Xinfadi food center, which houses warehouses and trading halls in an area the size of nearly 160 soccer pitches.
The latest outbreak infected more than 100 people and raised fears of wider contagion in China.
Among the patients who work at the Xinfadi market, most serve at seafood and aquatic product stalls, followed by the beef and mutton section, and patients from the seafood market showed symptoms earlier than others, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a daily briefing on Thursday.
Low temperatures favorable to viral survival as well as high humidity might be possible explanations for why seafood markets could be a source of outbreaks based on a preliminary assessment, Wu said, cautioning that further investigation was necessary.
China has halted imports from European salmon suppliers this week amid fears they may be linked to the recent outbreak in Beijing.
Health officials have also warned against eating raw salmon after the virus was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon, although the origin of the outbreak is not known.
Low standards of hygiene in wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said this week.
Boris Johnson defends England’s racist past as UK boards up statues to protect them from protesters
June 12, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday said a wave of anti-racism protests across Britain had been “hijacked by extremists”, as fears mounted about clashes between activists and far-right groups, and vandalism spread.
Several statues were boarded up as a precaution, including one of World War II leader Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph war memorial in central London, after previous damage.
In Liverpool, street signs of Penny Lane, which was immortalised in The Beatles’ 1967 song, were daubed with graffiti claiming it was named after a slave trader.
In Bannockburn, central Scotland, a statue to king Robert the Bruce — who led the Scots to victory against the English in 1314 — was defaced, calling him a racist.
Statues, monuments, street and building names commemorating historical figures from Britain’s colonial past have increasingly become targets for activists, amid calls for a re-examination of how the country’s historical legacy is marked in public spaces, and for many monuments to be torn down or relocated to museums.
On Sunday, crowds in Bristol, southwest England, toppled a statue to a 17th century slave trader and philanthropist, Edward Colston, and threw it into the harbour.
Several television shows, including an episode of the cult 1970s comedy series “Fawlty Towers”, were also pulled from streaming services because of language now deemed offensive.
Johnson said he recognised the “legitimate desire to protest against discrimination” but “we cannot now try to edit or censor our past.”
Earlier generations “had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults,” he said.
“To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come.”
Fears grow
The protests were sparked by the death during a US police arrest of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American, which has triggered outrage around the world.
Johnson acknowledged the anger of black and minority ethnic communities and said there had been “huge” strides in tackling discrimination in Britain.
But after clashes marred largely peaceful demonstrations in London, he said the protests “have been sadly hijacked by extremists intent on violence.”
Attacks on the police and indiscriminate acts of violence were “intolerable” and “abhorrent”, he said.
Fears are growing of further splits in a society already deeply divided over Brexit and widening inequality caused by years of austerity.
Police are promising a “robust” response to vandalism and violence.
But some protests have been cancelled to avoid clashes with far-right groups and self-styled “patriots” who have promised to protect memorials.
A Black Lives Matter protest originally planned for Saturday in London’s Hyde Park was brought forward to Friday, over such fears.
The BBC reported a statue of Jamaican poet, actor and playwright Alfred Fagon in Bristol was covered in an apparently corrosive substance.
Black Lives Matter London unveiled a billboard on the banks of the River Thames to more than 3,000 victims of what it called “state and racist violence”.
Their names were contained in the letters of “I can’t breathe” — Floyd’s last words before his death, as a white police officer held him down in a chokehold.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Johnson both urged people to stay home this weekend.
“Extreme far-right groups who advocate hatred and division are planning counter-protests, which means that the risk of disorder is high,” the mayor said.
‘Absurd and shameful’
Churchill’s statue was vandalised last weekend by campaigners who say his “racist” policies led to the deaths of millions of people during famine in the Indian state of Bengal in 1943.
Johnson, who has written a biography of the wartime leader, said it was “absurd and shameful” his memorial would be targeted, as he fought against fascism and tyranny.
“Yes, he sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial,” the premier wrote.
Activists linked to the Stop Trump Coalition have compiled a crowd-sourced list of more than 60 statues and monuments across Britain that they say “celebrate slavery and racism” and should be removed.
London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals announced they would remove two statues — including to benefactor Thomas Guy — because of their links to slavery.
Several statues were boarded up as a precaution, including one of World War II leader Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph war memorial in central London, after previous damage.
In Liverpool, street signs of Penny Lane, which was immortalised in The Beatles’ 1967 song, were daubed with graffiti claiming it was named after a slave trader.
In Bannockburn, central Scotland, a statue to king Robert the Bruce — who led the Scots to victory against the English in 1314 — was defaced, calling him a racist.
Statues, monuments, street and building names commemorating historical figures from Britain’s colonial past have increasingly become targets for activists, amid calls for a re-examination of how the country’s historical legacy is marked in public spaces, and for many monuments to be torn down or relocated to museums.
On Sunday, crowds in Bristol, southwest England, toppled a statue to a 17th century slave trader and philanthropist, Edward Colston, and threw it into the harbour.
Several television shows, including an episode of the cult 1970s comedy series “Fawlty Towers”, were also pulled from streaming services because of language now deemed offensive.
Johnson said he recognised the “legitimate desire to protest against discrimination” but “we cannot now try to edit or censor our past.”
Earlier generations “had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults,” he said.
“To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come.”
Fears grow
The protests were sparked by the death during a US police arrest of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American, which has triggered outrage around the world.
Johnson acknowledged the anger of black and minority ethnic communities and said there had been “huge” strides in tackling discrimination in Britain.
But after clashes marred largely peaceful demonstrations in London, he said the protests “have been sadly hijacked by extremists intent on violence.”
Attacks on the police and indiscriminate acts of violence were “intolerable” and “abhorrent”, he said.
Fears are growing of further splits in a society already deeply divided over Brexit and widening inequality caused by years of austerity.
Police are promising a “robust” response to vandalism and violence.
But some protests have been cancelled to avoid clashes with far-right groups and self-styled “patriots” who have promised to protect memorials.
A Black Lives Matter protest originally planned for Saturday in London’s Hyde Park was brought forward to Friday, over such fears.
The BBC reported a statue of Jamaican poet, actor and playwright Alfred Fagon in Bristol was covered in an apparently corrosive substance.
Black Lives Matter London unveiled a billboard on the banks of the River Thames to more than 3,000 victims of what it called “state and racist violence”.
Their names were contained in the letters of “I can’t breathe” — Floyd’s last words before his death, as a white police officer held him down in a chokehold.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Johnson both urged people to stay home this weekend.
“Extreme far-right groups who advocate hatred and division are planning counter-protests, which means that the risk of disorder is high,” the mayor said.
‘Absurd and shameful’
Churchill’s statue was vandalised last weekend by campaigners who say his “racist” policies led to the deaths of millions of people during famine in the Indian state of Bengal in 1943.
Johnson, who has written a biography of the wartime leader, said it was “absurd and shameful” his memorial would be targeted, as he fought against fascism and tyranny.
“Yes, he sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial,” the premier wrote.
Activists linked to the Stop Trump Coalition have compiled a crowd-sourced list of more than 60 statues and monuments across Britain that they say “celebrate slavery and racism” and should be removed.
London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals announced they would remove two statues — including to benefactor Thomas Guy — because of their links to slavery.
COVID-19 is deadlier for black Brazilians, a legacy of structural racism that dates back to slavery
the conversation
June 10, 2020 2.54pm EDT
The United States and Brazil have much in common when it comes to the coronavirus.
Both are among the world’s hardest-hit countries, where hundreds die daily. Their like-minded presidents, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, have both been widely criticized for their poor handling of the pandemic.
And in both countries the virus is disproportionately affecting black people, the result of structural racism that dates back to slavery.
Legacy of slavery
Brazil forcibly brought some 4 million enslaved Africans into the country over three centuries, more than anywhere else in the Americas. About half its 209 million people are black – the world’s second largest African-descendant population after Nigeria.
Modern Brazil never had legalized racial discrimination like Jim Crow, but race-based inequalities are deeply entrenched. Despite a persistent myth of Brazil as an integrated “racial democracy,” employment discrimination and residential segregation limit opportunity for black people.
These and other factors translate into lower life expectancy, education and standards of living for Afro-Brazilians. Black Brazilians live, on average, 73 years – three years less than white Brazilians, according to the 2017 National Household Survey. The U.S. has a nearly identical life expectancy gap between races.
Because government data in Brazil is not automatically collected by race or ethnicity, though, the health impacts of racism can be hard to measure. Bolsonaro’s administration did not require the collection of COVID-19 racial data until late April, well into the pandemic, after much pressure. It has yet to release that information.
Regardless, by April the Brazilian Health Ministry had already flagged high COVID-19 death rates among Afro-Brazilians, a category that includes people who identify as “black” or “brown” in the census. Officials in hard-hit São Paulo had also announced that mortality rates among COVID-19 patients were higher among black residents.
Now, data collected in May by outside researchers for over 5,500 municipalities shows that 55% of Afro-Brazilian patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 died, compared to 34% of white COVID-19 patients.
Health and racism
We are health researchers – one American, one Brazilian – who for many years have studied how racial disparities in Brazil affect black people, looking at everything from sickle cell anemia to reproductive health.
Our research over the past two months finds structural racism – in the form of high-risk working conditions, unequal access to health and worse housing conditions – is a major factor shaping Brazil’s COVID-19 pandemic.
For over a decade, black activists and public health researchers have been pointing out that institutional racism creates worse health outcomes for Brazil’s black population. Black Brazilians experience higher rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, and respiratory and kidney problems due to food insecurity, inadequate access to medicine and unaffordable prescriptions.
Racism itself also takes a severe physical toll on black people. Studies in the United States demonstrate that daily experiences of racism and discrimination can lead to dangerously high stress hormones and diminish the body’s ability to fight disease. Racial bias from medical professionals then compounds poor outcomes for black patients.
Unlike the U.S., Brazil has free, universal health care. But its public hospitals have been woefully underfunded since a deep recession that began in 2015.
Intensive care beds are now in short supply at public hospitals in several cities fighting coronavirus outbreaks. This is especially detrimental to black COVID-19 patients, since Afro-Brazilians rely more heavily on the public health system than white Brazilians, who often have private health insurance through their jobs.
Poverty and exposure
Extreme economic inequality is another critical factor shaping the general health of Afro-Brazilians. With the top 10% of the population earning 55% of domestic income, Brazil trails only Qatar in concentration of wealth, according to a 2019 United Nations report.
Few, if any, Afro-Brazilians rank among Brazil’s super-rich. National household survey data shows that black and brown Brazilians make far less money than white Brazilians, even with equivalent educational background. The racial wage gap in Brazil actually outweighs the gender wage gap: White women earn up to 74% more than black men.
Generally speaking, the higher the salary, the less likely Afro-Brazilians are to have a job. Many work in the informal and service sectors, as house cleaners or street vendors. Others are self-employed or unemployed.
During the pandemic, this economic insecurity severely lessens Afro-Brazilians’ ability to socially distance and makes them highly dependent on staying in their jobs despite the health threat.
Maids, for example – most of whom are black women – are proving to be a high-risk group. Domestic workers were among Brazil’s first COVID-19 deaths.
Neighborhood risks
Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak originated in wealthy neighborhoods whose residents had traveled to Europe, but the disease is now spreading fastest in its poor, dense, long-neglected urban neighborhoods.
Just over 12 million Brazilians, most of them black, live in such informal urban settlements, from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to the “peripheries” of São Paulo. These areas have inadequate access to water and sanitation, making it difficult to follow basic hygiene recommendations like washing one’s hands with soap.
So while the disparate impact of COVID-19 on black Brazilians was not inevitable, our research explains why it’s unsurprising.
The racism that pervades nearly every facet of Brazilian society increases black people’s exposure to the virus – then reduces their ability to get to quality care.
Both are among the world’s hardest-hit countries, where hundreds die daily. Their like-minded presidents, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, have both been widely criticized for their poor handling of the pandemic.
And in both countries the virus is disproportionately affecting black people, the result of structural racism that dates back to slavery.
Legacy of slavery
Brazil forcibly brought some 4 million enslaved Africans into the country over three centuries, more than anywhere else in the Americas. About half its 209 million people are black – the world’s second largest African-descendant population after Nigeria.
Modern Brazil never had legalized racial discrimination like Jim Crow, but race-based inequalities are deeply entrenched. Despite a persistent myth of Brazil as an integrated “racial democracy,” employment discrimination and residential segregation limit opportunity for black people.
These and other factors translate into lower life expectancy, education and standards of living for Afro-Brazilians. Black Brazilians live, on average, 73 years – three years less than white Brazilians, according to the 2017 National Household Survey. The U.S. has a nearly identical life expectancy gap between races.
Because government data in Brazil is not automatically collected by race or ethnicity, though, the health impacts of racism can be hard to measure. Bolsonaro’s administration did not require the collection of COVID-19 racial data until late April, well into the pandemic, after much pressure. It has yet to release that information.
Regardless, by April the Brazilian Health Ministry had already flagged high COVID-19 death rates among Afro-Brazilians, a category that includes people who identify as “black” or “brown” in the census. Officials in hard-hit São Paulo had also announced that mortality rates among COVID-19 patients were higher among black residents.
Now, data collected in May by outside researchers for over 5,500 municipalities shows that 55% of Afro-Brazilian patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 died, compared to 34% of white COVID-19 patients.
Health and racism
We are health researchers – one American, one Brazilian – who for many years have studied how racial disparities in Brazil affect black people, looking at everything from sickle cell anemia to reproductive health.
Our research over the past two months finds structural racism – in the form of high-risk working conditions, unequal access to health and worse housing conditions – is a major factor shaping Brazil’s COVID-19 pandemic.
For over a decade, black activists and public health researchers have been pointing out that institutional racism creates worse health outcomes for Brazil’s black population. Black Brazilians experience higher rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, and respiratory and kidney problems due to food insecurity, inadequate access to medicine and unaffordable prescriptions.
Racism itself also takes a severe physical toll on black people. Studies in the United States demonstrate that daily experiences of racism and discrimination can lead to dangerously high stress hormones and diminish the body’s ability to fight disease. Racial bias from medical professionals then compounds poor outcomes for black patients.
Unlike the U.S., Brazil has free, universal health care. But its public hospitals have been woefully underfunded since a deep recession that began in 2015.
Intensive care beds are now in short supply at public hospitals in several cities fighting coronavirus outbreaks. This is especially detrimental to black COVID-19 patients, since Afro-Brazilians rely more heavily on the public health system than white Brazilians, who often have private health insurance through their jobs.
Poverty and exposure
Extreme economic inequality is another critical factor shaping the general health of Afro-Brazilians. With the top 10% of the population earning 55% of domestic income, Brazil trails only Qatar in concentration of wealth, according to a 2019 United Nations report.
Few, if any, Afro-Brazilians rank among Brazil’s super-rich. National household survey data shows that black and brown Brazilians make far less money than white Brazilians, even with equivalent educational background. The racial wage gap in Brazil actually outweighs the gender wage gap: White women earn up to 74% more than black men.
Generally speaking, the higher the salary, the less likely Afro-Brazilians are to have a job. Many work in the informal and service sectors, as house cleaners or street vendors. Others are self-employed or unemployed.
During the pandemic, this economic insecurity severely lessens Afro-Brazilians’ ability to socially distance and makes them highly dependent on staying in their jobs despite the health threat.
Maids, for example – most of whom are black women – are proving to be a high-risk group. Domestic workers were among Brazil’s first COVID-19 deaths.
Neighborhood risks
Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak originated in wealthy neighborhoods whose residents had traveled to Europe, but the disease is now spreading fastest in its poor, dense, long-neglected urban neighborhoods.
Just over 12 million Brazilians, most of them black, live in such informal urban settlements, from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to the “peripheries” of São Paulo. These areas have inadequate access to water and sanitation, making it difficult to follow basic hygiene recommendations like washing one’s hands with soap.
So while the disparate impact of COVID-19 on black Brazilians was not inevitable, our research explains why it’s unsurprising.
The racism that pervades nearly every facet of Brazilian society increases black people’s exposure to the virus – then reduces their ability to get to quality care.
Indian philosophy helps us see clearly, act wisely in an interconnected world
the conversation
June 10, 2020 8.13am EDT
...The “Guide to the Awakened Way of Life” by Shantideva, an eighth-century Buddhist monk, explores the arduous path from ignorance and suffering to spiritual liberation. For Shantideva and his fellow Mahayana Buddhists – the predominant branch of Buddhism in north and central Asia – this involves cultivating a wise understanding of the interdependence of things and a compassionate concern for all sentient beings.
The Hindu scripture the “Bhagavad Gita,” written between 400 B.C. and 200 A.D., is a classic of world literature. Through the story of the great warrior Arjuna and his friend and spiritual advisor Krishna, the text explores how one’s actions in the world can become a path to spiritual freedom.
These texts, which depict the struggle to find freedom in the world, still resonate today.
Seeing interconnection
In both texts, wisdom requires changing one’s perception of the world and one’s place in it. One must come to see the world as an interwoven tapestry of cause and effect, and see oneself as part of that tapestry and capable of spiritual freedom within it.
Buddhist thinkers like Shantideva learned to analyze complex things and recognize the network of causes and conditions that give rise to them. As he puts it: “Everything is dependent on something else. Even that thing upon which each is dependent is not independent.” The deepest form of wisdom is seeing that all phenomena are empty of any fixed, independent existence. The central message of the “Guide” is that the awakened life unites the wisdom of interdependence with active compassion for all those who suffer.
In the “Bhagavad Gita,” the natural world is understood to be a dynamic, evolving tapestry. Our human bodies, minds and actions are inextricable from the larger patterns of cause and effect in nature. Yet the most interesting theme of interconnectedness in the text is not causal but social and moral.
The text opens at the start of a battle between clans for the fate of a kingdom. Describing the scene to his blind king, the seer Sanjaya refers to the battlefield as a field of dharma, the spiritual and moral order that upholds the world. That is, a site of impending conflict, death and chaos is also one of relationship, duty and moral choice.
This is a central message of the “Bhagavad Gita.” The human world is inextricable from nature. But as a human world it is upheld by our relationships and responsibilities to one another.
The wise person must see his or her own roles – as parent, child, worker, citizen – in light of this field of relationships. Amid war, or the uncertainty and suffering of a pandemic, the central question is: What can I do to uphold right relationships with others?
