No charge for policeman who shot Tamir Rice

Zimbabwehas announced that it will make the Chinese yuan legal tender after Beijing confirmed it would cancel $40m in debts.

“[China] said they are cancelling our debts that are maturing this year and we are in the process of finalising the debt instruments and calculating the debts,” minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement - as if his surname wasn't a bit of a giveaway.

Chinamasa also announced that Zimbabwe will officially make the Chinese yuan legal tender as it seeks to increase trade with Beijing.

Zimbabwe abandoned its own dollar in 2009 after hyperinflation, which had peaked at around 500bn%, rendered it unusable.

It then started using a slew of foreign currencies, including the US dollar and the South African rand.

The yuan was later added to the basket of the foreign currencies, but its use had not been approved yet for public transactions in the market dominated by the greenback.

China is Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner following Zimbabwe’s isolation by its former western trading partners over Harare’s human rights record - apparently not such an issue for China.

In reaction to the boycotting veteran president Robert Mugabe adopted a “look East policy”, forging new alliances with eastern Asian countries and buttressing existing ones.

In early December, Chinese president Xi Jinping stopped over in Zimbabwe in a rare trip by a world leader to the country, and presided over the signing of various agreements, mainly to upgrade and rebuild Zimbabwe’s infrastructure such as power stations.

Not too long ago, I had the chance to interview the former big cheese of the EU, Jose Manuel Barroso, for a political magazine and journal Open Citizenship. One of the more surprising parts of the interview is where he spoke about democracy in Europe, particularly the rise of populist movements. He seemed to make the claim that all populist movements across Europe sprung from a common nationalist, source. Podemos, in his calculus, was no different from Front Nationale or UKIP.

There is a point, and perhaps there is a deeper truth argued somewhere by social scientists, but the argument fails in one major regard: the preservation of a local society against globalizing forces does not necessarily have to be nationalist. UKIP and Front Nationale, like Podemos, are concerned with the welfare of their national populations, but they frame this concern in a nationalist, xenophobic and racist way. Podemos and left-wing movements frame their concern in an ineternationalist way; one which champions solidarity and social welfare.

Obviously left-wingers can be racist xenophobes. But the idea that the rise of populism across Europe is homogenous and even – the idea that Europe is becoming more and more racist is not true. It’s not untrue either – it’s incomplete. Europe is certainly experiencing a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, but it is also opening pockets of internationalist, left-wing resistance which are making real electoral gains as Podemos did last Sunday, and are welcoming refugees and immigrants from across the world.

It’s important to remind ourselves of this when we give in to thinking that we’re a doomed continent – or worse, solidarity is a doomed feeling.

The last European Union (EU) summit of the year has been dominated by sharp conflicts. As European governments like Poland or Hungary move rapidly to the right, unbridgeable conflicting interests are threatening to tear the EU apart. Especially, when it comes to a common refugee policy. A „Yes, we will make it“ from the German chancellor Angela Merkel contra borders, that have been re-established within the Schengen zone to repel refugees and force them into neighbouring states. Of the 160,000 refugees in Greece and Italy whom the EU agreed in September to distribute among its members, only 208 have begun their journey thus far. Hungary and Slovakia have filed complaints against the agreement at the European Court of Justice.

Instead of finding a pan-European solution, Turkey, a very controversial country in many ways - as the policy against the Kurds, its role in Syria and the anti-democratic measures in the country itself show - is being paid $3 billion Euros to act as a border guard. An agreement related to this was reached at a meeting on November 29. Unbelievable, what these $3 billion Euros could have done, sent to the refugee camps in Northern Africa, instead of being used for the brutal methods by the Turkish authorities how it was revealed in a report by Amnesty International on Wednesday entitled “Europe’s Gatekeeper”. The organisation emphasizes that refugees are sent back to Iraq and Syria where they are threatened with persecution, torture and death. They were held for two months in EU-funded camps, cut off from all contact with their surroundings until they “voluntarily” signed a statement agreeing to be sent back.

