French workers keep fighting Macron’s austerity

This 29 January 2020 video is called French protesters take to the streets in 8th protest day against pension reform.

By Alex Lantier in France:

30 January 2020

On Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of workers and youth marched in protests across France in a further “National Day of Action” against President Emmanuel Macron’s widely opposed pension cuts. Anger is still building against Macron, even after rail and transit workers, starved of strike pay … were forced to end their six-week strike and return to work last week.

The demonstrations were large, though figures released by both the police and the trade unions indicated a somewhat smaller participation than the previous protest, on January 24. According to the unions, 35,000 protesters marched in Toulouse, 10,000 in Bordeaux and 7,000 in Le Havre. …

In Paris, police arrested 13 demonstrators when clashes broke out at a march attended by 180,000 people, according to trade union estimates.

Amid a global upsurge of working-class struggles, including mass protests in Iraq, Algeria and across Latin America, strikes of teachers and copper miners in [the United States of] America, and mass strikes by tens of millions of workers in India, strikes continue to break out in France. Workers at Paris garbage incineration facilities, employees operating ferries connecting Marseille to Corsica, and sewer-cleaning workers across France took strike action against Macron’s cuts yesterday. …

Macron’s LRM party and the [pro-government trade union federation] CFDT will discuss state budget deficits, claim there is no money, and demand that the cuts be adopted as a matter of economic necessity. …

Alain, a “yellow vest” and retired bus driver attending yesterday’s protest in Paris, told the WSWS that Macron’s reform was “looting the people,” with pension cuts amounting to hundreds of euros monthly, or more. …

As a result, Alain added, even though “in every country, the people are rising up against a sort of new world order,” in France “many more people should have been out protesting.” He added, “I think then this government would not last long.”

Salim, a RATP (Paris mass transit) worker, told the WSWS that he had returned to work out of economic necessity, as his wages and savings had run out. He added that he is following mass protests by workers in the Middle East and around the world. “We must feel solidarity with them,” he said, “because the wealth produced by the workers everywhere is being harvested by the bosses and big capital.”

This 28 January 2020 video says about itself:

Firefighters clash with riot police in France protests

Police have used teargas and water cannon on protesting firefighters in Paris. Thousands of firefighters attended the demonstration in the French capital, asking for an increase in their hazard bonus, which has not changed since 1990.

The Alex Lantier article continues:

As protests began yesterday morning, news was spreading of violent clashes that erupted Tuesday between the government’s Republican Security Companies (CRS) riot police and firefighters protesting Macron’s cuts. With tensions high after a CRS cop shot a firefighter’s eye out with a rubber bullet at a protest last autumn, thousands of firefighters arrived in Paris in full fire-proof emergency gear, defying orders not to wear protective clothing to protests.

The firefighters’ heavy clothes and gas masks provided good protection from tear gas, and a running battle between firefighters and CRS units ensued in Paris as firefighters tried to reach the circular highway around the city to disrupt traffic.

Videos show how firefighters repelled an initial CRS baton charge, broke the CRS line and seized their plexiglass riot shields. Keeping close to retreating CRS police to limit their ability to fire rubber bullets and stun grenades, they chanted the call to arms from the Marseillaise, France’s national anthem. The CRS deployed truck-mounted metal barriers to halt the firefighters’ march, firing stun grenades and water cannon to protect the barrier, and then illegally shot a potentially lethal rubber bullet to the head of a firefighter who climbed onto the water cannon to wave a flare.

Firefighters pried apart several of the panels in the truck-mounted barrier, breaking it open, and shouted at the riot police, calling them “traitors to the French nation” and “Nazi collaborationists” for not defying Macron’s orders to attack demonstrators.

Created in December 1944, after the fall of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime in World War II, the CRS were initially a new name given by General Charles de Gaulle’s government to Vichy’s Mobile Reserve Group (GMR) units. The renaming aimed to hide the record of the fascist GMR, which fought alongside Nazi SS troops against Resistance units. This led to the famous slogan, used first in the bloody 1947 miners’ strike and then the May 1968 French general strike: “CRS-SS.”

