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Turning the Julian Assange Sandclock…

How a statue near Kotbusser Tor honours Edward Snowden and Julian Assange


06/12/2021

As the judgment from the extradition appeal hearing of Julian Assange at the Old Bailey, in London, is imminent, another glut of articles about WikiLeaks is permeating a broad range of media platforms. As this case has been dragging on for over ten years the central issues have been expounded many times already.

This article tells a different narrative and will focus on a Berlin street-art intervention initiated in 2016. It  still operates as a locus that draws attention to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

A sculpture forms a small roundabout at the junction between Kohlfurterstraße and Admiralstraße in Kreuzberg Berlin, just a few hundred yards from Kottbusser Tor U-bahn station.

Ludmila Seefried-Matějková was commissioned by the West Berlin authorities to create the sculpture in 1985 when the city was still divided. She titled the work, “Doppelganger Admiral”

This screen shot of the sculpture in July 2008 shows one of the most notable features at this point in time is the amount of graffiti all over the sculpture… Graffiti or “tagging?” That is a defining issue in “Street art”… Is it art? Is it vandalism? For now we skip over this graffiti debate.

Ludmila Seefried-Matějková is a Czech sculptor who was commissioned to make a series of sculptures for the city of Berlin. She is 83 years old but is still actively sculpting. She opened an exhibition of new work a few months ago.

Seefried-Matějková’s sculpture commemorates the time Admiralstraße underwent a radical change in the early 1980’s. Old buildings were demolished and new ones created. Seefried-Matějková responded to that by creating an hourglass – an ancient mechanical instrument symbolising the passage of time.

The massive concrete hourglass in the middle of the road is what most people first noticed. But there is more to the sculpture. Embedded in the surrounding metal work is a still working old fashioned type of digital clock, although when installed it would have been a futuristic state of the art time-piece.

On top of the hourglass are two semi-fused, back-to-back, larger-than-life admirals looking through their telescopes. Is one looking to the future and the other looking to the past, whilst in the “now” of the hourglass? Do they represent the divided city as they look both East and West? It is a sculpture that raises questions, not providing standard establishment certainties.

Whilst cleaning the sculpture we realised how easily the admirals spin. We think there was a time when they were constantly revolving. It would be great to have that story confirmed from someone who can remember seeing them spin. It would be interesting to know how slowly or quickly they moved.

Another significant element to the sculpture are two bronze figures sitting at the base of the hourglass. One is a man playing a harmonica and the other is a punk woman. These figures are slightly larger than life and are informally placed encouraging people to engage directly with them.

They fit in Seefried-Matějková’s broader body of sculptural work.

This sculpture is of interest in relation to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks because the WikiLeaks logo is an hourglass – and it is located in what was then the parliamentary constituency of Hans-Christian Ströbele.

Ströbele was one of the first people to travel to Moscow to meet Edward Snowden.

When Herr Ströbele MP and Frau Seefried-Matějková were informed about the idea to paint the hourglass sculpture with the WikiLeaks logo, they both responded positively.

Ströbele got permission from the City for the hourglass to be painted , after Seefried-Matějková gave consent to her work being re-appropriated with a three dimensional version of the WikiLeaks logo.

After the hourglass was painted it was publicly unveiled on the United Nations World Press Freedom Day – May 3rd 2016. Unfortunately Seefried-Matějková was unable to attend. However Ströbele spoke at this unveiling event with Sarah Harrison.

Sarah Harrison had worked for WikiLeaks and moved to Berlin after escorting Edward Snowden to Moscow. They had been trapped in Hong Kong airport for a number of weeks until Russia granted him asylum.

The sculpture became a focus, as exampled in the “Vigil for Julian Assange” held there on the 20th November 2019, organised by “Candels 4 Assange”.

The ongoing imprisonment of Julian Assange and the hourglass sculpture on Admiralstraße are given added potency by another of Seefried-Matějková’s Berlin sculptures. This one is above the main prison gates in Moabit depicting the “hand of justice” raising and lowering a cage around a prisoner.

Julian Assange’s  case has greater significance beyond his personal situation. Because  it reflects upon the public’s right to know about what wrongdoing their governments are doing in secret.

The newly painted sculpture was named – “Dopplewelt” (double world). It refers to the images on the hourglass of two globes to symbolise an old corrupt world leaking and creating a new world.

This image offers both the vision and crux of what is at stake in this trial. The world as presented to us by the compliant mass media is only a partial and very biased reflection of the geopolitical reality. Clearly a free independent investigative press is essential for a healthy democracy.

“Misconduct in Public Office”

The People’s Covid Inquiry reports on the handling of the pandemic by the government in England


05/12/2021

On Wednesday 1 December 2021, the People’s Covid Inquiry (PCI) organised by Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) presented its finished report. In the absence of a formal official public inquiry into the pandemic, the PCI began in February 2021 and concluded hearings in June. It covered all aspects of the government’s handling of the pandemic and heard testimony from a wide range of people and organisations. These included previous government advisors and key academics, as well as frontline workers and bereaved family members.

