Security personnel at German airports continue protest strikes

K. Nesan & Marianne Arens

Security staff at three airports across Germany went on strike again Thursday for better pay and working conditions. Security personnel at Stuttgart, Cologne/Bonn and Düsseldorf airports took part in the all-day protest strike. Protest strikes had already taken place at Berlin Tegel and Schoenefeld on Monday. A further strike by security is expected to disrupt flights Tuesday at Frankfurt Airport, the largest airport in the country.

Striking workers in front of the Stuttgart Airport

Almost 650 flights, well over half, had to be cancelled Thursday: 131 of them at Cologne/Bonn (out of 199), 370 at Düsseldorf (out of 570) and 142 flights (out of 275) planned at Stuttgart.

The workers, who are employed by different companies, including Fraport Security and Securitas Aviation, started their strike at 3:00 a.m. with the early shift. At Cologne/Bonn airport, the strike began at midnight, as there is no ban on night flights at this location.

The work stoppages make clear the enormous anger of security staff and their willingness to fight. They confront extremely stressful working conditions combined with meagre salaries.

Over half of the planned flights were cancelled

There is a great deal of sympathy and solidarity with the strike among the wider population. “Everybody wants to earn his or her money, so I think the strike is right”, said one person in Düsseldorf, even though he lost a lot of time due to the strike and had to travel by bus from Düsseldorf to Paderborn.

Virtually all those affected who were interviewed by TV reporters expressed their understanding for the strike. One traveller said, “You have to see the big picture. We have had a miserable wage development here in the last year and a half. This is the result now.” Another says, “I have nothing against the strike, I can understand their anger.”

A woman who had to put up with a longer wait said, “People have to get their money too. Of course, it’s daft that it’s us who are affected. But when they achieve their goal, it should be okay.” A business traveller in Stuttgart said that although he was experiencing great difficulties due to the strike, he sympathized with the aim of the strikers.

There is no doubt that the security staff—and many other airport workers who have recently gone on strike—are prepared to take up a serious fight for a fundamental change in their miserable situation.

However, they cannot effectively defend their interests if the Verdi union controls their industrial action.

Verdi already conducted four negotiations last year with the German Air Security Association (BDLS), most recently on December 20 and 21. The employers are not prepared to raise wages by more than two percent per year—for many workers that is just forty cents more per hour.

The companies who work as subcontractors of the Federal Police at the airports formed BDLS in 2018. This is why Verdi is now, for the first time, negotiating a nationwide contract with this new employers’ association in Berlin. Nevertheless, according to the employers, East German workers should not receive the same salary as their colleagues in the West for another five years.

A discussion with two representatives of Verdi in Baden-Württemberg was very illuminating. Both made it clear that Verdi had no intention of mobilizing workers together to effectively push through the goal of a 20 euros hourly wages for all.

Eva Schmidt and Dominik Bollinger, Verdi Baden-Württemberg

Questioned whether it would not make sense to strike together for a uniform nationwide wage, Verdi secretary Dominik Bollinger said this was not possible. There were “clearly defined negotiation procedures, we must adhere to them... There is the Friedenspflicht [a union-agreed pledge of ‘industrial peace’]. There’s no point in escalating a negotiation.”

“We are conducting negotiations with the employer with a view to reaching agreement,” Bollinger continued. He made clear that Verdi had never seriously accepted the aim of 20 euros for all, when he added that “one must also be able to lose”.

Eva Schmidt, head of the services department in Baden-Württemberg, explained, “We are only in the protest strike phase and not an all-out strike.” Verdi wanted to “give employers the chance to call us back to the negotiating table with a better offer before 23 January”.

A reporter from the World Socialist Web Site raised the question of a joint strike by all airport workers. He pointed out that strikes had been happening at airports for several years: among ground staff, against exploitation at Ryanair, among Lufthansa crews—pilots and flight attendants, against dismissals following the Air-Berlin bankruptcy, etc. “Wouldn’t a joint strike make sense?”

The Verdi officials immediately sought to play down the issue. Schmidt said that these were all “different areas, different collective agreements with different terms.” She was only responsible for security personnel, but not for the other areas.

The WSWS reporter then confronted the Verdi functionaries with the fact that the “yellow vests” protests in France had originated outside the trade unions and independently of them. Neither Schmidt nor Bollinger wanted anything to do with this and spoke out against the yellow vest demonstrations.

“The protest in France takes place in completely different conditions,” declared Bollinger, there was a “completely different legal basis” in France. His colleague argued, “France has a very different strike culture.”

Significantly, both immediately resorted to the slanders that were spread in the bourgeois media about the “yellow vests.” Schmidt said that she “generally did not think it good to use violence,” and Bollinger stressed that violence against police officers was “unacceptable.”

Strikers at Stuttgart Airport

These statements alone make clear that the security staff cannot achieve their demands through the negotiations that Verdi is conducting with the BDLS. While the workers are willing to strike and conduct a real struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, Verdi is trying to prevent just that.

Verdi is on the side of the employers’ association and is conducting the fifth round of negotiations “in the spirit of agreement.” This means that Verdi will make sure a compromise is reached that secures the profits and competitiveness of the companies.

