BlogSalao 2020
http://blogsalao.wordpress.com
https://massalao.wordpress.com
HOPE
“In this current climate it is easy to despair and it is easy to give up. But it is exactly at moments like this that we need to reorganise and redouble our efforts, because if we don’t then things could get a whole lot worse. From somewhere we must all find some hope, both to meet the challenges we are facing today, but also to ensure that tomorrow can be better.”
https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/nick-lowles-on-our-call-for-action-in-2020/
“Stay strong!”
Al igual que otras formas de desarrollo, el turismo también puede ser fuente de problemas como la pérdida del patrimonio cultural, la dislocación social, la degradación ecológica y la dependencia económica.
Aprender cuáles son los impactos que el turismo puede tener ha llevado a muchas personas a buscar la forma de que sus vacaciones no tengan repercusiones medioambientales, ya sea por su parte como visitante y al mismo tiempo eligiendo lugares y servicios que se orienten al turismo responsable
Por ello hoy en día existen varias formas de turismo alternativo o sostenible, tales como: el turismo basado en la naturaleza, el “ecoturismo y el turismo cultural. El turismo sostenible se está volviendo tan popular que algunos dicen que lo que actualmente llamamos “alternativa” será habitual en pocos años.
Todas las actividades de turismo sin importar la motivación (vacaciones, viajes de negocios, conferencias, experiencias deportivas o de aventuras, escapadas románticas o visitas puntuales) ni la duración de las mismas, deben ser sostenibles.
El turismo sostenible se define como aquel que respeta tanto a la población local como al viajero, al patrimonio cultural y al medio ambiente. Se trata de proporcionar a la gente unas vacaciones emocionantes y educativas, que al mismo tiempo sean beneficiosas para el lugar elegido.
El objetivo principal de este tipo de turismo es apreciar tanto los beneficios (para disfrutarlos) como los problemas (para evitarlos) derivados de las diversas formas de turismo, especialmente en términos de equidad social y medio ambiente.
Además, es importante tener en cuenta que el turismo sostenible permite desarrollar una conciencia crítica de las formas en que esta actividad puede mejorar el bienestar de las personas y proteger el patrimonio natural y cultural.
Otro de sus pilares es promover un compromiso personal con las diversas formas de turismo que existen, con el fin de maximicen vez de desvirtuar, el desarrollo humano sostenible y la calidad ambiental. La idea fundamental es que se puede llegar a un sitio, disfrutarlo e irse de él, sin dejar huellas negativas de ningún tipo.
“Lo que está impulsando la emergencia de enfermedades es el comportamiento humano.”
El mundo está tratando los síntomas de la pandemia de covid-19, pero no las causas
21 Julio 2020
Imagina que te enfermas una y otra vez. En cada ocasión vas al hospital, pero solo alivian un poco tu malestar. Nadie pregunta por el origen de tu enfermedad.
Algo similar ocurre con la actual pandemia según la profesora Delia Grace, quien investiga hace tres décadas las llamadas “zoonosis”, las enfermedades humanas que tienen origen en animales.
Grace es la autora principal de un nuevo informe de Naciones Unidas titulado: “Previniendo la próxima pandemia: las zoonosis y cómo romper la cadena de transmisión”.
La epidemióloga y veterinaria es profesora del Instituto de Recursos Naturales de la Universidad de Greenwich en Londres, y miembro del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Pecuarias, ILRI, con sede en Kenia, que también participó en el estudio.
En BBC Mundo hablamos con Delia Grace sobre qué factores están causando la emergencia de enfermedades, cómo los gobiernos deben aplicar una estrategia clave llamada “Una Salud”, y por qué, si no se toman medidas, la próxima pandemia podría ser aún peor que la del covid-19.
¿Por qué asegura que el mundo no está tratando las causas de la pandemia?
Soy veterinaria y me gustan las analogías médicas.