The Inquiry was chaired by renowned human rights barrister Michael Mansfield QC. In the report, a panel of experts delivered the findings and recommendations on all main aspects of the pandemic to date.

Key findings

These include:

1. The depleted state of the National Health Service and other public services prior to the pandemic was a determining factor in poor outcomes and led to avoidable deaths.

2. The government was poorly prepared for the pandemic and moved too slowly, which led to avoidable death.

3. The government adopted the wrong strategy leading to loss of life and growing mistrust in its advice.

4. The government’s poor record on inequalities put the most vulnerable at risk from illness and death from Covid-19.

5. There is a case to be made for a criminal charge of misconduct in public office.

The Inquiry chair sums up

The PCI chair Michael Mansfield QC, said:

“This People’s Covid Inquiry report is unequivocal – dismal failure in the face of manifestly obvious risks… This Inquiry performed a much-needed and urgent public service when the nation was hit by a catastrophic pandemic coincident with an unprecedented period of democratic deficiency. It afforded an opportunity for the beleaguered citizen to be heard; for the victims to be addressed; for the frontline workers to be recognised; and for independent experts to be respected. When it mattered most and when lives could have been saved, the various postures adopted by government could not sustain scrutiny.

It was plain to Keep Our NHS Public (the organisers of the People’s Covid Inquiry) that Government words were bloated hot air, hoping to delay and obfuscate. Within this narrative lies a theme of behaviour amounting to gross negligence by the Government, whether examined singularly or collectively. There were lives lost and lives devastated, which was foreseeable and preventable. From lack of preparation and coherent policy, unconscionable delay, through to preferred and wasteful procurement, to ministers themselves breaking the rules, the misconduct is earth-shattering.”

Filling the silence

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, Co-Chair of KONP, stated that the Inquiry had filled a deafening silence from government and had set out to learn the lessons that could save lives in this and future pandemics. The avoidable loss of tens of thousands of lives through the neglect of pandemic planning, the run down of the NHS, and the intense inequality in the United Kingdom – was shocking. The Inquiry had heard of the pride in their work of NHS, care and other frontline staff and about their pain, exhaustion and moral injury.

The level of government cronyism and resultant profiteering had been blatant and in plain sight. The overall conclusion was that a strong case could be made that there had been misconduct in public office. This needed to be addressed, since if ignored, the country would not be able to learn the lessons from today to face the challenges of tomorrow.

The overall conclusion was that a strong case could be made that there had been misconduct in public office. This needed to be addressed, since if ignored, the country would not be able to learn the lessons from today to face the challenges of tomorrow.

The pandemic is not over, and infection rates and death tolls are rising once again. As winter approaches and the omicron variant takes hold, the government needs to act decisively to prevent further avoidable deaths. With political will and public support, there is no reason that the UK can’t still emerge from the pandemic with an NHS that is not on the brink of collapse as it is now. The UK having learnt lessons, gained experience, and given proper investment in publicly provided health-and-care services, should be able to keep the nation safe, as and when another crisis like this occurs.

Michael Mansfield expanded on the charge of ‘Misconduct in Public Office’

The phenomenon of a ‘pandemic’ is hardly novel with a long history of plagues of one sort or another including recent examples such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS – 2003) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS – 2012; spread from camels). Anyone in government responsible for health and safety must have been aware of the risk of a pandemic recurrence.

This responsibility is well recognised by the tenets of international and domestic law. Internationally it is embraced by a number of different instruments – the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948 Article 25); the Charter of the UN (Article 1 1945); the Constitutional provisions of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Health Assembly (1946/1948 – creatures of the UN and engaging over 190 states) both committed to countering cross border health threats and giving rise to the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005).

Of especial interest is the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Articles 12 (1) and (2) read:

‘The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest standard of physical and mental health.

The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right SHALL include those necessary for . . .

(c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases.‘

The United Kingdom ratified this treaty in 1976.

Legal obligations

UK domestic law reflects these obligations via the Human Rights Act 1996 (HRA) s6, by which the government must act in a manner compatible with the European Convention Articles (ECHR). For example Art 2, the Right to Life. Even more specific is the National Health Service Act 2006 s2A which imposes a duty to protect the public from diseases and other dangers to public health, and indicates appropriate steps which may be taken.

Public Health England (PHE) as the executive arm of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) together with the Minister – Matt Hancock – bore ultimate responsibility. Both have gone, as Mr. Hancock resigned and PHE was replaced by the UK Health Security Agency in the summer of 2020.

According to the government website this agency will be responsible for planning the prevention and response to external health threats and providing intellectual scientific and operational leadership at national local and global levels. It will ensure the nation can respond quickly and at greater scale to deal with pandemics and future threats.

Abolishing PHE during the pandemic was likened to taking the wings off a malfunctioning plane in flight in order to achieve a safe landing. This abolition might in itself be taken as an admission of failed pandemic response.

Recent specific warnings in relation to pandemic had been either ignored, or was set aside. In 2006 the Government Office for Science predicted a global pandemic within the next 30 years due to a virus mutating from a wild animal to humans (zoonotic disease).