Security staff can only effectively fight for their concerns if they begin to organise independently of Verdi. Like autoworkers in the US, who took the first steps at a December 9 meeting in Detroit, they must build action committees linking up with all workers, including those in other areas, establishing contact with airports across Europe and fighting for the international unity of the working class.

Jaguar Land Rover announces nearly 5,000 UK job losses in global restructuring

Robert Stevens

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the UK’s biggest car maker, has confirmed that 4,500 jobs will be lost in Britain.

The redundancies represent around a tenth of its 44,000 strong UK workforce. The company, owned by Indian-based Tata Motors, has UK plants in Halewood, Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Wolverhampton. Internationally it employs a total of 53,000 workers, with operations in India, Ireland, Austria, Slovakia, Brazil, China and the United States.

The job losses are part of restructuring plans by the firm to cut costs by £2.5 billion. The announcement was made Thursday, the same day that the Ford Motor Company announced it would shed thousands of jobs in Europe. BBC Wales reported yesterday that this includes plans to slash 370 jobs at the Ford Bridgend engine plant in south Wales, which employs 1,700 workers, in a “first phase” of up to 1,150 job losses by 2021.

As with all car producers, JLR operates in a cut-throat environment and is constantly reducing its costs and increasing productivity. Last year, JLR shed 1,000 roles at its flagship plant in Solihull and reduced working hours at other sites amid falling demand for its diesel vehicles and saloon cars. Costs have been reduced further, with the company opening a plant in Slovakia employing 1,500 workers.

Last October, JLR posted losses of £90 million and has seen a collapse in sales by nearly 50 percent in its main and most profitable market, China. Reflecting growing trade tensions between the US and China, and a marked slowdown in its economy, last year the Chinese car industry recorded its first fall in sales for more than 20 years. The China Passenger Car Association reported that 22.7 million units were sold last year, a decline of six percent.

JLR manufactures a range of vehicles in Britain, with Castle Bromwich producing the Jaguar XE, XF and F-type models. Solihull makes the Jaguar F-Pace, Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover models. The Ryton and Halewood operations manufacture the Jaguar XE SV Project 8, Range Rover SV Coupé, Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque. JLR is to shift production of its Land Rover Discovery model to Slovakia.

The company said the losses were the next stage of its “transformation programme” to be imposed over the next 18 months, resulting in “cashflow improvements” and “a leaner, more resilient organisation with a flatter management structure.”

By the end of 2019, it is estimated that JLR’s UK workforce will be down to 38,000. The company have not yet announced which positions will be lost, but it is expected that managerial, research, sales and design staff will be hit. Job losses in the car industry have a massive knock-on effect in the many linked sectors. Five other jobs are dependent on each manufacturing job at an auto plant. Around 800,000 jobs in the UK are bound up with the car industry, with 170,000 involved in production.

Announcing the redundancies, JLR chief executive Ralf Speth said, “We are taking decisive action to help deliver long-term growth, in the face of multiple geopolitical and regulatory disruptions as well as technology challenges facing the automotive industry.”

Central to these geopolitical disruptions is Brexit and the widespread fear among car manufacturers over its impact. The UK is scheduled to leave the European Union in less than three months, on March 29. If Prime Minister Theresa May is unable to get her deal with the UK accepted by parliament, the real possibility exists of a “no-deal” Brexit threatening the auto industry with unprecedented turmoil.

Over half of UK car exports are destined for the EU and two-thirds of car imports come from the EU. UK car industry bosses all supported a Remain vote in the 2016 referendum and lobbied May to opt for a soft Brexit, including tariff-free access to the single market. Losing access to the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union would disrupt supply chains and brings the spectre of queues of lorries choking up the ports. With something like 15,000 components going into the production of a single car, these factors are life and death issues for the industry.

Speth voiced these concerns again this week. When asked by Sky News if a no-deal Brexit could be problematic, he responded, “It would be a huge problem for the company because [of] … the physical logistics to produce 3,000 cars in the UK daily... if we miss a part, we have to stop production, and stopping production costs between £80 million and £100 million per day.”

Amid growing economic crisis, workers fear that implications of the loss of some of the last decent paying jobs in the declining manufacturing sector that now represents less than 10 percent of the UK economy.

There is a widespread sentiment to fight job losses. The BBC cited one worker, speaking anonymously, who works at JLR’s plant at Whitley near Coventry. He said, “It’s not clear what’s going on,” adding, “I’ve got a young child, so I could really do with not losing my job right now.” He insisted, “I’m fighting for my job... It’s not worth the risk for me to take voluntary redundancy.”

This willingness to fight was expressed in the wildcat strike by an entire shift last November of Vauxhall car workers at Ellesmere Port near Liverpool, just a few miles from JLR’s plant in Halewood, Merseyside. After being told by local Unite trade union representatives that 241 jobs were to be lost, workers immediately walked out. Vauxhall is owned by PSA, who also own Peugeot and Citroën.

This sentiment pits workers into direct conflict with the trade unions, who have never lifted a finger to defend jobs in the car industry. The main union, Unite, which has around 95,000 members in the industry, has done nothing to oppose job losses at Ellesmere Port and only called for “urgent assurances” over the plant’s future. It would instead be “pressing for guarantees of no compulsory redundancies”—which as every worker knows is code language for accepting job losses.

