From West Bank real estate ads to violent expulsions and ethnic cleansing, the theft of Palestinian land is key to the Zionist project, writes Yoav Litvin.
The marketing of ‘Anglo neighbourhoods’ in the occupied West Bank at real estate events in synagogues in Toronto, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and other locations wouldn’t be out of place 30 years ago in apartheid South Africa or Rhodesia. But perhaps that’s the point.
Branded ‘Anglo Neighbourhoods’,
the marketing of illegal settlement real estate in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank primarily target Zionist Jews from the US, Canada and the
rest of the English-speaking West.
Corporate real estate investment by companies both within and outside Israel have long been integral to settlement policies, with new developments reinforcing this trend.
A Human Rights Watchreport
reveals how Israeli and international companies build, finance, service
and market settlement communities. Settlement businesses thrive on
Israel’s unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and resources,
supporting the growth and functioning of settlements.
These businesses, from real estate to
construction, benefit from Israel’s discriminatory policies in planning,
zoning, land allocation and access to natural resources, financial
incentives, utilities and infrastructure.
These policies displace Palestinians and
disadvantage them compared to settlers. Consequently, the Palestinian
economy suffers, forcing many Palestinians to work in settlements; a
dependency used to justify settlement businesses.
But the sale of real estate in stolen
land, while outrageous, is not surprising. It is just a recent tactic in
a longstanding systematic problem that is now escalating beyond the
point of no-return.
The establishment and expansion of
settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are
widely recognised as violations of international humanitarian and human
rights law.
These initiatives accurately encapsulate
the function of Zionism in Palestine as a settler colonialist,
capitalist and white supremacist movement which opportunistically and
antisemitically coopts Judaism to justify its criminal practices of
apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians.
Its strategy, tactics, and goals focus on
land grabs and demographic dominance, utilising both official
state-sponsored and unofficial methods, such as corporate real estate.
Official colonisation of Palestine
Contrary to the Zionist movement’s
duplicitous claims that Palestine was largely uninhabited, Zionist
leaders have recognised the necessity of assuming control over
Indigenous Palestinian land to realise their exclusivist goals.
For this purpose, they’ve applied a
variety of tactics orchestrated by official and unofficial state actors,
ranging from peaceful appropriation within questionable legal confines
to genocidal aggression.
Numerous official acts of genocide have been executed through deliberate warfare. A defining genocidal episode in Israel’s establishment, during the Palestinian Nakba, was Plan Dalet, a military initiative orchestrated by the Haganah under David Ben-Gurion’s leadership.
Further genocidal bouts of “mowing the lawn,” have demonstrated the Zionist settler colonial dynamic since Israel’s establishment to this day.
The current Israeli government has enhanced
its military aggression and prioritised illegal settlement
construction, bolstered by the presence of several far-right ministers
residing in illegal West Bank settlements.
Indeed, since the departure of former
Defense Minister Benny Gantz from Israel’s emergency war cabinet amid
disagreements over the Gaza war strategy and the return of Israeli
hostages held by Hamas, Netanyahu has increasingly leaned on far-right
factions within his coalition government.
In April 2024, the government expanded its control over West Bank land, setting the stage for unprecedented levels of settlement construction. At present,
Israel’s Supreme Planning Council is poised to discuss proposals for
6,016 new housing units in West Bank settlements, underscoring the
ongoing expansionist policies of the Netanyahu administration.
Beating up on neocons used to be a specialize sport without wide appeal. With all due false modesty I offer myself as an early practitioner.
Beating up on neocons used to be a specialize sport without wide appeal. With all due false modesty I offer myself as an early practitioner. Back in the mid-to-late-1970s, when I had a weekly column in the Village Voice, I used to have rich sport with that apex neocon, Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary. I nicknamed him Norman the Frother and freighted him with so many gibes that he made the mistake of publicly denouncing me in his magazine, exclaiming that “Cockburn’s weekly pieces have set a new standard of gutter journalism in this country,” a testimonial I still proudly feature on the back of my books.
The neocons’ political hero in those days was Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, much venerated in Israel and the corporate offices of Boeing for his ardor and constancy in sluicing US taxpayers’ money into their treasuries. But instead they got Jimmy Carter, who, on a couple of occasions, was downright rude to Menachem Begin. So the neocons abandoned the Democrats and threw in their lot with Ronald Reagan.