Ha habido una gran respuesta a esta crisis tremenda. Pero ha sido como tener un paciente en el hospital y tratar sus síntomas, la temperatura, lo aparente. Otra respuesta ha sido intentar rehabilitar al paciente para que camine y trabaje otra vez.
Pero si no se mira de dónde viene el problema, tendrás al paciente otra vez en el hospital el mes que viene con los mismos síntomas.
En otras palabras, el mundo se enfocó correctamente en la respuesta médica y en reiniciar la economía, pero a menos que veamos cuáles son las fuentes de esta crisis vamos a tener más pandemias. Ese es el enfoque del nuevo informe de ONU Medio Ambiente y el ILRI.
¿Las zoonosis ya eran un problema creciente antes de la actual pandemia?
Sí. He trabajado en zoonosis durante 30 años, así que parte de mi apreciación viene de mi experiencia. Pero también hemos hecho estudios.
Uno de los más citados lo hice con Kate Jones, de University College London.
Ella buscó casos de enfermedades infecciosas emergentes en humanos desde 1934 a inicios de los 2000. Y luego juntas cubrimos otra década más, y la tendencia es clara.
Es imposible negar que en el último siglo han surgido cada vez más y más enfermedades infecciosas.
¿Puede darnos algunos ejemplos?
El 75% de esas enfermedades tuvieron como fuente animales salvajes. Pero algo muy importante que hay que destacar es que muchas de esas enfermedades llegaron a los humanos usando como “puentes” animales domésticos, especialmente pollos, cerdos y otros tipos de ganado.
Hay muchos más animales domésticos en el planeta que animales salvajes, y no es sorprendente que algunas de las enfermedades de más impacto los hayan usado como puentes.
Algunos ejemplos son la enfermedad de la vaca loca, la influenza aviar, el VIH SIDA, y la gripe española, que se originó probablemente en aves y usó como puente pollos y cerdos y mató más gente que la Primera Guerra Mundial.
También hay enfermedades que no son emergentes, sino que se conocen hace tiempo como la brucelosis, que tienen un gran impacto sobre todo en las poblaciones más pobres.
Pasemos a las causas de la actual pandemia, a los factores que el informe llama “propulsores de enfermedad” o disease drivers. ¿Por qué se destaca especialmente al aumento en la demanda de proteína animal y la ganadería intensiva no sostenible?
Lo que está impulsando la emergencia de enfermedades es el comportamiento humano.
Y uno de los factores más importantes es la demanda de proteína de origen animal, sea carne vacuna, huevos, peces, pollos.
Esto está llevando a un aumento de la ganadería de escala industrial, porque las pequeñas granjas familiares con animales que crecen al aire libre no pueden responder a esta demanda.
En muchos de estos establecimientos los animales están hacinados, los seleccionan para que crezcan lo más rápido posible y son todos del mismo tipo genético.
En Irlanda, donde yo crecí, solías ver en el campo decenas de razas diferentes de ovejas y de cerdos. Pero ahora la industria está dominada por unos pocos tipos genéticos similares.
Estamos creando un hervidero de problemas, con animales hacinados y estresados. Y cuando los animales están estresados su sistema inmunológico se debilita.
Por otra parte, en muchos países las medidas de bioseguridad no son buenas y esos pollos o cerdos entran en contacto con animales como ratas o incluso personas enfermas.
Si hay un derrame de patógenos a humanos, el llamado spillover, puede crearse un problema alrededor del mundo.
Eso en cuanto a la ganadería. ¿Pero cuán grave es el problema del consumo de animales salvajes?
Es aún más arriesgado. Lo que estamos viendo es una enorme presión en los ecosistemas, impulsada por el aumento en la población, con un enorme incremento de industrias extractivas en sitios como la Amazonía y África Central.
Y para sacar la madera y los minerales se construyen carreteras y caminos.
En el pasado, si había un derrame de algún patógeno animal a humanos tal vez moría el cazador que había comido un animal salvaje, y alguien en su familia, y se acababa allí la enfermedad.
