Category Archives: Government Oppression

The federal government just set aside a huge sum $40bn to compensate the victims and relatives of a system of cruel racial exploitation that existed for much of the countrys history. This news is not about the United States, where debate over reparations for slavery have been stalled in Congress for decades. No, this news comes from the USs neighbour to the north, Canada.

The national government of Canada has agreed to set aside this sum, the equivalent of $31bn, for Indigenous Canadians who were harmed by the countrys child welfare system. The huge sum will go towards compensating Indigenous children who were unnecessarily removed from their families in the last three decades, and fixing the discriminatory system itself. The decision is the latest step in Canadas efforts to provide redress for historic wrongs against Indigenous Canadians and especially Indigenous children. It is an acknowledgement that even after the closure of Canadas infamous residential schools, the welfare system remained focused on removing Indigenous children from their families rather than supporting them in place.

For years, Indigenous Canadians were subjected to Canadian boarding schools. These institutions, generally operated by the Catholic Church and other religious institutions, forcibly removed First Nations, Inuit and Mtis children from their parents and communities and systematically stripped them of their cultural identities while imposing upon them English and French, Christian religious practices, and white Canadian culture.

This programme of state-sanctioned kidnapping and indoctrination officially ran from 1883 until the last school was closed in 1996, despite a long and well-known record of abuse. The stories that have emerged over the decades concerning these schools are horrific. Sexual abuse of children was common, and many of the schools had horrific mortality rates, as children died from tuberculosis and other communicable diseases, malnutrition, violence and even infanticide. The recent revelations of hundreds of newly-discovered unmarked graves on the sites of the now-closed boarding schools has created public outrage across Canada in recent months. These public scandals, combined with a ruling from a 2016 tribunal that surviving victims should be compensated, as well as a pair of pending lawsuits concerning more recent cases of discrimination, finally prompted the Canadian government to act.

In contrast, the debate about reparations continues to ebb and flow in the US without any resolution. Legislation in the House of Representatives to create a national commission to explore the issue, symbolically titled House Resolution 40 (HR 40) after the famous Forty Acres and a Mule promise to compensate freed slaves after the American Civil War, has been introduced by Black legislators every year since 1989, to no avail. The racial reckoning that occurred after the deaths of George Floyd and others in 2020 seemed to produce newfound momentum for the reparations conversation. HR 40 moved out of committee for the first time in 2021 but has yet to be put up to a full vote.

Unlike Canada, where the revelation of the graveyards of Indigenous children helped spur moral outrage and governmental action, the evils of American slavery have been extremely well-documented in academic and popular discourse for some time. And attempts like the 1619 Project to highlight the centrality of slavery and its aftermath to American history have led to backlash and laws designed to specifically downplay and obscure the magnitude and horror of American slavery and racial oppression. Such laws portend a renewed opposition to calls for reparations. And so attempts to appeal to moral outrage are likely to be counterproductive in the face of defensive conservatives and state policies designed to whitewash history.

Despite these setbacks in the United States, the American case for reparations can draw encouragement and examples from Canada. The multibillion-dollar sum allocated in Canada comes after years of increasingly large awards and settlements across the country. An earlier settlement reached in 2006 obligated the federal government and the Catholic Church to pay compensation to victims of the residential schools system. In recent years, the provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have agreed to settlements with specific First Nations worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each, based on improper allocation of lands based on treaties that are decades or even centuries old. An Ontario court recently ruled that the government had been significantly under-compensating members of various First Nations under the terms of an 1850 treaty, requiring potential billions in back pay.

The first lesson to draw from these Canadian examples is that localised action can have significant effect. This is encouraging for the US where, absent federal legislation, local jurisdictions have taken up the task of reparations. Evanston, Illinois recently became the first US city to implement a policy of reparations for its African American residents. The city has inspired other municipalities to look into similar programmes; main cities such as Detroit and Boston have taken steps towards implementing reparations. Evanston even recently hosted a meeting of the National African American Reparations Commission, which seeks to create a national network among advocates working on reparations at the local level. California, the countrys most populous state, created a task force in 2020 that has been investigating the details of how to implement reparations across the state. Even private institutions have begun implementing programmes to benefit descendants of American slaves, including Georgetown University and several other colleges and universities with histories of profiting from slavery.

Furthermore, reparations have been made or considered for more specific cities and statewide programmes that victimised Black people. North Carolina has been paying out millions to victims of forced sterilisation during a statewide eugenics programme that operated until 1976. The city of Chicago has been paying millions of dollars to compensate victims of police torture under now-deceased Police Commander Jon Burge. The city government of Tulsa, Oklahoma has begun deliberations over compensating any survivors as well as descendants of those victimised by the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, which rose into popular consciousness over the 100th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing against the citys Black residents.

In each of these examples, at least some of the recipients of compensation are living survivors of the policies in question, as is the case for the Canadian programme as well. However, these programmes have also established that families of direct victims are eligible for compensation. Furthermore, while slavery in the United States ended far too long ago for any of its direct victims to still be alive, there is a strong case that slavery represented just one phase in an unbroken chain of anti-Black policies that include Jim Crow segregation, redlining policies that discriminated against Black homeowners, and biased policing and criminal justice systems, all of which continue to affect Black people today. Indeed, scholar and prominent reparations advocate Ta-Nehisi Coates has made just such an argument, including in his landmark 2014 essay: The Case for Reparations.

If the Canadian example is to be followed, focusing on these specific and localised cases redlining in American cities, the Tulsa Massacre, police torture in Chicago, reparations in specific cities or states can lay the groundwork for larger and more general plans for compensation for the larger system of racial oppression. This type of bottom-up approach to reparations can actually support and complement the top-down approach that has been pursued in Congress through HR 40.

The final lesson coming from Canada is that, until legislation is passed to recognise and compensate past injustices, the court system can be an effective avenue for gaining redress. The United States has seen the judiciary move ahead of the legislature in other areas, from desegregation in the 1950s with Brown vs Board of Education to LGBTQ rights in the recent cases of Obergefell vs Hodges and Bostock vs Clayton County. One such lawsuit for reparations in the US was dismissed in 2004 without prejudice, meaning that it can be revived. As local, state and corporate efforts for reparations become more widespread, such changes could add momentum for a renewed legal case for reparations. A legal victory, or simply a strong court case, may in turn spur legislators to finally move on HR 40, seeking legislative redress for the evils of slavery and subsequent racial oppression.

The Canadian process for redressing the wrongs that continue to be inflicted upon Indigenous people has a long way to go. As the head of the First Nations advocacy organisation behind one the recent lawsuits notes candidly, no final agreement has been reached for the $40bn set aside by the Canadian government and promises actually dont end the discrimination for kids if theyre not implemented. The US case for reparations has even further to go, having yet to even revive the 40 Acre promise of 1865. But the progress made in select US localities, and the recent advancements in Canada, offer new hope and new strategies for finally achieving a measure of racial justice and repairing some of the damage that has accumulated over generations and centuries.

Correction: (8 January 2022) A previous version of this article stated that the $40bn sum set aside by the Canadian government was for Indigenous Canadians subjected to boarding schools. It is actually for Indigenous Canadians harmed by the discriminatory welfare system in the last three decades. The article has been updated to correct this error.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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Canada approved reparations the US can be next - Al Jazeera English

Europe has faced such ugly moments too often before, where matters of life and deathand of war and peacedepended on the balance of power and test of wills between despots and more benevolent forces.