Ten years later, in 2016, there were two exercises, the full details of which have not been made public until recently – Cygnus and Alice. The details of Cygnus were eventually leaked after threats of legal action. In June 2020, the Health Minister in the House of Lords at the time (Lord Bethell), asserted that such simulations should remain secret ‘so that the unthinkable can be thought‘.

Lord Bethell has since been mired in controversies surrounding lack of transparency over the awarding of lucrative government covid related contracts to associates of Conservative party members of parliament.

Loss of trust revealed by secrecy

A government that had lost the trust and confidence of the people did not want the public to know that the Cygnus report came to the conclusion that:

“The UK’s preparedness and response in terms of plans, policies and capability, is currently not sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic that will have a nationwide impact across all sectors.”

Health Secretary Mr. Hancock failed to reveal that on top of Cygnus, in the same year, there had been ten pandemic exercises modeling different scenarios. Some were for Ebola, some for flu but one was prompted by a MERS outbreak, and therefore was for CORONAVIRUS. This too was kept secret despite PHE and the DHSC both being centrally involved. The government should, therefore, have been well prepared for the eventuality that presented itself at the end of 2019.

The NHS and social care infrastructure should not have been neglected and run down; effective in date Personal Protective Equipment should have been readily stored and accessible; track and trace provision should have been anticipated as vital to basic public health measures; extra NHS hospital space should have been carefully planned; with an adequate NHS trained staffing complement at the ready; quarantine conditions and support sorted; and strict border controls and isolation facilities programmed in advance.

None of this is hindsight, as the PCI report makes clear – the report is unequivocal. This pandemic response has been a dismal failure in the face of manifestly obvious risks.

Where is the official government judicial inquiry?

The Prime Minister initially rejected the idea of an independent public judicial inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic. Pressed by the bereaved and others, he eventually conceded in the summer of 2020 that there would be one – but not until later. Months went by and nothing more was said until earlier this year when the bereaved repeated their request. Again rebuffed, ‘the time was not right’ and it would interfere with government work.

Eventually he appeared to relent and announced that there would be one ‘launched’ in the Spring of 2022. However, despite continued requests there is no definition of ‘launch’, no date, no judge, no terms of reference, no infrastructure. Nothing in fact up to the time of publication of the PCI report at the end of November.

The public deserves the truth, recognition and admissions

For behaviour to be categorised in criminal law as misconduct in public office, it must be serious enough to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder and:

‘must amount to an affront to the standing of the public office held. The threshold is a high one requiring conduct so far below acceptable standards as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.‘

The test for a jury has been said to be whether the conduct is worthy of condemnation and punishment, in other words: ‘Does it harm the public interest?’

The possibility of legal proceeding against government ministers should now be explored. If and when a judicial inquiry is held, the PCI will happily make all its evidence available – an important contemporary record made during the pandemic itself and not years afterwards.

Relevant links

Hijacking the slogans of ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘freedom of expression’

Is free speech really under attack? If so, who are the victims?


04/12/2021

Introduction

Over recent months, increasingly demagogic fears of curtailment of ‘freedom of speech’ or the closely related ‘freedom of expression’ have been voiced. I believe that most such calls serve to camouflage attacks on working peoples, by removing any social constraints on ‘individual’ will. This is not new, but has accelerated.

Perhaps the right-wing hijackers are correct? Has ‘free speech’ truly been curtailed? The reality seems to be that it has been left-wingers who have been muzzled – not the right. For example in academic circles, at least in the USA, data shows that left wing ‘freedom of speech’ has been targeted, not the right wing’s:

As Chris Quintana argued in Chronicle.com:

“Many conservative pundits will tell you that one of the most vaunted of American values, free speech, is under siege by undergraduates across the nation. And their prime targets are conservative speakers… But professor Jeffrey Adam Sachs, has.. new data… suggest(ing) the free-speech crisis is overblown… professors are dismissed more often for liberal comments than for conservative ones… (In) 45 incidents from 2015 to 2017 in which professors were fired, suspended, or otherwise punished – of the 26 he found in 2017, e.g., 19 had made liberal comments.”

This article will discuss two current cases in which slogans have been hijacked in Europe, although such examples are not limited to Europe given the current crisis in global imperialist capital. It then discusses constitutional rights regarding COVID measures in Germany. I end with a brief review of historical views on ‘free speech’ from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This review contrasts ‘liberal’ views (‘anyone is free to do whatever she wishes’) with a communist viewpoint (‘an individual is a part of a class, whose access to ‘freedom of expression’ differs by their class).

Eric Zemmour in France claims racist hate incitement is a ‘right to free speech’

Zemmour has overtaken Marine Le Pen (of fascist ‘National Rally’) to stand second in French opinion polls, behind the standing French President Emmanuel Macron. Modelling himself on Donald Trump, Zemmour seeks out a similar nationalist anti-immigrant constituency in France. Norimitsu Orishi argues that “the major concerns of the working class are immigration and trade.”