Pero ahora con carreteras hay más movimiento, más contacto, y más salida de animales silvestres para satisfacer la demanda de minorías élites en ciudades de África y Asia que pagan por estos animales exóticos porque los ven como símbolo de estatus o creen que comerlos mejora el vigor o la salud.
¿Qué medidas pueden tomarse ante el aumento en la demanda de proteína animal?
Es un problema complejo.
Algunas personas comen demasiada carne, más de 100k por año, algo que no es bueno ni para su salud ni para el medio ambiente. En este caso puede haber incentivos para una dieta más balanceada.
Pero muchas de las cerca de 4.000 millones de personas que viven en países de ingreso mediano bajo comen demasiada poca carne. Sabemos que el 30% de los niños allí tiene problemas de crecimiento y la proteína animal es rica en micronutrientes.
Así que algunos grupos deberían consumir más proteína animal, la cuestión es de qué origen, carne vacuna, huevos, o peces, o insectos.
Siempre hay un tema de contrapartidas o tradeoffs.
Por ejemplo, si la gente deja de comer carne vacuna, pero come más pollos, esto también puede ser un problema.
Uno de los mayores problemas en el planeta en este momento en términos de sanidad animal son los pollos criados específicamente para producción de carne.
Cerca del 30% viven una vida de un dolor agonizante, porque los hacen crecer tan rápido que tienen lesiones en las piernas y patas, y están tan hacinados que hay una oportunidad mucho mayor de emergencia de enfermedades.
Debemos mirar al mismo tiempo todo lo que importa, bienestar animal, nutrición, sostenibilidad, gases de invernadero.
Otro de los propulsores de enfermedad que menciona el informe es el cambio climático. ¿Qué papel juega?
El cambio climático no está tan asociado a la emergencia de enfermedades sino a su expansión.
Cuando hablamos de enfermedades emergentes no necesariamente hablamos de enfermedades nuevas, puede tratarse de enfermedades que cambian su patrón geográfico de distribución.
El zika, por ejemplo, probablemente existió durante siglos en animales en Uganda. Pero luego emergió y se esparció por el mundo.
Algunas enfermedades se transmiten por vectores como mosquitos, y su supervivencia está vinculada al clima.
Si no hay heladas esos insectos no mueren durante el invierno. Y áreas que antes eran secas pero ahora son más húmedas porque llueve más van a ser territorios de expansión para esos vectores.
Una de las recomendaciones del informe es implementar el principio “Una Salud” (One Health), y por ejemplo en Uruguay se acaba de inaugurar con ese enfoque el Centro de Innovación Epidemiológica o CIVI. ¿Qué significa “Una Salud” en esencia?
Que expertos de los diferentes sectores, es decir, de la salud humana, animal y del medio ambiente, trabajen juntos. Esto es importante para tratar las causas en lugar de los síntomas.
¿Puede darnos algunos ejemplos de cómo poner Una Salud en práctica?
Un ejemplo es el caso de la rabia, una de las zoonosis más serias, que mata cerca de 70.000 personas por día en el mundo.
En lugar de tratar a una persona mordida por un perro es más efectivo y barato vacunar a los perros.
La gripe aviar es otro ejemplo. El mundo despertó a esta epidemia cuando comenzó a morir gente, pero hacía meses que había muertes de aves. Solo que en muchos países no se había comunicado esto a las autoridades de la salud humana.
“Una Salud” también significa compartir instalaciones. Durante la actual pandemia, en Kenia, donde yo trabajo, no existía la capacidad de hacer tests de covid-19 a gran escala. Por ello en Kenia, al igual que en Noruega y otros países, laboratorios veterinarios abrieron sus puertas para realizar esos tests.
Porque cuando analizas ADN en una máquina no importa si es animal o humano.