Now here we are on the downslope of 2003 and George Bush is
learning, way too late for his own good, that the neocons have been
matchlessly wrong about everything. The neocons told Bush that eviction
of Saddam would rearrange the chairs in the Middle East, to America’s
advantage. Wrong. They (I’m talking about Wolfowitz’s team of mad
Straussians at DoD) told him that there was irrefutable proof of the
existence of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. Wrong. They told
him it would unlock the door to a peaceful settlement in Israel. Wrong.
They told him that Ahmed Chalabi had street cred in Iraq. Wrong. They
told him it would be easy to install a US regime in Baghdad and make the
place hum quietly along, like Lebanon in the 1950s. Wrong.
And of course the neocons, who have never forgiven the UN for
Resolutions 242 and 338 (bad for Israel), told Bush that he should tell
the UN to take its charter and shove it. Bush, who appreciates simple
words and simple thoughts, took their advice, and on Sunday night had it
served up to him by his speechwriters as crow, which he methodically
ate in his eighteen-minute speech, saying the UN has an important role
in Iraq.
Now many are gloating at the neocons’ discomfiture and waiting
for their downfall. Click go Madame Defarge’s knitting needles as she
waits beside the guillotine. Here come the tumbrels, inching their way
slowly through the rotting cabbages and vulgar ribaldry of Republican
isolationists. Here’s a palefaced Douglas Feith. Up goes the fatal
blade, and down it flashes. Behold, the head of a neocon! The next
tumbrel carries a weightier cargo: Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams.
Still not enough. Madame Defarge knits on, and her patience is soon
rewarded. Here come Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, the latter defiantly jotting
a coda to Rumsfeld’s Rules. They are swiftly dispatched and the crowd
moves off to torch The Weekly Standard and string up its editor, Bill Kristol.
Maybe not all of them, but some neocon will surely pay the price
for dropping Bush’s approval rating into the mid-50s. But will the
basic neocon line, dominant for so long in Washington, suffer a dent?
Not in any fundamental way. To appreciate this, one has only to look at
the current posture of prominent Democrats. Are they glorying in Bush’s
embarrassment and the humiliating and costly disaster for the United
States consequent upon its attack on Iraq? Take Senator Joe Biden. His
immediate reaction to Bush’s speech on Sunday was to insist that the
President would need, and should get, more money than the $87 billion
requested by the White House.
Then Biden gave the neocons a lesson in how to pay lip service to
internationalism and “our allies”: “What we need isn’t the death of
internationalism or the denial of our stark national interest. What I
want to talk about today is a more enlightened nationalism that
understands the value of international institutions but supports the use
of military force–without apology or hesitation–when we must.”
Study the zigzag rhetoric of Howard Dean and you find the same
essential approach, though Dean has just outraged the neocons by calling
for an “evenhanded” US role in any resolution of the Palestinian issue
(a posture he arrived at, please note, after taking fire from the left
for being a whore for AIPAC). On February 20, Katha Pollitt’s antiwar
candidate told Salon that “if the U.N. in the end chooses not to
enforce its own resolutions, then the United States should give Saddam
thirty to sixty days to disarm, and if he doesn’t, unilateral action is a
regrettable, but unavoidable, choice.” The next day he said the UN had
to do it. In June, at the Council on Foreign Relations, Dean said, “I
would add at least 50,000 foreign troops to the force in Iraq. It is
imperative that we bring the international community in to help
stabilize Iraq. If I were President, I would reach out to NATO, to Arab
and Islamic countries, to other friends to share the burden and the
risks.” Dean has made trenchant criticisms of Bush’s rationale for the
attack and of how it has been conducted, but he still proclaims,
“Failure in Iraq is not an option.”
With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun, no Democratic candidate is calling for anything other than that the United States “stay the course” in Iraq, with more money, more troops and, if possible, the political cover of the UN. Senator Kerry, who favored the US attack last spring, won’t commit himself to supporting the request for $87 billion but adds carefully, “I believe we must do what we need to do” to bring peace to Iraq. Edwards still justifies his support for Bush’s war. Don’t even ask about Lieberman. A few neocon heads may roll, but the policy won’t change. It’s fun to demonize the neocons and rejoice in their discomfiture, but don’t make the mistake of thinking US foreign policy was set by Norman Podhoretz or William Kristol. They’re the clowns capering about in front of the donkey and the elephant. The donkey says the UN should maybe clean up after them, and the elephant now says the donkey may have a point. Somebody has to come out with a dustpan and broom.