The Cold Wars peaceful end thirty years ago was meant to alter that bloody history and usher in a period that then US President George H.W. Bush in 1989 hoped would bring a Europe whole and free, where Russia would find its rightful and peaceful place.

For forty years, the seeds of democracy in Eastern Europe lay dormant, buried under the frozen tundra of the Cold War, said President Bush on May 31, 1989, in Mainz, Germany, six months before the Berlin Walls fall and more than two years ahead of Soviet dissolution. And decade after decade, time after time, the flowering human spirit withered from the chill of conflict and oppression The world has waited long enough. The time is right. Let Europe be whole and free.

It is with that as context that US President Joe Biden this week confronts a moment of truth for the dying embers of that aspiration and the signature foreign-policy initiative of his presidency. Biden is rallying allies for the systemic competition between democracy and Chinese and Russian autocracy that he has said will define the twenty-first century.

That collides with Russian President Vladimir Putins signature ambition of reversing the breakup of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of NATO to his borders, the former of which he famously called the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the [twentieth] century. As he turns seventy this year, he seems more determined than ever to cement his legacy, as have Russian czars and leaders before him, through territorial expansion or the control of neighbors.

This weeks talks begin with Mondays bilateral US-Russian meeting in Geneva, starting with an initial conversation Sunday evening, move on to the Russian-NATO Council in Brussels on Wednesday, and then end on Thursday in Vienna at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

What has prompted all these emergency meetings are Russian security demands delivered in mid-December in the form of two draft treaties. Their provisions would prohibit Ukraine from ever joining NATO and require the Alliance to withdraw forces stationed in member countries in Central and Eastern Europe and stop all military exercises in those countries. That was followed a few days later by brash Putin brinksmanship in the form of an ultimatumbacked by some one hundred thousand troops near Ukraines bordersthat he would take military-technical action if not satisfied.

Thus far, the United States and its allies have answered his escalation through the carrot of reciprocal talks on some aspects of the treatiesincluding allowable missile systems and military maneuversand through the stick of punishing, new financial, military, and technology sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine.

US officials told the New York Times that those plans include cutting off Russias largest financial institutions from global transactions, imposing an embargo on American-made or American-designed technology needed for defense-related and consumer industries, and arming insurgents in Ukraine who would conduct what would amount to a guerrilla war against a Russian military occupation, if it comes to that.

By this weeks end, the United States and its allies likely will know whether Putin is willing to negotiate or whether hes determined to escalate.

The fluidity of the situation was underscored by this past weeks swift, Russian-led military intervention in Kazakhstan, at the request of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, ostensibly to quell widespread public protests against a fuel-price increase on January 2.

It would be a mistake to separate Putins actions in Kazakhstan from his ambitions in Ukraine. By his calculus, they are inextricably linked.

When the dust settles, Kazakhstan is likely to land deeper in Moscows expanding sphere of influence than at any time since it broke from the Soviet Union in 1991complete with its energy and mineral riches, which include 40 percent of the worlds uranium reserves.

Although the situation is still unfolding and reliable information is hard to come by, whats beyond dispute is that the timing and swift execution of Russias intervention underscore Putins determination to see and seize strategic opportunities in the former Soviet space. It is the fourth time in just two years that Moscow has intervened in neighboring states that had been tilting toward the Westfollowing interventions in Armenia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Rumors are rife in Kazakhstan regarding Russias role in this past weeks events, ranging from the possibility that it was a Russian-organized coup from the beginning to the certainty that the always-opportunistic Putin simply seized the moment.

Whats clear is that with his country in turmoil and his leadership at risk, Tokayev turned to Putin to ensure his political survival. That is likely to bring lasting change to a countryand perhaps to other parts of Central Asiathat had benefited from balancing relations with Moscow, Beijing, and Washington.

With Moscows support, Tokayev issued shoot-to-kill orders against protesters and ousted Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, his erstwhile benefactor, and the countrys first president, as head of Kazakhstans powerful security council. He also ousted and arrested Karim Masimov, his intelligence chief, on charges of treason.

Russian troops are now on the ground protecting the countrys most crucial airports and military installations, alongside other soldiers from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), made up of six nations from the former Soviet Union, in its first such military intervention since its 1992 founding.

As US Secretary of State Tony Blinken said this week, One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, its sometimes very difficult to get them to leave. If there is a message from Kazakhstan to US officials negotiating this week with the Russians, it is this: Whatever you hope to negotiate, recognize that Putin is playing for keeps, believes he has the initiative, is willing to take risks, is prepared to send in troops, and sees the Biden administrationparticularly following the Afghanistan debacleand its partners as weak, divided, and indecisive.

The least-likely scenarios are those of Putin backing off from his demands on NATO or executing a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Watch instead for something murkier and craftier that would be designed to divide alliesthe taking of additional swatches of Ukrainian territory, the annexation of Luhansk of Donbas provinces, where Russian separatists dominate, or the stirring up of internal Ukrainian dramas with a hidden hand.

The question is whether the United States and its allies can avoid both appeasement and war. The future of Europe is again in the balance.

This article originally appeared onCNBC.com

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

#1 The future of Europe hinges on the coming talks between the West and RussiaTHE WASHINGTON POST

The recent passing of Fred Hiatt, the legendary editorial page editor of the Washington Post, was a blow to democracy advocates around the world.

So it was heartening to see the Posts lead editorial on Sunday rightly warning that history could repeat itself in Europe if the United States and its allies dont respond properly to Putins aggressions. Hiatt would have been proud of the piece, comparing the gravity of the moment to the specter of Munich in 1938, when Britain and France traded a piece of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitlers Germany in return for his false pledge not to make war.

What the United States cannot do is allow Mr. Putin to win concessions at the point of a gun, the Post concludes. In the all too likely event that he is not bargaining in good faith, and does invade Ukraine, President Biden will have to help that country defend itself, rally NATO and ensure that Russia pays a heavy price. Read more

#2 Kazakhstan Unrest and Russias Intervention Transform Ties With MoscowYaroslav Trofimov | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

For more on the history of Russian-Kazakh relations, look no further than this excellent explainer from Yaroslav Trofimov.

Longtime Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev oversaw moves to strengthen the Kazakh identity and weaken Russias historic influence following the fall of the Soviet Union, Trofimov writes. But now by inviting Russian-led foreign intervention into Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has risked upending that balancing act.

Recent history provides two contrasting paths for Kazakhstan to follow: Belarus, where President Alyaksandr Lukashenkas brutal crackdown has successfully kept him in power for now, and Ukraine, where then President Viktor Yanukovych couldnt quell the 2014 revolution and fled to Russia, leading to Putin taking over Crimea and invading the Donbas region. The question now is whether Tokayev will have enough political will to take Lukashenkos path, Russia expert Andrey Kortunov tells Trofimov. Read more

#3 Russias menacing of Ukraine is unlikely to induce NATO to retreatTHE ECONOMIST

The Economist examines how Putins menacing build-up across the Ukrainian border could push NATO closer together, a risk the magazine argues the Russian dictator could be more than willing to take.

The irony, the Economist writes, is that Russias efforts to halt NATOs eastward expansion may end up achieving precisely the opposite. But for Putin, the gamble may be worth it. Better to start a war now, despite the attendant costs, than risk a Ukraine bristling with foreign troops in a decade.

