Today's Topics:
1. fau berlin: Deliveroo retreats - the struggle against
precarious working conditions continues (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #296 - Echoes of Africa:
The UN is not Robin Hood (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. ucl-saguenay, Collectif Emma Goldman - Montérégie:
Solidarity with employees on strike at the Galvano plant (fr, it,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. asr anarshism: ex-political prisoner anarchist refugee Abtin
Parsa (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Britain, AFED, organise magazine: Stateless and Oppressed --
International (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Even in its retreat from Germany, Deliveroo makes clear that the wages and social security
of their workforce, mainly composed by minorities, are not a big issue for the company's
decision-making. However, the struggle against the particularly precarious working
conditions within the present-day platform economy continues; in other countries at
Deliveroo, and at other platforms of the delivery and further industries in Germany. ----
Deliveroo leaves behind an army of fake self-employed workers who worked for starvation
wages without social security. For Deliveroo, social responsibility has never been a
priority - the fact that workers have been informed today that they will be unemployed on
Saturday fits in well with the picture. Offering small payments as "goodwill payments" to
the riders instead of reasonable severance pay is almost unsurpassable cynicism in this
context.
According to our experience, the working conditions in the delivery industry will remain
precarious even after the departure of Deliveroo. Jobs as a food courier are still
particularly important for workers who are not native speakers in German. This dependency
and weaker social position of minorities is and will continue to serve as a basis for
corporate groups in the industry to try to impose precarious working conditions.
We continue to support the global union struggle for better working conditions in the
delivery industry, including Deliveroo. The strikes and actions in Spain, the UK, and
especially in recent days in Paris, show that these working conditions have no future as
long as unions fight.
https://berlin.fau.org/news/deliveroo-zieht-sich-zurueck-kaempfe-gegen-prekaere-arbeitsbedingungen-gehen-weiter
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Message: 2
In order to be able to claim to act for the poorest of the planet, the United Nations has
programs and objectives that create the frameworks in which all development aid agencies
think and act : cooperation agencies, large NGOs , World Bank and IMF included. ---- All
these structures say they fight against poverty, of which they have a mainly technical
vision. In 2000, the UN set eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), setting 2015 as its
target for fighting poverty. Most of them were " halving the number of people ... "
living on less than $ 1 a day, or with no access to water, or education, etc. ---- However
generous and ambitious they may have appeared, these objectives were criticizable on
various aspects, including their purely quantitative and technical approach, without any
political considerations. Firstly, the criteria only target the poor, without ever taking
into account the inequalities ... and I do not speak of targeting the big fortunes !
The income of 1 dollar a day corresponds to extremely different situations depending on
the context, country, entourage ... Gabonese live for many with more than 1 dollar a day,
but under the yoke of a dictatorship that generates inequality and violence . And when
schools teach to the glory of a despotic regime, is it really wise to build more ?
In 2015, the official record of the MDGs is generally positive, but at the same time it
notes that the most vulnerable have been left behind, and that climate change is already
undermining the few progress made ... so for the 15 years follow, we leave for 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in much the same spirit as the MDGs, but this time
including the fight against inequalities (always without touching the rich of course).
Like the Paris agreement on the climate signed the same year, this agreement explicitly
assigns a major role to multinationals in achieving its objectives. French companies have
taken the opportunity to communicate their commitment to the SDGs as part of their "
social and environmental responsibility " policies.
Fortunately for them, the SDGs have a non-binding and consensual nature, which avoids
going to look at others of their activities which push back these objectives and on which
they do not communicate !
Beyond the advantage in terms of image, the SDGs also serve to legitimize privatization
and public-private partnerships ... whereas the notions of democracy, freedom of
expression, independent justice are still absent from the objectives.
Once again, it is a question of proposing technical and consensual answers to problems
that are eminently political.