Sister universities VUB and ULB, as well as associated university
hospital UZ Brussels, have strongly criticised comments about abortion
made by Pope Francis on his flight home from Belgium on Sunday. They
call on the Belgian government to ensure “consequences” for his
statements.
Belgian
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has summoned the Vatican’s ambassador
to Belgium over the Pope’s comments, which De Croo has said were
“unacceptable”.
During an in-flight press conference on Sunday as the Pope flew from Brussels back to Rome (after a four-day visit to Belgium), the head of the Catholic Church labelled doctors who perform abortions as “hitmen”.
“On
this you cannot argue. You are killing a human life,” the pontiff said.
He also called Belgium’s late King Baudouin a “saint” for refusing to
sign legislation legalising abortion in 1990. This unprecedented refusal
required Baudouin abdicate for a day rather than to carry out the
monarch’s formal function.
During a mass in King Baudouin Stadium on Sunday,
the Pontiff confirmed that he would begin the beatification process for
Belgium’s fifth King, a preliminary step needed before a deceased
person can be canonised as a saint.
Visiting King
Baudouin’s tomb on Saturday, Pope Francis sparked anger among civil
organisations in Belgium when he spoke of Baudouin’s “courage” in not
signing a “murderous” abortion law.
In
an open letter published in De Standaard this week, VUB, ULB and UZ
Brussels said that the Pope’s comments cannot be allowed to go “without
consequences”.
“Freedom of speech is sacred to us, and the Holy
See may also make use of it. But whoever makes slanderous accusations is
no longer exercising freedom of speech, but is guilty of spreading
hatred,” the letter reads.
Precision medicine relies on genetic data that’s lacking in Latin America — especially for Indigenous groups.
When Andres
Moreno-Estrada began studying genetics back in the early 2000s, the high
cost of sequencing DNA was the biggest barrier to understanding the
role of genes in human health and disease. But with time, the problems
shifted.
“Technology is no longer the limit,” said Moreno-Estrada, now a
population geneticist at the National Laboratory of Genomics for
Biodiversity in Mexico. “Sequencing or getting genetic data is cheaper
than before. The problem is in the unbalanced way this genetic
information is being generated worldwide.” Researchers today rely on
genetic data that’s disproportionately drawn from people with European
ancestry, and mounting analysessuggest
that their databases fail to capture the full scope of human genetic
diversity. The result is a set of clinical tools that may not work as
well for people whose ancestors lived outside of Europe.
Those issues are especially acute in Latin America, where new
research suggests that more robust genetic data could allow physicians
to better target certain medical treatments, especially for Indigenous
groups.
At stake is the practice of precision or personalized medicine, which
uses individual variability, including genes, to make decisions
regarding diagnosis or treatments of health conditions. A certain
medication, for example, may be highly effective for people carrying one
version of a gene — but may not work, or could even be harmful,
to people with another version. In an ideal world, physicians would
simply find out which specific version of the gene each patient has, and
then give them the right drug with the right dosage. In the absence of
that kind of personalized data, they typically rely on other
information, such as a patient’s ethnic identity, that allows them to
make an informed guess about whether a particular genetic variant is
likely to be present.
But when physicians don’t have detailed genetic information available
for certain communities, they can’t make those kinds of informed
guesses.
Consequently, communities that are underrepresented in these biobanks are left behind in terms of care, said Eduardo Tarazona-Santos, a human geneticist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. And labeling people as belonging to a broader group can miss subtle, important patterns in genetic variation that could help clinicians make better decisions.
A new analysis
from Tarazona-Santos’ team, published in the journal Cell, highlights
how certain populations thought to be homogenous differ in genes related
to drug responses. The analysis revealed that Andean and Amazonian
individuals in Peru, some coming from communities that are only about a
hundred miles apart, tend to differ in key genes that influence how
individuals metabolize and respond to heart medications.
Tarazona-Santos, who himself has Indigenous ancestry, is worried
about the dearth of data. Certain genes, his team has found, don’t look
the same even in Indigenous populations that are geographically close.