Zemmour thrives on outlandish claims, including blaming the Bataclan Paris concert killings of 2015 on immigration. He claims that then President Francois Hollande “knew that terrorists were infiltrated among migrants”; and calls to ban foreign first names in France (e.g. Mohammed or Kevin). Amongst other provocations he calls “immigrant minors – ‘murderers’ and ‘rapists’ that should be ‘sent back’.”

Zemmour has successfully escaped 16 legal charges using the self-defence of ‘free speech’. Currently he faces another trial for inciting hatred, which he refuses to attend. Victor Mallett and Leila Abboud report him as saying “I will not attend this trial because I refuse that political debate takes place in court-rooms.”

Here, Zemmour is arguing that his rights of ‘free speech’ outweigh the rights of immigrants in French society to be safe and to be French citizens.

The case of the ‘right not to be vaccinated’

In a previous article, I discussed the close links between fascists of ‘Alternative for Deutschland’(AfD), right-wingers and Querdenken, petit-bourgeois business owners and COVID deniers. They all claim a ‘right to refuse vaccines and lock-downs’. Their ranks now include Sahra Wagenknecht – the former parliamentary group leader of Die Linke. Dubbed the ‘Heroine of the Unvaccinated’ by Der Spiegel, Wagenknecht disingenuously said at first: “I think it’s a problem that you have to justify it publicly”. However realising that is ridiculous for politicians to maintain, she amplified:

“Everyone has to weigh up whether they trust a new type of vaccine…. ‘Long Covid’, the long-term consequences of the corona disease, was controversial..”

This view claims a lack of testing and demonstrable safety. This is false, as trials with more than 70,000 informed participants show unequivocal safety and benefit. Moreover, editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal justify a Canadian vaccine mandate for physicians as:

“There is also compelling evidence from surveillance data on millions of administered doses that the vaccine is effective and that serious adverse events are both rare and less frequent than the risk of severe COVID-19 among people who are not vaccinated.”

The argument of the anti-vaxxers is that their individual freedoms in resisting COVID mandatory vaccination is infringed. Regardless of whether they are placing others at risk (e.g. young children where vaccination is not fully realised as yet; elderly with immune compromise; patients or vulnerable persons with whom their jobs put them into close contact).

Constitutional rights

COVID safety measures have triggered discussions of ‘constitutional rights’. This debate has an especial bite in Germany. This is not the place for a deep dive into the Basic Law, but a reminder of its genesis is worthwhile. It was hurriedly thrust onto Germany by Western imperialist powers, in order to prevent the USSR any say in the German Constitution.

Arthur B Gunlicks reports that to ensure that a future divided Germany remained powerless, the Western powers pressured the prime ministers of the eleven Länder in the three zones controlled by the West into subordination. The Allies’ planned to paralyse central government in West Germany:

“Americans.. pushed for the federal organization of Germany after 1945. The division of power … (where) political parties may not be so successful at the national level but may have a strong regional base. “

Gunlicks’s argument is backed up by Edmund Spevack in American Pressures on the German Constitutional Tradition: Basic Rights in the West German Constitution of 1949

This was to remain in ‘perpetuity’. The distribution of responsibility across the Länder partly explains delays in enacting anti-COVID measures in Germany. Yet even with complicated relations between Federal center and provincial Länder, there is still no constitutional bar to a vaccine mandate in Germany. The general principle is that risks to others from individuals posing potential for harm to them, outweighs an individual person’s ‘freedom’. Legal experts had previously opined:

“Compulsory vaccination as a last resort – it is only permitted as a last resort. All constitutional lawyers interviewed by MDR Aktuell agree on this. Bielefeld law professor Franz Mayer explains that, according to the Basic Law, physical integrity can be restricted if there are, as currently good reasons: “You only need to think of children and non-vaccinable people as a risk group.”

The Karlsruhe Constitutional Court (30th November), upheld the Bundesnotbremse Maßnahmenpaket (Federal emergency brake) COVID measures of 23 April-June 2021. Several urgent requests to rule those measures unconstitutional (from the FDP, Free Voters and the “Society for Freedom Rights”) were unsuccessful. Dietmar Hipp reports in Der Spiegel:

“(of) more than 450 proceedings, constitutional complaints… the Karlsruhe judges decided a total of 21 isolated urgent motions and 180 constitutional complaints.”

Actually vaccination for measles in Germany have long been compulsory for children and those in contact with them, creating a clear legal precedence. Yet, even in leading positions, apparently many – such as Christian Lindner of the Ampel coalition as party leader of the FDP, have till today maintained individual waivers for ‘respect’:

“Lindner true to the FDP philosophy in the federal election campaign. If, after carefully weighing the arguments, you come to the conclusion that you will not be vaccinated permanently, “then that deserves respect”.

This befits a ‘liberal’ philosophy, where an individual bests all groupings. What are the historical links of this philosophy and how do Marxists view it?

Underlying philosophical basis of individual freedom

Two pillars ground standard “liberal” bourgeois society views on ‘free speech and action’ – those of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Both buttress an individual’s viewpoint. Rousseau argues that the individual accedes to the ‘general will’ – which shows the nay-sayer that ‘they are mistaken’.