Christmas Surged (UCL Carcassonne)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Echos-d-Afrique-L-Onu-c-est-pas-Robin-des-bois
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Message: 3
The 35 employees of the Galvano plant in St-Mathieu-de-Beloeil (affiliated with the FTQ)
are fed up with the concessions and are ready and ready to hold out this time. They and
they have been on strike since July 9 after the refusal of the employer's offer to 97%.
The strikers are dealing with an American company that is taking full advantage of the
productivity of the workers in the factory. They denounce having accepted a stagnation of
their working conditions and wage freezes for fifteen years, going as far as agreeing to
reduce their conditions during a previous negotiation to allow the recovery of their
factory. " It's been cuts, cuts, cuts. We lost the pension plan. We lost the [salary]
indexationat the cost of living. We have lost the contribution to the group
insurance.[...]It's a company that needed to be rectified, "noted a union advisor in the
regional press. The fact that the company that bought their plant in 2005 had just gone
bankrupt. The company has recovered health on the backs of workers and capitalists do not
want to share the money from their profit rates (that's the system!). Then it will be
necessary for the strikers to tear them by the balance of power and combative actions.
Concretely, it means getting the message out in the only way the exploiting bosses
understand, by making them lose a lot of money. The time is too precious during a labor
dispute to wait for the union officials to organize the fight - the lock-out garage
workers of the Saguenay-Lac St-Jean automobile dealerships saw it a few days ago. years.
Strike, it's time to multiply the actions against the employer to make it bend. It's
normal that it brews!
A filmed frame running into the picket line:
As usual, we see that the bosses understand the class struggle well; they, their
executives and their lackeys, do not fail to taunt and provoke the strikers. We must be
wary of trade unionists who constantly ask their base to calm down, they play their game
... strikers end up getting hurt (how many have been hit by cars during trade union
disputes in recent years?) ... the executives do the scabs in the factories legally ...
the employers dominate the "game" all along the line and force the employees to accept any
concessions after long grueling conflicts for working class families.
Solidarity!
A Transport Provider Gaétan Moreau inc. (a real marde company) has today darkened with his
truck on two picketers (who passed close to being overturned):
Listed 15 hours ago by Collectif Emma Goldman
http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2019/08/monteregie-solidarite-avec-les-employe.html
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Message: 4
Greek court: Three months jail + 180 for ex-political prisoner anarchist refugee "Abtin
Parsa" ---- Monday 12th August 2019, the "Abtin Parsa" comrade was walking alone in the
neighborhood of Patisia, Athens that arrested the cops. ---- After searching, they found a
paper cut from him and it was enough for the cops to accuse our comrade of carrying a
weapon. ---- Cops moved to attiki police station and then to GADA police station ----
Tuesday 13th August at 16:00, the court happened for him while our comrade refused to give
fingerprint to the cops ---- Comrade Abtin Parsa said in court: stop and search me as an
immigrant had racist opinions behind that, since it happens to all immigrants here and
it's a common not personal pain; our comrade said that Greek state and cops are try to
Criminalize immigrants but the reality is that the Criminals are cops who killed 15 years
old alexis Grigoropoulos, it's cops who are dangerous for our society not Immigrants
Court stopped our comrade to finish his political statement and severely asked: what is
your political group and why were you making a banner at polytechnio university
Court said: the cops and court behave similar to Greeks and immigrants
Finally court Decided to give our comrade Abtin Parsa 3 months jail + 180 euros to pay
If our comrade get arrest again in 3 years he must go to prison for 3 months except what
will be Decided in trial of new accusation
He left the court free with his lawyer
http://asranarshism.com/1398/05/23/greek-court-three-months-jail180-for-ex-political-prisoner-anarchist-refugee-abtin-parsa
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Message: 5
On the 7th of July a young man called Ayed Hamad Moudath took his own life after the
government of Kuwait denied him civil documentation, which is needed to access public
services, as well as to study and work. They did so because he is Bidoon, a social class
of Kuwait and the other five states that form The Cooperation Council for the Arab States
of the Gulf (GCC) area, defined by their status as "stateless". ---- The word "Bidoon"
itself means "without" in Arabic, (taken from bidoon jinsiya "without nationality") and
they form a social class that is now defined as "illegal residents" and are subsequently
personae non gratae. This means Bidoons are refused access to work, education, healthcare
and all the benefits afforded to their rest of people of Kuwait. The estimates for the
number of Bidoon in Kuwait vary from 85,000 to some 300,000 with sources finding more
solid numbers around 150,000. The wild swing in figures is due to the lack of information
collected and their position at "stateless".