The paper examined samples from 294 individuals — some from the arid
Andean highlands and some from the Amazon. They looked at genetic
variants involved in responses to rosuvastatin and warfarin, two drugs
that can be used to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, among
other issues.
Some of the best evidence for this comes from the behavior of two of
the most powerful beings of the Maya world: The first is a creator god
whose name is still spoken by millions of people every fall – Huracán,
or “Hurricane.” The second is a god of lightning, K’awiil, from the
early first millennium C.E.
As a scholar of the Indigenous religions of the Americas,
I recognize that these beings, though separated by over 1,000 years,
are related and can teach us something about our relationship to the
natural world.
Huracán, the ‘Heart of Sky’
Huracán was once a god of the K’iche’, one of the Maya peoples who
today live in the southern highlands of Guatemala. He was one of the
main characters of the Popol Vuh, a religious text from the 16th century. His name probably originated in the Caribbean, where other cultures used it to describe the destructive power of storms.
The K’iche’ associated Huracán, which means “one leg” in the K’iche’
language, with weather. He was also their primary god of creation and
was responsible for all life on earth, including humans.
Because of this, he was sometimes known as U K’ux K’aj, or “Heart of
Sky.” In the K’iche’ language, k’ux was not only the heart but also the
spark of life, the source of all thought and imagination.
Yet, Huracán was not perfect. He made mistakes and occasionally
destroyed his creations. He was also a jealous god who damaged humans so
they would not be his equal. In one such episode, he is believed to
have clouded their vision, thus preventing them from being able to see the universe as he saw it.
Huracán was one being who existed as three distinct persons: Thunderbolt Huracán, Youngest Thunderbolt and Sudden Thunderbolt. Each of them embodied different types of lightning, ranging from enormous bolts to small or sudden flashes of light.
Hindutva groups in the US are making false claims of widespread Hinduphobia, in an attempt to ‘compete’ with Islamophobia and antisemitism.
The narratives of victimhood being propagated by Hindutva supporters
in the US are remarkably similar to those of White supremacists. In both
cases, privileged groups are attempting to portray themselves as the
real victims. In addition, Hindutva supporters see Zionists as useful
allies in their effort to draw parallels between antisemitism and
“Hinduphobia.”
These overlapping interests are being leveraged quite effectively by Hindu supremacists to push their agenda in the US in favor both of Hindu elites and the Narendra Modi government.
Their claims of widespread “Hinduphobia” are being given a sympathetic and sometimes apologetic hearing by many US lawmakers, interfaith groups and human rights organisations, which fail to look critically at the underlying data.
The victim card
Hindutva
supporters have learnt from the Israel lobby how to play the victim
card to accumulate political power disproportionate to their numbers.
This has allowed them to convince US lawmakers and governors to support
their regressive positions on matters like stopping legislation against
caste discrimination.
More often than not, their policy positions
are in sync with the Modi government and are designed to shield it from
any criticism in the diaspora.
The most recent example is California’s Assembly Bill AB 3027 on transnational repression. The bill was introduced in response to the attempted assassination of an American Sikh leader, allegedly by operatives of the Indian government.
Of
course, India has every right to defend itself against terrorism, but
Modi’s recent statement doubling down on India’s right to assassinate adversaries overseas is being taken very seriously by human rights activists in the diaspora.
AB 3027 is currently stalled in the California Senate Appropriations Committee, and Hindutva groups like HinduACTion and the HAF are taking credit, calling it an “anti-Hindu venomous bill” that “implicitly targets Indian Americans”.
#BREAKING: We are glad to see that California’s #AB3027 bill on “transnational repression” has now failed to advance out of the Senate Appropriations Committee and is in suspension!
On August 6, CoHNA filed a formal letter of opposition detailing our concerns regarding the… pic.twitter.com/WV7tBwfVPs— CoHNA (Coalition of Hindus of North America) (@CoHNAOfficial) August 16, 2024
This baseless argument is very similar to the self-serving argument used by these groups to oppose SB 403 caste discrimination bill, which had sailed through the legislature, only to be vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom at the urging of a major donor to Democrats.
The fact of the matter is that the AB 3027 bill had received support
from several law enforcement agencies, which recognise the need for
state-level training to combat foreign governments’ repression tactics
within the US. One would have thought that those worried about potential
unfair targeting of Indian Americans would have welcomed such training.