Engagement as a path to freedom
Despite their views on the interconnectedness of the world, classical Indian thinkers were not starry-eyed romantics. They recognized that pain and loss are inescapable. They saw that human selfishness and ignorance are deeply woven in the fabric of life.
Shantideva describes the human situation like this: “Hoping to escape suffering, it is to suffering that they run. In the desire for happiness, out of delusion, they cut down their own happiness, like an enemy.”
For Indian philosophers, one must see the world clearly in order to act wisely in it. What, then, is the wise response to an interconnected world that inevitably includes the good and bad – even pandemics?
For Shantideva, the awakened life is one of altruistic concern for all sentient beings. Spiritual freedom is waking up from the delusion of being a separate self in conflict with the world. Instead, the wise person realizes that “all those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others.”
One’s own happiness arises from compassion for others. In an interconnected world, Shantideva asks: “In the same way that hands and other limbs are loved because they form part of the body, why are embodied creatures not likewise loved because they form part of the universe?”
In the “Bhagavad Gita,” the key to inner freedom in an uncertain and conflicted world is to change one’s focus when acting. Krishna advises Arjuna:
“It is in action alone that you have a claim, never at any time to the fruits of such action. Never let the fruits of action be your motive; never let your attachment be to inaction.”
Action in the world is unavoidable. So rather than obsessing about the “fruits” of action for oneself, such as praise or blame, one should focus on the moral quality of the action.
The “Bhagavad Gita” highlights three aspects of action one should focus on. Is the action right? Does it serve the welfare of the world? Is it motivated by love? Krishna’s message to Arjuna is that, even in battle, wise action consists in giving up selfishness and doing one’s duty out of a sense of love and commitment to the common good.
In both texts, the world is understood as an interconnected web of cause and effect, happiness and suffering, life and death. In such a world, acting from ignorance or selfishness leads to suffering for oneself and others. Acting from wisdom and a love for the common good can lead to sense of inner freedom, even in difficult circumstances.
In our interconnected world, everyday actions can have far-reaching consequences. Moreover, as the “Bhagavad Gita” and the “Guide” remind us, we are deeply interwoven with one another and the natural world.
Wise freedom is to be found in the midst of this interconnectedness, by the grocery worker keeping people fed, the organizer serving his community, or the doctor treating her patients. Classical texts cannot teach us virology or epidemiology, but they can help us to see our deep interdependence and how to act more wisely and compassionately in light of it.
The Hindu scripture the “Bhagavad Gita,” written between 400 B.C. and 200 A.D., is a classic of world literature. Through the story of the great warrior Arjuna and his friend and spiritual advisor Krishna, the text explores how one’s actions in the world can become a path to spiritual freedom.
These texts, which depict the struggle to find freedom in the world, still resonate today.
Seeing interconnection
In both texts, wisdom requires changing one’s perception of the world and one’s place in it. One must come to see the world as an interwoven tapestry of cause and effect, and see oneself as part of that tapestry and capable of spiritual freedom within it.
Buddhist thinkers like Shantideva learned to analyze complex things and recognize the network of causes and conditions that give rise to them. As he puts it: “Everything is dependent on something else. Even that thing upon which each is dependent is not independent.” The deepest form of wisdom is seeing that all phenomena are empty of any fixed, independent existence. The central message of the “Guide” is that the awakened life unites the wisdom of interdependence with active compassion for all those who suffer.
In the “Bhagavad Gita,” the natural world is understood to be a dynamic, evolving tapestry. Our human bodies, minds and actions are inextricable from the larger patterns of cause and effect in nature. Yet the most interesting theme of interconnectedness in the text is not causal but social and moral.
The text opens at the start of a battle between clans for the fate of a kingdom. Describing the scene to his blind king, the seer Sanjaya refers to the battlefield as a field of dharma, the spiritual and moral order that upholds the world. That is, a site of impending conflict, death and chaos is also one of relationship, duty and moral choice.
This is a central message of the “Bhagavad Gita.” The human world is inextricable from nature. But as a human world it is upheld by our relationships and responsibilities to one another.
The wise person must see his or her own roles – as parent, child, worker, citizen – in light of this field of relationships. Amid war, or the uncertainty and suffering of a pandemic, the central question is: What can I do to uphold right relationships with others?
Engagement as a path to freedom
Despite their views on the interconnectedness of the world, classical Indian thinkers were not starry-eyed romantics. They recognized that pain and loss are inescapable. They saw that human selfishness and ignorance are deeply woven in the fabric of life.
Shantideva describes the human situation like this: “Hoping to escape suffering, it is to suffering that they run. In the desire for happiness, out of delusion, they cut down their own happiness, like an enemy.”
For Indian philosophers, one must see the world clearly in order to act wisely in it. What, then, is the wise response to an interconnected world that inevitably includes the good and bad – even pandemics?
For Shantideva, the awakened life is one of altruistic concern for all sentient beings. Spiritual freedom is waking up from the delusion of being a separate self in conflict with the world. Instead, the wise person realizes that “all those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others.”
One’s own happiness arises from compassion for others. In an interconnected world, Shantideva asks: “In the same way that hands and other limbs are loved because they form part of the body, why are embodied creatures not likewise loved because they form part of the universe?”
In the “Bhagavad Gita,” the key to inner freedom in an uncertain and conflicted world is to change one’s focus when acting. Krishna advises Arjuna:
“It is in action alone that you have a claim, never at any time to the fruits of such action. Never let the fruits of action be your motive; never let your attachment be to inaction.”
Action in the world is unavoidable. So rather than obsessing about the “fruits” of action for oneself, such as praise or blame, one should focus on the moral quality of the action.
The “Bhagavad Gita” highlights three aspects of action one should focus on. Is the action right? Does it serve the welfare of the world? Is it motivated by love? Krishna’s message to Arjuna is that, even in battle, wise action consists in giving up selfishness and doing one’s duty out of a sense of love and commitment to the common good.
In both texts, the world is understood as an interconnected web of cause and effect, happiness and suffering, life and death. In such a world, acting from ignorance or selfishness leads to suffering for oneself and others. Acting from wisdom and a love for the common good can lead to sense of inner freedom, even in difficult circumstances.
In our interconnected world, everyday actions can have far-reaching consequences. Moreover, as the “Bhagavad Gita” and the “Guide” remind us, we are deeply interwoven with one another and the natural world.
Wise freedom is to be found in the midst of this interconnectedness, by the grocery worker keeping people fed, the organizer serving his community, or the doctor treating her patients. Classical texts cannot teach us virology or epidemiology, but they can help us to see our deep interdependence and how to act more wisely and compassionately in light of it.
China, Russia and Iran Chide U.S. Over Racism While Persecuting Minorities in Their Own Countries
BY SHANE CROUCHER - newsweek
ON 6/8/20 AT 8:50 AM EDT
China, Russia, and Iran are using the Black Lives Matter protests to criticize the U.S. for the racism in its society. But as they chide America over its problems, the three states are overseeing the persecution of minorities and dissenters in their own countries.
"The U.S. government deserves global criticism for doing so little to end police brutality and the racism that pervades the criminal justice system," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told Newsweek.
"But it's hard not to see a hint of diversionary convenience when those who join the call include the Chinese government despite its detention of one million Uighur and other Turkic Muslims to force them to renounce Islam, or the Iranian and Russian governments despite their persecution of such minorities as the Baha'is and the Crimean Tatars."
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a television interview on Sunday that the "problem of racism in Western society" is now "full-blown" in the U.S.
"The scope of this evil cannot be concealed," Zakharova said, per Russia's state-owned TASS news agency, and suggested America was hypocritical in its criticism of other countries.
She had previously described George Floyd's death as "an American tragedy," The New York Times reported, and said "authorities should not violate the rights of Americans to peaceful protest" in response to the controversial policing of U.S. protests.
Yet, in Russia, protests against Putin's regime are swiftly and often brutally put down by local police. Dissent against the Russian government is regularly punished. High-profile critics, such as activists and journalists, are sometimes assassinated or die under suspicious circumstances.
During the coronavirus pandemic, several doctors and health officials who criticized the government fell to their deaths from windows.
Moreover, Russia has an uneasy relationship with some of its minority communities. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, are facing a crackdown, with dozens of believers jailed and churches shuttered under the guise of anti-extremism.
Under Russian occupation since 2014, the Crimean Tartars in Ukraine, who suffered terribly during the Soviet Union, are facing renewed persecution, again under the guise of anti-extremism.
In a recent blog post on the Atlantic Council think tank's website, two activists from the human rights group PEN said Putin's Russia is "ruthlessly repressing the rights of Crimean Tatars and attempting to quash their identity."
"Despite claiming to be confronting militant Islam and other forms of extremism, Russia has launched attacks on a wide variety of Crimean Tatars who have spoken out against the occupation including journalists, photographers, and activists," they wrote.
China has also used the unrest in the U.S. to raise the issue of racism. The state-run Global Times newspaper, which reflects the views of the ruling elite, carried an editorial last week urging the U.S. "to reflect on its social and economic discrimination."
"Racial discrimination is a chronic problem in US society, but the country's politicians have long turned a blind eye to it," the editorial said. "Little effort has been made to improve the decades-old issue, which has finally erupted in a violent manner...
"Violence is wrong and should by no means be encouraged, but there is no denying that it is time for American society to think about how to improve its problems to create a truly equal society and economy."
In China, a one-party state, criticism of the communist regime is not tolerated. Censorship of the media and the internet is routinely practiced to remove any dissent or content the authorities do not like.
One of the issues subject to a blackout is the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, more than a million of whom were forcibly rounded up into "re-education" camps, again ostensibly for reasons of anti-extremism and anti-terrorism. Mosques and other Islamic shrines, including some that are ancient, are being demolished.
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) out in China's far west adopted in 2017 "Regulations on De-extremification," which targeted the cultural practices of the area's eight million Muslims, and placed them under close surveillance.
"Open or even private displays of religious and cultural affiliation, including growing an 'abnormal' beard, wearing a veil or headscarf, regular prayer, fasting or avoidance of alcohol, or possessing books or articles about Islam or Uighur culture can be considered 'extremist' under the regulation," says a report by the human rights group Amnesty International.
"Travel abroad for work or education, particularly to majority Muslim countries, or contact with people outside China are also major reasons for suspicion. Male, female; young, old; urban, rural, all are at risk of being detained.
"The ubiquitous security checks that are now a routine part of daily life for all in the XUAR provide ample opportunity to search mobile phones for suspicious content or check people's identities using facial recognition software."
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance against Iran and the threat of war between the two countries loomed over the world following the killing by U.S. forces of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January.
Both powers exchange heated words regularly, and Iran has exploited the Black Lives Matter protests to needle the U.S. over its race relations. At the end of May, a statement from Iran's foreign ministry condemned "the tragic murder of black people and deadly racial discrimination in the United States," Reuters reported. "The voices of the protesters must be heard."
Iran, which is governed by hardline Islamic clerics, stifles opposition by detaining critics and cracks down hard on anti-government protests. Homosexuality also carries the death sentence in Iran.
In its 2020 report on the country, Human Rights Watch highlighted the plight of its Baha'i people, a minority faith group in Iran who have suffered worsening persecution since the 1979 Islamic revolution. "Iranian law denies freedom of religion to Baha'is and discriminates against them," the report said.
"Authorities continue to arrest and prosecute members of the Baha'i faith on vague national security charges, and close down or suspend licenses for businesses owned by them. Iranian authorities also systematically refuse to allow Baha'is to register at public universities because of their faith.
"The government also discriminates against other religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims, and restricts cultural and political activities among the country's Azeri, Kurdish, Arab, and Baluch ethnic minorities."
The Black Lives Matter protests that broke out across the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd have spread all over the world, including demonstrations in the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and many other countries.
"The U.S. government deserves global criticism for doing so little to end police brutality and the racism that pervades the criminal justice system," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told Newsweek.
"But it's hard not to see a hint of diversionary convenience when those who join the call include the Chinese government despite its detention of one million Uighur and other Turkic Muslims to force them to renounce Islam, or the Iranian and Russian governments despite their persecution of such minorities as the Baha'is and the Crimean Tatars."
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a television interview on Sunday that the "problem of racism in Western society" is now "full-blown" in the U.S.
"The scope of this evil cannot be concealed," Zakharova said, per Russia's state-owned TASS news agency, and suggested America was hypocritical in its criticism of other countries.
She had previously described George Floyd's death as "an American tragedy," The New York Times reported, and said "authorities should not violate the rights of Americans to peaceful protest" in response to the controversial policing of U.S. protests.
Yet, in Russia, protests against Putin's regime are swiftly and often brutally put down by local police. Dissent against the Russian government is regularly punished. High-profile critics, such as activists and journalists, are sometimes assassinated or die under suspicious circumstances.
During the coronavirus pandemic, several doctors and health officials who criticized the government fell to their deaths from windows.
Moreover, Russia has an uneasy relationship with some of its minority communities. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, are facing a crackdown, with dozens of believers jailed and churches shuttered under the guise of anti-extremism.
Under Russian occupation since 2014, the Crimean Tartars in Ukraine, who suffered terribly during the Soviet Union, are facing renewed persecution, again under the guise of anti-extremism.
In a recent blog post on the Atlantic Council think tank's website, two activists from the human rights group PEN said Putin's Russia is "ruthlessly repressing the rights of Crimean Tatars and attempting to quash their identity."
"Despite claiming to be confronting militant Islam and other forms of extremism, Russia has launched attacks on a wide variety of Crimean Tatars who have spoken out against the occupation including journalists, photographers, and activists," they wrote.
China has also used the unrest in the U.S. to raise the issue of racism. The state-run Global Times newspaper, which reflects the views of the ruling elite, carried an editorial last week urging the U.S. "to reflect on its social and economic discrimination."
"Racial discrimination is a chronic problem in US society, but the country's politicians have long turned a blind eye to it," the editorial said. "Little effort has been made to improve the decades-old issue, which has finally erupted in a violent manner...
"Violence is wrong and should by no means be encouraged, but there is no denying that it is time for American society to think about how to improve its problems to create a truly equal society and economy."
In China, a one-party state, criticism of the communist regime is not tolerated. Censorship of the media and the internet is routinely practiced to remove any dissent or content the authorities do not like.
One of the issues subject to a blackout is the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, more than a million of whom were forcibly rounded up into "re-education" camps, again ostensibly for reasons of anti-extremism and anti-terrorism. Mosques and other Islamic shrines, including some that are ancient, are being demolished.
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) out in China's far west adopted in 2017 "Regulations on De-extremification," which targeted the cultural practices of the area's eight million Muslims, and placed them under close surveillance.
"Open or even private displays of religious and cultural affiliation, including growing an 'abnormal' beard, wearing a veil or headscarf, regular prayer, fasting or avoidance of alcohol, or possessing books or articles about Islam or Uighur culture can be considered 'extremist' under the regulation," says a report by the human rights group Amnesty International.
"Travel abroad for work or education, particularly to majority Muslim countries, or contact with people outside China are also major reasons for suspicion. Male, female; young, old; urban, rural, all are at risk of being detained.
"The ubiquitous security checks that are now a routine part of daily life for all in the XUAR provide ample opportunity to search mobile phones for suspicious content or check people's identities using facial recognition software."
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance against Iran and the threat of war between the two countries loomed over the world following the killing by U.S. forces of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January.
Both powers exchange heated words regularly, and Iran has exploited the Black Lives Matter protests to needle the U.S. over its race relations. At the end of May, a statement from Iran's foreign ministry condemned "the tragic murder of black people and deadly racial discrimination in the United States," Reuters reported. "The voices of the protesters must be heard."
Iran, which is governed by hardline Islamic clerics, stifles opposition by detaining critics and cracks down hard on anti-government protests. Homosexuality also carries the death sentence in Iran.
In its 2020 report on the country, Human Rights Watch highlighted the plight of its Baha'i people, a minority faith group in Iran who have suffered worsening persecution since the 1979 Islamic revolution. "Iranian law denies freedom of religion to Baha'is and discriminates against them," the report said.
"Authorities continue to arrest and prosecute members of the Baha'i faith on vague national security charges, and close down or suspend licenses for businesses owned by them. Iranian authorities also systematically refuse to allow Baha'is to register at public universities because of their faith.
"The government also discriminates against other religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims, and restricts cultural and political activities among the country's Azeri, Kurdish, Arab, and Baluch ethnic minorities."
The Black Lives Matter protests that broke out across the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd have spread all over the world, including demonstrations in the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and many other countries.
Thousands in Paris protest racial injustice as George Floyd killing resonates beyond US
June 2, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Riot police fired tear gas Tuesday as scattered protesters in Paris pelted them with debris and set fires during an unauthorized demonstration against racial injustice and heavy-handed police tactics.
Several thousand people had previously rallied peacefully for two hours at the main Paris courthouse as global outrage over what happened to George Floyd in the United States kindled frustrations across borders and continents. The protesters also paid tribute to Adama Traoré, a French black man who died in police custody.
Police had banned the protest because of coronavirus restrictions that had forbidden any gathering of more than 10 people.
As the demonstration wound down, police fired tear gas and protesters could be seen throwing debris. Two small fires broke out, and green and grey barriers surrounding a construction site were knocked over.
Tensions also erupted at a related protest in the southern city of Marseille.
Earlier, thousands marched in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, chanting “I can’t breathe,” and expressions of anger erupted in multiple languages on social networks, with thousands of Swedes joining an online protest and others speaking out under the banner of #BlackOutTuesday.
Diplomatic ire percolated too, with the European Union’s top foreign policy official saying the bloc was “shocked and appalled” by Floyd’s death.
‘Echoes’ of George Floyd
As protests escalated worldwide, solidarity with US demonstrators increasingly mixed with local worries.
“When you refuse to treat the problem of racism … it leads to what we see in the United States,” said Dominique Sopo, head of French activist group SOS Racisme. “The case of George Floyd echoes what we fear in France.”
---
But the Paris protest plans drew attention online, and demonstrators showed up anyway. Demonstrations also were held in other French cities in honour of Traoré, who died shortly after his arrest in 2016, and in solidarity with Americans demonstrating against Floyd’s death.
The Traoré case has become emblematic of the fight against police brutality in France. The circumstances of the death of the 24-year-old Frenchman of Malian origin are still under investigation after four years of conflicting medical reports about what happened.