El informe dice que el monitoreo de indicadores ambientales es otro ejemplo de Una Salud. ¿Qué significa esto?
Tomemos como ejemplo una enfermedad llamada fiebre del valle del Rift.
Vemos que es producto de toda una secuencia.
Primero tienes el fenómeno de El Niño en Sudamérica que acaba afectando las corrientes oceánicas en la costa de África, causando más lluvias. Esas lluvias causan inundaciones que llevan a un aumento de mosquitos que infectan con la fiebre a las ovejas, y de las ovejas la enfermedad pasa a las personas.
Podemos determinar cuánto debe llover para que aumenten considerablemente los mosquitos, y de acuerdo a esos indicadores establecer categorías de riesgo para dar alertas.
Así que los entomólogos que estudian insectos, los científicos del clima, los veterinarios y los expertos en salud humana deben trabajar juntos.
El concepto Una Salud es novedoso para muchos de nosotros. ¿Cuándo surgió?
La idea de Una Salud tiene una larga historia. Algunos la vinculan a un epidemiólogo estadounidense, Calvin Schwabe, que habló hace más de medio siglo de “Una Medicina”, aunque incluía solo la salud humana y animal, no el medio ambiente.
La idea se extendió sobre todo durante la gripe aviar y la epidemia de SARS (2002-2004) en el Sureste Asiático. Y se formalizó en el llamado Acuerdo Tripartito que firmaron la Organización Mundial de la Salud, la Organización Mundial de Sanidad Animal y la FAO, para cooperar en el contexto de Una Salud.
Pero quiero mencionar que Una Salud tiene un campo que es pariente cercano y surgió en Sudamérica.
Me refiero a una idea llama Ecosalud, que comenzó en el contexto de la explotación de la Amazonía, y que abarca también las zoonosis y la degradación ambiental.
La Ecosalud ya se investigaba en los 90, aunque no era muy conocida fuera de Latinoamérica.
En realidad deberíamos hablar de Una Salud/Ecosalud. Es básicamente lo mismo.
El ecólogo Thomas Gillespie comentó tras leer el informe que si no se atacan las causas de las pandemias, vendrán otras mucho más graves que la del covid-19. ¿Usted está de acuerdo?
Sí. Estamos jugando a los dados y con muchas combinaciones posibles.
La epidemia del SARS mató a cerca de un 30% de las personas infectadas, pero no se transmitía facilmente. El covid se esparce fácilmente pero no es tan letal en comparación.
Las mismas variaciones ocurren con las influenzas, pero de pronto apareció una como la gripe española que no sólo se transmitía con facilidad sino que mató mucha gente.
Si miras al pasado, la viruela solía matar al 30% de la población cada año, la gripe española mató tal vez hasta 100 millones de personas, las estimaciones varían.
Sucedió antes y puede volver a suceder.
¿Estamos ahora mejor preparados?
Nos gusta pensar que podemos dominar estos virus con tratamientos, pero hallarlos lleva tiempo.
Piensa que en el caso de virus como el VIH o la malaria, los científicos han estado buscando soluciones durante medio siglo, pero aún no han logrado vacunas efectivas.
Así que no debemos asumir en forma automática que cuando venga un problema aún mayor, la superpandemia, podremos controlarla a tiempo.
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-53435056
Coronavirus | “El modelo de desarrollo capitalista es una especie de virus para nuestro planeta”: entrevista con el antropólogo Philippe Descola
23 Junio 2020
Las zoonosis -enfermedades infecciosas que se transmiten de los animales a los humanos y viceversa- han existido “desde que la humanidad comenzó a movilizarse”, pero lo alarmante del virus actual, según el antropólogo Philippe Descola, es la velocidad con la que se ha propagado.
Y para este especialista en los pueblos indígenas de la Amazonia, el modelo de desarrollo occidental es uno de los culpables.