The article ends with a sobering reflection by Munich Security Conference Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, who in 1993 asked a top official in Moscow how Russia was going to calm the fears of former Soviet bloc countries such as Poland and Ukraine.

Whats wrong with our neighbors living in fear of us? replied the official. Unfortunately, says Ischinger, very little, if anything, has changed. Read more

#4 Ukraine is Only One Small Part of Putins PlansLilia Shevtsova | THE NEW YORK TIMES

Longtime Russia expert Lilia Shevtsovas smart, concise analysis of Putins attempt to remake the international order into a shape more friendly to authoritarian Russia is a crucial read in order to understand Putins endgame.

Judging from the Wests awkward, anguished response so far, Shevtsova warns, Putin might be close to getting what he wants. And Ukraine could only be the beginning. Writes Shevtsova: Today, Ukraine is the jewel to fight for. But it wont end there: Belarus, whose embattled leader relies on Russias support, could be the next prize in the geopolitical rivalry or perhaps it will be Kazakhstan, where popular anger at the corrupt, Russian-backed regime has erupted. The drama is just beginning.

The result, she argues, is a deadlock, as Russia and the West play a seemingly endless game of who blinks first. Read more

#5 In Kazakhstans Street Battles, Signs of Elites Fighting Each OtherIvan Nechepurenko and Andrew Higgins| THE NEW YORK TIMES

This weeks must-read is this superbly reported explainer of the riots in Kazakhstan from Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew Higgins on how a power struggle within the Kazakh leadership may well have spilled into the streets and fueled the unrest sweeping the country.

The [fuel-price] crisis, they write, coincided with a power struggle within the government, fueling talk that the people fighting in the streets were proxies for feuding factions of the political elite.

Still, they note that discontent, even if exploited by political elites, is very real. Now that Tokayev has invited Russian troops into the country, the situation has only escalated further. What happens in Kazakhstan will leave ripples throughout the regionand perhaps beyond. Read more

Image: Demonstrators hold the Ukrainian national flag during a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin's policies, in Kyiv, Ukraine January 9, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters.

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Can the US avoid both appeasement and war? This week's Russia talks will be revealing. - Atlantic Council

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Imam Hussain University, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), published an assessment of the November 2019 uprising, which spread to 200 cities with lightning speed in reaction to the tripling of fuel prices and shook the regime to its foundations.

This assessment underscores the significance of the 2019 uprising as a turning point in the face-off between the Iranian people and the regime.

This study underlines that those protests were organized, and that the protesters were not a spontaneous expression of outrage nor indiscriminate vandalizing of shops or public locations.

The Enemys Tactics in Creating Urban Riots, acknowledges that people expressed their disdain toward the ruling theocracy by targeting the regimes centers of oppression and plunder.

The IRGCs latest report was reviewed by 30 IRGC commanders, officials of security brigades, IRGC intelligence organization, Basij organization, and Sarollah Headquarters in Tehran [charged with maintaining Tehrans security].

The report highlights that Poor people and a part of the middle class who had become poor, mostly youth who did not foresee a clear economic, social and political future for themselves, participated in November protests.

The report also acknowledges that the nature of these protests differed significantly from protests in the 1990s and 2000s in that they resembled the protests in the 1980s that were organized by the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

The report also underlines that the November 2019 uprisings nationwide character and anti-government nature made it distinct from the 1999 and 2009 protests.

While this report sheds light on the regimes paranoia over the explosive state of Iranian society, it distorts the ruthless manner in which the security forces cracked down on the protest and deliberately ignores Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis directive to open fire on the innocent protesters.

The following are some excerpts of this report.

The Rioters Field Tactic

Policy Recommendation

To manage urban crises like November 2019, we recommend:

Summary

The IRGCs latest report once again highlighted that major Iran protests in 2019 were a turning point and had a significant impact on the regimes standing both domestically and internationally. The November 2019 uprising laid bare the regimes vulnerability and illegitimacy in Iran, explaining why Tehran had to resort to stepped-up intransigent policies regarding its nuclear and missile program.

The IRGCs report also acknowledges that the protests were highly organized, and protesters only targeted the regimes centers of oppression and plunder.

This report reconfirms that unlike what Tehrans apologists have tried to imply for years, Iranians do not believe in reform, have rejected the regimes factions, and see regime change as the only viable option to the current economic and social crises.

The report lays bare the fragile and vulnerable state of the regime vis-a-vis an increasingly restive society. Against this backdrop, Western governments should refrain from providing Irans moribund regime with any lifeline. Including the easing of the sanctions. On the contrary, they should stand with the Iranian people as they stand for liberty.

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Exclusive: IRGCs Report Says 2019 Iran Uprising Was Organized - National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

The decision this month by an Israeli judge in the Beer Sheva Court caught advocate Maher Hanna off guard. And Hanna, a member of the Israel Bar Association, had already encountered the most bizarre case of his career as he attempted to have his client, Mohammed El-Halabi, released.

El-Halabi, humanitarian organization World Visions former head of operations in Gaza, has been in an Israeli jail since June 2016. He was arrested on his way back from Jerusalem and stands accused of masterminding a financial conspiracy to divert millions of dollars earmarked for humanitarian work to organizations Israel authorities have labeled terrorist groups.

The Israeli media reported an astronomical figure of $50 million for the value of the alleged fraud. This far exceeds the entire budget of the US-based Christian organization. In fact, World Vision and its Australian donors conducted an independent, high-level forensic audit of all the accounts of their Gaza operations and found no evidence of wrongdoing by El-Halabi. His maximum personal spending limit was $300, while the financial ceiling for his entire office was a mere $15,000.

Since his arrest, and reported torture for more than 50 days, Israeli authorities have repeatedly offered to release him if he accepts a plea bargain in which he admits, well, almost anything, just to cover up for the gross mistake that was made in arresting him. He has refused, saying he will not admit to a crime he did not commit.

Israels attempts to hide its actions behind a veneer of just laws have been totally exposed for what they are: Instruments of oppression and discrimination

Daoud Kuttab

The case has been bizarre from day one, including secret evidence and irregularities surrounding what the defense lawyer was allowed to see and do. It culminated last summer with the Israeli judge ordering Hanna to type his closing argument into the computer of the Israeli prosecutor, and refused to give him a copy of it.

Hanna finalized his argument in September in accordance with the unusual demands of the court. A ruling has yet to be made and the Israeli high court has ordered the Beersheba court to make a decision by Jan. 24. Bail has been repeatedly refused on the grounds that El-Halabi is accused of treason.

The most recent shock to Hanna in the case was an order by the judge, on Jan. 5, that he must reduce his 386-page closing argument to 100 pages. And that he can do so only when the Israeli prosecutor allows him to access to the laptop computer on which he was forced to type the original argument.

As bizarre as that case is, another judicial travesty also emerged in the first few days of 2022 when an Israeli court ordered the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to pay $13 million in fines to the Jewish National Fund over a 20-year-old case involving the expiration of a lease on land granted by the church to Israeli builders in the 1950s. The case arose when Jewish Israeli criminals tricked both the church and the JNF over an extension of the lease.

The fraudsters were caught, convicted and jailed but now the courts have ordered the church to pay a huge fine for a crime it did not commit.

These two cases were foreshadowed by the continuing Israeli policy of administrative detention, under which about 450 Palestinians are being held without charge or trial. Some, such as Hisham Abu Hawash, have protested against their detention by going on a hunger strike.