The unions at JLR and Ford operate no differently. In response to JLR’s announcement, Unite national officer Des Quinn said, “Unite will be scrutinising the business case for these global job cuts, and Unite expects that any UK redundancies will be on a voluntary basis amongst affected employees.”

The central concern of Unite, as a trusted partner of the company, was to ensure the continued competitivity of JLR, with Quinn stating that the companies UK workforce “have had to endure a great deal of uncertainty over recent months as they continue to work hard to ensure the carmaker remains a global leader.”

He added, “With record levels of new investment and models set to come on stream in its UK factories we look for Jaguar Land Rover to continue to be a global success and the jewel in Britain’s manufacturing crown.”

Autoworkers in Britain cannot fight job losses and further attacks on their pay, terms and conditions unless they adopt a perspective in opposition to that of the nationalist, pro-capitalist trade unions. The tens of thousands of JLR workers and 13,000 Ford workers in Britain must turn to building rank-and-file committees—independent of the unions.

These committees must establish the closest links with workers who face the same onslaught at auto plants across Europe, Asia, the United States and Canada to organise an internationally coordinated struggle. Autoworkers from the Big Three auto companies in the US, hostile to the constant sell-outs by the United Auto Workers union, have begun this fight by voting at a meeting in Detroit in December to establish independent rank-and-file committees to oppose General Motors’ planned layoffs of 15,000 workers internationally. The meeting was organised by the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter and the Socialist Equality Party (US).

The political significance of India’s two-day general strike

Keith Jones

Tens of millions of workers across India joined a 48-hour strike this Tuesday and Wednesday to voice their opposition to the “pro-investor” policies of the country’s rabidly right-wing government.

The strike involved vast sections of the working class— from mines and manufacturing to banking, transport and other government services—and cut across the caste and communal divisions the Indian ruling class has incited for decades as part of a deliberate “divide and rule” strategy.

This week’s general strike in India, one of the largest strikes in history, is part of a growing upsurge of the world working class.

In neighboring Bangladesh, tens of thousands of poverty-stricken garment workers mounted strikes and demonstrations this week in the face of escalating state repression and violence. On Tuesday, a 22-year-old worker was killed when police assaulted protesting workers.

In Sri Lanka, off India’s southeast coast, plantation workers have been mounting a months-long agitation against poverty wages. This included a nine-day strike by 100,000 workers in December launched in defiance of the state-supported unions.

Hundreds of thousands of workers have taken part in France’s “Yellow Vest” movement against the austerity policies of President Emanuel Macron.

In the US, the United Teachers Los Angeles union is desperately maneuvering to avert a strike by more than 30,000 educators against the dismantling of public education by the union-backed, Democratic Party-led school district and California state government.

Among autoworkers in North America and Europe support for a militant challenge to the plans of the transnational auto companies to slash jobs and shutter plants is growing. Acting independently of the corporatist Unifor union apparatus, workers at the GM plant in Oshawa, Canada staged a series of job actions this week after the automaker reaffirmed its decision to close the plant and four others in the US.

After decades in which the class struggle was artificially suppressed by the phony establishment “left”—the trade unions, social-democratic and Stalinist parties, and their pseudo-left appendages—the working class is beginning to assert its own independent interests.

India exemplifies the brutality of 21st-century capitalism. Seventy percent of India’s population or upwards of 900 million people eke out an existence on less than $2 per day. Meanwhile, the elite and its media celebrate the exponential growth of India’s billionaires, from two in the mid-1990s with some $3 billion in assets to 131 today, gorging on wealth equivalent to 15 percent of India’s GDP.

Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were brought to power in 2014 to subject India’s workers and toilers to even harsher exploitation. The Modi government has implemented savage austerity, promoted contract labour, and accelerated privatization; while stoking communal reaction and transforming India into a frontline state in US imperialism’s military-strategic offensive against China.

But as this week’s strike palpably demonstrated, the Indian working class is not just an object of exploitation. It wields immense social power.

The re-emergence of the international working class provides the objective foundations for a counter-offensive against world imperialism—its globally-organized transnational corporations, its wars and intrigues, and its turn to authoritarian methods of rule and the cultivation of ultra-right and fascist forces.

The task now is to politically arm this insurgent movement of the working class with an international strategy and new organizations of struggle, so it can create a new social order, free of want and war—international socialism.

A key element in blazing a new political path for the working class is the merciless exposure of the pro-capitalist organizations that claim to speak in the name of the working class, whether it be the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the US, the CGT in France, or the Left Party in Germany.

The all-India protest strike was politically led by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and its trade union affiliate, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). Also playing significant roles were the union federation of the CPM’s sister Stalinist party, the CPI, and the trade union appendages of the big business Congress Party and the DMK, a right-wing Tamil Nadu-based party.

All these parties have played a pivotal role in implementing the Indian bourgeoisie’s drive to make India a cheap-labour haven for global capital. Between 1991 and 2008, the CPM and CPI sustained in power a succession of governments, most of them Congress Party-led, that spearheaded the neo-liberal agenda and pursued closer ties with Washington.