Descola ha dedicado más de tres décadas de su vida a estudiar, entre otras cuestiones, la etnología de algunos pueblos nativos latinoamericanos, lo que lo ha convertido en una de las más grandes figuras de la antropología americanista en el mundo moderno.
Sus investigaciones también le hicieron ganar en 2012 la Medalla de Oro del Centro Nacional de la Investigación Científica (CNRS, por sus siglas en francés), la más alta distinción de Francia en el campo de la ciencia.
Philippe Descola es conocido por ser un gran crítico del llamado naturalismo occidental, que considera la naturaleza algo externo a los humanos.
“Desde el siglo XVII, el mundo occidental ha considerado a la naturaleza como algo externo a sí mismo. Una forma de luchar contra los excesos de esta concepción es educarse y verse a uno mismo como un elemento de la naturaleza”, explica.
Lo que sigue es un extracto de la conversación que el experto mantuvo con BBC Mundo, en la que además explicó cómo el neoliberalismo ha afectado la calidad de vida de los pueblos indígenas en Sudamérica.
“Ha reducido el papel y la responsabilidad del Estado en programas educativos y sanitarios para los pueblos indígenas. Ahora son las ONG las que se ocupan de ellos”.
¿Qué lecciones nos deja la crisis del coronavirus?
Lo primero es que estamos volviendo a un grado de incertidumbre que no veíamos desde hace tiempo, sobre todo en las grandes naciones posindustriales de Europa y Norteamérica.
De repente, un evento que en apariencia parecía menor, es decir, un pequeño virus, vino a alterar por completo la vida en el planeta.
Se trata de una situación muy común en algunos países del hemisferio sur y dentro de poblaciones que yo conozco muy bien, particularmente algunas poblaciones nativas en América que fueron expuestas a enfermedades epidémicas y contagiosas durante la conquista y hasta el siglo XVIII.
También es el caso de otras poblaciones que están sujetas a la depredación de grandes empresas extractivas, terratenientes, etc.
Pero debido al desarrollo del Estado de bienestar a finales del siglo XIX, las sociedades europeas y norteamericanas se habían acostumbrado a un cierto grado de previsibilidad del futuro, a pesar de todos los infortunios, crímenes y genocidios del siglo XX. Y esto se ha disipado.
Otro hecho visible es que la desigualdad se ha intensificado y se ha hecho más evidente debido a la pandemia. Y esto abarca tanto la desigualdad global como la podemos ver dentro de una misma nación.
¿Cómo ha afectado esto a los pueblos indígenas de América Latina?
Las poblaciones amerindias se encuentran en una situación crítica, excepto aquellas que tienen la posibilidad de protegerse aislándose completamente. Este es el caso de los achuares de la Amazonía ecuatoriana, un pueblo que conozco muy bien.
Se cerraron al mundo exterior. Ellos pudieron hacerlo, pero en otras regiones, particularmente en Brasil, la situación es muy diferente.
La tasa de mortalidad es tan alta en las poblaciones amerindias en las tierras bajas de América del Sur porque los servicios de salud son casi inexistentes y porque no se controla a las personas contaminadas que viajan a través de los territorios donde viven los aborígenes.
Aquí, pero también en muchas otras partes del mundo, nos damos cuenta de lo desiguales que somos ante una epidemia.
Entonces, la pandemia ha puesto en evidencia que hay algunos grupos que son más vulnerables que otros frente a una crisis sanitaria.
Exactamente. Algunos grupos han sido directamente afectados debido a la interrupción de sus actividades laborales con lo cual sus ingresos han mermado.
Pero también han sido intensamente golpeados por la misma enfermedad, lo cual ha empeorado la situación.
Los empleos peor pagados en gran parte del mundo son precisamente aquellos que han sido puestos en la primera línea de la lucha contra la enfermedad. Es decir, los enfermeros, los recolectores de basura, las personas que limpian, los cuidadores de ancianos, etc.
Son empleos mal pagados que, de repente, se han vuelto indispensables en todo el mundo.