The lawyer for two of the three police officers involved in the arrest, Rodolphe Bosselut, said the Floyd and Traoré cases “have strictly nothing to do with each other”. Bosselut told The Associated Press that Traoré’s death wasn’t linked with the conditions of his arrest but other factors, including a pre-existing medical condition.
Traoré’s family says he died from asphyxiation because of police tactics – and that his last words were “I can’t breathe.”
3,000 march in Sydney, Australia
“I can’t breathe” were also the final words of David Dungay, a 26-year-old Aboriginal man who died in a Sydney prison in 2015 while being restrained by five guards.
As 3,000 people marched peacefully through Sydney, many said they had been inspired by a mixture of sympathy for African Americans amid ongoing violent protests in the US and to call for change in Australia’s treatment of its indigenous population, particularly involving police. The mostly Australian crowd at the authorized demonstration also included protesters from the US and elsewhere.
“I’m here for my people, and for our fallen brothers and sisters around the world,” said Sydney indigenous woman Amanda Hill, 46, who attended the rally with her daughter and two nieces.
“What’s happening in America shines a light on the situation here. It doesn’t matter if it’s about the treatment of black men and women from here or from another country; enough is enough,” she said.
A total of 432 indigenous Australians have died in police detention since a 1991 Royal Commission – Australia’s highest level of official inquiry – into Aboriginal deaths in custody, according to The Guardian newspaper.
Australia has also never signed a treaty with the country’s indigenous population, who suffer higher-than-average rates of infant mortality and poor health, plus shorter life expectancy and lower levels of education and employment than white Australians.
Another protest was planned Tuesday in the Dutch capital The Hague, and more than 6,000 people attended a Sweden-organized online protest to express support with the Black Lives Matter movement. Among the speakers was Aysha Jones, a Gambia-born and Sweden-based activist and fashion blogger.
Jones said the protest was important to show support to people in America, but also to remind Swedes that racism “does exist here, it’s very real and people are being harmed from it”.
More protests in various countries are planned later in the week, including a string of demonstrations in front of US embassies on Saturday.
Diplomatic concern
The drama unfolding in the US drew increasing diplomatic concern.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s remarks in Brussels were the strongest to come out of the 27-nation bloc, saying Floyd’s death was a result of an abuse of power.
Borrell told reporters that “like the people of the United States, we are shocked and appalled by the death of George Floyd”. He underlined that Europeans “support the right to peaceful protest, and also we condemn violence and racism of any kind, and for sure, we call for a de-escalation of tensions”.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said peaceful protests in the US following Floyd’s death are “understandable and more than legitimate.”
“I can only express my hope that the peaceful protests do not continue to lead to violence, but even more express the hope that these protests have an effect in the United States,” Maas said.
More African leaders are speaking up over the killing of Floyd.
“It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism,” Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said in a statement, adding that black people the world over are shocked and distraught.
Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga offered a prayer for the US, “that there be justice and freedom for all human beings who call America their country”.
Like some in Africa who have spoken out, Odinga also noted troubles at home, saying the judging of people by character instead of skin colour “is a dream we in Africa, too, owe our citizens”.
Several thousand people had previously rallied peacefully for two hours at the main Paris courthouse as global outrage over what happened to George Floyd in the United States kindled frustrations across borders and continents. The protesters also paid tribute to Adama Traoré, a French black man who died in police custody.
Police had banned the protest because of coronavirus restrictions that had forbidden any gathering of more than 10 people.
As the demonstration wound down, police fired tear gas and protesters could be seen throwing debris. Two small fires broke out, and green and grey barriers surrounding a construction site were knocked over.
Tensions also erupted at a related protest in the southern city of Marseille.
Earlier, thousands marched in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, chanting “I can’t breathe,” and expressions of anger erupted in multiple languages on social networks, with thousands of Swedes joining an online protest and others speaking out under the banner of #BlackOutTuesday.
Diplomatic ire percolated too, with the European Union’s top foreign policy official saying the bloc was “shocked and appalled” by Floyd’s death.
‘Echoes’ of George Floyd
As protests escalated worldwide, solidarity with US demonstrators increasingly mixed with local worries.
“When you refuse to treat the problem of racism … it leads to what we see in the United States,” said Dominique Sopo, head of French activist group SOS Racisme. “The case of George Floyd echoes what we fear in France.”
---
But the Paris protest plans drew attention online, and demonstrators showed up anyway. Demonstrations also were held in other French cities in honour of Traoré, who died shortly after his arrest in 2016, and in solidarity with Americans demonstrating against Floyd’s death.
The Traoré case has become emblematic of the fight against police brutality in France. The circumstances of the death of the 24-year-old Frenchman of Malian origin are still under investigation after four years of conflicting medical reports about what happened.
The lawyer for two of the three police officers involved in the arrest, Rodolphe Bosselut, said the Floyd and Traoré cases “have strictly nothing to do with each other”. Bosselut told The Associated Press that Traoré’s death wasn’t linked with the conditions of his arrest but other factors, including a pre-existing medical condition.
Traoré’s family says he died from asphyxiation because of police tactics – and that his last words were “I can’t breathe.”
3,000 march in Sydney, Australia
“I can’t breathe” were also the final words of David Dungay, a 26-year-old Aboriginal man who died in a Sydney prison in 2015 while being restrained by five guards.
As 3,000 people marched peacefully through Sydney, many said they had been inspired by a mixture of sympathy for African Americans amid ongoing violent protests in the US and to call for change in Australia’s treatment of its indigenous population, particularly involving police. The mostly Australian crowd at the authorized demonstration also included protesters from the US and elsewhere.
“I’m here for my people, and for our fallen brothers and sisters around the world,” said Sydney indigenous woman Amanda Hill, 46, who attended the rally with her daughter and two nieces.
“What’s happening in America shines a light on the situation here. It doesn’t matter if it’s about the treatment of black men and women from here or from another country; enough is enough,” she said.
A total of 432 indigenous Australians have died in police detention since a 1991 Royal Commission – Australia’s highest level of official inquiry – into Aboriginal deaths in custody, according to The Guardian newspaper.
Australia has also never signed a treaty with the country’s indigenous population, who suffer higher-than-average rates of infant mortality and poor health, plus shorter life expectancy and lower levels of education and employment than white Australians.
Another protest was planned Tuesday in the Dutch capital The Hague, and more than 6,000 people attended a Sweden-organized online protest to express support with the Black Lives Matter movement. Among the speakers was Aysha Jones, a Gambia-born and Sweden-based activist and fashion blogger.
Jones said the protest was important to show support to people in America, but also to remind Swedes that racism “does exist here, it’s very real and people are being harmed from it”.
More protests in various countries are planned later in the week, including a string of demonstrations in front of US embassies on Saturday.
Diplomatic concern
The drama unfolding in the US drew increasing diplomatic concern.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s remarks in Brussels were the strongest to come out of the 27-nation bloc, saying Floyd’s death was a result of an abuse of power.
Borrell told reporters that “like the people of the United States, we are shocked and appalled by the death of George Floyd”. He underlined that Europeans “support the right to peaceful protest, and also we condemn violence and racism of any kind, and for sure, we call for a de-escalation of tensions”.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said peaceful protests in the US following Floyd’s death are “understandable and more than legitimate.”
“I can only express my hope that the peaceful protests do not continue to lead to violence, but even more express the hope that these protests have an effect in the United States,” Maas said.
More African leaders are speaking up over the killing of Floyd.
“It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism,” Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said in a statement, adding that black people the world over are shocked and distraught.
Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga offered a prayer for the US, “that there be justice and freedom for all human beings who call America their country”.
Like some in Africa who have spoken out, Odinga also noted troubles at home, saying the judging of people by character instead of skin colour “is a dream we in Africa, too, owe our citizens”.
Coronavirus outbreak
Global report: new clues about role of pangolins in Covid-19 as US severs ties with WHO
Experts condemn Trump’s actions; India records worst daily rise in infections; surges in Russia and Brazil; Australia tests sewage water
Chris Michael and Guardian staff
the guardian
Sat 30 May 2020 01.39 EDT
Scientists claim to have found more clues about how the new coronavirus could have spread from bats through pangolins and into humans, as India reported its worst single-day rise in new cases, and the number of Covid-19 infections worldwide neared 6 million.
Writing in the journal Covid-19 Science Advances, researchers said an examination of the closest relative of the virus found that it was circulating in bats but lacked the protein needed to bind to human cells. They said this ability could have been acquired from a virus found in pangolins – a scaly mammal that is one of the most illegally trafficked animals in the world.
Dr Elena Giorgi, of Los Alamos national laboratory, one of the study’s lead authors, said people had already looked at the pangolin link but scientists were still divided about their role in the evolution of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
“In our study, we demonstrated that indeed Sars-Cov-2 has a rich evolutionary history that included a reshuffling of genetic material between bat and pangolin coronavirus before it acquired its ability to jump to humans,” she said, adding that “close proximity of animals of different species in a wet market setting may increase the potential for cross-species spillover infections”.
The study still doesn’t confirm the pangolin as the animal that passed the virus to humans, but it adds weight to previous studies that have suggested it may have been involved.
However, Prof Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, in Australia, said more work on the subject was needed. “There is a clear evolutionary gap between Sars-Cov-2 and its closest relatives found to date in bats and pangolins,” he said. “The only way this gap will be filled is through more wildlife sampling.”
The findings came as Donald Trump announced that the United States was severing its ties with the World Health Organization because it had “failed to reform”.
The US is the biggest funder of the WHO, paying about $450m (£365m) in membership dues and voluntary contributions for specific programmes.
Trump’s declaration was condemned in the US and around the world, with Australian experts joining counterparts in the UK and elsewhere in voicing their support for the WHO. Prof Peter Doherty, a Nobel laureate and patron of the Doherty Institute, which is part of global efforts to find a Covid-19 vaccine, said the WHO had the “full support of the scientific community”.
Deaths in the US have climbed to more than 102,000, with 1,747,000 infections. It is by far the biggest total in the world. On Friday it emerged that one person who attended the controversial pool parties in the Ozarks last weekend had tested positive for the virus.[...]
Writing in the journal Covid-19 Science Advances, researchers said an examination of the closest relative of the virus found that it was circulating in bats but lacked the protein needed to bind to human cells. They said this ability could have been acquired from a virus found in pangolins – a scaly mammal that is one of the most illegally trafficked animals in the world.
Dr Elena Giorgi, of Los Alamos national laboratory, one of the study’s lead authors, said people had already looked at the pangolin link but scientists were still divided about their role in the evolution of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
“In our study, we demonstrated that indeed Sars-Cov-2 has a rich evolutionary history that included a reshuffling of genetic material between bat and pangolin coronavirus before it acquired its ability to jump to humans,” she said, adding that “close proximity of animals of different species in a wet market setting may increase the potential for cross-species spillover infections”.
The study still doesn’t confirm the pangolin as the animal that passed the virus to humans, but it adds weight to previous studies that have suggested it may have been involved.
However, Prof Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, in Australia, said more work on the subject was needed. “There is a clear evolutionary gap between Sars-Cov-2 and its closest relatives found to date in bats and pangolins,” he said. “The only way this gap will be filled is through more wildlife sampling.”
The findings came as Donald Trump announced that the United States was severing its ties with the World Health Organization because it had “failed to reform”.
The US is the biggest funder of the WHO, paying about $450m (£365m) in membership dues and voluntary contributions for specific programmes.
Trump’s declaration was condemned in the US and around the world, with Australian experts joining counterparts in the UK and elsewhere in voicing their support for the WHO. Prof Peter Doherty, a Nobel laureate and patron of the Doherty Institute, which is part of global efforts to find a Covid-19 vaccine, said the WHO had the “full support of the scientific community”.
Deaths in the US have climbed to more than 102,000, with 1,747,000 infections. It is by far the biggest total in the world. On Friday it emerged that one person who attended the controversial pool parties in the Ozarks last weekend had tested positive for the virus.[...]
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu professes innocence at start of corruption trial
france24
24/05/2020 - 07:13
Benjamin Netanyahu professed his innocence at the start of his corruption trial on Sunday, saying he was being framed in the first criminal prosecution of a serving Israeli prime minister.
Flanked by a clutch of cabinet ministers from his right-wing Likud party, and speaking forcefully, Netanyahu appealed to public opinion, addressing television cameras in the courthouse hallway before taking his seat on the defendants' bench.
"These investigations were tainted and stitched-up from the first moment," Netanyahu said about charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud at the centre of three graft cases against him.
Outside the courthouse, and separated by metal barriers and police, hundreds of his supporters and opponents held noisy demonstrations. Chants of "Bibi, king of Israel" from Netanyahu faithful using his nickname echoed through the court building.
Netanyahu, 70, was indicted in November in cases involving gifts from millionaire friends and for allegedly seeking regulatory favours for media tycoons in return for favourable coverage.
He drove in a motorcade to court after attending the first working session of his new "unity" cabinet, sworn in a week ago after a surprise power-sharing deal with his main opponent Benny Gantz. Its inauguration ended more than a year of political deadlock in the wake of three inconclusive elections.
In his hallway appearance, Netanyahu dubbed prosecutors and police the "Just Not Bibi Gang", reasserting that he was a victim of a political witch-hunt abetted by a left-wing media to drive him from office.
"I am appearing here today, as your prime minister, standing tall and with head high," Netanyahu said, vowing to beat the charges and continue to lead Israel in his current fifth term.
He is Israel's longest-serving leader, now in office for more than 11 straight years, plus three years in the 1990s.
On the street, a supporter's sign read: "Netanyahu, you'll never walk alone".
"Crime Minister," countered a banner draped over a barrier in the other camp's protest area.
In the courtroom, one of the judges asked Netanyahu whether he had read and understood the indictment.
The prime minister then stood up and replied: "Yes, your Honour."
Flanked by a clutch of cabinet ministers from his right-wing Likud party, and speaking forcefully, Netanyahu appealed to public opinion, addressing television cameras in the courthouse hallway before taking his seat on the defendants' bench.
"These investigations were tainted and stitched-up from the first moment," Netanyahu said about charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud at the centre of three graft cases against him.
Outside the courthouse, and separated by metal barriers and police, hundreds of his supporters and opponents held noisy demonstrations. Chants of "Bibi, king of Israel" from Netanyahu faithful using his nickname echoed through the court building.
Netanyahu, 70, was indicted in November in cases involving gifts from millionaire friends and for allegedly seeking regulatory favours for media tycoons in return for favourable coverage.
He drove in a motorcade to court after attending the first working session of his new "unity" cabinet, sworn in a week ago after a surprise power-sharing deal with his main opponent Benny Gantz. Its inauguration ended more than a year of political deadlock in the wake of three inconclusive elections.
In his hallway appearance, Netanyahu dubbed prosecutors and police the "Just Not Bibi Gang", reasserting that he was a victim of a political witch-hunt abetted by a left-wing media to drive him from office.
"I am appearing here today, as your prime minister, standing tall and with head high," Netanyahu said, vowing to beat the charges and continue to lead Israel in his current fifth term.
He is Israel's longest-serving leader, now in office for more than 11 straight years, plus three years in the 1990s.
On the street, a supporter's sign read: "Netanyahu, you'll never walk alone".
"Crime Minister," countered a banner draped over a barrier in the other camp's protest area.
In the courtroom, one of the judges asked Netanyahu whether he had read and understood the indictment.
The prime minister then stood up and replied: "Yes, your Honour."
brazil
COVID-19: Neglected by government, Amazon tribes turn to traditional medicine
May 21, 2020
By Agence France-Presse
With the Covid-19 pandemic taking a heavy toll on Brazil’s Amazonas state, some Amazon tribes are turning to traditional medicine to treat the illness amid what they say is a lack of help from the country’s government.
Using ingredients including tree bark, mango peel mint and honey, as well as knowledge passed down through generations, members of the Sateré Mawé say their concoctions are effective against the virus.
“We have treated all the symptoms we have been experiencing with homemade remedies,” community leader André Sateré Mawé told AFP.
“Thanks to knowledge passed over generations, each member of the community has gathered an understanding of remedies. We have been experimenting, each remedy fights a symptom of the disease.”
But they also say they have little choice but to turn to traditional medicine.
“It seems that the government chooses who to attend to and they leave us without attention. We have learnt to manage ourselves. We have learnt to fight alone,” said the community leader.
Amazonas is one of the states most affected by the pandemic in Brazil with 22,132 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 1,491 deaths, according to official figures, overwhelming hospitals in the state’s capital Manaus.
Local officials and NGOs have warned that indigenous tribes are particularly at risk due to a lack of health services in remote areas, while the government of Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of doing little to help.
On Tuesday the mayor of Manaus, Arthur Virgilio Neto, warned of an impending “genocide” of indigenous people as a result of government inaction.
“I fear genocide and I want to denounce this thing to the whole world. We have here a government that does not care about the lives of indigenous people,” he said.
Using ingredients including tree bark, mango peel mint and honey, as well as knowledge passed down through generations, members of the Sateré Mawé say their concoctions are effective against the virus.
“We have treated all the symptoms we have been experiencing with homemade remedies,” community leader André Sateré Mawé told AFP.
“Thanks to knowledge passed over generations, each member of the community has gathered an understanding of remedies. We have been experimenting, each remedy fights a symptom of the disease.”
But they also say they have little choice but to turn to traditional medicine.
“It seems that the government chooses who to attend to and they leave us without attention. We have learnt to manage ourselves. We have learnt to fight alone,” said the community leader.
Amazonas is one of the states most affected by the pandemic in Brazil with 22,132 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 1,491 deaths, according to official figures, overwhelming hospitals in the state’s capital Manaus.
Local officials and NGOs have warned that indigenous tribes are particularly at risk due to a lack of health services in remote areas, while the government of Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of doing little to help.
On Tuesday the mayor of Manaus, Arthur Virgilio Neto, warned of an impending “genocide” of indigenous people as a result of government inaction.
“I fear genocide and I want to denounce this thing to the whole world. We have here a government that does not care about the lives of indigenous people,” he said.
Hungary
Hungary votes to end legal recognition of trans people
Activists say new law will increase discrimination, especially as Hungarians must often display their ID cards
Shaun Walker in Budapest
the guardian
Tue 19 May 2020 11.37 EDT
Hungary’s parliament has voted to end legal recognition for trans people, passing a bill that rights activists say pushes the country “back towards the dark ages”.