Six days later, to mourn his passing and to call on the government to recognise the equal
rights of Bidoons, the community organised a peaceful sit in at al-Hurriya Square in al-
Jahra, just outside Kuwait City. The police rolled in heavy and arrested 15 activists,
their names added to the list of those arrested the day before in raids on the homes of
organisers of previous sit ins and human rights activists. These were subsequently
followed by yet more arrests the day after, and one particular arrest, of a stateless
Bidoon activist named Mohammed Khudair, reportedly led to him being buried up to his head
in the sand and tortured.
The charges against the activists included spreading fake news, harming allied countries,
joining a group that calls for the destruction of the country's basic systems, calling for
attacking national interests, calling for public gatherings, participating in public
gatherings, and use of cellphones for abusive purposes. This attitude towards civil
demonstration in the relatively liberal country is enshrined in the legal framework of
Kuwait as Article 12 of the 1979 Public Gatherings Law which bars non-Kuwaitis from
participating in public gatherings. Kuwait's brutal response to protests has even lead to
the Human Rights Committee of the UN to note that "... it remains concerned at reports
that the State party unduly restricts freedom of peaceful assembly and that security
forces have dispersed peaceful demonstrations with excessive and disproportionate uses of
force."
The Bidoons have been trapped in near sixty years of administrative ethnic cleansing as
the world, as it so often does, remains quiet. An inconvenient reality from one of the
UK's main trade partners with some £3.5 billion in mutual trade in 2018 alone. This
includes the shipments of Arms with Kuwait being one of the "priority markets" for the
UK's Department for International Trade's Defence & Security Organisation (DSO) and being
a repeat attendee of the marketplace for death that is London's Defence & Security
Equipment International Expo.
So how did we get here?Heck, you won't need two guesses.
This horrendous state of affairs is the residue of colonialism and empire building.
The history of the Arabian peninsula is as horrific at Europe from conflict between
warring empires, nations and tribes and come the turn of the last century the principle
tussle was between the British and Ottoman Empires. The fine details could fill tomes but
In a short run down of the colonial barbarity...
Kuwait City had been a protectorate of the British since 1899, a move to deter Ottoman
invasion, giving Britain exclusive access and trade with Kuwait, and excluded Iraq to the
north from a port on the Persian Gulf. The Ottomans controlling what would later become
the State of Iraq, were now effectively land locked in the region.
In 1913 the Ottomans and British got together to discuss the future of Kuwait. Lines were
drawn on the map. They ruled that Shaikh Mubarak had independent authority over an area
extending out to a radius of 80 km from the capital, a red circle was drawn. He would also
be able to claim taxes from the native tribes people who lived within a further addition
of 100km in radius, indicated with a green circle. This belligerent act of empire was
ignorant of the Bedouins nomadic nature, their sovereignty and liberty.It ignored the
geography and anthropology. No, the lines had been drawn, what were these heathen tribes
to their greater wisedom? Thus it was so.
At the same time to the South West, Ibn Saud was building a kingdom through the military
mighty of the Wahabbi clerics of The Ikhwan, a fundamentalist force mostly comprised of
nomad tribes people from the interior Najd region. Tensions were at their peak with border
raids commonplace as Saudia Arabia began to form.
During this time The Great War with it's wholesale murder would see the fall of the
Ottoman empire leaving a power vacuum in the region which would lead to the Kuwait-Najd
war (1919-1920) and the installation of Faisal I as king of Iraq on the advice of T.E.