Como usted ha dicho, el virus ha alterado la vida en el planeta. ¿Cree que esto se podría ver como una oportunidad para abordar problemas como la desigualdad, por ejemplo?
He leído diversas opiniones en las últimas semanas sobre lo que llaman el mundo que sigue. Me parece que el mundo de después se parece muchísimo al mundo de antes de la pandemia.
Puede que el virus haya hecho que una parte de la población sea consciente de las desigualdades del planeta.
Algunos también se han dado cuenta de que la propagación del virus ha sido impulsada en parte por la destrucción de los ecosistemas.
Pero para que cambiemos nuestros estilos de vida, los modos de consumo, de producción y las terribles desigualdades entre los más ricos y los más pobres, el shock tendrá que ser mayor.
No veo por el momento una transformación profunda.
Hay algo que está bastante claro y es que los más jóvenes se han dado cuenta de la gravedad de la situación de la desigualdad.
Antes, los jóvenes eran conscientes de los problemas del cambio climático, en mayor proporción que la gente mayor, pero no de los problemas de la desigualdad entre las personas y los pueblos.
Hay una diferencia entre ser consciente y realmente impulsar un cambio. ¿Cuánto tiempo podría tomarle a una sociedad cambiar su visión del mundo y comenzar a abordar estos problemas?
Los antropólogos y los expertos en ciencias sociales son muy cautelosos con las predicciones en general, pues siempre cabe la posibilidad de que resulten erróneas.
Antes de la Revolución Francesa, muy pocos pensaban que en un par de años el rey sería guillotinado y se le quitarían los privilegios a monarquía.
Hay situaciones que ocurren en determinados momentos y estallan. Hemos visto algunos ejemplos de estos con los abusos hacia las mujeres y, más recientemente, la cuestión del racismo.
Después de cientos de asesinatos por parte de la policía, todo lo que se necesitó fue que un video se volviera viral de repente para que surgiera una movilización internacional considerable.
Pero son movimientos muy difíciles de prever.
¿Por dónde se podría comenzar?
En el mundo hay pequeñas comunidades que se han organizado para hacerle frente a la devastación capitalista.
En Francia, tenemos la Zone À Defendre (“Zona a defender”) de Notre Dame des Landes, donde un grupo de personas se unieron en contra a un gran plan para construir un aeropuerto, estas personas se sienten tan identificadas con el lugar que decidieron quedarse y luchar para protegerlo, bajo el lema: “No defendemos la naturaleza, somos la naturaleza que se defiende”.
Mientras haya más situaciones como esta, las cosas irán cambiando más rápidamente en relación a la apropiación privada y de todas esas cosas que han sido características del desarrollo económico europeo y global desde finales del siglo XVIII.
Usted piensa que el pueblo achuar en la Amazonía ecuatoriana subexplota sus recursos naturales. ¿Cómo se les puede alentar para que hagan un mejor uso de los recursos naturales sin dañar la naturaleza?
Los achuares subexplotan los recursos por muchas razones que yo trato de analizar en mis libros.
Podrían haber intensificado la producción para mantener poblaciones más grandes. No lo han hecho porque encontraron un equilibrio entre el trabajo y el ocio.
Los achuares, como muchas otras poblaciones indígenas en el mundo, trabajan un máximo de cuatro horas al día. En estos pueblos existe una especie de límite insuperable de las jornadas laborales que ha sido modificado en ciertos momentos históricos, en particular mediante el trabajo forzoso
No se trata de aprovecharlo mejor. Creo que están aprovechando al máximo el bosque y sus recursos. Solo que no han hecho el tipo de sobreexplotación destructiva para el medio ambiente que los grandes productores de cacao, de café, etc.
Entonces, me parece que son más bien un ejemplo a seguir, pero uno muy particular porque, por otro lado, en realidad no reciben ayudas del Estado.
Creo que usted es venezolano y conoce bien la situación.