“The nearer opinion comes to unanimity, the greater is the dominance of the general will. … the vote of the majority always binds all the rest. …You will ask: ‘How can a man be both ‘free’ and ‘forced’ to conform to wills that are not his own… the general will is found by counting votes. When therefore the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so.

Leaving aside the matter of how the general will is determined more broadly, and how often its representation is gauged (i.e. on-going democracy) the simple criterion for us seems to be a majority rule. By that count the German COVID measures are supported, and felt to be not strict enough: As Der Spiegel reports in its Corona News:

“A clear majority of 58 percent consider the current corona measures to be insufficient, 73 percent expect a nationwide lockdown to be decided this year and a majority of 57 percent even want this measure. Fifty-five percent also believe that politicians are too considerate of the concerns of those who have not been vaccinated.)

Another authority often cited is John Stuart Mill – of whose work Richard Reeves says “love or loathe it, ‘On Liberty’ is the New Testament of liberalism.” [“John Stuart Mill’; London 2007; p. 264] Yet some liberals have not read him precisely. For defence of all individual actions neglects Mills’ principle of harm: “The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant”. Der Spiegel correctly identifies that John Stuart Mill would likely have not baulked at the COVID Maßnahmenpaket.

For confines of space we cannot fully contrast the views of Rousseau and Mill from the communist viewpoint. But at core Marx objects that Rousseau mistakes a general will for individuals engaging in production whose consequent class interests arise. [Grundrisse, 1857 Introduction] His views on Mill are more pungent still (“sophists and sycophants.. trying to harmonize the political economy of capital with the claims of the proletariat.. a shallow syncretism of which Mill is the best representative”. [Capital Volume 1])

Marxists reject abstract ‘freedoms’. Lenin bluntly put this in the context of the press:

“We must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective “freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. … Absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.”

Surely – it may be argued – this is no longer the case? After all – don’t we have a ‘free press?’ Here I offer only one counter, and do not delve into the repetitive sculpting of mass opinion by Facebook et al. Instead, examine the conscious strategy employed to hijack the slogan of ‘free speech’, described in a new study of Charles Koch, which refers to Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola’s book, Free Speech and Koch Money – Manufacturing a Campus Culture War’.

This multi-billionaire and intellectual leader led the Right’s conquest of the US Supreme Court and the ‘free speech’ movement

“Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola write (of) a fabricated “crisis” in which conservative voices are posited as being silenced by the left. To counter this, deep-pocketed conservatives, with Charles Koch at the helm, have poured money — $256 million between 2005 and 2017 — into cash-strapped public and private colleges and universities. The effort, they write, was a blatant effort to steer curricula and hiring, and funnel students into jobs and internships with conservative groups. The upshot was the development of an “academic ecosystem in which donor-preferred ideas can thrive…. complete with an echo chamber of media outlets — including Fox News, The Washington Examiner, The College Fix, RealClearPolitics, The Daily Caller and the Daily Wire — that are eager to promote an array of questionable ideas. Among them, “money is speech, corporations are people, and all regulations are oppressive.”

Climate conferences: liability or opportunity?

Climate change can only be stopped if activists utilize new forms of media


02/12/2021

US President Joe Biden stands at the podium at COP26, 2021, the annual climate conference

“COP26 was a flop”, “COP26: most ambitious climate summit yet”, “What the outcome of COP26 means”, “COP26 is a PR event,” – the headlines from this year’s climate conference were all over the place, both during the event and in the aftermath. Hailed as ‘the most important climate conference’ since the Paris Agreement of 2015, people across the board, from activists to journalists, small business owners and union members, had high hopes that finally, this year, our elected representatives would do something about the pace at which we are careening towards a world unliveable for billions of people.

The delegates did make some real progress, COP-timists will say. ‘What about that methane pledge?’, and all those countries that promised to ‘end deforestation’? Or the fact that Modi said India would ‘phase down coal?’ Doesn’t that count for anything? It does, of course, count for something.

Any progress in a movement that has existed for decades and has thus-far largely been ignored is, of course, cause for celebration. This year’s climate conference drew more delegates than ever before, and many who have historically been left out of negotiations: young people, representatives from indigenous communities, and support from workers’ movements within Glasgow. And if these were pledges that had been agreed to 15, 10 or even five years ago it would likely have been deemed a true success.

However, the problem is that we, globally, are far past promises to “phase down coal”. We are facing a global emergency the scale of which we cannot even begin to imagine. Millions of people will be without water by 2030, triggering mass migrations that will dwarf the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015. The Amazon rain forest is dangerously close to a tipping point that will see it begin to emit more CO2 than it sucks up, which will likely end up with it turning into a savannah.

Meanwhile, the global agricultural industry sucks up 70% of the freshwater on the planet and we dump a garbage truck full of fast-fashion textiles into landfills every single second. What is a pledge to end deforestation without any mention of global agricultural subsidies, or the role that fashion plays in cutting down precious trees? What do words about phasing down fossil fuels mean when leaders immediately turn around and approve new oil fields and coal mines?