The policy of administrative detention was inherited by Israel authorities from the previous British government which, toward the end of the Second World War, had passed an emergency law allowing the detention of suspects without charge or trial. The power is supposed to be used only in rare and exceptional circumstances, under close supervision and with restrictions to ensure that suspects rights are not abused.

But under Israeli government rule it has become a form of political punishment used against Palestinians. The frequent cases have become so embarrassing that Israels leading independent daily newspaper, Haaretz, has called on the Israeli government to abandon the draconian law and either charge people and present the evidence against them or set them free.

The cases I have mentioned will not be new to those who follow Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. They are a damning indictment of the total deterioration of Israels judicial system, which has been hijacked completely by the Israeli security and intelligence services and has become an instrument of right-wing Israeli governments.

Western democracies have for a long time referred to the democratic values of justice and the rule of law they share with Israel. If the above cases are any indication, such a claim must be reviewed.

Israels attempts to hide its actions behind a veneer of just laws have been totally exposed for what they are: Instruments of oppression and discrimination.

When Israeli and international human rights organizations describe an apartheid regime that exists for the people living between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean, the corrupt Israeli legal system is a reflection of this system of discrimination.

Crimes of apartheid have been declared war crimes. Will the international community therefore address Israels continued war crimes, including the discriminatory policies of its judicial system?

Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Twitter: @daoudkuttab

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

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Recent cases expose to the world the unjust and discriminatory Israeli legal system - Arab News

DA MP says GOOD SG working to strengthen the hand of national Police Minister Bheki Cele

STATEMENT BY CAPE TOWN MAYOR, GEORDIN HILL-LEWIS

7 January 2022

Effort to weaken local policing powers endangers the lives of Capetonians

The City of Cape Town is committed to building and expanding Cape Towns policing powers and resources, because, given the failings of the national police service, this is the only way that we can keep Capetonians safer.

Inexplicably, a former mayoral candidate in the city, Brett Herron, has proposed that we give up, and shut down, successful examples of local policing like the Safety and Security Investigations Unit (SSIU).

Herron appears to be actively working to undermine Cape Towns local policing powers in an effort to strengthen the hand of national Police Minister Bheki Cele, with whom Herrons political party is in partnership at national level. If he gets his way, criminals and corrupt cops will be let off the hook and residents will pay the price.

Far from yielding policing and enforcement powers to the national Minister, this administration is working hard to devolve far more of those powers to Cape Town, where we know we will use them to better protect residents both from criminals and from the failing national state.

We know, as does any resident who lives daily in fear of crime, that residents trust and rely on Cape Towns policing abilities far more than they rely on any other sphere of government. It is regrettable that Herron appears willing to endanger residents by weakening Cape Towns policing powers for political reasons.

Residents cannot rely on SAPS to keep them safe. While there are many hard-working SAPS officers, the fact is that it is another national service that is in steep decline, with devastating consequences for the lives of citizens.

Cape Town must and will step into this gap to keep residents safer, because, unlike politicians who seek to centralise policing powers in the hands of Bheki Cele, we understand that we cannot hope to deliver a city of dignity, safety and shared prosperity so long as people suffer the oppression of violent crime and the constant anxiety that comes with feeling unsafe.

Devolution of power will accelerate over the coming decade in public transport, electricity, and in policing and it will happen whether national government likes it or not, because every crucial national service on which the public depends, is failing.

The Citys Safety and Security Investigations Unit is also extraordinarily successful, making Herrons objections doubly strange.

This unit was established in 1994 to address internal discipline, ensuring that the City of Cape Town maintains its record for the lowest levels of corruption among its policing and enforcement staff so that we do not degenerate into the bribe-taking chaos observed in police forces elsewhere in South Africa.

It is because of the work done by the unit that the City of Cape Town maintains its record for the lowest levels of corruption among its policing and enforcement staff.

The SSIUs role was expanded to deal with criminal cases involving City infrastructure and City Rental Stock where units had been hijacked by gang and criminal activity.

While this remains a priority for SSIU, the unit also functions to assist the South African Police Service (SAPS) and City enforcement agencies with watching briefs, which is the monitoring and tracking of registered criminal cases through the courts.

As such, the SSIU is responsible for the deployment of investigators who will perform watching briefs on the firearms and drug-related cases in the 10 crime hotspots to ensure that we secure convictions on these cases.

They will act in support of the excellent results being achieved by the nearly-1000 Law Enforcement Advancement Programme (LEAP) officers who are deployed in these hotspots. LEAP, like the SSIU, is an innovation of this government (in partnership with the Western Cape Provincial Government) designed to pick up the slack left by the decline and under-resourcing of the SAPS.

Thanks to the work of the SSIU, we have been able to:

- recover 30 hijacked council vehicles between 2020 and 2022

- achieved 2 920 convictions alongside City enforcement agencies and the South African Police Service (SAPS) between 2016 and 2021

- Conduct watching briefs for more than 23 000 arrests made by City enforcement staff for possession of drugs, driving while under the influence, possession of firearms and ammunition.

- Achieve a large number of meaningful convictions for drug, firearm, copper theft, robbery, extortion and even assisting with Interpol investigations leading to the capture of wanted persons.

Unlike Herron, this administration is not prepared to sacrifice these law enforcement successes and the safety of Capetonians merely to please Cele and the national government.

Issued by: Media Office, City of Cape Town, 7 July 2021

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Wrong for Brett Herron to want to close Cape Town`s SSIU - GHL - POLITICS - Politicsweb

Who says we cannot guide ourselves

through the boiling reefs, black as they are...

EDWIN Morgan, the first Poet Laureate of Glasgow, and also of Scotland, bequeathed 1 million to the cause of Scotlands independence. His poetry is also a precious legacy of self-knowledge: he reminds us of our history, both proud and difficult, and urges us to move into our future with courage, determination, love and empathy for the world around us especially our fellow mortals from hyenas, wolves, rhinos and gangsters, to joyful family shoppers in Glasgows Christmas streets.

Yes! Morgan would tell us now. Yes, it might be hard to go, but lets go! because we can do it, because the adventure of Scotlands great chance will give us all the hope and motivation we need to make it work. Morgan believed in Scotland, in our people and in our future as an independent nation.

In the first place, independence is our chance to heal some of the wrongs of history ancient and modern; in the second, remembering hard lessons from that history, independence is the starting gun to Scotlands future in a world that has drastically changed since September 2014.

We will be joining the battle to save Planet Earth from the lethal effects of corporate greed, corruption, toxic pollution and global warming. To prevent mass extinctions; to answer desperate human migration with compassion and positive pragmatism, Scotland can and will be an inspiration and leader. Our independence will offer the chance of a better future to everyone in the British Isles. The twin disasters of Brexit and Covid have horribly demonstrated that the so-called United Kingdom has developed key symptoms of a failing state.

No matter how much anachronistic pomp accompanies the golden coach, how much ermine, how many swords and black tights decorate the premises, Westminster has descended into blatant corruption at the highest levels of government: executive contempt for parliament and the law itself; dislocation from the electorate; expedient and devious power grabs; lethal incompetence; fragmentation of society, racism and dangerous blame culture. All this and huge investment in propaganda to distract us, the rumbling masses, into acquiescence.

David Edgerton (below), Professor of History at Kings College, London, recently argued that: England needs to liberate itself from the Anglo-UK state just as much as Scotland [does]. He claimed the break-up of the UK would help England to establish a new democratic settlement and a new political class.