Workers joined this week’s strike to oppose the social devastation wrought by more than a quarter-century of “pro-market” reforms. However, for the Stalinists it was a grubby political maneuver aimed at corralling the working class behind bringing to power of an alternative capitalist government—whether led by the Congress Party or a series of smaller, right-wing regional parties—after the April-May general election.

The Stalinists seek to justify their systematic subordination of the working class to the parties and institutions of the bourgeoisie by pointing to the crimes of the BJP and its Hindu right allies.

To be sure, Modi and his BJP are bitter enemies of the working class. But if the Hindu right has been able to grow into such a menace, it is because the Stalinists have fertilized the ground for reaction to grow. With the Stalinists preventing the working class from advancing its own socialist solution to the social crisis, the BJP has been able to demagogically exploit popular anger over the ruinous impact of the pro-market policies implemented by the various Stalinist-backed “secular” governments.

The only viable strategy to defend democratic rights and defeat reaction in India, as in the United States, France and around the world, is one based on the international class struggle and the independent political mobilization of the working class against the decrepit capitalist order.

Indian workers must prepare for struggle against the Modi regime and the next government—which, whatever its composition, will be tasked by its bourgeois masters with dramatically intensifying the exploitation of India’s workers and toilers—by building new organizations of struggle.

In this they should follow the example of the Abbotsleigh tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka, who under the guidance of the Socialist Equality Party have established a rank-and-file action committee completely independent of the trade union apparatuses that have connived in their brutal exploitation for decades.

Such rank-and-file workplace committees must develop a working class counteroffensive by unifying the struggles of workers across India and by reaching out to workers around the world, with whom they are closely interlinked by the very process of global capitalist production.

These committees should take up the fight to free the 13 Maruti Suzuki workers jailed for life on frame-up murder charges. These workers, whose only “crime” is to have fought against poverty wages and contract-labour jobs, have been scandalously abandoned by the Stalinists and the unions because they fear their militant example. A campaign linking the fight for the freedom of the Maruti Suzuki 13 to the broader struggle against sweatshop conditions and precarious employment would galvanize the widespread support for these class-war prisoners in the working class and serve as a rallying point for class struggle.

Indian workers and youth must join with workers across South Asia and around the world in building an international movement against imperialist war on the basis of a resolutely socialist program. By aligning itself with Washington, the Indian bourgeoisie has recklessly encouraged US imperialism in its war drive against China. Moreover, India’s ruling elite systematically manipulates its reactionary military-strategic conflicts with Pakistan and China to stoke communalism and jingoism with the aim of intimidating and splitting the working class.

Women in Africa (WIA) Club Entrepreneurs’ Hub 2019 for Female Entrepreneurs in Africa (Fully-funded to Morocco)

Application Deadline: 15th February 2019

Eligible Countries: African country

To be taken at (country): Marrakesh, Morocco

About the Award: WIA CLUB PHILANTROPY is a non-profit structure aiming at supporting and funding businesses led or managed by African women, through two main projects : the Women in Africa Entrepreneurs Hub and the Women in Africa Revelations Night.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: 

• The companies or initiatives meeting the following criteria can apply to the Entrepreneurs’ Hub:
• Companies or initiatives based in one of the 54 African countries.
• Created or managed by an African woman.
• With a strong market traction (turnover, number of users, funds raised)

Selection Criteria: We will select the most innovative and high-growth potential companies or initiatives with already proven traction:
• Innovative product, service or technology and/or a strong human impact.
• With a first traction on the market (turnover, number of users, raised funds…).
• Proven business model, scalability.
• Large growth potential (in own country, Africa and globally).
• Ambitious team with deep execution skills.

Number of Awards: 54 women

Value of Program: 

• Invitation to the WIA International Annual Summit in Marrakesh (June 27/28 2019): reimbursement of travel, accommodation and exhibition space decoration.
• Unique visibility: Unique visibility from 500 delegates, including investors, top executives and media from all over the world plus visibility on Women in Africa Club print and media supports including WIA Mag, social media, press, offering key visibility.
• High-level Networking: Business meetings organized during the WIA Club Annual Meeting in Marrakech and during all the events of the Club (Regional and Local meetings).
• Special access to the WIA Link digital platform in order to exchange with each other and with international top executive. Real social network of entrepreneurs and all year long acres exclusive club.
• Mentoring: Mentoring for 1 year from large companies (depending from the fundings and sponsors)
  

The African Revelations Night will invite women entrepreneurs to present their project on stage.

Duration of Program: June 27/28 2019

How to Apply: Apply to Women Entrepreneurs Hub 2019

Visit Program Webpage for details

Cornell Climate Online Fellowship 2019 for Students and Professionals

Application Deadline: 31st January 2019

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Online

About the Award: Climate change poses threats to environments, communities, and economies, yet no single “one-size-fits-all” solution can be implemented across different countries and contexts. The Cornell Climate Online Fellows will work together over a period of 12 weeks to identify, discuss, implement, and assess greenhouse gas mitigation actions they take locally and within their social networks.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Environmental and education professionals, volunteers, and university students from any country. Discussions will be in English. Students lacking a basic knowledge of climate science will need to complete parts of online course, Climate Science, Communication, and Action, prior to the fellowship.