En Latinoamérica, el neoliberalismo ha reducido el papel y la responsabilidad del Estado en programas educativos y sanitarios para los pueblos indígenas. Ahora son las ONG las que se ocupan de ellos.
Gracias al trabajo de las ONG, este tipo de poblaciones también pueden tener acceso a bienes que ellos mismos no pueden producir.
¿Cree que los pueblos de la Amazonía tienen una relación más sana con la naturaleza que la civilización occidental?
Sí, pero creo que deberíamos subrayar que la naturaleza es precisamente un concepto occidental.
Por lo tanto, hablar de relaciones saludables con la naturaleza ya es ponerse en una posición que no es la de las poblaciones amerindias.
Los amerindios tienen relaciones muy personales con las plantas, las animales y otras mentes.
La naturaleza es una abstracción, es un concepto filosófico. Hablar de una relación sana con la naturaleza ya es ubicarse en lo que yo llamo el naturalismo occidental de una exterioridad de los humanos frente a la naturaleza.
Muchas poblaciones en todo el mundo no tienen esta exterioridad o, en cualquier caso, no la tuvieron durante mucho tiempo.
La palabra naturaleza no tiene traducción en chino ni en japonés. Se trata de un término que no existe en ningún otro idioma no europeo derivado del griego o del latín.
Desde el siglo XVII, el mundo occidental ha considerado a la naturaleza como algo externo a sí mismo. Una forma de luchar contra los excesos de esta concepción, es educarse y verse a uno mismo como un elemento de la naturaleza.
¿Habrá consecuencias a largo plazo para los pueblos de la Amazonía? ¿Cree que pandemia cambiaría permanentemente el estilo de vida de estos pueblos?
No creo. Muchas epidemias y enfermedades infecciosas han afectado a las poblaciones amerindias, en México, América Central, etc., con tasas de mortalidad altísimas.
En algunos momento la mayoría de la población desapareció como resultado de estas enfermedades, pero se recuperaron y todavía existen.
En el contexto de los pueblos del Amazonas, será solo otro episodio de todos los males que han golpeado a estas poblaciones.
Algunos de los más recientes son la fiebre del caucho en el siglo XX y luego la invasión de tierras por la parte de grandes terratenientes y empresas extractivas.
Cuando uno se ha enfrentado a condiciones terribles de conquista y dominación, uno desarrolla la capacidad de resistir.
Eso es algo que en Occidente perdimos hace mucho tiempo.
¿Cree que las modificaciones que ha sufrido el medioambiente en las últimas décadas ha facilitado la propagación de este tipo de virus en el mundo de hoy?
Sí, por supuesto. Todas las principales epidemias infecciosas de las últimas décadas son zoonosis locales, que provienen de especies silvestres y que se han transmitido a través de otras especies silvestres o de animales domésticos a los humanos.
Y luego viene la propagación entre los humanos.
El detonante ha sido las poblaciones de animales salvajes que, debido a la deforestación y la destrucción de los ambientes naturales salvajes, entran en contacto continuo con las poblaciones humanas y, por lo tanto, facilitan estas contaminaciones.
Estas son cosas que todavía la gente ignora, porque hay que ser capaz de combinar el enfoque de la ecología científica, de la antropología, de la infectología, de la virología, etc..
Y estas son disciplinas que no siempre trabajan conjuntamente.
Entonces ¿si no cambiamos el modelo, estas enfermedades podrían volverse más frecuentes?
Hay varias consecuencias y creo que el modelo actual de desarrollo occidental es uno de los causantes de esta pandemia. Se puede decir que el modelo de desarrollo capitalista es una especie de virus para nuestro planeta.
Siempre ha habido epidemias. Las zoonosis han existido desde que la humanidad comenzó a movilizarse.
No son nuevas, pero la velocidad de propagación de este coronavirus lo es y es alarmante.