Lawrence (of Arabia) as a puppet of the British.
The hinterland between these three Empires was blurry and ill defined and that simply
would not do. The border of the Ibn Saud's domain and Kuwait were established by the Uqair
Protocol of 1922. Kuwait was given no say in matters. The British and Al Saud decided
modern-day Kuwait's borders. A year later on 1 April 1923, Shaikh Ahmad al-Sabah of Kuwait
wrote the British Political Agent in Kuwait, Major John More, "I still do not know what
the border between Iraq and Kuwait is, I shall be glad if you will kindly give me this
information." and thus the arbitrary lines on the map were formalised and the border of
Kuwait were finalised.
Iraq became independent in 1931 and when in 1938 oil was discovered in Kuwait it placed a
claim to the region. When in 1961 Kuwait gained independence from the British, Iraq
mobilised it's forces and invaded six days later.
They were rebuffed, first by British forces and then by The Arab League and in 1963 Iraq
recognised Kuwait and thus began twenty years of booming economic and consolidation of the
borders. These borders split apart lands which had been wandered by bedouin tribes and
communities which had lived and worked the land since day dot. Shortly after, in 1965
Kuwait held a registration/census for citizenship for this now secure and independent
nation. Those who did not register were designated as Bidoon. Overwhelmingly these
communities had very little notion of "nation" or "citizenship" coming from an entirely
different world and these concepts being quite different to their tribal and nomadic
heritage. There was also widespread illiteracy which combined with a complex change in the
laws and little support or provision made to ease this transition for the tribal
communites meant that hundreds of thousands simply did not register into the now sovereign
nation.
At the same time Kuwait began populating it's military and police forces (as well as it's
oil fields) with workers from elsewhere in the peninsula as there was little uptake from
Kuwaiti nationals for these roles. To provide a smoke screen for their dubious recruitment
policies these workers were also designated as Bidoon forming a second, smaller category.
The stateless workforce of expendables for a time benefited from the booming economy and
were instrumental in building Kuwait into a strong economic power, despite the lack of
citizenship Bidoons were afforded relative equality for a time. Later the Kuwait
government would deliberatly obfuscate the situation of the Bidoon and "they are foreign
nationals" would be something projected on the entire Bidoon community.
Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, social divides and sectarian conflicts began to
present themselves, these became more prominent during the Iraq-Iran war the following
year when refugees and Iraqis fleeing conscription would join the Bidoon communities. The
policies started to change towards the oppressive and as the economy began to downturn
Bidoons were declared "illegal residents" in 1986. So began mass deportations, overt
oppression at the hands of the Kuwaiti government and policies that amount to
administrative ethnic cleansing.
Bidoons, whether those who descended from unregistered tribes people, economic migrants or
even those who as were born to Kuwaiti mothers and Bidoon fathers ( Kuwait's nationality
laws mean citizenship is passed through patrilineal lines) were now surplus to
requirements and faced a hostile environment at every level.
This systematic prejudice was only to snowball after the Persian Gulf War which started in
August 1990 and ended the following February. At the start of the conflict Bidoons made up
the majority of the army and were an easy scapegoat after the military capitulated to the
occupying forces, on top of this some Bidoons fought alongside the Iraqi forces (It's
claimed many were infact forced to fight) and this was all the excuse they needed to begin
a purge. The government dismissed Bidoons from the military en masse, refugees were
prevented from returning and yet more were held in detention centres. The official
population of Bidoons in Kuwait went from some 250,000 to 100,000 pretty much overnight,
this is before counting up the thousands who are excluded from such figures.
The fight for equality and recognition has been ongoing since. A law in 2000 permitted the
naturalization provided they could show that they were registered in the 1965 census.