To community activists and followers of social movements, the fact that leaders completely fail over and over to tackle any challenge that cannot be fought with guns and bombs is far from surprising. But there was something interesting and new about this COP that departed from previous years, other than the fact that a significant portion of the delegates could not attend due to Covid travel and vaccine restrictions.

This year, for the first time, media around the world turned their attention towards the conference in a way that they had not before.

During the two weeks of the conference, press agency footage was plentiful, and it seemed like every announcement and protest was getting coverage. From diplomats to young activists taking the official stage, as well as Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion members staging protests outside, COP was in the spotlight.

This is no accident, and not because people within large media organizations have deemed climate change important enough to cover – it’s because the climate emergency is, well, an emergency now. Fires, floods, famine, drought, migration: these all make for attention-grabbing headlines, so extreme weather and the warming of the Earth are finally seen as ‘newsy’ enough to cover. The news cycle isn’t working any differently now than it has ever before. The old adage, ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, is still as true as ever. Except now, it is the whole planet that is bleeding.

So what’s wrong with more media attention on climate change, and especially on a conference bringing together heads of governments from across the globe? Like Greta Thunberg pointed out, this COP and future climate conferences are in danger of becoming important PR campaigns for nations; another tool with which professional diplomats and negotiators navigate the international stage.

The more media attention, the more their empty promises can be echoed and amplified around the world. It could become especially important for countries that are in the spotlight for human rights’ abuses: the United States, India, and China to name a few. These types of conferences hold the potential to become one giant greenwash, especially now that politicians know that they will have more and more of a spotlight as the state of the planet deteriorates.

But there is another option, albeit one that will require a change in the way that the global media reports on these types of events. Traditionally, sources of information in the press that are deemed ‘credible’ are often those that are affiliated with governments or businesses, although this varies between and sometimes within countries.

When it comes to reporting about the climate, however, governments and businesses usually have similar agendas, so in the never-ending search for objectivity, many media outlets also give their platforms to NGOs, or activists, as long as they don’t say anything too controversial.

And considering as COP, and other conferences like it, are hugely important in the opportunity they provide to these individuals and organizations to meet with each other, the media lens might serve to pass the microphone to alternative viewpoints in a way that they haven’t been offered before.

In the face of a global crisis that threatens the life and livelihoods of most people on the planet, there is no more time to accept statements from politicians at face value when it comes to climate action.

For better or for worse, the entire landscape of journalism has, and continues to, evolve at a rapid pace. Large media houses are losing captive audiences and being forced to change how they report, which often means prioritizing what their viewers want to see. Smaller organizations are getting a chance at a reach that would not have been possible before widespread internet access and social media.

We’re in an interesting moment, where journalism is more of a two-way street than it has ever been before. And social platforms, which of course come with a huge number of their own issues, have a chance to influence what ends up on the homepage of major news outlets.

Maybe in the face of these changes, climate conferences could be a tool that community organizers and activists could use to have their voices heard.

Deaths on the Polish border – the EU and Belarus share the blame

In the conflict between the EU and Belarus, both sides have been treating refugees as pawns


01/12/2021

by Magdo Chuchracka, Alicja Flisak and Hanna Grześkiewicz

Two officers of the Polish border police throw a 29-year old pregnant person from the Congo over the border fence back into Belarusian territory like a sack of rubbish. Two days later, she has a miscarriage. She is not the only pregnant refugee who has recently tried to reach the European Union over the Polish border. Local activists report that there are known cases of pregnant people who have been violently sent back to Belarus six times.

Around the border, voluntary medics are trying to look after those who most need their help. They examine pregnant people with an ultrasound scanner. One of the refugees, who is nine months pregnant, is complaining about strong pains and a urinary tract infection.

“We want the children to be born in a safe place”, says one of the doctors. People are driven away from the border like cattle – irrespective of whether they are pregnant. And this is happening in a country in which the constitutional court has de facto forbidden abortions in the name of Catholic values. But the protection of unborn lives, which the Catholic hypocrites harp on about, applies only to white Christians.”

Free Hand

The doctors report that some of the pregnant people have considered suicide. They are losing hope. After they receive medical help, they must return to the woods. Without water, without food, without medicine. Often without family and friends, who have been lost on the journey or were separated from them by state authorities, even though it is illegal to use violence separate families.

But that hasn’t interested anyone here for a long time. The deputy press speaker of the border control in Podlachien, Krystyna Jakimik-Jarosz, openly admits that pregnant people are being returned “to the border strips.”

Wojewodschaft Podlachien lies in the North, partly bordering Lithuania, but mainly Belarus. Since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis in mid-August of this year, its border security had not punished a single border guard for brutality or other illegal practises. According to officer Jakimik-Jarosz, there has not been a single complaint about her colleagues. Small wonder. None of the border guards would report their own people, and the masked officers, who have mainly hidden their car number plates, cannot be recognised from the outside. It doesn’t matter that this is illegal. For the refugees, who also don’t speak any Polish, it is almost impossible to make a complaint about abuse.