The report says in its conclusion: “Irrefutable evidence shows that the Turkish authorities are detaining some of the most vulnerable people in their jurisdiction, including children, in a manner more akin to kidnapping than a lawful detention regime. Forcibly returning refugees back to Syria and Iraq is as unconscionable as it is unlawful under international and domestic Turkish law.

The fact that these detentions and returns took place in the context of negotiations and the signing of the EU-Turkey deal to combat irregular crossings is chilling. What the future will hold, given that the migration deal is now in force, is unclear. What is clear is that the EU and Turkey have a joint responsibility to ensure that any migration deal is implemented in a way that puts an end to these illegal practices and fully respects the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants in Turkey.”

According to the UN, due to the measures by the Turkish government, the number of refugees fleeing across the Aegean Sea to Greece has dropped from 7,000 a day in September and October to 2,000 a day this week. But is that a number the European community of states should really be proud of?

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres thinks that the global refugee crisis can be solved, with different means — and he offers compelling, surprising reasons why we must try – as a global action and by all European countries. (see video)

Read more about Europe and refugees in our Dossier ESCAPE.

South Sudanese leaders should help end widespread use of child soldiers by suspending and investigating commanders who have recruited children, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Thousands of children have fought in the South Sudan conflict, including under commanders from both government and opposition forces.

South Sudan’s conflict began two years ago today, on the night of December 15, 2013.

The 65-page report, “‘We Can Die Too’: Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in South Sudan,” names more than 15 commanders and officials from both the government Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the rebel SPLA-in Opposition and their allies who have used child soldiers. The report is based on interviews with 101 child soldiers who were either forcibly recruited or joined forces to protect themselves and their communities. They said they lived for months without enough food, far away from family, and were thrown into terrifying gun battles in which they were injured and saw friends killed.

Children also expressed deep regret that they had lost time they should have spent in school - and many schools have been taken over my military, as seen in this video.

“Commanders have deliberately and brutally recruited and used children to fight, in total disregard for their safety and South Sudan’s law,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “South Sudan authorities should call a halt to the massive recruitment and use of children in this conflict, which deepens the decades-old patterns of abuse.”

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 15,000 to 16,000 children may have been used by armed forces and groups in the conflict. South Sudan’s civil war began in December 2013, when soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar, now the rebel leader, fought in Juba, the capital. As the fighting spread, both sides targeted and killed civilians, including in gruesome massacres, often based on their ethnicity. Some 2.2 million people have been displaced, many from villages or towns that were burned and pillaged.

So imagine you get to build your own society. You’re God for a day, and you need to build a hospitable, functioning place for people to thrive. What do you get? Food, water, shelter – obviously. What else? Jobs/ duties – sure. Culture – oh yes. Philosophy – stick it on the bill. Coca-Cola? Hmm. Maybe. Anyone got any better ideas?

Well, according to Coca-Cola, they are building a better society. In Mexico, at least. You’d think the only things they were building was a massive pile of money, while hospitals had to build bigger waiting rooms to accommodate all those diabetes and obesity patients desperate for treatment – but sure, ok, let’s take them at their word, Coke’s building a better society.

So why exactly were they forced to pull a recent advert in the country? The company’s latest TV spot has got a small army of white, urban hipsters travelling to the Mixa region to give the indigenous community Cokes and spread some Christmas vibes. Big love.

It’s predictably well-made, everyone’s happy, there’s even a nice filter to the lens. Commercialism and religion have an obviously long and violent historical romance, and there’s no need to go into that now. But, there are two points which make this particular advert remarkable:

• Firstly, the imagery of Coke being distributed like Bibles to the natives is unbelievably crass.
• Secondly, Al-Jazeera reports that people featured in the ad were happy to take part; they did not feel humiliated or exploited.