The new law defines gender as based on chromosomes at birth, meaning previous provisions whereby trans people could alter their gender and name on official documents will no longer be available.
The votes of rightwing prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party pushed the legislation through by 134 to 56, with four abstentions. It is likely to be signed into law by President János Áder, a close ally of Orbán.
Although Orbán passed a bill during the coronavirus pandemic to allow him to rule indefinitely by decree, the transgender bill was part of a larger package of legislation that went through parliament in the normal way. It was proposed by the deputy prime minister on 31 March, International Transgender Day of Visibility, and amendments submitted by opposition parties were discarded one by one on Tuesday.
The law has been roundly condemned both at home and abroad. Bernadett Szél, an opposition MP who spoke out strongly against the bill in parliament, described it as evil.
Trans people and advocates say the bill will lead to increased discrimination against the community, especially as Hungarian daily life requires people to show their identity cards frequently. It also means that trans people will not be able to choose a name that fits with their identified gender, as Hungarian law requires first names to be chosen from a list kept by the country’s Academy of Sciences, which is sorted according to gender.
“It basically means coming out as trans to complete strangers, all the time,” Ivett Ördög, a 39-year-old trans woman living in Budapest, told the Guardian last month.
The Háttér Society, a Hungarian trans rights group, said on Tuesday that the law violated international human rights norms and went against the case law of the European court of human rights, as well as previous rulings of the Hungarian constitutional court.
Since 2017, legal gender changes in the country have effectively been frozen, and now the backlog of people waiting for the legal procedure will all be rejected, along with any new applicants. Because the new category will list “sex at birth”, there are also fears it could be used to target trans people who have already legally changed their gender.
Krisztina Tamás-Sáróy of Amnesty International said: “This decision pushes Hungary back towards the dark ages and tramples the rights of transgender and intersex people. It will not only expose them to further discrimination but will also deepen an already intolerant and hostile environment faced by the LGBTI community.”
Orbán’s government has increasingly used anti-LGBT rhetoric as part of a perceived culture war, and has made “traditional family values” a mainstay of many of its policies. The speaker of parliament, an Orbán ally, last year compared gay couples that adopt to paedophiles.
The new law defines gender as based on chromosomes at birth, meaning previous provisions whereby trans people could alter their gender and name on official documents will no longer be available.
The votes of rightwing prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party pushed the legislation through by 134 to 56, with four abstentions. It is likely to be signed into law by President János Áder, a close ally of Orbán.
Although Orbán passed a bill during the coronavirus pandemic to allow him to rule indefinitely by decree, the transgender bill was part of a larger package of legislation that went through parliament in the normal way. It was proposed by the deputy prime minister on 31 March, International Transgender Day of Visibility, and amendments submitted by opposition parties were discarded one by one on Tuesday.
The law has been roundly condemned both at home and abroad. Bernadett Szél, an opposition MP who spoke out strongly against the bill in parliament, described it as evil.
Trans people and advocates say the bill will lead to increased discrimination against the community, especially as Hungarian daily life requires people to show their identity cards frequently. It also means that trans people will not be able to choose a name that fits with their identified gender, as Hungarian law requires first names to be chosen from a list kept by the country’s Academy of Sciences, which is sorted according to gender.
“It basically means coming out as trans to complete strangers, all the time,” Ivett Ördög, a 39-year-old trans woman living in Budapest, told the Guardian last month.
The Háttér Society, a Hungarian trans rights group, said on Tuesday that the law violated international human rights norms and went against the case law of the European court of human rights, as well as previous rulings of the Hungarian constitutional court.
Since 2017, legal gender changes in the country have effectively been frozen, and now the backlog of people waiting for the legal procedure will all be rejected, along with any new applicants. Because the new category will list “sex at birth”, there are also fears it could be used to target trans people who have already legally changed their gender.
Krisztina Tamás-Sáróy of Amnesty International said: “This decision pushes Hungary back towards the dark ages and tramples the rights of transgender and intersex people. It will not only expose them to further discrimination but will also deepen an already intolerant and hostile environment faced by the LGBTI community.”
Orbán’s government has increasingly used anti-LGBT rhetoric as part of a perceived culture war, and has made “traditional family values” a mainstay of many of its policies. The speaker of parliament, an Orbán ally, last year compared gay couples that adopt to paedophiles.
racism again!!!
Queensland criticised for holding back rapid Covid-19 testing in remote Aboriginal communities
Test funded by federal government cuts wait times to 45 minutes, but Queensland Health has vetoed the rollout
Lorena Allam
the guardian
Mon 18 May 2020 05.42 EDT
Aboriginal health organisations say the Queensland government is holding back a $3.3m national rollout of rapid Covid-19 testing in remote Aboriginal communities, putting concerns for health worker safety ahead of conducting what they say is a “gold standard” test endorsed by the World Health Organization and already being used in other states and territories.
In April, the federal government announced funding for a rapid-testing program in Aboriginal communities which cuts wait times to 45 minutes, calling it “a game-changing improvement” for people in remote areas who are currently waiting several days to receive their results.
Eight-three sites were nominated nationally, around 20 of them in Queensland. The Kirby Institute has been training Aboriginal healthcare workers in how to conduct the tests and has supplied personal protective equipment. Testing in some sites is already up and running.
But Queensland Health has vetoed the rollout.
“The chief health officer wants to ensure any use of rapid-point-of-care testing for coronavirus in remote communities is conducted to the same high level of safety standards that apply in metropolitan locations,” a health department spokesperson said.
“The safety of health workers and residents of remote communities should not be compromised.”
Queensland Health said it has established a network of 35 pathology laboratories, 29 of which can undertake rapid-point-of-care testing, and is talking to the federal government about an expansion of testing in remote locations.
But the public health medical officer at Apunipima Cape York Health Council, Dr Mark Wenitong, said the decision “doesn’t make a lot of sense to us”.
“This is one of the safest tests I’ve ever seen. And it’s point of care so it’s not meant to be done in a laboratory.
“And if you’re taking the same precautions that you would anyway around infection control, then that risk’s completely minimised.
“We have the right training, Kirby Institute supply that and the PPE as well. So if you’ve got all the right training, there are no problems around infection issues for the operator.
Wenitong said when he was tested in Cairns, the results took three days to arrive and he’s concerned by how quickly the virus can spread in that timeframe, especially now that restrictions are easing.
“We can’t control what people do for three or four days, especially when there are no isolation or quarantine facilities. In many communities there’s very little infrastructure. And we will be looking at a lot larger percentage of community transmission.”
Wenitong said the test is a “gold standard”, endorsed by WHO for these conditions.
“It’s important to have a fast turnaround time so that’s kind of part of what the WHO principles for removing restrictions is around,” he said. “If you have everything else shored up and the ability to assess fast and respond fast, then it’s easier to release restrictions but if you don’t, you’re leaving communities vulnerable.
“It’s a very, very important tool in being able to respond quickly. And to be honest, we’ve been lucky.
“We just need to be on guard and this [test] just makes it easier.”
The program is an initiative of the Kirby Institute, in partnership with Flinders University, and has been developed in consultation with Aboriginal community-controlled health services.
The GeneXpert device can detect Covid-19 directly and “has close to 100% sensitivity and specificity”, Kirby Institute’s Rebecca Guy said.
“The test is the only one approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for point-of-care use.
“The steps involved are simple and have been deemed low or minimal risk by state governments and the World Health Organization.”
Sites were selected to ensure no community is more than two to three hours’ drive from a testing facility.
In April, the federal government announced funding for a rapid-testing program in Aboriginal communities which cuts wait times to 45 minutes, calling it “a game-changing improvement” for people in remote areas who are currently waiting several days to receive their results.
Eight-three sites were nominated nationally, around 20 of them in Queensland. The Kirby Institute has been training Aboriginal healthcare workers in how to conduct the tests and has supplied personal protective equipment. Testing in some sites is already up and running.
But Queensland Health has vetoed the rollout.
“The chief health officer wants to ensure any use of rapid-point-of-care testing for coronavirus in remote communities is conducted to the same high level of safety standards that apply in metropolitan locations,” a health department spokesperson said.
“The safety of health workers and residents of remote communities should not be compromised.”
Queensland Health said it has established a network of 35 pathology laboratories, 29 of which can undertake rapid-point-of-care testing, and is talking to the federal government about an expansion of testing in remote locations.
But the public health medical officer at Apunipima Cape York Health Council, Dr Mark Wenitong, said the decision “doesn’t make a lot of sense to us”.
“This is one of the safest tests I’ve ever seen. And it’s point of care so it’s not meant to be done in a laboratory.
“And if you’re taking the same precautions that you would anyway around infection control, then that risk’s completely minimised.
“We have the right training, Kirby Institute supply that and the PPE as well. So if you’ve got all the right training, there are no problems around infection issues for the operator.
Wenitong said when he was tested in Cairns, the results took three days to arrive and he’s concerned by how quickly the virus can spread in that timeframe, especially now that restrictions are easing.
“We can’t control what people do for three or four days, especially when there are no isolation or quarantine facilities. In many communities there’s very little infrastructure. And we will be looking at a lot larger percentage of community transmission.”
Wenitong said the test is a “gold standard”, endorsed by WHO for these conditions.
“It’s important to have a fast turnaround time so that’s kind of part of what the WHO principles for removing restrictions is around,” he said. “If you have everything else shored up and the ability to assess fast and respond fast, then it’s easier to release restrictions but if you don’t, you’re leaving communities vulnerable.
“It’s a very, very important tool in being able to respond quickly. And to be honest, we’ve been lucky.
“We just need to be on guard and this [test] just makes it easier.”
The program is an initiative of the Kirby Institute, in partnership with Flinders University, and has been developed in consultation with Aboriginal community-controlled health services.
The GeneXpert device can detect Covid-19 directly and “has close to 100% sensitivity and specificity”, Kirby Institute’s Rebecca Guy said.
“The test is the only one approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for point-of-care use.
“The steps involved are simple and have been deemed low or minimal risk by state governments and the World Health Organization.”
Sites were selected to ensure no community is more than two to three hours’ drive from a testing facility.
Spraying disinfectants does not work — and can be ‘harmful’: World Health Organization
May 16, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Spraying disinfectant on the streets, as practised in some countries, does not eliminate the new coronavirus and even poses a health risk, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Saturday.
In a document on cleaning and disinfecting surfaces as part of the response to the virus, the WHO says spraying can be ineffective.
“Spraying or fumigation of outdoor spaces, such as streets or marketplaces, is… not recommended to kill the COVID-19 virus or other pathogens because disinfectant is inactivated by dirt and debris,” explains the WHO.
“Even in the absence of organic matter, chemical spraying is unlikely to adequately cover all surfaces for the duration of the required contact time needed to inactivate pathogens.”
The WHO said that streets and pavements are not considered as “reservoirs of infection” of COVID-19, adding that spraying disinfectants, even outside, can be “dangerous for human health”.
The document also stresses that spraying individuals with disinfectants is “not recommended under any circumstances”.
“This could be physically and psychologically harmful and would not reduce an infected person’s ability to spread the virus through droplets or contact,” said the document.
Spraying chlorine or other toxic chemicals on people can cause eye and skin irritation, bronchospasm and gastrointestinal effects, it adds.
The organisation is also warning against the systematic spraying and fumigating of disinfectants on to surfaces in indoor spaces, citing a study that has shown it to be ineffective outside direct spraying areas.
“If disinfectants are to be applied, this should be done with a cloth or wipe that has been soaked in disinfectant,” it says.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide since its appearance in late December in China, can attach itself to surfaces and objects.
However, no precise information is currently available for the period during which the viruses remain infectious on the various surfaces.
Studies have shown that the virus can stay on several types of surfaces for several days. However, these maximum durations are only theoretical because they are recorded under laboratory conditions and should be “interpreted with caution” in the real-world environment.
In a document on cleaning and disinfecting surfaces as part of the response to the virus, the WHO says spraying can be ineffective.
“Spraying or fumigation of outdoor spaces, such as streets or marketplaces, is… not recommended to kill the COVID-19 virus or other pathogens because disinfectant is inactivated by dirt and debris,” explains the WHO.
“Even in the absence of organic matter, chemical spraying is unlikely to adequately cover all surfaces for the duration of the required contact time needed to inactivate pathogens.”
The WHO said that streets and pavements are not considered as “reservoirs of infection” of COVID-19, adding that spraying disinfectants, even outside, can be “dangerous for human health”.
The document also stresses that spraying individuals with disinfectants is “not recommended under any circumstances”.
“This could be physically and psychologically harmful and would not reduce an infected person’s ability to spread the virus through droplets or contact,” said the document.
Spraying chlorine or other toxic chemicals on people can cause eye and skin irritation, bronchospasm and gastrointestinal effects, it adds.
The organisation is also warning against the systematic spraying and fumigating of disinfectants on to surfaces in indoor spaces, citing a study that has shown it to be ineffective outside direct spraying areas.
“If disinfectants are to be applied, this should be done with a cloth or wipe that has been soaked in disinfectant,” it says.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide since its appearance in late December in China, can attach itself to surfaces and objects.
However, no precise information is currently available for the period during which the viruses remain infectious on the various surfaces.
Studies have shown that the virus can stay on several types of surfaces for several days. However, these maximum durations are only theoretical because they are recorded under laboratory conditions and should be “interpreted with caution” in the real-world environment.
Commemorating the abolition of slavery in France: "This is our history"
france 24
10/05/2020 - 17:12
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, celebration of the National Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade, Slavery and Its Abolition, held every year in France on May 10, has been disrupted.
A ceremony presided over by Prime Minister Édouard Philippe was held on Sunday, but on a small scale. "We will not put this commemoration on hold, despite the health requirements," former prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, now president of the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, told FRANCE 24.
Ayrault’s foundation was charged with overseeing the remembrances this year. In addition, regional prefects were asked by the Prime Minister to organise commemorative ceremonies for the public in each department, while respecting the rules of social distancing.
"There will be modest national ceremonies, in Paris with the Prime Minister, but also in provincial and overseas communes with the help of associations," Ayrault said. "A lot of things are going to happen on May 10, including the organisation of a live broadcast on Facebook."
The live broadcast, in partnership with FRANCE 24, will bring together politicians, artists and historians for discussion.
"This is not about creating division"
The theme of this year's commemorations is 'The Missing Page'.
"We don't know how the existing framework was established. We know that there was slavery and abolition, but we know less about the fact that it took three revolutions to achieve abolition," Ayrault said.
For the former mayor of the city of Nantes, a hub in the slave trade, the occasion provides an opportunity to recall the place that slavery occupies in our national history. "It leaves deep traces and wounds. They must be repaired. It is not a question of creating division nor of setting memories against each other," Ayrault stressed, referring to critics, who complain of an excess of repentance. "This is our history. And for us to share it, we must make it known.
"The aim is not to make people feel guilty, but to provide keys to understanding and to a way of living together based on justice, equality, the fight against all forms of discrimination and racism, but also fraternity," Ayrault said, adding that it was "a contemporary struggle".
An estimated 12 to 18 million slaves were taken from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. Under the impetus of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, a critique of slavery and the slave trade began to emerge in France in the 18th century. In his 1748 book "The Spirit of the Laws ", Charles de Montesquieu is sarcastic about "those who call themselves Christians and who practice slavery". In 1788, the Society of Friends of Blacks was created in Paris and campaigned for abolition.
A long road to abolition
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 abolished slavery but had no impact in the French West Indies. It was not until February 1794 that the Society of Friends of Blacks succeeded in winning abolition. Napoléon Bonaparte, however, very quickly re-established slavery and the slave trade in 1802.
It was not until 27 April 1848 that a decree by the provisional government of the Second Republic definitively abolished slavery in all the French colonies. The abolition of slavery was enshrined in the Constitution on November 4, 1848.
A ceremony presided over by Prime Minister Édouard Philippe was held on Sunday, but on a small scale. "We will not put this commemoration on hold, despite the health requirements," former prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, now president of the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, told FRANCE 24.
Ayrault’s foundation was charged with overseeing the remembrances this year. In addition, regional prefects were asked by the Prime Minister to organise commemorative ceremonies for the public in each department, while respecting the rules of social distancing.
"There will be modest national ceremonies, in Paris with the Prime Minister, but also in provincial and overseas communes with the help of associations," Ayrault said. "A lot of things are going to happen on May 10, including the organisation of a live broadcast on Facebook."
The live broadcast, in partnership with FRANCE 24, will bring together politicians, artists and historians for discussion.
"This is not about creating division"
The theme of this year's commemorations is 'The Missing Page'.
"We don't know how the existing framework was established. We know that there was slavery and abolition, but we know less about the fact that it took three revolutions to achieve abolition," Ayrault said.
For the former mayor of the city of Nantes, a hub in the slave trade, the occasion provides an opportunity to recall the place that slavery occupies in our national history. "It leaves deep traces and wounds. They must be repaired. It is not a question of creating division nor of setting memories against each other," Ayrault stressed, referring to critics, who complain of an excess of repentance. "This is our history. And for us to share it, we must make it known.
"The aim is not to make people feel guilty, but to provide keys to understanding and to a way of living together based on justice, equality, the fight against all forms of discrimination and racism, but also fraternity," Ayrault said, adding that it was "a contemporary struggle".
An estimated 12 to 18 million slaves were taken from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. Under the impetus of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, a critique of slavery and the slave trade began to emerge in France in the 18th century. In his 1748 book "The Spirit of the Laws ", Charles de Montesquieu is sarcastic about "those who call themselves Christians and who practice slavery". In 1788, the Society of Friends of Blacks was created in Paris and campaigned for abolition.
A long road to abolition
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 abolished slavery but had no impact in the French West Indies. It was not until February 1794 that the Society of Friends of Blacks succeeded in winning abolition. Napoléon Bonaparte, however, very quickly re-established slavery and the slave trade in 1802.
It was not until 27 April 1848 that a decree by the provisional government of the Second Republic definitively abolished slavery in all the French colonies. The abolition of slavery was enshrined in the Constitution on November 4, 1848.
Crisis lays bare poverty in Geneva, Switzerland as thousands queue for food
May 9, 2020
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
In one of the world’s most expensive cities, thousands of people lined up Saturday for free food, as the COVID-19 crisis casts a spotlight on Geneva’s usually invisible poor.
In the Swiss city famous for its private banks, luxury watchmakers and fancy boutiques, people began lining up at 5:00 am (0300 GMT) Saturday, according to the association Caravane de Solidarite, the main organizer of the event.