The border guards have a completely free hand. They can do what they want. An Iraqi journalist reports that the border police have shot at the people in the woods with rubber bullets. One of his friends was seriously wounded there. There have also already been deaths. “We feel like we’re fair game. I don’t know if I’m still a person. I have become a hunted animal. They have robbed me of my humanity. My crime is that I have the worst passport in the world”. Some of the refugees call the no-man’s land between Poland and Belarus the “Second Iraq”.

Hundreds of thousands of people want to leave the “first Iraq” – devastated by Western wars and militant Islam, like many other states in the Middle East, many people there live in disgraceful conditions threatened by hunger, poverty and violence. The EU deal with Turkey has prevented people from coming to Europe by land since 2016. Now only the dangerous and often fatal path over the Mediterranean remains.

Brought to the border

Since the EU applied sanctions on Belarusian president Alexander Lukaschenko following the supposedly rigged elections of August 2020, a new possibility of escaping misery has emerged. The Belarusian travel agency “Oskartur” is organising flights to Minsk and four nights in a hotel for around US$3,400 (€2,935). For the last few months, Lukaschenko had been flying in people from Baghdad and Istanbul and bringing them to the border with the West. First to Lithuania, and for the last few weeks also to the border with Poland, 300 kilometres away, where the Belarusian border guards drive the people towards the fences that separate the two countries.

According to media reports, the government in Minsk is extending these activities. On November 7th 2021, the Welt am Sonntag reported that roughly 40 weekly flights until March were planned from Istanbul, Damascus and Dubai.

Grodno has 380,000 inhabitants and is nearly 20 kilometres from the border. In Grodno, the rumour mill is buzzing. It says that the refugees are good business. A woman can take $100 for a flat of 30 square metres for 12 people. This rumour can’t be proved. The Belarusian media do not report the migrants. “No independent journalist in the country is reporting the migration phenomenon. Also no NGO”, says Alexej Schota from the local news portal hrodna. life. It is simply too dangerous. The authorities threatened to close down the website in September.

In Lenin Square in the town centre, at the foot of the memorial to Russian revolutionaries who rejected all forms of nationalism, people lie in sleeping bags and tatty coats. Around the market place, many of them are looking for weatherproof boots and warm clothing. The path through the forest to the border is barely possible in flip flops. And it’s getting even colder. Winter is coming: at night the temperatures are already sub-zero.

State of emergency declared

On 2nd September, the Polish government declared a state of emergency along the Belarusian border. Since then, 183 cities and villages are closed to outsiders, and open meetings are forbidden. Aid organisations have been barely able to reach the refugees who have managed to cross the border. Accompanying the state of emergency, the official ruling has ordered a “restriction of access to public information about activities in the area of the state of emergency regarding the defence of national borders and the prevention of and fight against illegal migration”. In plain language: journalists and doctors, lawyers and activists must stay out.

In the last three months, the Polish authorities have registered more than 28,500 attempts to cross the border, According to reports from people who live in the closed areas, at the moment there are around 3,000 refugees living there. Although there is no way of counting exactly how many people are involved, only a few individuals are occasionally able to bring simple soup and warm clothes into the woods. Everyone else must wait outside. “We can only help those who manage to get out of there”, says Marta Gorczynska, a lawyer who is active in the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland, and in the Grupa Ganica (Border Group). And even this is difficult, as the helpers are fully overwhelmed.

Cynical charge

Meanwhile, in the Polish media the horror scenario is being propagated of an anonymous mass which is threatening to overwhelm Poland. You see very little in either the liberal media or that close to the government about the individual experiences of the refugees. Pictures of arrests from the Polish side are reminiscent of those of the apprehension of members of criminal groups.

At the same time, the Belarusian station Belta News is trying to further stoke the fires of conflict. The station regularly broadcasts reports about the “unsustainable conditions” at the border fence. The government in Minsk is accusing the Polish authorities of hurting the refugees and restricting the work of journalists. On the 9th of November, President Lukaschenko officially warned his neighbour against further provocations in the border area, referring to the protection of women and children. The refugees have become pawns in their game.

Grupa Granica, an alliance of journalists and doctors, lawyers and actives, demands of the Polish authorities that they at least allow doctors and paramedics into the special zone. The group “Medycy na Granicy” (doctors at the border) now offers consultation by telephone, to provide medical advice as a bare minimum. More than 500 doctors have registered to help.

It was some time before the larger Polish aid agencies and charities responded. Poland’s largest charity “Wielka Orkiestra Swiatecznej Pomocy” (Large orchestra of Christmas help), which collects money every year for medical equipment has allowed “Medycy na Granicy” to use all their equipment, but only in the last few days. The Polish Red Cross has now opened all its sites for the collection of donations.