On the first point: there’s no contention, this trope is not only astonishingly insensitive, it’s so boring. Are people really still peddling the enlightened/ benighted dichotomy in 2015? Sure, they are – from ISIS to racist cartoons, this stuff still happens. Boringly enough, people still believe they are helping others – by giving them food, a Coke, or in Isis’ case, killing them.

On the second point, this is something to take seriously. When we defend a principle like proper representations of people – we should take their viewpoints seriously. If we don’t, we risk repeating the mistakes of the people we oppose. If we believe people should be represented properly in visual media, and that they should be given full credit and respect for what they want – then we also have to take into account that they might want to have Coke handed to them by a white, urban hipster.

If we deny this, we’re really no better than the people peddling such stereotypes in the first place. We say, ‘yeah, the natives might want a Coke, but they don’t know any better – they don’t understand the world like we do’.

This is one of the more jagged pills socially-liberal people have to swallow: defending what you disagree with. Everyone knows Voltaire said something like, ‘I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll defend you’re right to say it’. Well, I fear that’s a principle we’re losing – we can’t simply shut down debate because it’s not the one we want to have. 

That doesn't mean of course tolerating everything. The defence of principles requires hard thinking and hard work; there are no easy answers. The people in the ad consented to their involvement, which makes this a nuanced issue. There are people in Syria who probably consent to ISIS' involvement in that region - does that mean we should support that? No. See - it's difficult. But if we want to build the societies we want to see, we might have to just stomach a Coke ad in the process. 

Living in Europe – what is it really? That’s a question the EU statistic nerds of Eurostat try to display in their 2015 report on “People in the EU: who are we and how do we live?” To find the answers they analysed everything – from household sizes, migration until even the availability of indoor plumbing – and they found some interesting statistical facts. Facts that may show, why some European countries are more scared about the millions of refugees knocking on their doors than others. Or for some, this report may even bring light into some perceived discomfort about being “overrun”. As the figures show, your neighbour is most likely from another EU member state. As European politician are going to seal the continent off from people fleeing from certain regions, Europeans themselves benefit from the free movement of persons as one of the fundamental freedoms of the internal market, enshrined in law (Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and subsequent secondary legislation). As such, citizens of EU Member States, together with their immediate family - spouses or registered partners are free to go, live and work wherever they want and for whatever reasons.

According to the report, approximately half of all foreign-born people living in the EU Member States were from elsewhere in Europe. More than 10 % of those born in Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland and Romania lived abroad in another EU Member State and more than one in five residents living in an EU Member State but born in another Member State originated from Poland. There are 2.7 million Polish-born residents living in Germany. It becomes very interesting to observe the foreign policy and the behaviour of the new Polish government in terms of the refugee policy in its own country!

By contrast, more than one-third (36.9%) of foreign-born residents - some 18.8 million persons- were born in the other EU Member States, while 7.4 million (14.6 %) were born in other European countries outside of the EU. Residents in the EU Member States who were born in Asia made up 20.8% of the foreign- born total while EU residents born in Africa made up 16.9% of the total and residents born in the Caribbean, Central and South America made up 8.7%. There were relatively small shares for those born in North America (1.7%) and Oceania (0.6%). In absolute terms, the largest numbers of foreign-born people living in the EU Member States on 1 January 2014 were found in Germany (9.8 million), a country with approximately 80 million inhabitants. The Moroccan community is the largest foreign-born community in the EU. And as the report says: The second and third largest foreign-born communities resident in the EU-28 were composed of people born in Turkey and Russia (2.1 million and 1.8 million persons), while there were in excess of one million residents living in the EU originating from each of Algeria, Ukraine and India. It is interesting to note that there were more Chinese-born residents living in the EU-28 (827 thousand) than American-born residents (584 thousand).