By the time the distribution at Geneva’s Vernet hockey stadium began four hours later, the queue of people, most wearing masks and standing two meters (six feet) apart, stretched and wound for about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile).
Organizers said they believed at least as many people had showed up as a week earlier, when well over 2,000 took part.
“We’re in a bit of a crescendo,” Silvana Mastromatteo, head of Caravane de Solidarite, told AFP, adding that Saturday’s distribution was the sixth the organization had set up since the crisis began, with more and more people showing up each time.
“We need food,” Silvia Mango, a 64-year-old from the Philippines, said after waiting for three hours under a hot spring sun.
“Everything is just so much more difficult since the crisis began,” she said, adjusting the scarf draped over her mouth and nose, and acknowledged this is her second time accepting a hand-out.
– ‘Immediately fragilized’ –
Switzerland introduced a range of emergency measures in mid-March, including closing restaurants and most other businesses, to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, which to date has killed more than 1,500 people out of more than 30,000 infected in the Alpine nation.
While the country has begun gradually lifting measures, the nearly two-month shutdown has had particularly dire consequences for undocumented workers and other vulnerable groups already living on the edge.
According to Switzerland’s Federal Statistics Office, around eight percent of the Swiss population, or some 660,000 people, are considered to live in poverty, out of around one million living in a precarious situation.
“We know this population exists,” said Isabelle Widmer, who is in charge of coordinating the City of Geneva’s response to the crisis and who on Saturday was providing support to the food drive.
“But it has been astonishing to see how this population was so immediately fragilized by this crisis,” she said, as volunteers donning fluorescent yellow and orange vests stacked bags of food behind tables topped with bottles of disinfectant.
– COVID-19 tests –
Around 1,500 large shopping bags filled with rice, pasta instant coffee, cereal and other goods have been prepared and line the walls of the large entrance hall and fill a nearby hall.
In addition, a large pile of reserves tower in one corner next to mountains of empty bags, ready to be filled if needed.
And if the food supplies run out, 20-franc coupons will be handed out, said Patrick Wieland of the Doctor Without Borders charity, a co-organizer of Saturday’s event that goes by its French acronym MSF.
In addition to food, MSF is offering free COVID-19 tests to people showing symptoms, said Wieland, who is in charge of MSF’s COVID-19 response in Switzerland.
Mastromatteo said there was no requirement for recipients to prove they were in need.
“It is not easy to stand in this line and ask for help,” she said, insisting that “anyone who is here is here because they are in need.”
Miguel Martinez, a 27-year-old undocumented restaurant worker from Colombia in the queue, lamented that “the virus has upended everything. There is no work. Nothing.”
He said it was frustrating to have to accept handouts, but said he had no choice.
“The restaurants have received assistance, but not me. I have nothing to eat.”
– ‘We have nothing’ –
Odmaa Myagmarjavzanlkham, a 27-year-old undocumented migrant from Mongolia, also said she had nowhere else to turn, since she could no longer find work cleaning houses, and all of her husband’s gardening jobs had also disappeared.
“There is no work. We can’t find the food,” she said.
Usually the couple sends most of the money they make back to Mongolia where their five-year-old son still lives with his grandmother, but now they cannot even cover their rent, she said.
“It is so expensive here, and we have nothing.”
A survey conducted of some 550 of those queueing for food a week ago showed that more than half were undocumented, but nearly a third had a residence permit and nearly four percent were Swiss nationals.
That survey also showed that 3.4 percent of those questioned said they had already tested positive for COVID-19, said Wieland, pointing out that that is three times the percentage seen in Geneva overall.
He pointed out that many of those hardest-hit by the crisis live in cramped quarters, sometimes with a dozen family members squeezed into a small apartment, making them more vulnerable to infection.
“There is poverty in Geneva that usually is quite hidden, under the radar,” he said.
“Obviously, with the coronavirus crisis, everything just becomes a lot more visible.”
In the Swiss city famous for its private banks, luxury watchmakers and fancy boutiques, people began lining up at 5:00 am (0300 GMT) Saturday, according to the association Caravane de Solidarite, the main organizer of the event.
By the time the distribution at Geneva’s Vernet hockey stadium began four hours later, the queue of people, most wearing masks and standing two meters (six feet) apart, stretched and wound for about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile).
Organizers said they believed at least as many people had showed up as a week earlier, when well over 2,000 took part.
“We’re in a bit of a crescendo,” Silvana Mastromatteo, head of Caravane de Solidarite, told AFP, adding that Saturday’s distribution was the sixth the organization had set up since the crisis began, with more and more people showing up each time.
“We need food,” Silvia Mango, a 64-year-old from the Philippines, said after waiting for three hours under a hot spring sun.
“Everything is just so much more difficult since the crisis began,” she said, adjusting the scarf draped over her mouth and nose, and acknowledged this is her second time accepting a hand-out.
– ‘Immediately fragilized’ –
Switzerland introduced a range of emergency measures in mid-March, including closing restaurants and most other businesses, to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, which to date has killed more than 1,500 people out of more than 30,000 infected in the Alpine nation.
While the country has begun gradually lifting measures, the nearly two-month shutdown has had particularly dire consequences for undocumented workers and other vulnerable groups already living on the edge.
According to Switzerland’s Federal Statistics Office, around eight percent of the Swiss population, or some 660,000 people, are considered to live in poverty, out of around one million living in a precarious situation.
“We know this population exists,” said Isabelle Widmer, who is in charge of coordinating the City of Geneva’s response to the crisis and who on Saturday was providing support to the food drive.
“But it has been astonishing to see how this population was so immediately fragilized by this crisis,” she said, as volunteers donning fluorescent yellow and orange vests stacked bags of food behind tables topped with bottles of disinfectant.
– COVID-19 tests –
Around 1,500 large shopping bags filled with rice, pasta instant coffee, cereal and other goods have been prepared and line the walls of the large entrance hall and fill a nearby hall.
In addition, a large pile of reserves tower in one corner next to mountains of empty bags, ready to be filled if needed.
And if the food supplies run out, 20-franc coupons will be handed out, said Patrick Wieland of the Doctor Without Borders charity, a co-organizer of Saturday’s event that goes by its French acronym MSF.
In addition to food, MSF is offering free COVID-19 tests to people showing symptoms, said Wieland, who is in charge of MSF’s COVID-19 response in Switzerland.
Mastromatteo said there was no requirement for recipients to prove they were in need.
“It is not easy to stand in this line and ask for help,” she said, insisting that “anyone who is here is here because they are in need.”
Miguel Martinez, a 27-year-old undocumented restaurant worker from Colombia in the queue, lamented that “the virus has upended everything. There is no work. Nothing.”
He said it was frustrating to have to accept handouts, but said he had no choice.
“The restaurants have received assistance, but not me. I have nothing to eat.”
– ‘We have nothing’ –
Odmaa Myagmarjavzanlkham, a 27-year-old undocumented migrant from Mongolia, also said she had nowhere else to turn, since she could no longer find work cleaning houses, and all of her husband’s gardening jobs had also disappeared.
“There is no work. We can’t find the food,” she said.
Usually the couple sends most of the money they make back to Mongolia where their five-year-old son still lives with his grandmother, but now they cannot even cover their rent, she said.
“It is so expensive here, and we have nothing.”
A survey conducted of some 550 of those queueing for food a week ago showed that more than half were undocumented, but nearly a third had a residence permit and nearly four percent were Swiss nationals.
That survey also showed that 3.4 percent of those questioned said they had already tested positive for COVID-19, said Wieland, pointing out that that is three times the percentage seen in Geneva overall.
He pointed out that many of those hardest-hit by the crisis live in cramped quarters, sometimes with a dozen family members squeezed into a small apartment, making them more vulnerable to infection.
“There is poverty in Geneva that usually is quite hidden, under the radar,” he said.
“Obviously, with the coronavirus crisis, everything just becomes a lot more visible.”
the fool trump has diminished usa standing, everywhere!!!
‘Not the World’s Number One’: Chinese Social Media Piles On the U.S.
The verdict is in: China has outperformed, while the once-respected American system has disastrously faltered.
By DAVID WERTIME - politico
05/04/2020 04:30 AM EDT
On March 29, President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden and offered a coronavirus forecast: “If we have between 100,000 and 200,000 [deaths],” he told a reporter, “we all, together, have done a very good job.”
The president meant it as self-congratulation; he’d been shown a projected American death toll as high as 2.2 million. But in China, the statement landed very differently. On Weibo, the country’s equivalent of Twitter, Trump’s declaration sounded like an astonishing statement of defeat by China’s major geopolitical rival.
“Trump says reducing death toll to 100,000 people is ‘not bad’” quickly became a top trending hashtag. Commenters on Weibo called the Rose Garden appearance “preparation for a funeral,” labeled Trump a “joker” and a “blowhard,” and sarcastically predicted, “I’m sure God will protect the United States.” If a similar death toll had been reported in China, one popular comment speculated, “how many people here would be saying that [we are] a dying country?” Another noted, bluntly: “[F]rom here onward, the world order will never be the same.”
As coronavirus has spread outward from its Wuhan origins, the Chinese government has worked hard to spin an initial embarrassment into a win for its international image, with mixed success. But to Chinese authorities, the audience at home is the one that really matters, and among that vast cohort, the verdict is unsparing: China has outperformed, while America has disastrously faltered. It’s a sentiment shared by even educated, internationalized Chinese observers — the very group once inclined to look to America as an exemplar.
Since Trump’s late March declaration, each day has brought a fresh batch of horrific news seemingly tailor-made to highlight American weakness. Thousands online marked the grim and growing U.S. infection and death tolls, billionaire Jack Ma’s pledged donation of 500,000 testing kits, the number of New York City police officers who have called in sick during the lockdown, and New York state’s purchase of over 1,000 ventilators from China. On April 28, after the number of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases topped 1 million, the Weibo account of state-run China Central Television trumpeted the news with an eye-grabbing graphic.
One popular comment professed “astonishment” at seeing America as “narrow, self-interested, buck-passing; not the world’s number one.” Another declared the U.S. response “the disaster flick of 2020.” And those ventilators? “Jack up the price,” went one popular response. “Then make sure they pay before delivery.”
Chinese social media is a highly imperfect lens into widespread public sentiment, full of hot tempers, trolls, and the ever-present specter of censorship, particularly given the ruling Communist Party’s power and proclivity to punish dissenting voices. It is emphatically not real life; American visitors to China generally describe encountering warmth, or at least respect, even during times of high tension between the countries.
Yet Chinese social media is also a crucial indicator of sentiment among the ultra plugged-in young, as well as a battlefield on which Chinese citizens — within strict limits, and often in code — air out differing views of the Party and the world. As recently as February 7, Chinese social media heaved with resentment at Chinese authorities following the death of doctor Li Wenliang, who had endured police harassment for sharing early news of the new virus. That outcry, too broad and too deep to censor, appeared then to herald one of the most frontal challenges to Party legitimacy since the 1989 Tiananmen uprising.
Now, however, a scant two months later, a new narrative predominates inside China. Yingyi Ma, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University and author of a recent book on Chinese students in the United States, described an about-face among that relatively affluent group. Now, “Chinese international students in the U.S overwhelmingly consider China a safer place, with [their] government more competently handling the crisis than the American government. That is why so many Chinese students have returned home,” Ma told POLITICO, “despite the high risk of international travel and the enormous difficulty in buying airplane tickets.”
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The coronavirus response — now playing out on Weibo, within the private discussion rooms on mobile social behemoth WeChat, and in private conversations — telegraphs a wound to America’s image even deeper and wider than the one sustained after the 2008 financial crisis, which convinced many Beijing policymakers that the United States was more paper than tiger. China’s intellectuals have respected power and wealth for more than a century, says Zhang; they favored the American model because “they naturally gravitated to the most economically and militarily powerful state.” As China rises and America fumbles, that dynamic is changing.
Chinese nationalism has never lurked terribly far below the surface, rearing its head repeatedly during times of heightened bilateral tension, particularly in the wake of the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet in 2001. But resentment toward the United States has long commingled with admiration, or at least the grudging recognition of an American hegemony that looked set to continue indefinitely. At the turn of this century, many Chinese felt certain their country would not catch up with the United States until the next one.
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Amid China’s dynamic rise, America has nonetheless held out the distinct promise of clean air and clean water, first-rate universities, competent governance, and a best-in-class public health system.
Now, Chinese propagandists and nationalists can state, truthfully, that U.S. representatives, governors and hospitals have purchased ventilators, gloves and masks from China in a time of desperate need, often without any help from Washington. The fact that U.S. institutions are buying the supplies at market prices, not begging for alms, or the reality that some of the Chinese-made goods have proven defective, have not diluted domestic perceptions of a fundamental rebalancing. “The current crisis highlights the importance of international bench-marking in the formation of Chinese public opinion,” Haifeng Huang, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Merced, told POLITICO. Insulated within an information bubble, many “may not be aware that the crisis has actually worsened international opinion toward China.”
The shift in grassroots sentiment is far more profound than mere dislike of President Donald Trump, a figure whom many Chinese commenters and policymakers originally considered a refreshing outsider and no-nonsense businessman with whom Beijing could deal. George W. Bush was labeled “little Bush” and subject to widespread derision. Barack Obama, while more popular, was subjected to a series of subtle, but unmistakable, diplomatic snubs. Whoever eventually succeeds Trump will confront a changed landscape in which intellectuals and reformists — erstwhile advocates for U.S.-style governance within China — are far more skeptical of American capabilities than they were a generation ago.
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The Communist Party’s mouthpieces depict President Xi Jinping lecturing Trump and the G-20 on coronavirus prevention, evincing a confident, technocratic, well-oiled Chinese state. The gritty, uncensored reality of a fractious and angry America whose flaws and debates play out in painful public view can scarcely compete.
If many Chinese are susceptible to triumphal propaganda, it’s partly because, for an increasingly large share of the population, nothing in their lived experience contradicts it. For all the doubt about the veracity of Chinese GDP growth numbers, the improvement in the quality of life for countless millions of Chinese citizens in recent decades is real, palpable and impressive. Younger Chinese “are accustomed to the Olympics, high-speed rail and mobile payments, and have no direct personal memories of poverty, hunger, or turmoil,” Huang says. They have been raised to believe their government can deliver the goods; now, they are being taught that America’s government cannot.
“One month ago they told me the U.S. had developed testing,” began a popular comment on Weibo, posted in early April. “One month ago, they told me the U.S. could take care of its own health; one month ago they told me the U.S. would stabilize as soon as it mobilized; one month ago they said U.S. industry was developed enough to produce the needed ventilators. Now I finally understand; it was all just talk.”
The president meant it as self-congratulation; he’d been shown a projected American death toll as high as 2.2 million. But in China, the statement landed very differently. On Weibo, the country’s equivalent of Twitter, Trump’s declaration sounded like an astonishing statement of defeat by China’s major geopolitical rival.
“Trump says reducing death toll to 100,000 people is ‘not bad’” quickly became a top trending hashtag. Commenters on Weibo called the Rose Garden appearance “preparation for a funeral,” labeled Trump a “joker” and a “blowhard,” and sarcastically predicted, “I’m sure God will protect the United States.” If a similar death toll had been reported in China, one popular comment speculated, “how many people here would be saying that [we are] a dying country?” Another noted, bluntly: “[F]rom here onward, the world order will never be the same.”
As coronavirus has spread outward from its Wuhan origins, the Chinese government has worked hard to spin an initial embarrassment into a win for its international image, with mixed success. But to Chinese authorities, the audience at home is the one that really matters, and among that vast cohort, the verdict is unsparing: China has outperformed, while America has disastrously faltered. It’s a sentiment shared by even educated, internationalized Chinese observers — the very group once inclined to look to America as an exemplar.
Since Trump’s late March declaration, each day has brought a fresh batch of horrific news seemingly tailor-made to highlight American weakness. Thousands online marked the grim and growing U.S. infection and death tolls, billionaire Jack Ma’s pledged donation of 500,000 testing kits, the number of New York City police officers who have called in sick during the lockdown, and New York state’s purchase of over 1,000 ventilators from China. On April 28, after the number of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases topped 1 million, the Weibo account of state-run China Central Television trumpeted the news with an eye-grabbing graphic.
One popular comment professed “astonishment” at seeing America as “narrow, self-interested, buck-passing; not the world’s number one.” Another declared the U.S. response “the disaster flick of 2020.” And those ventilators? “Jack up the price,” went one popular response. “Then make sure they pay before delivery.”
Chinese social media is a highly imperfect lens into widespread public sentiment, full of hot tempers, trolls, and the ever-present specter of censorship, particularly given the ruling Communist Party’s power and proclivity to punish dissenting voices. It is emphatically not real life; American visitors to China generally describe encountering warmth, or at least respect, even during times of high tension between the countries.
Yet Chinese social media is also a crucial indicator of sentiment among the ultra plugged-in young, as well as a battlefield on which Chinese citizens — within strict limits, and often in code — air out differing views of the Party and the world. As recently as February 7, Chinese social media heaved with resentment at Chinese authorities following the death of doctor Li Wenliang, who had endured police harassment for sharing early news of the new virus. That outcry, too broad and too deep to censor, appeared then to herald one of the most frontal challenges to Party legitimacy since the 1989 Tiananmen uprising.
Now, however, a scant two months later, a new narrative predominates inside China. Yingyi Ma, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University and author of a recent book on Chinese students in the United States, described an about-face among that relatively affluent group. Now, “Chinese international students in the U.S overwhelmingly consider China a safer place, with [their] government more competently handling the crisis than the American government. That is why so many Chinese students have returned home,” Ma told POLITICO, “despite the high risk of international travel and the enormous difficulty in buying airplane tickets.”
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The coronavirus response — now playing out on Weibo, within the private discussion rooms on mobile social behemoth WeChat, and in private conversations — telegraphs a wound to America’s image even deeper and wider than the one sustained after the 2008 financial crisis, which convinced many Beijing policymakers that the United States was more paper than tiger. China’s intellectuals have respected power and wealth for more than a century, says Zhang; they favored the American model because “they naturally gravitated to the most economically and militarily powerful state.” As China rises and America fumbles, that dynamic is changing.