However, it has been reported that only a small number of Bidoon have been able to acquire
nationality through this process, and these were predominately those with wealth or
connections. The yearly quota of 2,000 naturalizations, as stipulated by the law, was
never met. Since 2011, the Central System for the Remedy of Situations of Illegal
Residents, the administrative body in charge of Bidoon affairs, has started issuing
temporary ID cards. Some have been able to obtain green ID cards or ‘reference' cards
(bitaqaat muraja'a). Others, whom the government considers to have foreign origins or
similar issues, have received yellow or red cards. These cards can be used for limited
purposes, such as registering for private schools or health insurance. They are not,
however, comparable to the civil ID cards issued to Kuwaiti citizens and legal residents,
and some Bidoon feel that the colour coding system is stigmatizing.
For many gaining these cards, and thus access to basic services, means renouncing their
claim to Kuwaiti citizenship by confirming a foreign nationality and accept a permanent
limitation on their rights. Of the currentBidoons in Kuwait (In excess of a hundred
thousand easily), Around 40,000 of these have civil documentation with the rest existing
in a bureaucratic limbo. Do you give up your rights of equality in your community by
petitioning for a document that would allow you to work and survive capitalism or do you
exist in the hinterland of legality using a fake passport to get employment hoping that
the government continue to turn a blind eye to them and that you don't get deported in the
next wave of expulsion of "illegal aliens".
All this creates a vast underclass that is socially, culturally and politically oppressed.
As is often the case in marginalized communities, Bidoon girls and women have been
particularly vulnerable to discrimination and abuse. They have faced sexual harassment
from government officials while applying for documentation. At the same time, the
government has failed to protect Bidoon women, whose marriages are often unregistered,
from obtaining their legal rights upon divorce.
In February 2011 some 1000 Bidoon took to the streets to call for their right to be
citizens in the first major protest for recognition. They were met with tear gas, water
cannons and smoke bombs. Some 50 were arrested and 30 were injured. Some of those detained
were tortured and sexually abused and this pattern of brutality from the Kuwait state has
been repeated time and time again which brings us to the present situation.
Most Bidoon in Kuwait still lack legal residence permits and the access to employment,
education, healthcare and other rights that should be the basic minimal for all people.
This is a position kept in place by the Kuwaiti governments refusal to acknowledge that
the vast majority of Bidoon have always lived in Kuwait, they would rather obfuscate the
issue by forcing people to take on foreign national status which allows them to undermine
the rights of their citizens. Their plight is something that has been felt by people the
world over who have been seen as other, stateless and surplus. From the the struggles of
black people in the US, the administrative disregard of the Ainu in Japan to the millennia
of oppression felt by the Irish.
Don't worry tho, The Kuwait government in it's infinite wisdom has now allowed the
descendants of the former Bidoon soldiers to join the army. This solitary offer of stable
income proved popular... given that for many the option is service or poverty it's to be
expected. The state calling in it's surplus humanity to do their bidding for scraps to
eat. Pitting the oppressed against each other perpetually and undermining the communities
ability to survive in it's own right. Populating the security forces with members of your
must vunerable or "promblematic" communities is a tool used by governments world wide to
control the the people, sadly it is very successful as it sows seeds of doubt (re how to
deal with collaborators?) in the minds of people fighting for their existence while
allowing them to show how gracious they are to offer such work.
These are all reminders that while nation states exist, no one is free.
Whether trapped within their myriad systems held in place by capitalism and social
authourity or exluded, cut out and refused even the most basic positive aspect our shared
world, these instititons are a cancer on all people and they, along with their imaginary
lines with which they have brought such death and destruction need tearing down.
We cannot be stateless while the state still holds the cards. The parasites will always
try to persecute the vulnerable. While some Bidoon fight for recognition and equality,
others fight to build up their communities, there are whispers of Anarchist networks
building both in Kuwait, across the Middle East and in the diaspora worldwide, looking to
a better future free from the heel of an uncaring state government. Such a movement
requires solidarity from across the working class, Bidoons and citizens both, standing
together against the enemy, working together towards liberty and a Kuwait where no one has
to fight for the right to exist.
http://organisemagazine.org.uk/2019/08/14/stateless-and-oppressed-international
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