A lot of figures, indeed! But what they show is, humans have always moved across the planet, from the beginnings of mankind, through tribal and religious migrations, empire building, colonialism and slavery, to more modern forms (see also fairplanet’s dossier ESCAPE). The official statistics agency of Eurostat finds that Europe is a diverse place – always has been and it better will be. Because, the ever-changing lifestyles and population trends of good old Europe show, that the 506.8 million inhabitants in the EU-28 as of 1 January 2014 are ageing, rapidly. Aside from Japan, the EU is the world’s most rapidly ageing region. Especially, in 11 EU Member States - ahead of everyone: Germany, recording 1.76 million fewer inhabitants between 2004 and 2013, followed by Romania with1.57 million fewer inhabitants.

Europop2013, the latest population projections released by Eurostat, forecast the largest reductions in population numbers in eastern and southern EU Member States. Seclusion – that history has shown, is definitely no solution.

Six months ago a secret climate coalition was firmed, representing more than 100 countries on the developing and developed world, including the US.

Last night they revealed themselves at the UN climate talks in Paris as a force to be reckoned with, with four key demands.

The coalition wants an agreement at Paris to be legally binding; to set a clear long-term goal on global warming that is in line with scientific advice; to introduce a mechanism for reviewing countries’ emissions commitments every five years; and create a unified system for tracking countries’ progress on meeting their carbon goals.

Representing the US, all EU member states, as well as 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, the groups two notable absences are China and India.

The move is significant because it forms a major new power at the talks that wants to come to as strong an agreement as possible. Countries are meeting in Paris to forge a new global agreement on climate change, with limits on emissions and finance for poorer countries, to kick in from 2020 when current commitments expire.

The Paris talks, which are now into their final days, are seen as a make-or-break meeting, because if they fail the world will lack effective collective action on global warming.

Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU climate commissioner, said the alliance showed that developed and developing countries could work together with a common interest.

“These negotiations are not about them and us. They are about all of us, developed and developing countries, finding common ground and solutions together. We urge other countries to join us. Together we can do it,” he said.

It’s the end of the world as we know it. At least according to every Republican in America. We’re headed into a nuclear/ Biblical disaster zone, and the president of the world’s only superpower is too dull-witted to know what to do.

There is a striking parallel which no one seems to have mentioned: remember when George W. Bush was president, and he went to war, and everyone thought he was not only making a poor decision, but that he was unfit to lead? Well, the same is being said about President Obama – the only difference being that with Bush, at least, the case is easier to make. Do I need to remind you about his buffoonish public image? No, with Obama, it’s like high-school maths: you have to show your working. You can’t just say he’s unfit to lead. Nevertheless, that’s what’s happening, because he’s not going to war with Daesh/ ISIS.

Candidates like Rand Paul, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina have all signaled they think the best option would be to engage directly with Daesh, using that unlovely phrase so often heard in our times, ‘boots on the ground’. Fiorina even went so far as discussing which forces she would arm in the region, and with whom she would partner; as though nothing has been learnt from 1980s American foreign policy.

To be fair, Obama’s address to the nation after a tumultuous week which included yet another shooting in the States, and an attempted murder in Leytonstone, both of which have been linked to terrorism and ISIS in one way or another – was fairly non-committal. As it should have been – America should be thankful they have a leader in charge who isn’t swayed by national fervor to simply invade another country and ignite what would be a bonfire the whole world would feel.

No, he’s right to stick to his word, listen to the advice of his military and security personnel and not  simply leap into Syria, boots first. That’s something we should all feel thankful for. But we should be prepared too – this piece of good news isn’t entirely heartening, especially in such a depressing environment. The right-wing is rising again in Europe – not just in France, but all over the place.

Muslims, refugees, people of colour – things are turning against all of them. So what do we do? As always, speak out, be brave and do what you can to build community trust again where you are. And also, keep calm. Chill. Relax. Everyone will tell you the apocalypse is coming in the next few weeks, months and years – but here’s the truth: it’s not. There will be no big bang this week or next that commences the epic conflict between Islam and the West. The only reality is that we diminish our own lives with fear, hate and suspicion. Now, stop taking Donald Trump seriously and have a chat with stranger – it might not be amazing, but it won’t be the end of the world.