Chinese nationalism has never lurked terribly far below the surface, rearing its head repeatedly during times of heightened bilateral tension, particularly in the wake of the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet in 2001. But resentment toward the United States has long commingled with admiration, or at least the grudging recognition of an American hegemony that looked set to continue indefinitely. At the turn of this century, many Chinese felt certain their country would not catch up with the United States until the next one.
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Amid China’s dynamic rise, America has nonetheless held out the distinct promise of clean air and clean water, first-rate universities, competent governance, and a best-in-class public health system.
Now, Chinese propagandists and nationalists can state, truthfully, that U.S. representatives, governors and hospitals have purchased ventilators, gloves and masks from China in a time of desperate need, often without any help from Washington. The fact that U.S. institutions are buying the supplies at market prices, not begging for alms, or the reality that some of the Chinese-made goods have proven defective, have not diluted domestic perceptions of a fundamental rebalancing. “The current crisis highlights the importance of international bench-marking in the formation of Chinese public opinion,” Haifeng Huang, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Merced, told POLITICO. Insulated within an information bubble, many “may not be aware that the crisis has actually worsened international opinion toward China.”
The shift in grassroots sentiment is far more profound than mere dislike of President Donald Trump, a figure whom many Chinese commenters and policymakers originally considered a refreshing outsider and no-nonsense businessman with whom Beijing could deal. George W. Bush was labeled “little Bush” and subject to widespread derision. Barack Obama, while more popular, was subjected to a series of subtle, but unmistakable, diplomatic snubs. Whoever eventually succeeds Trump will confront a changed landscape in which intellectuals and reformists — erstwhile advocates for U.S.-style governance within China — are far more skeptical of American capabilities than they were a generation ago.
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The Communist Party’s mouthpieces depict President Xi Jinping lecturing Trump and the G-20 on coronavirus prevention, evincing a confident, technocratic, well-oiled Chinese state. The gritty, uncensored reality of a fractious and angry America whose flaws and debates play out in painful public view can scarcely compete.
If many Chinese are susceptible to triumphal propaganda, it’s partly because, for an increasingly large share of the population, nothing in their lived experience contradicts it. For all the doubt about the veracity of Chinese GDP growth numbers, the improvement in the quality of life for countless millions of Chinese citizens in recent decades is real, palpable and impressive. Younger Chinese “are accustomed to the Olympics, high-speed rail and mobile payments, and have no direct personal memories of poverty, hunger, or turmoil,” Huang says. They have been raised to believe their government can deliver the goods; now, they are being taught that America’s government cannot.
“One month ago they told me the U.S. had developed testing,” began a popular comment on Weibo, posted in early April. “One month ago, they told me the U.S. could take care of its own health; one month ago they told me the U.S. would stabilize as soon as it mobilized; one month ago they said U.S. industry was developed enough to produce the needed ventilators. Now I finally understand; it was all just talk.”
This State in India Shows Us Why Fighting COVID-19 Requires Working-Class Power
BY Samantha Agarwal, Truthout
PUBLISHED May 2, 2020
Even as the death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 climbs to 63,583 and increasing numbers of Americans are forced to decide whether to forgo potentially life-saving treatment or face bankruptcy, we are bombarded daily with pro-corporate rhetoric opposed to universal health care systems. We are told that the market is the most efficient mechanism for distributing goods and services, including health care, and that social democratic policies like Medicare for All are a fiscal “fantasy” that would leave us with inferior quality care.
But the COVID-19 crisis has thrown up a stubborn challenge to this pro-market logic. Despite high levels of private sector health care spending, the U.S. not only has fewer hospital beds per capita than other wealthy nations but also has huge regional disparities in how those beds are distributed. Doctors find themselves turning to the black market for personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and crucial medications as supplies dwindle. In the chance that an effective vaccine is developed in the next year or so, private pharmaceutical companies pose a serious threat to affordable access.
This story is eerily familiar to other nations ravaged by neoliberal economic policy, like Italy and the U.K. As one analyst put it, the U.K. is scrambling to rebuild a “safety net after destroying it for a decade.”
Yet there is one ray of hope in this disaster: The neoliberal consensus is slowly but surely unraveling. Social democratic policy interventions are also becoming more appealing to the masses. While the typical media coverage of the topic does not reflect it, recent polls show that a majority of U.S. Democratic Party voters, for example, prefer a government-run universal health care system to private insurance.
The insurgent campaign of Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, which has foregrounded Medicare for All, has played no small part in this radical shift in public opinion. Similarly, in the U.K., former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has aggressively advocated for the restoration of a fully public National Health Service. But, while these high-level endorsements of universal health care are extremely important, they are not enough to get us on the pathway to health care as a universal right. That effort will require a sustained and militant mass movement, with widespread participation from the working classes.
In building this movement, it will benefit the left to examine the successes and failures of various movements for universal health care across the world. In this regard, the history of the communist party rule in the South Indian state of Kerala should be part of our curriculum. It is an example of how a territory with the population of California squeezed into a land mass the size of Vermont and New Hampshire can achieve remarkable health outcomes despite low industrial capacity.
At the same time, as Patrick Heller pointed out in his pioneering work on communist rule in Kerala, the key to these successes lies not only in a people-centric policy approach which has been shaped since the late 1950s by a coalition of left parties known as the “Left Front” led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), but it is also, crucially, defined by the degree of grassroots participation in the everyday affairs of the state. This has led to impressive public health outcomes in Kerala, including, most recently, in its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the moment the state detected its first case of COVID-19 at the end of January, it has been leading the way in the national battle against the pandemic. Kerala’s approach to pandemic relief offers valuable lessons not only for India but also — perhaps especially — for advanced capitalist countries which have been hit the hardest by the outbreak.
Kerala’s Response to the Outbreak
Given the large number of Keralans who work or study internationally, it is unsurprising that India’s first cases of COVID-19 were detected there. It has, so far, experienced two waves of infection. The first was at the end of January, when a handful of students from Kerala who had been studying in Wuhan’s Hubei province returned home and tested positive. The second began a month later, when a couple returned from Venice to the district of Panthanamthitta and failed to alert the authorities of their travel history.
Thinking on its feet, the district administration culled data from the family’s phones and from CCTV cameras in the area. Based on that, it developed a detailed flow chart of all of the exact locations visited by the patients along with approximate dates and times. The flow chart was then widely circulated on social media along with a hotline for those who may have come into contact with the family. The hundreds of calls the administration received in the days that followed helped it plug the gaps in the flow chart.
Such epic contact tracing initiatives, though tedious, have been at the heart of the state’s “people-intensive” pandemic response. People who are identified in contact tracing are — depending on their situation — sent for testing and kept in hospital isolation wards or monitored at home for 28 days. On April 13, the state also announced a new policy of “reverse quarantine” where the most vulnerable sections of the population, such as elderly people or patients with respiratory illness, are isolated at home.
But surveilling so many people for long periods of time has not been easy. It has required, in addition to the usual frontline labor force, a veritable army of 235,000 health care volunteers and the help of various local governance bodies — including (but not limited to) the flagship poverty eradication and women’s empowerment scheme known as the “Kudumbashree,” which has over 277,000 neighborhood units across the state. This force of civil society activists and volunteers has carried out essential activities ranging from manufacturing over 145,000 masks and 2,000 liters of hand sanitizers to delivering books, medicines and groceries to people in home quarantine. They also staff the new state-run call centers which check up on the mental health of those who are home-quarantined.
The state has also taken a number of important macro-level measures to curb the economic and mental hardships faced by the general population. A 20,000 crore ($2.6 billion) stimulus package announced on March 19 is enabling the early distribution of elder pensions, midday meals for low-income children and food grain rations for everyone respective of their economic status. It is also funneling 2,000 crore ($261.4 million) into a fund controlled by the Kudumbashree Mission to distribute low-interest loans, and 1,000 crore ($130.7 million) to bolster the state-run Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. And while the state is not undeserving of criticism for its treatment of the most precarious section of its workers — migrant laborers — it has, still, outperformed the rest of the country. Data recently obtained from the Home Ministry showed that Kerala, which constitutes merely 2.76 percent of the Indian population, has set up has set up 69 percent (over 4,000) of the nation’s relief camps and shelters for migrant workers.
Finally, despite facing the near-universal challenges of possessing an insufficient quantity of PPE and ventilators, Kerala has astoundingly displayed one of the highest rates of patient recovery anywhere. Out of its 497 total recorded cases, 383 people have recovered so far and only 4 have died. More Keralans have succumbed to the coronavirus in New York than in Kerala. This stunning fact can partially be explained by the generally above-average quality of care in Kerala, but more so because the state was able to keep the health care system from being overwhelmed through its two-pronged approach: rigorous contact tracing and strict isolation measures.
The state’s impressive response to the pandemic is only the most recent move in a long line of development achievements by the communist-led state, including land reforms, a literacy rate of over 90 percent by 1990 (when the all-India rate was only 52.2 percent), infant mortality at a fifth of the national average, life expectancy at least 10 years higher than the national average and numerous effective interventions targeting reproductive health. The remarkable feat of attaining social development indices comparable to the Global North at a low cost has been dubbed the “Kerala Model” of development.
Movements Are Essential to Kerala’s Success in Fighting the Pandemic
It is widely recognized that without collective action this model — even with radical and committed action by the state — would have failed. Popular movements have often held the state’s feet to the fire and enforced accountability. For example, most recently, the Kerala Sathra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP), which describes itself as a revolutionary people’s science movement, has been scrutinizing the governments’ pandemic response. On April 11 it issued a statement against “sanitizer tunnels” installed in some localities in the state, arguing that the tunnels were unscientific and warned that the hypochlorite solution being sprayed is not meant for use on the human body.
Historically KSSP has also authored numerous important reports, including a landmark study on the morbidity load across the state and its “relationship to socio-economic variables,” as well as an extensive household survey on the health impacts of aerial spraying endosulfan, a chemical pesticide, on cashew plantations. Groups like KSSP don’t just act as a pressure mechanism — without them the state may not have achieved many of its development goals; for instance, KSSP alone mobilized over 20,000 volunteer teachers for the mass literacy campaign mentioned above.
Movements have long been part of the fabric of Keralan society, even predating the communist rule in the state. In the late 19th century, massive numbers of marginalized people — particularly women and Dalits, members of the formerly “untouchable” caste — waged highly militant successful struggles against the hundreds of esoteric and caste-based practices upholding regional feudal power relations. Some have called this period Kerala’s renaissance for its democratization of education, eradication of irrational thought and expansion of personal freedoms. The communists’ strength came from the fact that they built their base among these very movements of the downtrodden, developing a vast network of trained cadre who could deliver the party’s message to every village.
But, being a social democracy in the context of a capitalist country is not without contradictions. Most problematically, the state entered into a prolonged fiscal and economic crisis starting in the 1980s, from which it has not fully recovered. Kerala was pressured to liberalize its economy in line with the rest of the country, although Kerala never fully embraced it in the full-fledged way that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) did in West Bengal. Social inequality still expanded dramatically, which has also been reflected in the health care sector. In the period from 1986 to 1996, for example, the number of beds in public hospitals increased by 5.5 percent (to 38,000), whereas the number in private hospitals rose 40 percent (to 67,500). Today, as much as 70 percent of the poor rely on the private sector and are forced to spend as much as 40 percent of their income on health care as against 2.4 percent by the rich.
Perhaps sensing the need to put forth an alternative to bourgeoning neoliberal doctrine, the Left Front introduced the People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning (or PPC for short) in 1996. The PPC aimed at building up local self-government bodies, which would carry out projects and programs formulated through people’s participation. Initially, 35-40 percent of the state’s budget was allocated for these local deliberative bodies, and they involved over 1.8 million people in the first two years. Here, the KSSP also played a central role in helping to identify local resources and capacities to carry out activities ranging from the production of eggs and vegetables to the revitalization of public health. This was a major feat; unfortunately, as various kinks arose in implementation in the following years, the PPC’s effectiveness has diminished. Such efforts like the PPC need to be revisited and revived. One hopes that the coronavirus containment effort, dependent as it is on these existing networks, will be a major impetus to do so.
There are many other concerns with Left Front rule that can’t be ignored, including the way it has failed to address the oppression of marginalized groups like Dalits, Adivasis (Indigenous people) and women, and has sidelined serious environmental issues. These are concerns that the left in the U.S. must take seriously while drawing on the best achievements of Kerala’s social democratic movement.
In the U.S., we are at a crossroads in our history of social struggle. In the past 10 years we have seen an unprecedented growth of movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Red for Ed, the Climate Strike and Standing Rock. These struggles — and the tremendous racial, gender and economic inequality which has generated them — paved the way for an open socialist, Senator Sanders, to run a highly energetic presidential bid. Yet in the wake of the suspension of Sanders’s campaign, there are a number of left-wing thinkers who are cautioning against a “return to movementism” and elevating elections as the only arena of “mass politics.”
The Kerala experience offers a valuable lesson to the U.S. left: Medicare for All — let alone a Sanders-type presidency — would be tremendously limited without militant working-class participation at all levels of society. Kerala’s impressive social-democratic achievements including its battle against COVID-19 were undergirded by the robust participation of ordinary people. As we assess the post-Sanders landscape, the correct strategic question is not how to avoid descent into movementism at the expense of electoralism, but how can we build up independent movements which can act as levers for progressive electoral candidates, so that the best of Sanders’s policies may succeed.
In the time of COVID-19, and the much bigger looming threat of climate catastrophe, the survival of humanity depends on the power of the people.
But the COVID-19 crisis has thrown up a stubborn challenge to this pro-market logic. Despite high levels of private sector health care spending, the U.S. not only has fewer hospital beds per capita than other wealthy nations but also has huge regional disparities in how those beds are distributed. Doctors find themselves turning to the black market for personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators and crucial medications as supplies dwindle. In the chance that an effective vaccine is developed in the next year or so, private pharmaceutical companies pose a serious threat to affordable access.
This story is eerily familiar to other nations ravaged by neoliberal economic policy, like Italy and the U.K. As one analyst put it, the U.K. is scrambling to rebuild a “safety net after destroying it for a decade.”
Yet there is one ray of hope in this disaster: The neoliberal consensus is slowly but surely unraveling. Social democratic policy interventions are also becoming more appealing to the masses. While the typical media coverage of the topic does not reflect it, recent polls show that a majority of U.S. Democratic Party voters, for example, prefer a government-run universal health care system to private insurance.
The insurgent campaign of Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, which has foregrounded Medicare for All, has played no small part in this radical shift in public opinion. Similarly, in the U.K., former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has aggressively advocated for the restoration of a fully public National Health Service. But, while these high-level endorsements of universal health care are extremely important, they are not enough to get us on the pathway to health care as a universal right. That effort will require a sustained and militant mass movement, with widespread participation from the working classes.
In building this movement, it will benefit the left to examine the successes and failures of various movements for universal health care across the world. In this regard, the history of the communist party rule in the South Indian state of Kerala should be part of our curriculum. It is an example of how a territory with the population of California squeezed into a land mass the size of Vermont and New Hampshire can achieve remarkable health outcomes despite low industrial capacity.
At the same time, as Patrick Heller pointed out in his pioneering work on communist rule in Kerala, the key to these successes lies not only in a people-centric policy approach which has been shaped since the late 1950s by a coalition of left parties known as the “Left Front” led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), but it is also, crucially, defined by the degree of grassroots participation in the everyday affairs of the state. This has led to impressive public health outcomes in Kerala, including, most recently, in its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the moment the state detected its first case of COVID-19 at the end of January, it has been leading the way in the national battle against the pandemic. Kerala’s approach to pandemic relief offers valuable lessons not only for India but also — perhaps especially — for advanced capitalist countries which have been hit the hardest by the outbreak.
Kerala’s Response to the Outbreak
Given the large number of Keralans who work or study internationally, it is unsurprising that India’s first cases of COVID-19 were detected there. It has, so far, experienced two waves of infection. The first was at the end of January, when a handful of students from Kerala who had been studying in Wuhan’s Hubei province returned home and tested positive. The second began a month later, when a couple returned from Venice to the district of Panthanamthitta and failed to alert the authorities of their travel history.
Thinking on its feet, the district administration culled data from the family’s phones and from CCTV cameras in the area. Based on that, it developed a detailed flow chart of all of the exact locations visited by the patients along with approximate dates and times. The flow chart was then widely circulated on social media along with a hotline for those who may have come into contact with the family. The hundreds of calls the administration received in the days that followed helped it plug the gaps in the flow chart.
Such epic contact tracing initiatives, though tedious, have been at the heart of the state’s “people-intensive” pandemic response. People who are identified in contact tracing are — depending on their situation — sent for testing and kept in hospital isolation wards or monitored at home for 28 days. On April 13, the state also announced a new policy of “reverse quarantine” where the most vulnerable sections of the population, such as elderly people or patients with respiratory illness, are isolated at home.
But surveilling so many people for long periods of time has not been easy. It has required, in addition to the usual frontline labor force, a veritable army of 235,000 health care volunteers and the help of various local governance bodies — including (but not limited to) the flagship poverty eradication and women’s empowerment scheme known as the “Kudumbashree,” which has over 277,000 neighborhood units across the state. This force of civil society activists and volunteers has carried out essential activities ranging from manufacturing over 145,000 masks and 2,000 liters of hand sanitizers to delivering books, medicines and groceries to people in home quarantine. They also staff the new state-run call centers which check up on the mental health of those who are home-quarantined.
The state has also taken a number of important macro-level measures to curb the economic and mental hardships faced by the general population. A 20,000 crore ($2.6 billion) stimulus package announced on March 19 is enabling the early distribution of elder pensions, midday meals for low-income children and food grain rations for everyone respective of their economic status. It is also funneling 2,000 crore ($261.4 million) into a fund controlled by the Kudumbashree Mission to distribute low-interest loans, and 1,000 crore ($130.7 million) to bolster the state-run Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. And while the state is not undeserving of criticism for its treatment of the most precarious section of its workers — migrant laborers — it has, still, outperformed the rest of the country. Data recently obtained from the Home Ministry showed that Kerala, which constitutes merely 2.76 percent of the Indian population, has set up has set up 69 percent (over 4,000) of the nation’s relief camps and shelters for migrant workers.
Finally, despite facing the near-universal challenges of possessing an insufficient quantity of PPE and ventilators, Kerala has astoundingly displayed one of the highest rates of patient recovery anywhere. Out of its 497 total recorded cases, 383 people have recovered so far and only 4 have died. More Keralans have succumbed to the coronavirus in New York than in Kerala. This stunning fact can partially be explained by the generally above-average quality of care in Kerala, but more so because the state was able to keep the health care system from being overwhelmed through its two-pronged approach: rigorous contact tracing and strict isolation measures.