Selection Process: Applicants complete an online application about their environmental and education work or volunteer activities, motivation for participating in the fellowship, ideas about climate action projects, and ability to commit the time to be an active participant in the fellowship over the 12-week period. Civic Ecology Lab staff will select the final fellows based on their applications and on our commitment to creating a group of fellows who bring different ideas and experiences and represent a diverse set of countries.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Free. This is a serious commitment,from 4 -10 hours of work per week. All fellows will be expected to actively participate in weekly Zoom conference calls Thursdays from 8-10am Eastern Standard Time (New York) and to implement a climate mitigation action.
• Participants who complete the fellowship will be awarded a Cornell University certificate. However, the main benefit of the fellowship is the opportunity to work with a diverse group of climate-concerned citizens globally who will provide support and provide feedback on your local climate actions.

Duration of Programme: 12 Weeks: February 14 – May 9, 2019

How to Apply: Please click HERE to apply now

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Sexual Predators in the Era of Trump

David Rosen

Long after the Trump presidency passes into the historical graveyard, it will be recalled for the scandals involving sexual abuse that occurred during his tenure.  These scandals bespeak the sexual pathology that long characterized the president himself.

A series of revelations about men who take advantage of underage girls has placed the issue of sexual predators at the center of public debate.  These include the financier Jeffrey Epstein and the entertainer R Kelly as well as the male sex tourists traveling overseas to have sex with trafficked young girls.

Lifetime is airing a six-part documentary series, Surviving R. Kelly, that tells the gruesome story of how the entertainer sexually abused African-American girls and women for decades.  Willa Paskin, reviewing the series for Slate, notes: “We chose to ignore his deeds, downplay them, or remain willfully ignorant of them so we could go on enjoying his music. …  We made a deal with the devil on the cheap — let us keep this song! — and had 16-year-old girls pay the exorbitant price.”

Kelly’s sexual exploitation of teenage girls were first revealed in the mid-90s by Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago Sun-Times pop-music critic.  He long covered Kelly musical career, but in 2002 he received two videos from an anonymous source that depicting the pop star engaging in sex with young girls. Working with his colleague Abdon Pallasch, over the years they interviewed innumerable people involved in the case, including dozens of young women Kelly allegedly sexually exploited.  DeRogatis’ articles and the two videos led to criminal charges against Kelly. He went to trial in 2008 and was found not guilty on all 14 charges.

One of the weirdest aspects of the Kelly story that DeRogatis reported on concerns the allegations that he has operated a series of sex cults, essentially imprisoning girls and young women to a form of sex slavery.  These facilities were located in Chicago and the Atlanta suburbs and, as reported, “dictating what they eat, how they dress, when they bathe, when they sleep, and how they engage in sexual encounters that he records.”  In a Duluth, GA, “guest house,” a 31-year-old “den mother” “trained” new young women as to “how Kelly liked to be pleasured sexually.” The reporter has also detailed how Kelly paid “hush money” to an underage girl to avoid further litigation.

Numerous women appear in Surviving R. Kelly and testify to the sexual abuse that Kelly inflicted on them.  However, the key experience that shapes the series involves the performer, Aaliyah, Kelly’s protegee and who he married when she was just 15 years old.  They first met during his child-pornography trial and Aaliyah died in a plane crash in August 2001 in the Bahamas. Her mother, Diane Houghton, has challenged the series’ account of her daughter’s relationship with Kelly.

A second prominent sex predator is the financier Jeffrey Epstein.  In 2005, he began to assemble a network of dozens – if not a hundred — underage girls for prostitution. The Miami Herald found about 80 women Epstein allegedly molested or sexually abused over a five-year period, including 36 underage victims.  Some of the girls were only 13 or 14 years old when they were molested.  More damaging revelations involve Trump’s Sec. of Labor, R. Alexander Acosta, who, as the U.S. attorney in Miami, brokered what the Herald calls the “deal of a lifetime” so that Epstein received a slap on the risk.

The latest twist in this twisted tale involves the lawyer and TV personality, Alan Dershowitz. Sarah Ransome has alleged in a New York federal court filing that Epstein and his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, “directed” her in 2006 to have sex with Dershowitz and others.  It’s a claim the attorney adamantly denies.

On September 4, 2015, David Strecker, a 66-year-old Florida resident, was arrested at a Costa Rican airport for violating the country’s law for promoting prostitution and received a five-year sentence. Strecker operated a blog, “Cuba Dave,” celebrating his sexual exploits with girls and young women in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. He was the first person ever tried under the country’s new anti-prostitution law and received a 5-year prison sentence in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is among the leading international destination favored by American sex tourists.  Others include the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, The Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Mexico. World Vision Australia estimates 250,000 tourists visit Asia each year for sexual activities with a minor and an estimated 25 percent of sex tourists originate from the U.S.  Men are considered to be the primary sex tourist around the globe with most sex tourism customers coming from middle to upper class backgrounds.

In 2003, the U.S. adopted the PROTECT — Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today — Act.  An Urban Institute study finds that from 2003 to 2012, only 33 individuals were prosecuted under the act.  The study notes, “by prioritizing this crime and enforcing the PROTECT Act, more US citizens and legal US residents traveling overseas for the purposes of sex tourism can be identified and brought to justice.”