Yes indeed, Scotlands independence will surely galvanise England into reforming Westminster, still strait-jacketed by outdated conventions and a ridiculous class system that continually and terrifyingly processes smoothly polished, plausible fools to positions of power; it can help to bring England a new, meaningful parliament. That change is long overdue.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast to the racism of Brexit and other vicious Westminster policies such as the hostile environment and the rape clause, the unanimous decision of our Holyrood Parliament to adopt the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child challenged in the Supreme Court by the UK Government is proof that the people of Scotland already expect their government to act as if we are in the early days of a better nation. If independence is a process, we are already on our way.

Learn from history or you will repeat mistakes! urged an old Unionist. It is, nevertheless, easy to understand the recent appalling attempt by frightened Tories and right-wing think tanks to control the teaching of Scotlands history in our schools without any help from Mel Gibson, textbooks show that the past 1300 years in Scotland have been dominated by our dangerously acquisitive, fearful and aggressive neighbour. Tories are quite right to fear our young peoples reaction to injustice and oppression but burning their books wont preserve a rotten state. Everyone in Scotland has the right to know why we are where we are.

I learnedsome more about Scotlands constitutional status in the 1970s when I was handed a government document which explained that a Galloway hill, Mullwharchar, had been chosen as the UK high-level nuclear waste dump not because the granite there was more suitable than anywhere else, but because the communities nearby were small, remote and unsophisticated and unlikely to protest successfully.

Mullwharchar was saved only by a strong earthquake that those same 1970s Westminster special advisers had predicted would never happen. Galloway learned exactly what Westminster thought about our hills and our communities.

Since then there have been many similar examples, each one demonstrating that Scotland is at the mercy of a system which ignores or changes the rules, from planning to the constitution, simply to impose its will. We were subjected to the poll tax while our steel and shipbuilding industries were destroyed. Westminster attempted to circumvent the international London Dumping Convention ban on dumping nuclear waste at sea by dumping it in Scottish territorial waters instead. Scotland was handed over to Nato as the only live bombing range for war games in Europe.

Forty years ago, however, another powerful constitutional lesson came from the people of Orkney. In the 1970s, they had had to fight against a uranium mine which would have destroyed their West Mainland. The UK Government openly acknowledged the inevitable destruction but true to form ordered that the mine should proceed in what they called the national interest. Orkney was saved only by an unexpected world glut of uranium.

Three years later, a new threat arrived: an experimental nuclear reprocessing plant at Dounreay. Westminster MPs made requisite gestures of concern but disingenuously urged adherence to the UK planning system. Anticipating that, as before, London would ignore their protests and proceed in the national interest, Orkney with Shetlands help made a direct appeal to Norway, the Faroe Islands and Denmark they used their history to protect their future.

We will never be allowed to know the full extent of the interventions. However, while the UK Government followed the usual course of ignoring local protest, those independent Scandinavian governments repeatedly expressed concern within the EU and in other international forums. Shortly afterwards, despite the UK determination to press on, the reprocessing experiment dependent on European support was unexpectedly cancelled.

The lesson for Scotland was, and is, crystal clear: be like Norway independent since 1905.

As Brexit drives us into a future that the Scottish electorate vehemently rejected, that Orcadian history lesson seems even more striking. I have absolutely no doubt that Scotland is now regarded as the very last colony to be exploited by a desperate British establishment.

We are, at one and the same time, an inconvenience, with rebellious characters protesting against, for instance, Londons racist immigration policies, and also a vital convenience, not just as a remote empty space for nuclear weapon silos and rotting nuclear submarines, but also as the last milch cow.

The Clair oilfield and our other natural resources are about to be consumed by the voracious appetite of the otherwise bankrupt, post-Brexit, post-Covid Westminster government, fantasising, still looking around for a servile empire that escaped long ago.

The Greta Thunberg generation demands that climate change, pollution and bio-diversity are made global priorities. Their concerns are not new: 50 years ago, when EF Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful his diatribe against mass consumption and destruction of natural resources he also pleaded for thrift and conservation.

Scotlands history shows a traditional understanding of the need to travel lightly on the Earth, taking what we need, respecting nature, leaving it fit to nurture others once we are gone.

The starkest example I know is the story of our black puddings part of the same 1960s colourful primary school history lessons that provided youngsters with such a vivid grasp of time, causes, events and justice. Because, we were told, Scotlands people were too poor to kill their beasts for meat, they bled them instead and mixed the blood with oatmeal and spices. The family was fed and the animals lived on to feed them again.

A very beautiful, poignant version of the same philosophy is found in the gentle song Travellers Trade written by Ian MacGregor, the grandson of a Scottish Traveller and pearl fisherman. He urges us to take only what we need, with thoughts of fellow man, and all forms of life whose right is tae survive.

So, while Westminster wallows in arguments about sausages and signs up to more trade deals that are disastrous for Scottish farming, we can adapt, as our ancestors did, to the new circumstances perhaps, for example, with imaginative diversification from killing young lambs to massive investment in wool production, product innovation and education.

It makes sense. Scientists are advising the world to consume less meat, to produce and discard no more microfibres and plastics to the oceans. Scotlands hill farmers already offer the sustainable alternative: wool for insulation; for duvets; for carpets and rugs; for blankets. Wool is even now being used as a successful absorbent in major oil spills.

Our Scottish wools are already known throughout the world Shetland, Soay, North Ronaldsay, Harris, Fair Isle: the re-instatement of beautiful Paisley shawls is another possibility. We have our patterns and brands our new ideas, with more to follow once we are free to try.

Independence will give us our first chance to know the truth about rest of our economy currently obscured by Westminster calculations about everything from origin of exports to allocation of taxes and tariffs and liabilities. To those who want our youngsters to believe that we are too wee and too poor to survive on our own resources, I would recite such a long, long list of these precious, sustainable resources, from electricity to food (and water), and remind them that they are shared among only 5.5 million people.

And when we are asked about currency, we should surely answer that whatever currency we choose to use will be backed up by those economic surpluses of food, electricity and sustainable natural resources, including our huge fishing grounds. In the past 120 years, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are just a few of the many European countries who have become independent, established new currencies and prospered: none of them started off with such natural wealth. And if we are asked about how we should protect our currency, we can refer again to history: Scotland will treat corrupt gamblers and bankers and their systems with the same effective resolution that Iceland (population 344,000) showed in 2015.

With independence, another dramatic, positive change will surely be in transport and international trade. Remembering our historic links with Flanders and Baltic ports, Scotland can choose to look, again, directly to Ireland, Scandinavia and Europe rather than the current bottleneck strangulation (and demoralising disguise of our national exports) via the M6, to the Kent lorry parks, Brexit bureaucracy and Dover.

Just as people make Glasgow, so immigrants have made Scotland over thousands of years. Celts, Picts, Scots, Vikings, British, Flemish, Irish, French, Polish, Italians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis: we are indeed all Jock Tamsons Bairns and we are all as somebody from Kenmure Street posted fae somewhere.

Google Bhangra Scottish Dancers and you can watch a stunning combination of Sikh and Scottish Highland dancers performing together to the same music! And in my opinion, the most wonderful, powerful moment in the marches for independence has always been when the St Georges Flag comes by, with English Scots for Yes emblazoned across.

OUR people will make independence work for Scotland. Fifty years ago, in his rectorial address to Glasgow University, Jimmy Reid famously promised that the untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people.