Just over 2 weeks ago, the Brandenburg initiative “Wir packen’s an” (we will tackle it) reached Wojewodschaft, the capital of Wojewodschaft Podlachien, with a lorry load of aid supplies. Last Tuesday, a further transport was able to reach its goal. Together with the initiative “Seebrücke”, “Wir packen’s an” is currently trying to gain a permit from the German interior ministry to be able to bring refugees to Germany on their return journey.

Little Infrastructure

Apart from this, in the border area there has so far been only very little international support. Many of the local activists are burned out because of the permanent activity. “Every day there is more work at the border. The shift that ended their work at 8 o’clock this morning could only sleep for one hour”, reported an activist from “Medycy na Granicy” last week. The situation is more than overwhelming. The local groups are therefore asking that journalists, doctors and lawyers come to the border if they are able to arrange this. As well as personnel, there is also a lack of heated tents and combat support hospitals.

The Polish army and the border patrols really have not yet built anything, as recently reported in the newspaper Krytyka Polityczna. Sylwia Urbanksa and Przemyslaw Sadura spoke of “total chaos” at the border: “The Polish state is not trying to organise an adequate number of transit camps for the refugees. Instead, the exhausted people are driven back into the woods.

Meanwhile, the conservative Polish PiS government under Mateusz Morawiecki is abdicating responsibility and demonising the refugees. Here, they are playing the same game as the European Union. The woods in the Polish-Belarusian border territory and the emergency complement the Mediterranean, where emergency sea rescue is being criminalized. It does not help to merely point out the fact that Lukaschenko is using the refugees as a weapon and Belarus does not care about their fate. Because Lukaschenko’s “hybrid war” is an attempt to put the EU under pressure through organised migration. This is only able to work because in previous years, the EU has increasingly closed its outer borders and visibly outsourced its migration policy to so-called “third countries”, in order to keep refugees away from its own territory at any price.

Praise from Frontex chief

The “European solution to the humanitarian catastrophe at the Polish-Belarusian border is the deployment of the European “border control agency” Frontex. This solution has been demanded by part of the parliamentary opposition in the Sejm as well as Polish civil society. The effect is one of using a fox to guard chickens. For Frontex was not created to save people, but to deter refugees, as shown by increasing claims that Frontex is making illegal “pushbacks”. No wonder that the cooperation between the Polish authorities and Frontex, which is located in Warsaw, seems to be working well. Even if the Polish government continues to reject all Frontex activity on the border, in the end Warsaw receives enough resources to be solely in charge. Frontex executive director Fabrice Leggeri recently thanked the Polish authorities for the help in protecting the Eastern EU outer border. He was impressed by the methods which were deployed to control the border. There has been a permanent exchange of information since the beginning of the crisis. Leggeri also approves of the newest idea of the PiS government to build a wall along the Belarusian border. That fits the bill. The member states of the European Union and the Schengen area have already built more that a thousand kilometres of wall since the 1990s, in order to prevent refugees from coming to Europe.

Furthermore, the Polish government is using the situation on the Belarusian border to promote their own political agenda. In the name of the “hybrid war” it is preparing a “law to defend the fatherland” and planning to further increase military spending. Vice-president Jaroslaw Kaczynski has already announced a “radical strengthening of the armed forces”. Poland already belongs to the few countries which have achieved the NATO goal of spending a minimum of two percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for military purposes. Warsaw would like to increase this spending to 2.5% of the GDP by 2030. Racism and militarism are also in this case two sides of the same coin. The horrible pictures from the border have at least led to a fragile pro-migration movement to develop for the first time. In Warsaw and Krakow, people are taking to the streets again and again under the banner “Stop the torture on the border”. We can hope that this movement will get larger, in order to increase the pressure on the government.

No Solution in Sight

Meanwhile, refugees have been organising themselves. On Sunday, 7th November, thousands of them gathered five kilometres from the border near Grodno. On Monday, 8th November, they were joined by further groups from Minsk and Brest. Together, they walked along the motorway towards the Polish border – accompanied by the Belarusian military – and tried to cross it. The Polish border guards responded with tear gas. There were also reports of shots in the air, although this has not been confirmed independently. But some refugees did film the acts of the Polish and Belarusian border troops.

Now, 12,000 soldiers have gathered on the border. Warsaw says that if necessary, more can be mobilised. They want to stand up to Lukaschenko, no matter what happens. President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen is of the same opinion. On 8th November, she demanded sanctions against Lukaschenko. In cynical diplomat’s jargon, she stated that she wanted to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and support a “safe return” for people. Meanwhile, the Lithuanian parliament in Vilnius has declared a state of emergency on the border with Belarus, initially limited to one month. This means that death on the EU outer borders will continue.

Magdo Chuchracka is a queer activist who lives in Berlin. She works at the Goethe University in Frankfurt-Main, with a focus on Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Feminism, Media and Political Science.

Alicja Flisak is an activist and socialist who lives in Berlin. She is a sociologist and works in the international department of the party Die LINKE.

Hanna Grześkiewicz is an activist who lives in Berlin. She writes and researches the subjects social movements, Eastern Europe, Feminism and Music/Culture.

This article first appeared in German in the junge Welt newspaper. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.

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