Hindutva groups are clearly placing the interests of a foreign government over the safety and security of Californians.
Playing politics
Another
self-victimisation strategy by Hindu supremacists is to claim that any
criticism of Hindutva ideology is an attack on all Hindus and on India.
This is very similar to the recent assertions by Zionists that any criticism of Israel is itself antisemitic.
However, in order to sustain the analogy with the Jewish community, they need to convince US lawmakers and the courts to view Hinduphobia on par with antisemitism and Islamophobia. To this end, they are busy with a spate of advocacy efforts to legitimise the notion that Hinduphobia is rampant in the US.
There is just one problem: there are only a handful of recent
incidents that have been categorised as “anti-Hindu” by law enforcement.
In fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation consistently ranks anti-Hindu hate crimes at the lowest end of 30 or more communities tracked in its hate crimes statistics.
Even
among those incidents, many recent ones are attributed to Khalistani
separatists, who unfortunately choose Hindu temples as targets to send
their political message to the Indian government.
In order to
justify the claim of rampant Hinduphobia, organisations such as the
Hindu American Foundation are now casting a much wider net by redefining
“Hinduphobia” itself, contrary to the commonly understood definition of
a phobia.
They have prepared a glossary of terms that they claim are “Hinduphobic,” which includes terms like Brahmanism, dual loyalty, exotic, model minority, Hindu fatalism, Hindutvadi, bhakt and savarna.
“When the spectrum of terms and tropes listed in this glossary are
used regularly, over time, the perception of Hindus as grotesque,
untrustworthy, bigoted, evil, or violent grows and generates greater and
greater levels of danger to Hindus’ lives and wellbeing,” they explain.
They want ‘Hinduphobia’ recognized so they can use it as a tool to shut down discussions of caste and of human rights violations in India. It’s pure gaslighting.— Sonia Sikka (@SoniaSikka4) August 12, 2023
This a blatant attempt to censor honest dialogue in the
community. For example, Dalits and Bahujans refer to privileged dominant
castes as savarnas, a term popularised by Dr. Ambedkar, and now used
routinely in caste conversations. It would be adding insult to injury to
suggest that the use of the term is now considered “Hinduphobic.”
White supremacists
In
their quest to assert themselves in the US, Hindutva groups have
increasingly been looking to partner with White supremacists. Unlike
White supremacists, Hindutva groups already draw considerable power from
the frameworks of minority rights in the US and multiculturalism born
out of the civil rights struggle. But the similarities in their
“self-victimisation” strategies and their invocation of the right to
defend themselves against fictional attacks on their culture lend
themselves to a natural partnership.
One such partnership is led by the Republican Hindu Coalition, founded by the Hindu billionaire and Trump supporter Shalab Kumar, and chaired by Steve Bannon, the former advisor of Donald Trump. One of their major goals is to build a “Hindu Holocaust Memorial” in Washington DC, a plan that Trump has endorsed.
In July, the Republican Hindu Coalition was in Washington to participate in the National Conservatism Conference, NatCon 4, which featured prominent right-wing personalities from several parts of the world.
At the conference,Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue Ram Madhav
declared that under the leadership of Modi, India had already attained
its National Conservatism goals and is now in a position to play the
vanguard role in taking the conservative agenda forward world-wide.
One report
about the event said that Madhav “would now like the Indian role in
America to be…as influential as the pro-Israel lobby…Madhav also wants
the US to embrace the Modi government’s model of dealing with India’s
religious minorities and its Muslim neighbours.”
The RSS leader also claimed that over a billion Indians support his vision of National Conservatism. This is a vast exaggeration, given that only about one-third of India’s voters typically support the BJP. In the US diaspora, surveys estimate that only 69% of Hindus support Modi and 40% of them disapprove of Hindu majoritarianism.
Where this could go
These
are dark times for Hinduism when a small section of the community is
trying to reserve for itself the right to decide who’s a “real” Hindu
and who is anti-Hindu. Anyone who does not share their narratives of
Hindu victimhood and antipathy towards other faiths is being labeled
“anti-Hindu”.
This is a travesty.
The march towards the
abyss can only be stopped by Hindus who wish to reclaim a tolerant and
inclusive faith. They must unequivocally condemn Hindutva bigotry and
hate crimes in India. In the diaspora, we must for the sake of future
generations of Indian-Americans soundly reject the misappropriation of
the term “Hinduphobia” in their self-victimisation strategies to gain
political ground and expose the nexus between Zionist extremists, White
supremacists and Hindutva advocates.