His words are echoed in our songs, music and poetry; they reflect our love of Scotlands land and sea, our hearty irreverence for highness and mightiness and our readiness to challenge the powerful and corrupt when necessary. Wherever we are from, everyone who witnesses Scotlands reinstatement as one of the oldest independent nations in the world will have the best reason to try.

Like Schumacher and Edwin Morgan, Jimmy Reid also pleaded against the ruthless anonymity of a rat-race society; for recognition and fulfilment for every human being and reminded us of another Scottish instinct that still, despite those 300 years of contradictory rule, survives. On May 13, in Kenmure Street, Glasgow, ordinary people showed gloriously that, in our Scotland:

...a the bairns of Adam

Can find breid, barley-bree and painted room

Therefore, since our history and continuing experiences teach us repeatedly that Scotland is a very different nation, we simply cannot afford to be over-ruled by inappropriate policies designed by Westminster, for the needs of England. We can and will do better. It might, sometimes, still seem hard to go, but we are, indeed, going to do this for Scotland, for England, and for the rest of the world:

Why should we idly waste our time

Repeating our oppressions?

...Tomorrow we

Shall don the Cap of Libertie!

Read more:

Who says Scotland cannot guide itself through 'boiling reefs, black as they are'? - The National

Former Member of Parliament for Asante Mampong, Francis Addai-Nimoh

Government must involve citizens in governance process to prevent coup dtat, Addai-Nimoh

We need to examine factors that led to the disruptions in our journey to development, Addai-Nimoh

Ghana marks 4th constitution day

A former Member of Parliament for Asante Mampong, Francis Addai-Nimoh, says for the country to preserve its democracy, there is a need for government to engage citizens in the governance process in order to prevent any possible coup dtat in the country.

According to him, this is necessary because the military juntas have failed to deliver any good to the people as they have disregarded the rule of law and rather focused on looting of state property.

In a Facebook post to commiserate constitution day, he said Interestingly, military juntas, in my view, have mostly failed to deliver any good to the people. Military juntas largely come with extrajudicial killings, looting of state resources, oppression of the people, and disregard for the rule of law. And that's why it's important to preserve our democracy through citizens' involvement in the governance process in order to kill any possibility of a coup dtat. On this day, let everyone reflect on our journey thus far, and identify what more we can do to improve our lots.

He added that the nation has enough reason to celebrate the fourth republic which has lasted for almost three decades.

Today is a Constitutional Day on the national calendar of our country. The purpose of the day is to celebrate the constitutional milestone of the 4th Republic. Considering that our history is replete with many disruptions of the constitutional order, we have every reason to celebrate the sustenance of the 4th Republic for almost three decades on this day.

He however indicated that government must consider factors that led to the disruption in the countrys journey to development.

In this vein, I subscribe to the theory that a stable democracy is the bedrock for national development. But, we need to begin to examine, after three decades of constitutional practice, what factors led to the disruptions in our journey to development. Are those factors present today? Have we consolidated our democracy hermetically to prevent another disruption? These questions are critical especially when West Africa is seeing a surge in military strongmen who are vacating the constitutions of their respective country.

Below is his post

I take this opportunity to wish all Ghanaians, far and near, a prosperous new year. No challenge is insurmountable and so, I have positive intuition that the challenges that ravaged 2021, would be surmounted in 2022.

Today is a Constitutional Day on the national calendar of our country. The purpose of the day is to celebrate the constitutional milestone of the 4th Republic. Considering that our history is replete with many disruptions of the constitutional order, we have every reason to celebrate the sustenance of the 4th Republic for almost three decades on this day.

Many governance experts believe that but for the incessant disruptions of the constitutional order, Ghana could have witnessed an accelerated development. For the proponents of this theory, a stable democracy is the bedrock for national development. If we test this theory against the 4th Republic, can we say Ghana has developed? The obvious answer is no. However, it's refreshing to note that we've made enormous progress though there's more room for improvement.

In this vein, I subscribe to the theory that a stable democracy is the bedrock for national development. But, we need to begin to examine, after three decades of constitutional practice, what factors led to the disruptions in our journey to development. Are those factors present today? Have we consolidated our democracy hermetically to prevent another disruption? These questions are critical especially when West Africa is seeing a surge in military strongmen who are vacating the constitutions of their respective country.

In most, if not all, military juntas, the leaders ride on the collective outrage of citizens to overthrow the constitution. A reading of our own history will support this point. When there's a state of despondency and frustrations in a country, perceived or real, military strongmen latch onto that to carry out their agenda, mostly to the admiration of civilians. Indeed, it should not be lost on us, flipping through our history pages, that, misgovernance and misrule, in summary, have been the reasons adduced by coup leaders in Ghana to justify their actions.

A case in point which buttresses the point supra, is the 1979 coup led by the late Jerry John Rawlings. To date, some people think the circumstances of that coup is justified. This goes to underscore the possibility of coup leaders to galvanise the support of the ordinary citizens to sustain their agenda. I daresay, without the support of citizens, the barrel of the gun can't succeed at overthrowing the constitution. A recent example is what happened in Turkey when the people poured on the streets to foil a coup attempt by the military.

My reflections on our journey as a people so far and looking at scenarios in other jurisdictions, point to an irresistible conclusion that, to sustain our 4th republican democracy, we need the unflinching support of the ordinary citizens of our country. We can attain this by serving the people in truth. The needs of the people including employment, access to healthcare, education, etc should be addressed. All attempts must be made to secure the trust of the people in the political class. This can be achieved through bridging the gap between the political class and the ordinary people.

Interestingly, military juntas, in my view, have mostly failed to deliver any good to the people. Military juntas largely come with extra judicial killings, looting of state resources, oppression of the people, and disregard for the rule of law. And that's why it's important to preserve our democracy through citizens' involvement in the governance process in order to kill any possibility of a coup d'etat. On this day, let everyone reflect on our journey thus far, and identify what more we can do to improve our lots.

A happy constitutional day.

God bless our homeland Ghana!

Read the rest here:

Military juntas have failed to deliver any good to the people of Ghana - Addai-Nimoh - GhanaWeb

Squid Game (2021)

Squid Game, written and directed by South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk, is the latest entrant in the survival drama genre and a significant presence on the popular cultural landscape. Following its release in September, Squid Game quickly claimed the attention of millions around the globe, in October becoming the sixth show in Netflixs history to surpass three billion minutes viewed in a week.

No doubt, the mini-series owes its popularity to various factors, some healthier than others, but, as the WSWS review indicated, the central one is clearits [Squid Games] depiction of desperate individuals put in desperate situations, the consequences of a society riven by social inequality, the greed and criminality of the rich, and associated themes. The widespread interest in the series undoubtedly reflects a growing awareness of the rigged character of the existing social order, as well as mounting popular anger.

In the film, hundreds of poor and working class contestants from all walks of life compete, literally, to the death in a series of warped childrens games for a large sum of money, which would allow them to escape their poverty-stricken reality.

While Squid Game presents a unique twist on the effort to represent capitalism as a fight to the death, it is only the most recent example of the genre. Over the past two decades, there have been other films and works sounding similar themes, such as Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000), based on Koushun Takamis novel , completed in 1996 and published in 1999, and Suzanne Collins novel Hunger Games (2008) and its 2012 film adaption, directed by Gary Ross. We will discuss these below.

