• Days after Sudan’s military overthrew the nation’s civilian government on Oct. 25, World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley’s flight to Sudan’s capital Khartoum was abruptly canceled. Beasley’s goal was to negotiate a settlement between the deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and military coup leaders. However, the former Republican governor of South Carolina’s trip was canceled by the United Special Representative for Sudan because it had not been coordinated with regional powers.
(“WFP-Freelance Diplomacy,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 16, 2021; “Sudan Security Forces Fire Tear Gas at March Against Military Rule,” Reuters, Nov. 30, 2021)
• Over the past six years, the European Union, weary of the financial and political costs of taking in immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, has created a shadow immigration system that stops them before they reach Europe. According to a report in the New Yorker magazine the EU has equipped and trained the Libyan Coast Guard, a quasi-military organization linked to militias in the country, to patrol the Mediterranean, sabotaging humanitarian rescue operations and capturing migrants. The migrants are then detained indefinitely in a network of profit-making prisons in Libya run by the militias.
(“Secretive Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe,” New Yorker, Nov. 28, 2021)
• Union elections at three Starbucks stores in the Buffalo, New York area which employ 100 workers, has sent the Seattle-based coffee giant into hyperdrive to defeat the worker’s union drive. They’ve hired anti-union consultants, ordered mandatory meetings with baristas, and sent dozens of corporate executives to Buffalo, including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, to pressure workers to oppose unionization. Starbucks has never recognized a union in any of its 8,000 stores.
(“Starbucks Launches Aggressive Anti-Union Effort As Upstate NY Stores Organize,” Guardian, Nov. 23, 2021; “Starbucks: Purveyor of Fresh Coffee and Stale Union Busting,” American Prospect, Nov. 23, 2021)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Anna Manzo.