Since Harvey Weinstein was outed in October 2017, about 80 women have publicly revealed how they were sexually abused. Many of those accused of such immoral, if not illegal, behavior are among the social elite, including judges, politicians, business execs and entertainers.

Among these men, both white and African-American, are judges Alex Kozinski (CA federal judge) and Ray Moore (R-AL); politicians Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Reps. Ruben Kihuen (D-NV), Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Pat Meehan (R-PA), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and John Conyers (D-MI); and entertainers Kevin Spacey (actor), Russell Simmons (co-founder, Def Jam Recordings), Garrison Keillor (host, “A Prairie Home Companion”), Charlie Rose (host, PBS and CBS), Matt Lauer (host, NBC “Today”) and Mario Batali (TV star and chef).

Sadly, in the era of Trump, further revelations about prominent men who are sexual abusers and predators are likely.

Everything the Western Mainstream Media Outlets Get Wrong When Covering Poor Countries

Tamara Pearson

If you want to find out what’s happening in a poor country, be sure to add tourists to your Google News search.

“Canadian and Italian tourists feared kidnapped in Burkina Faso,” was the recent headline in the BBC, a day after clashes there claimed 46 lives. The BBC didn’t cover the clashes online, nor did they cover a terrorist attack there a few days prior, or the country’s trade deals with China. If the tragic events had happened in Europe though, the media would have been all over it.

We see similar scenarios with the recent media coverage of tourists robbed in Brazil (just as a president who is arguably more racist, sexist, and homophobic than Trump has taken power – yes, it’s possible), of a tourist murdered in Morocco, and the killings in a Mexican tourist resort.

From de-prioritizing the lives of locals in poor countries, to downplaying global inequality, racism, and condescension, the way Western news agencies do international news is deeply harmful. They judge other countries based on the assumption that US and European political and economic standards are the best and only way to do things, and that practice is leading to some seriously discriminatory and damaging outcomes.

As the news becomes increasingly corporatist, with agencies blurring the lines between native advertising and news stories and focusing on clicks over quality, there is little desire to examine this sort of malpractice, let alone rectify it.

A list of deliberate distortions the mainstream media makes about poor countries

1) News discourse is based on the assumption that the only way to do democracy, elections, and economics is the highly dysfunction two-party neoliberalism of the US and Europe. If countries stray from the West’s way of doing politics, or from “free” trade and privatization, they are labelled as tyrannies, dictatorships, regimes, and more. Though the news claims to be unbiased, there is a stark inconsistency in the terminology used for the West and for poor countries.

2) Media coverage of charity and aid from the US and Europe rests on the assumption that such “help” is desired, and that the US and Europe have something to offer poor countries, despite their responsibility for colonizing, looting, enforcing abusive debt repayment, and largely causing the poverty in the first place. The historic and economic context behind the poverty is rarely discussed, creating the impression that poverty has no cause.

3) Media agencies boycott news stories about what people in poor countries are doing, achieving, calling for, hoping for, or building. By omitting this sort of coverage, one gets the false impression that people in poor countries aren’t doing anything about their economic or political situations. That contributes to the myth perpetuated by charities that poor people are incapable and passive and need outside help.

4) Media analysis assumes that institutions in other countries work in the same way as those in the media’s home country. For example, that police and national guards should play the same role in Venezuela as they do in the US, and if they don’t, there is something wrong with them.

5) The media consistently boycotts experts from the actual poor country in question when it comes to quotes and interviews and analyzing what is going on there. Instead, experts are typically US or European white male academics who aren’t in, or have never set foot in the country they judge and opine on. This sort of boycott contributes to the stereotype about who an expert is and what they look like. Hypocritically, the media never invites qualified intellectuals in poor countries to pass judgment on the US or Europe.

6) Related to this, is the belief that poor countries are so simple and similar that a Western journalist can be parachuted in to one to cover a presidential election, for example. These journalists often don’t speak the local language, and don’t know how the local elections work (as I witnessed while covering numerous elections in Venezuela). The media also thinks it is acceptable to use locals to do all the networking work and on-the-ground grunt work as “fixers“, or worse, as unpaid “contacts”, while a Westerner gets the byline credit and much higher pay, for writing up that work.

7) US and European culture is portrayed as the default or norm, while everyone else’s culture is “exotic” or “colorful”. Further, the media usually thinks its enough to do the occasional photo gallery of such culture (ie a festival in India) for people to then have an understanding or insight into the ways of being and living of people in countries like India, with its 1.2 billion people.

8) The media’s errors regarding poverty extend to its default definition of it. It sees poverty as how much stuff people can buy, rather than, for example, access to culture, education, and healthcare. When covering other countries’ situations, it doesn’t include their perspective on what good living consists of.

9) Western mainstream media values the lives of people in rich countries more. People have to die in the thousands in a non-political tragedy in poor countries to get a similar amount of coverage as the death of a white Australian mountain climber in Indonesia.

10) The media brands itself as “neutral”, though it always takes the perspective of its home country or region. But when 1 billion people are hungry, we need the media to have a more global perspective.