Beyond that, however, Squid Game bears a relationship to film trends that developed in the US at least in the 1970s. The first death-game films were made at that time, such as Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975) and Rollerball (Norman Jewison, 1975), later Deathsport (Allan Arkush, Nicholas Niciphor, 1978) and The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser, 1987)and from Italy, Endgame (Joe DAmato, 1983).

These dark, mostly unsatisfying and sometimes even unimportant films reflected social processes underway in the US and the rest of the advanced capitalist countries: economic stagnation or decline and accompanying social and political developments. To a certain extent, the artists were conscious of these phenomena. We learn from one commentator, for example, that Norman Jewison, the Canadian-born director of the most ambitious of these early works, Rollerball, had become preoccupied with the sinister increase of corporate power and had read Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations, a scholarly, influential 1974 study by Richard Barnett and Robert Muller.

Certain features of the genre were established at the time and subsequently became almost standardized. A more or less omnipotent elite, assisted by the latest in technologies, rules with an iron fist or plays an overpowering role in society. The mass of the population is downtrodden and relatively easy prey for the manipulations of those on top. The fight to the death games provide economic incentives to the participants and also often a means of entertaining the demoralized, debased masses or members of the elite itself.

The following summary of Jewisons Rollerball is instructive: Corporate nations and their supercomputers rule humanity, shaping digitized historical records to their liking. The masses are pacified by watching rollerball, a professional sport thats like football played on a roller derby loop with motorcycles. Rollerball players have a glamorous existence: fans idolize them, executives envy them, and theyre provided lavish homes, beautiful wives or girlfriends, and fancy TVs with extra screens that show smaller, differently angled shots of whatever theyre watching. In return for all this, they let corporations control their lives. ( The Verge )

Film critic Robin Wood once pointed out that the collapse of ideological confidence that characterizes American culture throughout the Vietnam period becomes a major defining factor of Hollywood cinema in the late 60s and 70s. Wood suggested that disintegration and breakdown had increasingly become the central theme of the American cinema, reflected in the growing trend of disaster films and, more generally, by the fact that various genres have reached their apocalyptic phase. And a great deal of water has flowed under the bridge since that time!

Indeed, the overwhelming majority of post-apocalyptic and dystopian films and television seriesfrom the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Europehave appeared since the 1970s and most of those since 1990. What began to a certain extent with gloomy dystopias like THX 1138 (1971), Soylent Green (1973) and A Boy and His Dog (1975), in the words of one film historian, has become a widespread phenomenon. The amount of light these films shed on the processes involved has varied wildly. For the most part, they have tended merely to register passively, if quasi-hysterically and morbidly, the relentlessly deteriorating social and moral situation.

The supposed passivity of the mass of the population, its alleged willingness or even eagerness to be pacified and entertained by the powers that be, is a theme or, worse still, an assumption that will recur in virtually every subsequent film in the dystopian and related trends. That will grate on anyone familiar with real-life conditions and with the behavior of the working class in America or anywhere else, even under the most peaceful circumstances. Such a false notion runs counter in particular to everything in the traditions, mentality and experience of the socialist movement, whose basic idea, Plekhanov once remarked, is the resolute and final rejection of submissiveness.

However, this failing does not come out of the blue. It has an objective basis in the decades of political reaction and stagnation and suppression of the class struggle, policed by the trade unions and other so-called labor organizations. Moreover, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the bombast about the end of history sharply affected the artists. For their part, the various postmodern and pseudo-left trends have done everything in their power to paint the working class as a backward and hopeless mass and create as much of a breach and a misunderstanding as possible between the artists and the workers.

Enter Squid Game and the more recent entrants into the genre, which has now become thoroughly globalized. Clearly, new and important elements have been added, above all, the advanced degree of economic polarization. And, to a certain extent, hints of popular rebellion.

As noted above, many commentators refer to Takamis Battle Royale as the progenitor of the recent survival drama trend. The novels release garnered substantial praise, making it one of Japans most successful novels while also earning it condemnation from the countrys government. The film adaptation, directed by Kinji Fukasaku, became Japans highest grossing film in 2000.

Takamis book recounts an alternate history in which Japan is the dominant world superpower ruled by a fascist government that instills fear in the populace by kidnapping youth and forcing them to fight to the death. The film adaptation recontextualized the plot within Japans economic crisis of the late 1990s. In this version, the horrific battle royales emerge as the Japanese republic resorts to crushing a youth rebellion.

The novel and film adaptation conclude very differently. The book ends with the surviving characters hoping to escape to an idealized democratic America. The films finale provides a more promising twist, with the survivors beginning to organize a rebellion against the government. Unfortunately, the 2003 film sequel, Battle Royale II: Requiem (directed by Kenta Fukasaku, the son of Kinji Fukasaku, who died after shooting only one scene of the new film), destroys those possibilities, transforming the revolt into a terrorist group rebelling against the countrys adults.

The battle royales are seemingly intended to reference the wave of austerity measures and cuts to workers living standards that the Japanese ruling elite carried out in the midst of a real-world recession. Yet, the films fail to connect these issues with the wave of youth rebellion and delinquency they portray. The unrest appears to be more vague disillusionment and unfocused violence than a burgeoning rebellion in need of suppression.

The next milestone in the international genre was Collins novel Hunger Games and its 2012 film adaptation, directed by Ross. (The Maze Runner the 2009 novel and 2014 film, the first of three in a seriesand Divergent the 2011 novel and 2014 film, also the first of threeare related phenomena, all aimed at young adults.) Taking more than a handful of pages from Takamis book, Collins presents US capitalism in a fictional dystopian future. Like Battle Royale before it, Hunger Games clearly struck a chord.

The novel and film imagine a despotic government ruling over North America and its 12 impoverished working class districts. An annihilated thirteenth district is left in ruins, a warning to those considering rebellion. As a further means of oppression, each district must annually send two children to participate in a televised battle royale, the Hunger Games.

The sole survivors district receives food rations as a prize. Though promisingly presenting rebellion as the means to transform society in its sequels, the promotion of individualism and the unconvincing character of the rebellion ultimately lead the various Hunger Games iterations into a blind alley. They trip over many of the same artistic and intellectual hurdles as Battle Royale.

A more intriguing addition to the survival drama genre arrived with Jinsei Kataokas manga (Japanese graphic novel) Deadman Wonderland (2007-2013). In 2011, the series received an anime adaptation by studio Manglobe, covering the first 21 chapters of the manga.

Set in modern Japan ten years after a massive earthquake, which sank much of Tokyo underwater, the story follows 14-year-old Ganta Igarashi. Gantas stable life falls apart when a terrorist attack on his classroom, carried out by a man in red armed with otherworldly powers, leaves him the traumatized sole survivor. Ganta is framed on trumped up charges and sentenced to death at Japans only privately run prison, Deadman Wonderland.

The maximum security prison doubles as a theme park featuring lethal games played by the inmates. The games provide a means of profit for the prison and a path to gain prison currency for the victorious inmates. For death row inmates (known as Deadmen) like Ganta, the games serve as a means of staving off a slow poisoning death (the means of execution) through buying antidotes with their winnings.

Deadman Wonderland makes an effort to humanize its protagonists. The Deadmen, who face terrible conditions and have brutal backgrounds, ultimately prove their innate decency and reason in response to the official savagery.