Jurassic South African dinosaur, other footprints, discovery

This 13 August 2018 video says about itself:

Take a look at some of the most important and valuable archaeological treasures in the world that are to be found in South Africa’s Great Karoo. It was through the study of Karoo fossils in the early years of the 20th century that scientific thought was influenced in acknowledging that mammals arose from reptiles.

And, as every one of us is a living fossil – containing within our genes the secrets of our ancestors – a journey into the Karoo is in some respects a voyage of self-discovery.

World-famous palaeontologist, Dr Robert Broom, was greatly excited by seeing one specimen in particular, and that was the Milleretta.

The Milleretta was the first well-preserved skull ever discovered of the group of reptiles that may have had as one of its members the ancestor of all mammal-like reptiles. To Broom, this skull was “the seed of the mammal race.” These prehistoric mammal-like reptiles left their mark in other ways too – such as visible footprints, dating about 250 million years ago – found at Sante Sana, also in the Graaff-Reinet district.

From PLOS:

The ‘firewalkers’ of Karoo: Dinosaurs and other animals left tracks in a ‘land of fire’

Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat

January 29, 2020

In southern Africa, dinosaurs and synapsids, a group of animals that includes mammals and
their closest fossil relatives, survived in a “land of fire” at the start of an Early Jurassic mass extinction, according to a study published January 29, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Emese M. Bordy of the University of Cape Town and colleagues.

The Karoo Basin of southern Africa is well-known for its massive deposits of igneous rocks left behind by extensive basaltic lava flows during the Early Jurassic. At this time, intense volcanic activity is thought to have had dramatic impacts on the local environment and global atmosphere, coincident with a worldwide mass extinction recorded in the fossil record. The fossils of the Karoo Basin thus have a lot to tell about how ecosystems responded to these environmental stresses.

In this study, Bordy and colleagues describe and identify footprints preserved in a sandstone layer deposited between lava flows, dated to 183 million years ago. In total, they report five trackways containing a total of 25 footprints, representing three types of animals: 1) potentially small synapsids, a group of animals that includes mammals and their forerunners; 2) large, bipedal, likely carnivorous dinosaurs; and 3) small, quadrupedal, likely herbivorous dinosaurs represented by a new ichnospecies (trace fossils like footprints receive their own taxonomic designations, known as ichnospecies).

These fossils represent some of the very last animals known to have inhabited the main Karoo Basin before it was overwhelmed by lava. Since the sandstone preserving these footprints was deposited between lava flows, this indicates that a variety of animals survived in the area even after volcanic activity had begun and the region was transformed into a “land of fire”. The authors suggest that further research to uncover more fossils and refine the dating of local rock layers has the potential to provide invaluable data on how local ecosystems responded to intense environmental stress at the onset of a global mass extinction.

Bordy adds: “The fossil footprints were discovered within a thick pile of ancient basaltic lava flows that are ~183 million years old. The fossil tracks tell a story from our deep past on how continental ecosystems could co-exist with truly giant volcanic events that can only be studied from the geological record, because they do not have modern equivalents, although they can occur in the future of the Earth.”

Spanish neofascists Vox bribed by Iranian paramilitarists

This 17 November 2019 video from Spain says about itself:

Around 1,000 protesters gathered in Madrid to participate in a demo against racism and the surging popularity of the far-right on Sunday.

The crowd protested in the city centre, bringing signs and banners directed at banishing xenophobia and far-right parties including Vox, who significantly increased their share of the vote in the recent general elections.

Spain has been rocked by demonstrations sparked by Catalan independence leaders being sentenced to prison in mid-October. Political uncertainty saw the second election of 2019 with the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) again emerging the largest party after the November 10 elections.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Vox party funded by Iranian extremist group

TWO parliamentarians from Spain’s far-right Vox party were paid for eight months by donations from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), sources have revealed.

The El Pais newspaper reported that the party — now Spain’s third-largest, with 52 MPs — was created in 2013 thanks to a bumper €1million (£845,600) from the NCRI.

In December of that year, Vox received a donation of €1,156 (£977) transferred from abroad by sympathisers of the Iranian group whose armed wing, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), was deemed by the US to be a terrorist organisation until 2012.