The scholar Mahmood Mamdani, who has written about the state of mind of majority Hutus leading up to the Rwanda genocide, says that “self-victimisation can be a warning sign that could be used to prevent genocide”. In Rwanda, the world ignored those warning signs and paid a heavy price in human lives.
India has already gone past such warning signs, with state complicity
in violence against the minorities and open calls for Muslim boycotts
and genocide by people claiming to be Hindu priests. It is imperative
that the world not make the same mistake again by placing geo-political
interests over the ground realities in Modi’s India.
Raju
Rajagopal is a Co-founder of Hindus for Human Rights, which opposes
Hindu supremacy and caste discrimination and speaks up for minority
rights.
Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) foremost leader,
is, as of June 9, 2024, in his third consecutive five-year term in
office as India’s Prime Minister. But unlike his earlier two terms in
office, when the BJP had a majority in Parliament, he now heads a coalition
government. A business-as-usual line of action, however, seems to be
carrying the day. The Modi regime since 2014 has unleashed what I have
called semi-fascism, which has been nourishing India’s sub-imperialist tendencies.1
In this article, I try to understand sub-imperialist India’s role in
U.S. imperialism’s Indo-Pacific, anti-China “pivot” project.2 (New Delhi, of course, denies any role in China’s “containment.”)
How did India emerge as a sub-imperialist power and key collaborator
with the United States in the U.S. Indo-Pacific anti-China project? I
suggest the answer lies in the political-economic foundations of India’s
“dependent development” and sub-imperialism. Within this structural
setting, India has sought to derive “national advantage” from the trade
and technology wars, as well as the New Cold War unleashed by U.S.
imperialism against China. Key to this process is the Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue (the Quad), a strategic security dialogue between the
United States, Japan, Australia, and India, paralleled by joint military
exercises (named “Exercise Malabar”) of extraordinary scope. The U.S.
imperialism/Indian sub-imperialism relationship has deepened following
the putting in place of agreements related to consolidation of the
interoperability of the U.S. and Indian armed forces. These moves are
coordinated in opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and
China’s presumed “String of Pearls” strategy. The reignition of
hostility along the India-China border (the “Line of Actual Control,” or
LAC) reflects an aspect of the relationship. Though directly
antagonistic dimensions of the relationship are also present, India-U.S.
relations in their entirety must be seen within “the whole,” centered
on China’s resistance to U.S. imperialism.
Legacy of the British Raj: India’s 1962 China War
The British Raj (rule) left a recurring flashpoint in the Indian
subcontinent in the form of ill-defined borders, and independent India
has followed in its footsteps. Independent India fueled the fire of
Tibetan separatism by extending help and support to Tibetans hostile to
Beijing. By the 1950s, it had also claimed the territory of Aksai Chin
(in 1958); insisted on complete adherence to the so-called McMahon Line;
de facto junked UN Security Council Resolution 47 (adopted April
20, 1948) on the right to self-determination in Kashmir; and
circumscribed—in certain aspects—the sovereignty of Nepal, Sikkim (which
was eventually absorbed into India in 1974), and Bhutan.3
Scholars, health practitioners and health freedom advocates around the world say that efforts to universalise public health through the draft Pandemic Agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations are rife with the kind of opportunities that unchecked power affords.
“It was not just the SARS-cov-2 virus. That was just the jumping
off point?–?and jump we did, a world in perfect synchronicity. The
frantic response knew no bounds: there was the shifting target of the
virus, and the new genetic therapeutics hailed as traditional vaccines.
And what of the failure to approve cheap and effective off-patent
therapeutics? The register continues?–?several lockdowns, denial of
early lifesaving treatment, and the fever pitch censoring?–?and
censuring?–?of intelligent dissent. We would do well to recognise and
address these well-documented shortcomings and exercise extreme caution
before a repeat spells disaster for every WHO partner state.” A
Pandemic Reflection
During the 77th World Health
Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland from 27 May to 1 June 2024,
Ministers of Health the world over convened to consider amendments to
the International Health Regulations (IHR) that were last amended in
2005, as well as to establish a new Pandemic Agreement (Treaty). While
this could sound innocuous, if not cooperative, the potential meaning
and impact of these two instruments could be staggering for
international public health. In effect, these drafts were intended to
set up legally binding commitments under which the WHO’s 194 Member
States would undertake to follow WHO recommendations regarding the
management of health emergencies. Strengthened with centralised power,
the WHO’s Director-General (DG) would have enhanced authority to
unilaterally declare Public Health Emergencies of International Concern
(PHEIC), and during such emergencies, exercise increasing powers over
member nations. This would radically change how pandemics or threats
thereof are managed, further shifting public health policy away from
sovereign nations to a global, untempered body.