Even so, Deadman Wonderland s more striking socially critical elements are marred by a lack of historical and social concreteness. Its plot, while encouraging a rebellious attitude and response toward oppressive structures, tends to fall into the same individualistic trap as its predecessors. Increasingly, Gantas powers appear as the primary means to fight the prison authorities. Regressive tropes from the anime and manga genre crop up as the story progresses, devouring much of the focus in later chapters.

Dong-Hyuks Squid Game has a number of quite distinct, interrelated features. It depicts South Korea, one of the supposed miracles of modern globalized capitalism, as blighted by social polarization and home to widespread social misery and oppression. From this point of view alone, it is a slap in the face of the official version of contemporary life. The economic desperation of the central characters is compellingly and convincingly conveyed.

Squid Game, unlike many of its predecessors, attempts to provide these characters with social and psychological backgrounds, as well as their relationship to the larger social picture. For example, the series introduces the life and conditions of an immigrant refugee laborer and those of an autoworker who participated in a strike that was harshly suppressed.

At the same time, some of the same generalized difficulties reemerge. The voluntary nature of the games presents one such issue. Following the first round, which results in the brutal deaths of hundreds, the participants vote to end the gamesonly for most of them to return later of their own accord. This is a fable, not a naturalistic work, but still some accordance with psychological and social reality is called for. To suggest that men and women, even those financially stressed, would willingly submit to having their fellow creatures massacred is something of a libel against mankind, and provides a glimpse of the misanthropic Lord of the Flies strand in the filmmakers thinking.

The extreme violence is another expression of the Squid Game s problems. It is both a concession to the bloody mayhem pervading current global filmmaking and an indication of a demoralized view of humanity. It also serves as a distraction from genuine dramatic lapses and failings.

As the WSWS noted in its review of Squid Game, the first seasons lead-in to the coming one suggests a brewing rebellion against the games. One hopes director Dong-Hyuk takes strength from the growing wave of international strikes and emerging working class opposition.

In any event, whatever the fate of Squid Game, the future course of the genre and of filmmaking as a whole depends, above all, on objective social developments and the reflection it finds in the thinking and activity of the artists. Ultimately, it is the conscious movement of the working class and its struggle for freedom that will scatter, in a great Marxists phrase, the clouds of skepticism and of pessimism which cover the horizon of mankind.

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Squid Game and the survival drama genre - WSWS

HAVANA, Cuba Saturday marked 63 years since the Communist usurpation of Cuba 63 years of unfettered totalitarian control by the Castro brothers, their henchmen and successors over nearly every aspect of their subjects lives.

The government refers to the anniversary of its 1959 victory as Triumph of the revolution or Liberation Day. But those titles are deeply misleading. The revolution has been anything but a triumph for my nation. And instead of liberating the Cuban people, the Communist regime has forced them to live as prisoners on a prison island.

Todays festivities will include long-winded speeches by government officials and celebratory concerts and dance performances in public squares across the country. But these outward expressions of jubilation belie the reality of a nation thats rotting on the inside after decades of economic stagnation, political subjugation, and spiritual and intellectual despair.

It is sometimes said that the most basic measurement of a nations health is whether, when given the opportunity, people clamor to enter it or risk their lives to escape from it. By that standard, Cuba has been an abject failure since the communists took over.

Millions have fled Cuba since the revolution, and many thousands have died trying to make the perilous journey to Florida through treacherous, shark-infested waters, often in flimsy rustic rafts.

The decades-long exodus from Cuba shows no signs of abating. The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted 838 Cubans at sea in fiscal 2021, a large increase from 2020. Since October, another 410 Cubans have been intercepted trying to make the 90-mile journey to a better life in the United States. In addition, tens of thousands of Cubans are given sanctuary in the U.S each year as political refugees.

They are driven to flee out of desperation desperation to leave behind a system of government that stifles opportunity and suppresses the human spirit. And they have grown impatient with the idea, perpetuated most recently by Cuban leader Miguel Diaz Canal, that if only they wait, reforms will gradually take place.

We Cubans know the true nature of communism. We have lived it for all these years. We know that it is capable of neither growth nor improvement, reform nor evolution. It is irredeemable, and no real reform will occur until Cuba is free of it. What Cuba needs is not reform of the stale Communist model, but a rebirth into a truly free democracy.

The desperation, hopelessness and desire to reclaim our nation from its captors prompted the historic protests of July 11, when thousands of Cubans across the island took to the streets to demand freedom. The protests were spurred by the increasing realization of everyday Cubans that only a free Cuba can flourish.

Cuban officials and the state-run media blame the U.S. trade embargo for all the ills of Cuban society. Recently, Diaz Canel blamed the embargo which he referred to as genocidal for the conditions that led to the July 11 protests.

Blaming Cubas economic privations on the U.S embargo is also common among U.S. progressives and some international institutions, including the United Nations General Assembly.

But inside Cuba, the practice of blaming the embargo has become something of a joke among ordinary people. If someone doesnt show up for work or is late to an appointment, he or she may say in jest that the embargo or blockade (el bloqueo) delayed them. In short, Cubans don't buy it.

One reason is that Americas trade embargo against Cuba has many exceptions, including for food, medicine and medical supplies, agricultural goods and humanitarian supplies. And there are numerous other exceptions as well. For instance, Cuba imported more than $120 million worth of U.S. chicken in the first six months of 2021.

Moreover, Cuba is free to trade with the worlds 193 other countries and does so extensively. Spain and Italy are major trade partners, and Cuba has developed strong commercial ties with the rogue regimes that control China, Russia and Venezuela.

U.S. sanctions are not causing Cuba's problems, and more importantly, they do not justify the harsh constraints that the Cuban authorities impose on the civil liberties of Cuban citizens.

Cuba is poor not because America wont trade with it, but because it is shackled to a Marxist economic model and authoritarian political system that are morally bankrupt; because it is a dictatorship that stamps out free expression, political freedom, human rights and economic opportunity; because it is a soulless enterprise whose only animating principle is the instinct to control.

The Cuban government will continue to point to the U.S. trade embargo as the source of its problems and to demand that it be lifted. But only when the embargo imposed against the spirit of the Cuban people is lifted will the problems that ail our nation begin to disappear.

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is a human rights leader, former prisoner of conscience, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He lives inHavana,Cuba, and can be contacted through his website: OscarBiscet.com.

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63 years of oppression and misrule in Cuba - Washington Examiner

About 1 in 3 Americans believe that "violence against the government can at times be justified," a year out from the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland out Saturday found.

Why it matters: It's the largest share of respondents to hold that view in similar polls in the last two decades, according to the Post, which said the findings "offer a window into the countrys psyche at a tumultuous period in American history."

By the numbers: A majority of adults still say violence is never justified. But that number, 62%, is a new low, per the Post. Some 90% believed it was never justified in the 1990s.

What they're saying: "Peoples reasoning for what they considered acceptable violence against the government varied, from what they considered to be overreaching coronavirus restrictions, to the disenfranchisement of minority voters, to the oppression of Americans," the Post writes.

Separately, a CBS News/YouGov poll out Sunday found that 68% of respondents believed the events of Jan. 6 were a sign of increasing political violence, rather than an isolated incident.

Methodology: The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll was conducted online and by phone Dec. 17-19, 2021, among a random national sample of 1,101 adults. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of 4 points.

The CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,063 U.S. adult residents interviewed between Dec. 27-30, 2021. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as to 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is 2.6 points.

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Poll: Americans increasingly justifying political violence - Axios