The state’s impressive response to the pandemic is only the most recent move in a long line of development achievements by the communist-led state, including land reforms, a literacy rate of over 90 percent by 1990 (when the all-India rate was only 52.2 percent), infant mortality at a fifth of the national average, life expectancy at least 10 years higher than the national average and numerous effective interventions targeting reproductive health. The remarkable feat of attaining social development indices comparable to the Global North at a low cost has been dubbed the “Kerala Model” of development.
Movements Are Essential to Kerala’s Success in Fighting the Pandemic
It is widely recognized that without collective action this model — even with radical and committed action by the state — would have failed. Popular movements have often held the state’s feet to the fire and enforced accountability. For example, most recently, the Kerala Sathra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP), which describes itself as a revolutionary people’s science movement, has been scrutinizing the governments’ pandemic response. On April 11 it issued a statement against “sanitizer tunnels” installed in some localities in the state, arguing that the tunnels were unscientific and warned that the hypochlorite solution being sprayed is not meant for use on the human body.
Historically KSSP has also authored numerous important reports, including a landmark study on the morbidity load across the state and its “relationship to socio-economic variables,” as well as an extensive household survey on the health impacts of aerial spraying endosulfan, a chemical pesticide, on cashew plantations. Groups like KSSP don’t just act as a pressure mechanism — without them the state may not have achieved many of its development goals; for instance, KSSP alone mobilized over 20,000 volunteer teachers for the mass literacy campaign mentioned above.
Movements have long been part of the fabric of Keralan society, even predating the communist rule in the state. In the late 19th century, massive numbers of marginalized people — particularly women and Dalits, members of the formerly “untouchable” caste — waged highly militant successful struggles against the hundreds of esoteric and caste-based practices upholding regional feudal power relations. Some have called this period Kerala’s renaissance for its democratization of education, eradication of irrational thought and expansion of personal freedoms. The communists’ strength came from the fact that they built their base among these very movements of the downtrodden, developing a vast network of trained cadre who could deliver the party’s message to every village.
But, being a social democracy in the context of a capitalist country is not without contradictions. Most problematically, the state entered into a prolonged fiscal and economic crisis starting in the 1980s, from which it has not fully recovered. Kerala was pressured to liberalize its economy in line with the rest of the country, although Kerala never fully embraced it in the full-fledged way that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) did in West Bengal. Social inequality still expanded dramatically, which has also been reflected in the health care sector. In the period from 1986 to 1996, for example, the number of beds in public hospitals increased by 5.5 percent (to 38,000), whereas the number in private hospitals rose 40 percent (to 67,500). Today, as much as 70 percent of the poor rely on the private sector and are forced to spend as much as 40 percent of their income on health care as against 2.4 percent by the rich.
Perhaps sensing the need to put forth an alternative to bourgeoning neoliberal doctrine, the Left Front introduced the People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning (or PPC for short) in 1996. The PPC aimed at building up local self-government bodies, which would carry out projects and programs formulated through people’s participation. Initially, 35-40 percent of the state’s budget was allocated for these local deliberative bodies, and they involved over 1.8 million people in the first two years. Here, the KSSP also played a central role in helping to identify local resources and capacities to carry out activities ranging from the production of eggs and vegetables to the revitalization of public health. This was a major feat; unfortunately, as various kinks arose in implementation in the following years, the PPC’s effectiveness has diminished. Such efforts like the PPC need to be revisited and revived. One hopes that the coronavirus containment effort, dependent as it is on these existing networks, will be a major impetus to do so.
There are many other concerns with Left Front rule that can’t be ignored, including the way it has failed to address the oppression of marginalized groups like Dalits, Adivasis (Indigenous people) and women, and has sidelined serious environmental issues. These are concerns that the left in the U.S. must take seriously while drawing on the best achievements of Kerala’s social democratic movement.
In the U.S., we are at a crossroads in our history of social struggle. In the past 10 years we have seen an unprecedented growth of movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Red for Ed, the Climate Strike and Standing Rock. These struggles — and the tremendous racial, gender and economic inequality which has generated them — paved the way for an open socialist, Senator Sanders, to run a highly energetic presidential bid. Yet in the wake of the suspension of Sanders’s campaign, there are a number of left-wing thinkers who are cautioning against a “return to movementism” and elevating elections as the only arena of “mass politics.”
The Kerala experience offers a valuable lesson to the U.S. left: Medicare for All — let alone a Sanders-type presidency — would be tremendously limited without militant working-class participation at all levels of society. Kerala’s impressive social-democratic achievements including its battle against COVID-19 were undergirded by the robust participation of ordinary people. As we assess the post-Sanders landscape, the correct strategic question is not how to avoid descent into movementism at the expense of electoralism, but how can we build up independent movements which can act as levers for progressive electoral candidates, so that the best of Sanders’s policies may succeed.
In the time of COVID-19, and the much bigger looming threat of climate catastrophe, the survival of humanity depends on the power of the people.
Gender equality: Most people are biased against women, UN says
A new study shows that almost 90% of people worldwide are biased against women and around half perceive men to make better leaders. And nearly 30% of people think it's justified for a husband to beat his wife.
dw.com
3/5/2020
Women around the world still suffer from widespread gender bias, according to a newly-published report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The study measures how people's social beliefs inhibit gender equality in areas including education, politics and the work force. It contains data from 75 countries, covering over 80% of the world's population.
Pedro Conceicao, director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, said that while progress has been made in giving women the same access to basic needs as men in education and health, gender gaps remain in areas "that challenge power relations and are most influential in actually achieving true equality."
The UNDP analysis found that despite decades-long efforts to close the gender divide, around half of the world's population feel that men make better political leaders, while over 40% think men make better business executives and have more right to a job when work availability is limited. Almost 30% of people think it's justified for a husband to beat his wife.
Women hold only 24% of parliamentary seats globally and they make up less than 6% of chief executives in S&P 500 companies, the study showed.
Countries with the highest numbers of people showing any kind of bias against gender equality are Jordan, Qatar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The countries with the lowest levels of gender bias are Andorra, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
The study measures how people's social beliefs inhibit gender equality in areas including education, politics and the work force. It contains data from 75 countries, covering over 80% of the world's population.
Pedro Conceicao, director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, said that while progress has been made in giving women the same access to basic needs as men in education and health, gender gaps remain in areas "that challenge power relations and are most influential in actually achieving true equality."
The UNDP analysis found that despite decades-long efforts to close the gender divide, around half of the world's population feel that men make better political leaders, while over 40% think men make better business executives and have more right to a job when work availability is limited. Almost 30% of people think it's justified for a husband to beat his wife.
Women hold only 24% of parliamentary seats globally and they make up less than 6% of chief executives in S&P 500 companies, the study showed.
Countries with the highest numbers of people showing any kind of bias against gender equality are Jordan, Qatar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The countries with the lowest levels of gender bias are Andorra, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Women Perform 12.5 Billion Hours of Unpaid Labor Every Day
BY Michelle Chen, Truthout
PUBLISHED January 24, 2020
The global economy is polarized on multiple dimensions. Even as the gap widens between the extremely poor and ultra-rich, a chronic economic divide persists between men and women. Millions of people subsist on an income of a few dollars a day, and billions of women work for nothing at all.
Oxfam’s new report on global inequality — which was released to coincide with the gathering of the ultra-wealthy at the World Economic Forum January 21-24 in Davos, Switzerland — lays out devastating but familiar, statistics: The world has 2,153 billionaires who collectively possess more wealth than 4.6 billion people at the bottom of the income scale. More than half the world’s population is estimated to survive on less than $5.50 a day, while the rate of poverty reduction slowed by half since 2013.
The latest analysis highlights how poverty is both gendered and also socially entrenched. According to the report, men collectively own 50 percent more wealth than women do, and at the top of that wealth gap, “the richest 22 men in the world own more wealth than all the women in Africa.”
The gender wealth gap isn’t entirely surprising — sexism predates industrial capitalism, after all. But the systematic economic subjugation of women reflects how patriarchy and poverty are mutually reinforcing. Due to social as well as cultural pressure, women perform vast amounts of unpaid labor — about 12.5 billion hours every day.
Women’s unwaged labor — which occupies up to 14 hours a day in rural and low-income regions — involves domestic duties, primarily the “care work” of looking after children or elders, cooking, cleaning and mending. It could also involve procuring water or gathering firewood, or tending subsistence crops on a family farm — tasks that will become increasingly challenging as climate change and other environmental stresses intensify.
One woman in rural India, who said she worked around the clock and would be beaten by her husband if she slipped up, told Oxfam researchers, “I have no time, not even time to die for they will all curse…. Who will look after them and bring money to the family when I’m gone?”
If women like her were paid the real value of their economic contributions to their families, they would be owed at least $10.8 trillion (more than half of the U.S. annual gross domestic product) — the estimated collective value of women’s unpaid care work worldwide.
“The care economy is very neglected,” said Gawain Kripke, director of policy and research at Oxfam America. “Most of it is unpaid. And what we pay [for] is treated very poorly. And this provides a subsidy to the more formal economy. All this work that gets done, society and the economy wouldn’t function without this work…. Businesses rely on it, families rely on it, society as a whole relies on it. And yet we don’t recognize it, and don’t compensate it, and don’t support it.”
This is not an accidental oversight, but institutionalized oppression. “This is what patriarchy is,” he added. “It ignores and makes invisible women, and exalts and elevates rich men.”
In the United States, the care gap for children and the elderly falls disproportionately on women, whether they are caring for their own, or paid as hired care workers. In 2018, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, about 16.2 million people, the majority of them women, provided unpaid informal care for individuals with dementia, contributing about 18.5 billion hours of feeding, bathing, providing medication and other tasks. If the unpaid care work in the U.S. was provided through government services instead, taxpayers would have paid an estimated $234 billion. Meanwhile, professional home health care aides who care for seniors — aides who are also mostly women — typically earn poverty wages, and about half receive public benefits.
Child care faces a similar crisis: it’s both extremely expensive for families — well over $1,000 per month in many areas — and chronically underpaid for child care providers. Across the country, the Center for American Progress reports that roughly half of families with children under the age of six (about 6.3 million households) face difficulty finding suitable child care, often because of cost barriers or a lack of open slots. Roughly 4 in 10 mothers (and an even higher percentage of Black and Latinx women) are especially vulnerable because they are the primary or sole income-earners for their families. Women who could not find a decent child care program were generally less likely to be employed (fathers’ workforce participation, unsurprisingly, did not change according to child care availability), indicating that many women opt out of work rather than have their earnings eaten up by daycare fees.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) Chief Operating Officer Cynthia Hess says that, since women tend to earn lower wages, “it often makes economic sense for the family for the woman to be the one to do that…. And without access to that affordable quality child care, a lot of working parents, particularly mothers, really don’t have a real choice about whether to participate in the paid labor force or not.”
According to Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of advocacy group Family Values @ Work, the marginalization of care work can drag down women’s lifetime economic prospects. “Devaluing women means care work is under-valued and unseen. That leads to lower pay and to job loss, which then cements women in jobs that pay less and have less opportunity for advancement, or boots women out of the workforce and labels them as ‘unreliable’ and ‘dependent’,” Chun-Hoon told Truthout via email.
Despite steady growth in women’s workforce participation over the past 50 years, the care gap between working men and women has barely budged. According to the Pew Research Center’s time-survey analysis from 1965 to 2011, “American mothers still spend about twice as much time with their children as fathers” — with women most recently clocking around 13.5 hours a week, compared to men’s 7.3 hours. According to a briefing paper co-authored by Oxfam America and IWPR, the care gap is wider among young people than older ones: Women aged 25 to 34 spend about twice as much time on unpaid household and care work (8 hours to 3.9 hours) than their male peers, compared to a gap of 5.6 hours per week versus 4.1 hours per week between women and men aged 45 to 54. The care gap is also wider between Black, Latinx and Asian men and women than between white ones.
The gender gap in wealth is undergirded by a gender gap in political power. The inequality report points out that fewer than one in four government ministers around the world is a woman, which might explain why the social welfare policies most crucial to women and families are often targeted by austerity measures. “Cutting these services is done as a budget savings,” Kripke said, “but they don’t see that the costs will be borne mainly by women, and many women will have to leave the paid workforce in order to pick up the care burdens.”
Although the intersection of gender and economic inequality is built into most modern social structures today, Oxfam and IWPR researchers note that both gender and economic justice can be tackled in tandem through the structural redistribution of wealth. For the U.S., gender-equality advocates recommend measures like paid family leave and paid sick days to allow working parents to meet their care needs without endangering their jobs. The gender wage gap, which hovers at roughly 19 percent between women’s and men’s weekly earnings, could be narrowed by boosting wages and working conditions and supporting collective bargaining. To help counter gender stereotypes, paid family leave policies should be structured to encourage men to use their leave time to spend more time caring for their kids.
In the U.S., child care has become a central issue for both liberal and conservative lawmakers. Democratic presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have advocated for universal early childhood education funded through a wealth tax. Warren has proposed making child care free for households earning less than double the federal poverty line and cap overall costs at 7 percent of income; Sanders has not released a detailed plan, but has called for universal preschool, in line with legislation he previously sponsored. Sanders also commented broadly on the Oxfam report, stating that the global wealth gap had pointed to the need to “develop an international movement that takes on the greed of the billionaire class.”
In response to the Oxfam report, Mary Ignatius, statewide organizer of the California-based advocacy group Parent Voices, stated, “Fully funding a robust and comprehensive child care system that meets the needs of today’s working women will dramatically and immediately close the income inequality crisis in this country and liberate women to take greater control of their lives.”
At the same time, a robust national family care program would engage women both as beneficiaries and workers. Although care jobs are hugely in demand, they remain notoriously low-paying and underregulated. A sustainable care infrastructure — expanding on the model family welfare policies of Scandinavian countries — would guarantee living wage jobs in gender-segregated sectors of the economy — particularly child care and home care jobs that relegate millions of women to the lowest wage tiers of the education and health care systems. An analysis by the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment shows that aligning preschool teachers’ salaries with those of typical elementary and middle school teachers would more than double their pay, from $25,218 to $60,602 annually, which, multiplied by the early childhood education workforce nationwide, would boost their collective earnings by more than $80 billion. Similarly, the home health care workforce, with annual median wages stuck at just $13,000, would be massively boosted by raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, which would in turn raise their income by roughly 50 percent, and generate an economic ripple effect that would average $2,000 per worker.
The Oxfam report estimates that taxing just an additional half of 1 percent of the wealth of the richest people in the U.S. would, over a decade, generate the funds “needed to create 117 million care jobs in education, health and elderly care and other sectors, and to close care deficits.” Those jobs could form the foundation of a comprehensive care-labor infrastructure, providing working parents with universal access to child, elder and disability care, as well as the flexibility to take time off from work to tend to an ailing parent or bond with a newborn, without risking their families’ economic security.
Global inequality, of course, is not just a gender issue. But the current inequities in wealth around the world could not exist if patriarchy were not subordinating half the population to a hierarchy within a hierarchy. And to end inequality, a political transformation that dismantles sexism as a tool of economic oppression is a critical step toward total social emancipation.
Oxfam’s new report on global inequality — which was released to coincide with the gathering of the ultra-wealthy at the World Economic Forum January 21-24 in Davos, Switzerland — lays out devastating but familiar, statistics: The world has 2,153 billionaires who collectively possess more wealth than 4.6 billion people at the bottom of the income scale. More than half the world’s population is estimated to survive on less than $5.50 a day, while the rate of poverty reduction slowed by half since 2013.
The latest analysis highlights how poverty is both gendered and also socially entrenched. According to the report, men collectively own 50 percent more wealth than women do, and at the top of that wealth gap, “the richest 22 men in the world own more wealth than all the women in Africa.”
The gender wealth gap isn’t entirely surprising — sexism predates industrial capitalism, after all. But the systematic economic subjugation of women reflects how patriarchy and poverty are mutually reinforcing. Due to social as well as cultural pressure, women perform vast amounts of unpaid labor — about 12.5 billion hours every day.
Women’s unwaged labor — which occupies up to 14 hours a day in rural and low-income regions — involves domestic duties, primarily the “care work” of looking after children or elders, cooking, cleaning and mending. It could also involve procuring water or gathering firewood, or tending subsistence crops on a family farm — tasks that will become increasingly challenging as climate change and other environmental stresses intensify.
One woman in rural India, who said she worked around the clock and would be beaten by her husband if she slipped up, told Oxfam researchers, “I have no time, not even time to die for they will all curse…. Who will look after them and bring money to the family when I’m gone?”
If women like her were paid the real value of their economic contributions to their families, they would be owed at least $10.8 trillion (more than half of the U.S. annual gross domestic product) — the estimated collective value of women’s unpaid care work worldwide.
“The care economy is very neglected,” said Gawain Kripke, director of policy and research at Oxfam America. “Most of it is unpaid. And what we pay [for] is treated very poorly. And this provides a subsidy to the more formal economy. All this work that gets done, society and the economy wouldn’t function without this work…. Businesses rely on it, families rely on it, society as a whole relies on it. And yet we don’t recognize it, and don’t compensate it, and don’t support it.”
This is not an accidental oversight, but institutionalized oppression. “This is what patriarchy is,” he added. “It ignores and makes invisible women, and exalts and elevates rich men.”
In the United States, the care gap for children and the elderly falls disproportionately on women, whether they are caring for their own, or paid as hired care workers. In 2018, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, about 16.2 million people, the majority of them women, provided unpaid informal care for individuals with dementia, contributing about 18.5 billion hours of feeding, bathing, providing medication and other tasks. If the unpaid care work in the U.S. was provided through government services instead, taxpayers would have paid an estimated $234 billion. Meanwhile, professional home health care aides who care for seniors — aides who are also mostly women — typically earn poverty wages, and about half receive public benefits.