This important
role ought not to be vested in a single individual. Instead, it ought to
be entrusted to a body free from conflicts of interest and adequately
representing a cross-section of regions, cultures and disciplines, to
assess the transmissibility, morbidity and mortality caused by a
disease, and to determine response mechanisms appropriate for specific
settings and diverse cultures in a bid to promote the highest possible
holistic health outcomes (physical, social, psychological, economic,
etc.) for everyone. What is perhaps most concerning is that much of the
global population and its leaders remain largely unaware of these
proposed radical changes and potential impact on their national systems
and populations.
Reportedly crafted with the intention of learning
from failures in the management of the COVID-19 crisis and building
upon its successes, had the two instruments been adopted as proposed
prior to tabling at the 77th WHA, they would have accomplished the opposite. The WHO’s failures during the pandemic and its now-discredited exaggeration of disease outbreaks and risk (both of which have trended downward in recent years)
are well documented. Nevertheless, the Working Group on Amendments to
the International Health Regulations (2005) (WGIHR) and the
International Negotiating Body (INB) responsible for the preparation of
the Pandemic Agreement both pressed forward with unusual haste to
complete negotiations on the two documents to be voted on at the 77th WHA.
In
the process, the WHO contravened its own legal requirements for voting
by disregarding Article 55(2) of the current IHR that reads: “The text
of any proposed amendment shall be communicated to all States Parties by
the Director-General at least four months before the Health Assembly at
which it is proposed for consideration.” In like manner, the Pandemic
Agreement was intended to be delivered by 29 March 2024,
for a similar intent of providing time for reflection prior to
commitment to vote. But it was also under negotiation right up until the
opening of the 77th WHA. In the end, the 77th WHA
adopted significantly diluted amendments to the International Health
Regulations and shelved a vote on the Pandemic Agreement. Dr Meryl Nass
has written a helpful “Complete Article-by-Article Analysis of the Adopted IHR and How it Differs from what was Proposed by WHO in February 2023”.
Recruiters are wooing new workers with bonuses and gifts.
Vietnam is the preferred location for tech manufacturers diversifying from China.
As Apple suppliers expand production in Vietnam, competition for workers has intensified.
Recruiters solicit prospective workers on TikTok, promising cash rewards and free accommodation.
For Apple suppliers in Vietnam, the end of summer is recruitment
season. In the months ahead of the busy holiday shopping rush, companies
like Luxshare and Foxconn try to fill thousands of permanent and
temporary assembly jobs, building products like AirPods and iPads.
Competition for these jobs was once fierce. But in the past couple of
years, as more manufacturers relocate from China to Vietnam, the benefit of choice has shifted to the workers.
“There are more factories competing for the same pool of workers, and
so many have had to increase perks and find ways to attract workers,”
Tong Diep Anh, marketing director at Viec 3 Mien, a recruitment company
for Apple manufacturers, told Rest of World. “In the past, when
demand for work was high, workers had to pay money to get a job. Now
that the job market is saturated, workers have a choice.”
On TikTok and Facebook, manufacturers and their recruiters try to
attract the attention of potential workers by posting videos and hosting
daily livestreams about the jobs they offer. Some promise monthly wages
of up to 12 million dong ($492), plus sign-on bonuses.
“Did you come on your own or through a referral?” a recruitment host
asks a job candidate at Foxconn, in a video posted on TikTok.
“On my own,” the worker says. “Okay, the company will award you
500,000 dong,” the host replies, adding that the bonus of about $20 is
valid for everyone who applies in the next two months. “Brothers and
sisters, friends who refer a worker will also be awarded 500,000 dong.”
Vuong Van Hung, a
security guard at Luxshare, gives his TikTok viewers a tour of the
sports and gaming facilities at his workplace.