11) And despite lauding itself as being objective and factual, accuracy is less important to the media when it comes to poor countries. Getting a president’s name wrong, the actual title of the head of state, or labeling community organizations as “terrorists” isn’t a big deal.

12) When something really huge happens in a poor country – like a tsunami and earthquake that kills 230,000 people, then the media is happy to exploit it for all the clicks they can get. Once the main drama has passed though, don’t expect too many follow-ups that analyze why earthquakes cause more damage in some countries than others, or the rebuilding and recovery needed.

13) Further, when the media does bestow to cover poorer countries, it usually needs to be in terms of a richer country. Stories about Mexico, for example, are more likely to get covered if Trump is in the headline. African countries are more likely to see the light of day when a famous Western actor deigns to visit.

14) Sometimes the media takes the position that poor countries are “too depressing” for readers. But if the reading is tough, imagine what its like to live it. We should be screaming about the worst injustices from our rooftops, not sidelining such injustice with pathetic excuses.

Causes and consequences of anti-poor country bias

Global racism, classism, and prioritizing profits are the key factors behind all these distortions. Stories about poor countries don’t appeal to advertisers, except for those promoting charities who typically victimize poor countries and simplify poverty because they want their donors to think that $1 a day makes the exploitation, wars, and debt go away.

Further, mainstream media has stopped seeing itself as an active force in the world that has a responsibility to inform people and to help them understand what is going on – if it ever did see itself that way. Instead of being a public service, the news is a commodity. As such, media companies understand that stories about first world events, white people, celebrities and the rich and powerful tend to get more clicks than those about the poor.

In addition, over the past decade with the smartphone becoming more accessible to more people, the media has shifted over to bite-size stories and easily and quickly digestible content that can be scan-read, then shared, in a few seconds or minutes. However, the key issues in poor countries aren’t bite size nor simple. They require context, and the media shies away from that – especially where worker rights, inequality, or historical injustice are concerned.

Finally, US media in particular loves individual stories of rags-to-riches and to perpetuate the myth that financial success is all about individuals working hard. Poor countries simply don’t fit into that narrative, so they get left out altogether.

The consequences of this selective and distorted media coverage are serious. What it ultimately does, is perpetuate the status quo; the racism, the dehumanizing of people who live in poor countries, the global inequality, and US and European cultural, economic, and violent dominance. That is, mainstream media coverage of poor countries is an active, and deliberate participation in the oppression of those countries.

The coverage ends up distorting how we understand global forces, culture, and history. It obstructs our ability to learn from other culture’s amazing lifestyles, literature traditions, philosophies, art and film techniques, and it fosters closed-minded adults. Such rich-country centric coverage also promotes unjustified arrogance in those countries, which in turn fosters blind spots to how damaging US and European foreign policy (ie wars) can be.

With high rates of homelessness, police impunity, racist attacks, consumerism, and more, countries like the US are in no position to be judging other countries. A healthy media landscape would instead see the news media as informational and educational rather than entertainment, and would prioritize local journalists and local experts.

Combating Racism With Exposure

Matt Johnson

When I started volunteering at a youth detention center, whose incarcerated population was entirely African American and Latino, I was told by an Africana Studies professor I respected that I should focus on my own community — white people — instead. He said this after I asked whether my presence in the detention center was fostering cross-racial solidarity. Despite respecting his knowledge and experience, I took exception to his advice then and still do now.

My reason for taking exception is purely strategic: I am not sure that a white person can convince another white person to be less racist. This is, in effect, what it means to be a “white ally” in the grassroots left. White allies take their marching orders from people of color, and then reenter their own (presumably white) communities to conduct missionary work in reverse: instead of racist attempts to “civilize” darker-skinned peoples, white allies conduct anti-racist attempts to civilize their lighter-skinned neighbors. This is well intentioned but somewhat misguided in my opinion.

I am a believer in the mere-exposure effect because it worked for me. To give just one example, I studied abroad in China as an undergraduate student and grew so accustomed to seeing mostly Han Chinese people everywhere that, upon my return home, diverse crowds of Americans seemed strange to me. People were larger, louder, and more intimidating than ever before.

But Chinese people not only became more familiar, they became more attractive. A similar change occurred in my psyche when I lived and worked in areas with more African Americans than whites.

I am not arguing that racism can be eradicated solely by (positive or neutral) exposure or that racist white people never encounter people of color on the streets or at work — but I am positing that exposure is a necessary condition for abolishing racism. Racism cannot be resisted in the abstract: it must be addressed practically and contextually. If ‘Racist Rick’ were replaced in his job some time ago by a person of color, and this was his only experience with an individual from said community of color, he would likely remain racist — especially if the media he consumes, the education he recalls, and the friends he keeps cast further suspicion on the black community. He would need a positive experience to shift his thinking.

I met a Palestinian man in the historic town of Beit Sahour a few years ago who allowed me to stay in his home for the night. He told me he opened his doors to just about anyone who wanted to visit — including Jewish settlers who laid claim to his land and denied his rights. When I asked him why, he recounted a story about an Israeli (Jewish) man: a stranger who had given him a ride when he was stranded and desperate. The man took him to his home, introduced him to his family, and served him dinner. My host said this experience changed him and that henceforth he was committed to exposing even the most reactionary Jews to Palestinians (himself and his family) by hosting them so that their minds would open the way his did. He bragged that he had even convinced a Jewish-American guest to reject an offer to settle in the West Bank out of respect for the Palestinians living there.