Child care faces a similar crisis: it’s both extremely expensive for families — well over $1,000 per month in many areas — and chronically underpaid for child care providers. Across the country, the Center for American Progress reports that roughly half of families with children under the age of six (about 6.3 million households) face difficulty finding suitable child care, often because of cost barriers or a lack of open slots. Roughly 4 in 10 mothers (and an even higher percentage of Black and Latinx women) are especially vulnerable because they are the primary or sole income-earners for their families. Women who could not find a decent child care program were generally less likely to be employed (fathers’ workforce participation, unsurprisingly, did not change according to child care availability), indicating that many women opt out of work rather than have their earnings eaten up by daycare fees.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) Chief Operating Officer Cynthia Hess says that, since women tend to earn lower wages, “it often makes economic sense for the family for the woman to be the one to do that…. And without access to that affordable quality child care, a lot of working parents, particularly mothers, really don’t have a real choice about whether to participate in the paid labor force or not.”
According to Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of advocacy group Family Values @ Work, the marginalization of care work can drag down women’s lifetime economic prospects. “Devaluing women means care work is under-valued and unseen. That leads to lower pay and to job loss, which then cements women in jobs that pay less and have less opportunity for advancement, or boots women out of the workforce and labels them as ‘unreliable’ and ‘dependent’,” Chun-Hoon told Truthout via email.
Despite steady growth in women’s workforce participation over the past 50 years, the care gap between working men and women has barely budged. According to the Pew Research Center’s time-survey analysis from 1965 to 2011, “American mothers still spend about twice as much time with their children as fathers” — with women most recently clocking around 13.5 hours a week, compared to men’s 7.3 hours. According to a briefing paper co-authored by Oxfam America and IWPR, the care gap is wider among young people than older ones: Women aged 25 to 34 spend about twice as much time on unpaid household and care work (8 hours to 3.9 hours) than their male peers, compared to a gap of 5.6 hours per week versus 4.1 hours per week between women and men aged 45 to 54. The care gap is also wider between Black, Latinx and Asian men and women than between white ones.
The gender gap in wealth is undergirded by a gender gap in political power. The inequality report points out that fewer than one in four government ministers around the world is a woman, which might explain why the social welfare policies most crucial to women and families are often targeted by austerity measures. “Cutting these services is done as a budget savings,” Kripke said, “but they don’t see that the costs will be borne mainly by women, and many women will have to leave the paid workforce in order to pick up the care burdens.”
Although the intersection of gender and economic inequality is built into most modern social structures today, Oxfam and IWPR researchers note that both gender and economic justice can be tackled in tandem through the structural redistribution of wealth. For the U.S., gender-equality advocates recommend measures like paid family leave and paid sick days to allow working parents to meet their care needs without endangering their jobs. The gender wage gap, which hovers at roughly 19 percent between women’s and men’s weekly earnings, could be narrowed by boosting wages and working conditions and supporting collective bargaining. To help counter gender stereotypes, paid family leave policies should be structured to encourage men to use their leave time to spend more time caring for their kids.
In the U.S., child care has become a central issue for both liberal and conservative lawmakers. Democratic presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have advocated for universal early childhood education funded through a wealth tax. Warren has proposed making child care free for households earning less than double the federal poverty line and cap overall costs at 7 percent of income; Sanders has not released a detailed plan, but has called for universal preschool, in line with legislation he previously sponsored. Sanders also commented broadly on the Oxfam report, stating that the global wealth gap had pointed to the need to “develop an international movement that takes on the greed of the billionaire class.”
In response to the Oxfam report, Mary Ignatius, statewide organizer of the California-based advocacy group Parent Voices, stated, “Fully funding a robust and comprehensive child care system that meets the needs of today’s working women will dramatically and immediately close the income inequality crisis in this country and liberate women to take greater control of their lives.”
At the same time, a robust national family care program would engage women both as beneficiaries and workers. Although care jobs are hugely in demand, they remain notoriously low-paying and underregulated. A sustainable care infrastructure — expanding on the model family welfare policies of Scandinavian countries — would guarantee living wage jobs in gender-segregated sectors of the economy — particularly child care and home care jobs that relegate millions of women to the lowest wage tiers of the education and health care systems. An analysis by the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment shows that aligning preschool teachers’ salaries with those of typical elementary and middle school teachers would more than double their pay, from $25,218 to $60,602 annually, which, multiplied by the early childhood education workforce nationwide, would boost their collective earnings by more than $80 billion. Similarly, the home health care workforce, with annual median wages stuck at just $13,000, would be massively boosted by raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, which would in turn raise their income by roughly 50 percent, and generate an economic ripple effect that would average $2,000 per worker.
The Oxfam report estimates that taxing just an additional half of 1 percent of the wealth of the richest people in the U.S. would, over a decade, generate the funds “needed to create 117 million care jobs in education, health and elderly care and other sectors, and to close care deficits.” Those jobs could form the foundation of a comprehensive care-labor infrastructure, providing working parents with universal access to child, elder and disability care, as well as the flexibility to take time off from work to tend to an ailing parent or bond with a newborn, without risking their families’ economic security.
Global inequality, of course, is not just a gender issue. But the current inequities in wealth around the world could not exist if patriarchy were not subordinating half the population to a hierarchy within a hierarchy. And to end inequality, a political transformation that dismantles sexism as a tool of economic oppression is a critical step toward total social emancipation.
review
Here’s What Workers of the Global South Endure to Create Corporate Wealth
BY Eve Ottenberg, Truthout
PUBLISHED January 5, 2020
In recent decades, as U.S. corporations shipped millions of jobs overseas to save money on wages, GM, H&M, Apple and dozens of other companies established elaborate supply chains in Asia, Mexico and Latin America, where workers earn pennies per hour. These chains are geographically expansive networks organized by foreign companies to produce semi-finished goods in different places before final assembly for huge global corporations.
Abuses abound. One typical example: An Indonesian factory that supplied the Japanese multinational behind the clothing brand Uniqlo abruptly closed, leaving workers with unpaid wages and unpaid severance. Intan Suwandi, the author of the recently published book Value Chains, told Truthout that there have been similar cases involving Nike, Adidas, H&M and Walmart in Cambodia and Honduras. A Chinese factory that supplied PUMA abused its workers and paid starvation wages, while workers in India’s home garment sector are as young as 10 years old, working for companies that supply the U.S. and European Union.
Suwandi also cites, in an email, a Chinese factory that produces computer products, such as keyboards and printer cases, for Hewlitt-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM. The factory applied a “long list of draconian disciplinary measures, and fines were used to control every movement and almost every second of the workers’ lives.” She also mentions a Chinese factory that produces parts for Ford, where, among many violations, seriously injured workers were “fired after a year or two.”
And then there’s Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones for Apple and products for Dell, Nokia, Hewlitt-Packard and Sony. It employs roughly 400,000 people at its Shenzhen factory, paying 83 cents an hour, under conditions so deplorable that in one six-month period in 2010, 13 workers jumped from the factory building, at least 10 to their deaths, while later, 150 threatened to kill themselves thus. Meanwhile, in 2012, a fire in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that supplied Walmart and Sears, killed 112 workers.
Value Chains argues that economic imperialism is alive and well and being practiced in the Global South by corporations from the North. Although in recent years some leftists have argued that with the hollowing out of the Global North’s manufacturing base, economic imperialism ended, Suwandi disputes this. Her book mentions the GM commodity chain, which, as former GM director of sustainability David Tulauskas told Suwandi, includes “20,000 suppliers that provide us parts that go onto our vehicles. We buy from them approximately 200,000 individual items, spending about $100 billion. We operate in 30 countries. We sell those products in 125 countries.” Those suppliers, Suwandi explains, are scattered in Brazil, China and Mexico. Wages are kept low through direct investments and “arm’s lengths contracts.”
Value Chains devotes many pages to these contracts, which are a form of subcontracting without equity involvement. In these contracts, multinationals outsource production to suppliers mostly in the global South through contract relationships. As a result, the complex network of labor-value chains conceals how profits are extracted from workers by making it almost impossible to trace profits back to those workers. This is largely due to the arm’s length contracts.
Suwandi cites John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century in order to demonstrate how much wealth transnational western corporations extract from workers in the Global South: “Apple subcontracts the production of the component parts of its iPhones to a number of countries, with Foxconn subcontracting the final assembly in China. Due … to low-end wages … Apple’s gross profit margin on its iPhone 4 in 2010 was found to be 59 percent of the final sales price.” For each iPhone 4, retailing at $549, Smith writes, only $10 went to labor costs in China.
Cheap labor in the Global South means that multinational capital only has to pay a few cents an hour for work which creates much more value than that, Suwandi explains. Corporations disguise this value capture by attributing it to marketing, distribution and design activities in the Global North. Of course, it helps that that’s where the products are sold, with high markups on production cost. This obfuscates GDP. Take Apple’s iPhones:
Only 1.8 percent goes to labor costs in China, only that amount is recorded in China’s GDP, while a large percentage is recorded in the GDP of the country where Apple is headquartered — the United States — even when none of the production processes happened here…. The country where the iPhone was produced receives in its GDP only a small proportion of the final sales price. Meanwhile the larger part shows up in the GDP of the country where it is consumed…. So that’s why the profits that multinationals get are very difficult to trace back to the workers in the Global South.
Suwandi emails that global labor value chains (or “global commodity chains,” “global value chains,” or “global supply chains”) link people, tools and activities to deliver goods and services to the market. Her book argues that multinational corporations headquartered in the Global North control these chains completely, in every detail, even though they don’t own them. She explains that each chain consists of various nodes (each node signifies a specific production process) with different businesses involved in these different production processes. Take a pair of Nike sneakers: Several nodes are involved where semi-finished parts of the final product are made in various factories located in different countries. The raw materials are also acquired from different countries. If final assembly occurs in a factory in Vietnam, the sneakers will be labeled “made in Vietnam.”
The top three countries participating in labor value chains are China, India and Indonesia, where, according to Value Chains, wages are low and productivity is high. These labor value chains “are imperialistic in their characteristics,” because “capital accumulation processes are inseparable from the unequal relations among nation states.” The global labor force is concentrated in the South: With 541 million industrial workers there in 2010, compared to 145 million in the North, the idea that the commodity chain system is imperialist in nature makes sense. Indeed, Value Chains argues that globalized production is a new form of economic imperialism that transfers wealth from South to North. This does not preclude, however, the creation of local billionaires in China and India, who reap immense profits from their own transnational corporations. And where does all that profit go? “Huge quantities of this loot,” Value Chains reports, “captured from peripheral economies in the global South end up in the ‘treasure islands’ of the Caribbean, where trillions of dollars of money capital are now deposited.”
All this pelf, of course, comes directly out of workers’ hides. The cheaper the wages of the workers in the Global South, the greater the gross profit margins. Moreover, Suwandi explains, “Multinationals exercise a high degree of control within these labor-value chains, even when they only engage in contractual relationships with their suppliers.”
Value Chains examines two Indonesian firms, pseudonymously labeled Java Film and Star Inc., which often have the same customers for the plastic wrappers they produce. These firms do not use sweatshops, partly because they do not identify as “labor intensive.” But that’s one of Suwandi’s points: Exploitation does not necessarily involve blatantly abusive practices. She observes that multinationals control their suppliers’ production to the smallest detail, determining their suppliers’ profit margins, by increasing exploitation of the suppliers’ workers, usually through increased productivity, but also sometimes by depriving workers of their rights, or through violence, abuse and law-breaking.
Making production more economical and increasing productivity involve two processes, according to Value Chains – “systemic rationalization and flexible production.” Suwandi explains that capital wants production to be flexible enough to accommodate market fluctuations, “without paying the price … this burden is in the end placed upon workers through enhancing exploitation.” Engaging in arm’s length contracts itself exemplifies both processes. Systemic rationalization, according to Value Chains, refers “to the technological and organizational changes by corporations that began in the 1970s … [with] its focus on the rise of decentralized production throughout the globe.” (The ‘70s was the decade when neoliberalism and the union busting it entailed really got going. It’s when corporations “modernized.”) Flexible production — according to Lean and Mean by Bennett Harrison, which Value Chains quotes — involves “lean production, downsizing, outsourcing and the growing importance of spatially extensive production networks governed by powerful core firms and their strategic allies.”
Abuses abound. One typical example: An Indonesian factory that supplied the Japanese multinational behind the clothing brand Uniqlo abruptly closed, leaving workers with unpaid wages and unpaid severance. Intan Suwandi, the author of the recently published book Value Chains, told Truthout that there have been similar cases involving Nike, Adidas, H&M and Walmart in Cambodia and Honduras. A Chinese factory that supplied PUMA abused its workers and paid starvation wages, while workers in India’s home garment sector are as young as 10 years old, working for companies that supply the U.S. and European Union.
Suwandi also cites, in an email, a Chinese factory that produces computer products, such as keyboards and printer cases, for Hewlitt-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM. The factory applied a “long list of draconian disciplinary measures, and fines were used to control every movement and almost every second of the workers’ lives.” She also mentions a Chinese factory that produces parts for Ford, where, among many violations, seriously injured workers were “fired after a year or two.”
And then there’s Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones for Apple and products for Dell, Nokia, Hewlitt-Packard and Sony. It employs roughly 400,000 people at its Shenzhen factory, paying 83 cents an hour, under conditions so deplorable that in one six-month period in 2010, 13 workers jumped from the factory building, at least 10 to their deaths, while later, 150 threatened to kill themselves thus. Meanwhile, in 2012, a fire in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that supplied Walmart and Sears, killed 112 workers.
Value Chains argues that economic imperialism is alive and well and being practiced in the Global South by corporations from the North. Although in recent years some leftists have argued that with the hollowing out of the Global North’s manufacturing base, economic imperialism ended, Suwandi disputes this. Her book mentions the GM commodity chain, which, as former GM director of sustainability David Tulauskas told Suwandi, includes “20,000 suppliers that provide us parts that go onto our vehicles. We buy from them approximately 200,000 individual items, spending about $100 billion. We operate in 30 countries. We sell those products in 125 countries.” Those suppliers, Suwandi explains, are scattered in Brazil, China and Mexico. Wages are kept low through direct investments and “arm’s lengths contracts.”
Value Chains devotes many pages to these contracts, which are a form of subcontracting without equity involvement. In these contracts, multinationals outsource production to suppliers mostly in the global South through contract relationships. As a result, the complex network of labor-value chains conceals how profits are extracted from workers by making it almost impossible to trace profits back to those workers. This is largely due to the arm’s length contracts.
Suwandi cites John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century in order to demonstrate how much wealth transnational western corporations extract from workers in the Global South: “Apple subcontracts the production of the component parts of its iPhones to a number of countries, with Foxconn subcontracting the final assembly in China. Due … to low-end wages … Apple’s gross profit margin on its iPhone 4 in 2010 was found to be 59 percent of the final sales price.” For each iPhone 4, retailing at $549, Smith writes, only $10 went to labor costs in China.
Cheap labor in the Global South means that multinational capital only has to pay a few cents an hour for work which creates much more value than that, Suwandi explains. Corporations disguise this value capture by attributing it to marketing, distribution and design activities in the Global North. Of course, it helps that that’s where the products are sold, with high markups on production cost. This obfuscates GDP. Take Apple’s iPhones:
Only 1.8 percent goes to labor costs in China, only that amount is recorded in China’s GDP, while a large percentage is recorded in the GDP of the country where Apple is headquartered — the United States — even when none of the production processes happened here…. The country where the iPhone was produced receives in its GDP only a small proportion of the final sales price. Meanwhile the larger part shows up in the GDP of the country where it is consumed…. So that’s why the profits that multinationals get are very difficult to trace back to the workers in the Global South.
Suwandi emails that global labor value chains (or “global commodity chains,” “global value chains,” or “global supply chains”) link people, tools and activities to deliver goods and services to the market. Her book argues that multinational corporations headquartered in the Global North control these chains completely, in every detail, even though they don’t own them. She explains that each chain consists of various nodes (each node signifies a specific production process) with different businesses involved in these different production processes. Take a pair of Nike sneakers: Several nodes are involved where semi-finished parts of the final product are made in various factories located in different countries. The raw materials are also acquired from different countries. If final assembly occurs in a factory in Vietnam, the sneakers will be labeled “made in Vietnam.”
The top three countries participating in labor value chains are China, India and Indonesia, where, according to Value Chains, wages are low and productivity is high. These labor value chains “are imperialistic in their characteristics,” because “capital accumulation processes are inseparable from the unequal relations among nation states.” The global labor force is concentrated in the South: With 541 million industrial workers there in 2010, compared to 145 million in the North, the idea that the commodity chain system is imperialist in nature makes sense. Indeed, Value Chains argues that globalized production is a new form of economic imperialism that transfers wealth from South to North. This does not preclude, however, the creation of local billionaires in China and India, who reap immense profits from their own transnational corporations. And where does all that profit go? “Huge quantities of this loot,” Value Chains reports, “captured from peripheral economies in the global South end up in the ‘treasure islands’ of the Caribbean, where trillions of dollars of money capital are now deposited.”
All this pelf, of course, comes directly out of workers’ hides. The cheaper the wages of the workers in the Global South, the greater the gross profit margins. Moreover, Suwandi explains, “Multinationals exercise a high degree of control within these labor-value chains, even when they only engage in contractual relationships with their suppliers.”
Value Chains examines two Indonesian firms, pseudonymously labeled Java Film and Star Inc., which often have the same customers for the plastic wrappers they produce. These firms do not use sweatshops, partly because they do not identify as “labor intensive.” But that’s one of Suwandi’s points: Exploitation does not necessarily involve blatantly abusive practices. She observes that multinationals control their suppliers’ production to the smallest detail, determining their suppliers’ profit margins, by increasing exploitation of the suppliers’ workers, usually through increased productivity, but also sometimes by depriving workers of their rights, or through violence, abuse and law-breaking.
Making production more economical and increasing productivity involve two processes, according to Value Chains – “systemic rationalization and flexible production.” Suwandi explains that capital wants production to be flexible enough to accommodate market fluctuations, “without paying the price … this burden is in the end placed upon workers through enhancing exploitation.” Engaging in arm’s length contracts itself exemplifies both processes. Systemic rationalization, according to Value Chains, refers “to the technological and organizational changes by corporations that began in the 1970s … [with] its focus on the rise of decentralized production throughout the globe.” (The ‘70s was the decade when neoliberalism and the union busting it entailed really got going. It’s when corporations “modernized.”) Flexible production — according to Lean and Mean by Bennett Harrison, which Value Chains quotes — involves “lean production, downsizing, outsourcing and the growing importance of spatially extensive production networks governed by powerful core firms and their strategic allies.”
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