The politically jihadist NCRI-MEK used to fight for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in armed conflicts between the Iraqi and Iranian governments. Later, as conflicts between the United States and Iranian governments increased, they switched sides to the Bush, later Obama and Trump United States administrations, and to the Blair administration in Britain, who then got them off their lists of terrorists.

One month later the then Vox secretary-general Santiago Abascal and senior official Espinosa started receiving salaries paid for by the NCRI, invoiced through another company, according to two former party officials. …

Vox received nearly €1m between December 2013 and April 2014 which helped fund their 2014 European election campaign, as well as paying the rent on the party headquarters in Madrid.

MEK undertook a lengthy legal battle over its designation as a terrorist group between 2003 and 2014.

Britain removed MEK from its list of proscribed organisations in 2008, followed by Washington in 2012.

This was thanks to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign with large donations to members of Congress and influential officials.

Spain’s Vox Party Hates Muslims—Except the Ones Who Fund It. The upstart far-right party is unapologetically Islamophobic, but without donations from Iranian exiles, it may have never gotten off the ground: here.

Olm salamanders in Slovenia, video

This 29 January 2020 video from Slovenia says about itself:

The caves beneath Predjama Castle are home to the remarkable olm salamanders. Their eerie pale skin and the fact that they possess both gills and lungs is why people call them ‘the human fish’.

Turkish war profiteering in Nigeria

This 29 November 2019 video from Nigeria says about itself:

Boko Haram might not be sponsored by local entities as we previously thought, as reports that Turkey is supplying sophisticated weapons to the terrorist group have emerged and now have caught the attention of the Defence headquarters who has described it as a serious issue.

Ugochukwu Ikeakor and Peter Eigbedion joined us in the studio.

Plus TV Africa’s Maryann Duke Okon brings you PLUS POLITICS, a show designed to keep YOU in the know.

By Steve Sweeney:

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Turkey in new arms trafficking row after Nigeria weapons report

TURKEY found itself at the centre of a new arms trafficking scandal today after a major study found weapons manufactured there are being used in a deadly conflict in Nigeria.

Investigators from the Conflict Armament Research (Car) group spent three years examining hundreds of weapons and ammunition in Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara in the north of the country.

The area has been plagued by inter-communal violence with clashes between farmers and semi-nomadic herdsmen.

It has also seen attacks by jihadist groups keen to exploit an increasingly volatile situation.

A report seen by the Morning Star revealed that large numbers of the deadly weapons, including semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, were made in Turkey.

Car claimed that several thousand of the weapons were shipped in containers from Istanbul to Lagos in 2017 as part of a major organised trafficking network.

The data set of weapons also included assault rifles manufactured in Iraq in 1987 of a type used mainly by jihadist groups …

While Car insisted that it does not indicate that the farming groups are linked with the terrorist factions, it does point to them obtaining the weapons from the same sources.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is becoming increasingly seen as the world’s leading supporter of jihadist groups accused of fuelling deadly conflicts.

Most recently the Turkish government sent thousands of jihadist fighters from Syria to the aid of the [Tripoli] Government of National Accord in Libya.

Turkish intelligence operatives have also been accused of taking jihadists across the border into Syria where they have been engaged in fighting against Kurdish forces as part of Ankara’s illegal invasion and occupation.

On the domestic front, Mr Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was accused by a European Union intelligence agency of commissioning an Isis bomb attack in October 2016 which killed more than 100 people at a peace rally in Ankara.

In November last year, he was accused of shipping arms to the Boko Haram jihadist group in Nigeria via Turkish Airlines.

An audio recording purporting to be former Turkish Airlines executive Mehmet Karatas was leaked in which he told Mr Erdogan’s adviser Mustafa Varank that he felt guilty over his role in transferring the weapons.

The herder-farmer conflicts are said to have killed more people than Boko Haram attacks in the region.

But there has been an escalation of Islamist attacks with groups affiliated to Isis and al-Qaida launching a wave of deadly assaults in Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Jihadists given Turkish uniforms as Russian and Syrian troops close in on Idlib: here.