TikTok/@vuongvanhung99
Just last year, a slump
in Vietnam’s electronics manufacturing put tens of thousands of workers
out of a job. The second quarter of 2024, however, saw the sharpest
increase in orders for Vietnamese manufacturers in more than a decade,
according to data from S&P Global.
“Now that these laborers, especially the younger generations, have
had other jobs, it is not easy to get them back to work in factories
with simple and rather boring tasks and long working hours,” David
Yuen-Tung Chan, a researcher at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, told Rest of World
over email. “They have a better idea about how to select factories.
That could be a good signal for the industry to care more about decent
work practices so as to attract workers.”
Vietnam is the most popular location for tech manufacturers wishing
to diversify away from China to avoid U.S. tariffs. The country
registered large foreign direct investment in new projects and expansion
in the fields of semiconductors, energy, component manufacturing, and
electronics in the first eight months of this year, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
Apple suppliers and their vendors have notably increased their
presence in Vietnam, with Luxshare, Foxconn, and Goertek all opening up
new factories. In 2015, Vietnam hosted just eight Apple suppliers; by 2023, the country had 35 suppliers assembling AirPods, iPads, and MacBooks.
Hundreds of teachers’ college students
make their way through the streets of Mexico City, chanting and marching
in unison. Half-covered by bandanas, their faces reveal piercing eyes,
defiant as they walk along Reforma Avenue heading towards the Zócalo,
the city’s central square.
They howl together, a guttural, deafening chorus that drowns out the
noise of Mexico City: “Alive they took them, alive we want them.”
A decade after the case sent shockwaves across Mexico and beyond, the fate of the students remains shrouded in silence.It
is September 26, 2024, on the fourth consecutive day of mobilizations
in the capital, just hours before the 10-year anniversary since 43
normalistas from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were forcibly
disappeared. A decade after the case sent shockwaves across Mexico and beyond, the fate of the students remains shrouded in silence.
The disappeared were young men just like the demonstrators that fill
the city streets, their lives violently suspended in time and place.
A few days later, on October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum will be sworn in as
Mexico’s first woman president. A protege of outgoing President Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, she was elected in June with nearly 60 percent of
the vote. On the Ayotzinapa anniversary, Sheinbaum promised to work with
the families of the victims to uncover the truth. Yet, her commitments
echo the unfulfilled promises of her predecessor, and it remains to be
seen how she will address Mexico’s crisis of disappearance.
The “Historical Truth”
Ayotzinapa remains an inconvenient
truth, an open wound in the Mexican psyche. On that fateful night in
2014, five buses carrying students were attacked by municipal and
federal police, the army, and organized crime groups in Iguala, in the
state of Guerreo. The assault left six dead and 43 missing, igniting
national and international outrage in a nation where mass graves have
become all too common. An estimated 100,000 people are missing across
Mexico, a grim statistic that reflects a deepening forensic crisis.
The investigation has faced a decade of obstruction and deceit, with
officials manipulating narratives to shield those responsible. In 2015,
the Attorney General’s Office attempted to close the case by installing a
“historical truth,” asserting that the students were intercepted by
members of the cartel Guerreros Unidos, killed, and incinerated in a
garbage dump 15 miles away. Established through state torture and the
fabrication of evidence, this narrative systemically erased the role of
the Mexican military and police in perpetrating the crime.
However, family members of the disappeared, experts like the
Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, and investigative
journalists—including Marcela Turati, Pepe Jimenez, and John
Gibler—refused to accept this false narrative. They tirelessly retraced
the events and pressured authorities to reopen investigations that
linked the case directly to higher authorities, including top military
officials.
AMLO’s Unfulfilled Promises
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)
took office in 2018, he promised to prioritize uncovering the truth
behind Ayotzinapa. Two days after his inauguration, he signed an
executive order creating a new commission to investigate the case and
invited back the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), a
committee of international specialists formed by the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, which had been expelled by the
administration of Enrique Peña Nieto in 2016.
“He told us we were going to know the truth about what happened to
our kids,” says Francisco Lauro Villegas, the father of one of the
missing students, at the anniversary protest in Mexico City. Yet six
years later, that promise remains unfulfilled. The investigation stalled
when it revealed evidence of top military involvement, a line that many
observers believe AMLO could not—or would not—cross.