My Palestinian friend did not refuse the ride or his potential guests — he did not tell said Jewish guests to go home and lecture their (Jewish) friends about Palestinian rights. He made bold attempts at integration and (willingly) put himself in a vulnerable position in order to do so. The man who gave him a ride did likewise. The context may be different, but the power differential between Israelis and Palestinians is comparable to whites vs. (some) communities of color in the United States. The level of segregation is also comparable in some respects — and it will be more so if Trump gets his wall.

Exposure, however, is not as easy as it sounds given continued de-facto segregation in America. And this segregation is only one aspect of a larger system of racial oppression that most whites are loath to address. That system will have to be dismantled for racism to die, but in the meantime, we should allow ourselves to be exposed.

After attempted coup in Gabon, government imposes internet and media broadcast blackout

Eddie Haywood 

The government of Ali Bongo Ondimba imposed a country-wide blackout of all Internet and television and radio broadcasting services throughout Gabon for more than 24 hours in the wake of an attempted coup Monday morning that saw insurgent soldiers take over the operations of state-owned television and radio broadcaster RadioDiffusion Television Gabonnaise in the capital city Libreville. The group’s leader, Lt. Obiang Ondo Kelly, broadcast a call on national television for viewers to overthrow the Bongo government.

Several hundred demonstrators responded to the insurgent soldiers’ call to “take control of the streets,” and swarmed a downtown section of Libreville, setting a car aflame and burning several tires.

Expressing the anger toward the Bongo regime felt within a broad layer of the Gabonese masses, Stephane, a 27-year-old tripe seller, told Agence France-Presse (AFP), “What happened (yesterday) was a good thing, it should have worked. We have to get out of this situation. We weren't criminals or looters. We answered the call. We are 120-percent fed up!”

Another resident told AFP of the internet shutdown, “They did the same thing to us in 2016 [referring to the government’s blackout of the internet during the 2016 election]. Can you understand how frustrating it is to live in a country where there is such a blackout?”

Gabonese security forces swiftly put down the coup attempt, killing two and arresting eight. Shortly afterward, the government declared “the situation is under control,” and proclaimed that it had restored peace and order. In the wake of the government crackdown, the internet was cut, along with electricity in many sections across Libreville.

Agence de Press Gabonnaise (AGP) reported on Tuesday that order had been restored and routine had returned to Libreville, with children returning to school and businesses open. By then the government had restored internet access and broadcast services, after being down since the morning of the coup attempt.

Internet Without Borders, an organization which monitors internet censorship by governments around the globe, found that beginning Monday morning almost immediately after the coup attempt, internet connection requests from Gabon sharply dropped, indicating the starting point of the blackout. Traffic remained down for the next 28 hours. When the government lifted the blackout, traffic requests in the country began functioning as normal. Internet Without Borders’ report was corroborated by Netblocks, another like-minded organization tracking censorship of the internet.

The cutting off of internet service to the population stands as a stark threat to the Gabonese masses that the Bongo regime is willing to resort to any means necessary to stifle any opposition to its rule. Such anti-democratic methods have been utilized by governments in countries around the world, including nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the recent elections, and in Tunisia and Egypt, during the Arab Spring revolutions that overthrew the dictatorships in those countries.

The imposition of a complete blackout of internet and broadcast services has long been utilized as a tool of repression by the Bongo government. Comprising a quasi-dynasty, the Bongo family has been in power in Gabon for more than half a century.

During the 2009 and 2016 elections, internet service and broadcasts were shut down in the days preceding the poll, illustrating the thoroughly criminal and anti-democratic character of the regime. Over the decades, the ruling government has arbitrarily shut down newspapers and broadcast media.

Security forces in 2012 raided and then shuttered two newspapers critical of the ruling government, Ezombolo and La Une. In a move ominously Orwellian the government body charged with the regulation of media, the National Communications Council, accused the two weeklies of “disrespecting public institutions and the personalities that embody them.”

The underlying motive in carrying out these thoroughly anti-democratic actions is the palpable fear within the ruling elite of the Gabonese masses. The ruling class is acutely aware of their deep unpopularity and seek above all to quell a social explosion which may escape their control. In order to accomplish this the Bongo government is seeking to control the dissemination of information and to regulate what the masses see, hear and read.

The development of the internet has revolutionized mass communications and created a vast expansion in the manner by which workers are able to express ideas and their opposition to the ruling class, as evidenced in many protests organized over social media, such as the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, the teachers’ strikes in the United States last year and recently, the Yellow Vest protests in France.

Efforts to censor the internet by governments worldwide is being led by the United States. In the closest collaboration with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other powerful information technology corporations, the American ruling class has implemented severe restrictions on access to socialist, antiwar and progressive websites. The growth of opposition from the working class has struck a chord of terror within the ruling class. In response they are seeking to severely limit workers’ access to the internet and transform it into a tool of state surveillance, censorship and repression.