También son nuevos los factores detonantes del desarrollo de este tipo de enfermedades. Son culpa de este modelo y no paran de aumentar.
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-53066587
“Es que la verdad no se puede exagerar. En la verdad no puede haber matices. En la semi-verdad o en la mentira, muchos.” (Pio Baroja)
El nacionalismo se cura viajando, aunque sea sólo dentro de casa
El avión que me llevó a Buenos Aires se llamaba Pío Baroja. Me da tranquilidad viajar en un avión con ese nombre. El escritor no hizo muchos viajes. Nada que ver con los viajeros de nuestro tiempo. Lanzados a conocer el mundo y sus maravillas. Rápidos viajes a cataratas, selvas o finisterres de inmensidades vacías. Don Pío fue más de viajes por su habitación, con sus viejos libros comprados en Moyano. Feria que ahora termina en Recoletos y que presentó, en homenaje a Fernán-Gómez, una lectora llamada Emma Cohen.
Aquí dejé la feria del libro viejo y me fui a la nueva feria en la libresca capital de Buenos Aires. Habían desembarcado muchos escritores, los mismos que me encuentro sin moverme del barrio, y decidí poner un poco de paisaje por medio y me marché a la Patagonia. Helado fin del mundo donde hay un interminable surtidor de cubitos de hielo, glaciar que tiene nombre de un perito que nunca estuvo allí.
Ver panoramas considerables, paisajes de belleza abrumadora; de hielos más perfectos y hermosos que los de cualquier whisky. Ir al sur del sur. Hacer el viaje que tanto costó a Darwin, en unas pocas horas de avión y en cómodos coches que te llevan a un hotel con vistas a la helada y viva maravilla.
Frente al espectacular panorama recordé a Plá -ahora reeditadas sus notas y cuadernos- cuando decía que en el Ampurdán no había panoramas considerables: “En este rodal, a los paisajes los llamamos vistas”. Mundano hombre de pueblo que no se deja sorprender con un espectacular paisaje.
No somos Plá, y fuimos al viaje como recomienda el maestro, casi secreto, Juan Filloy: “Cuando usted viaje, deje su vida en su casa, en su pueblo, en su ciudad. Es un artefacto inútil”. Eso sí, no olvidar las tarjetas de crédito.
Y si se quiere pasear sobre el glaciar, hermosa y extravagante caminata, se deberían dejar los nacionalismos. Pero no. No hacen caso a Baroja, ni a Filloy, ni a Camba, del que ahora se recuperan sus escritos nada nacionalistas, sus humorísticas maneras de ser español. Allí van los turistas con sus banderas. Hasta con las de su equipo. Y allí, en el fin del mundo, hay que soportar que algún turista haga un brindis por Dios y contra Darwin. Por la Patria en mayúsculas. Y por la Madre Patria con más fervor que Carmen Chacón. Cuando ya creía poder beber mi whisky con hielos del glaciar, el patriota gritó el último de los brindis: “Por nuestros gobernantes, para que encuentren la luz y la justicia al dirigirnos”. Bajé mi vaso. No brindé y recordé algunas cosas de los gobernantes de su país. Era colombiano. Recordé de los gobernantes argentinos. De otros. Y terminé por recordarnos. Tengo que brindar más y beber menos. Viajar más, pero dentro de casa.
https://elpais.com/diario/2008/05/11/domingo/1210476637_850215.html
“El nacionalismo se cura viajando. Y leyendo se quita lo bruto. Pero como ustedes ni viajan ni leen, son xenófobos y brutos.”
Europe and right-wing nationalism
13 November 2019
Nationalism has always been a feature across Europe’s political spectrum but there has been a recent boom in voter support for right-wing and populist parties.
It is visible from Germany, where the AfD has become the biggest opposition party in the Bundestag, to Spain, where Vox has become the third largest force in parliament.
In part, voters are frustrated with the political establishment, but they also have concerns about globalisation, immigration, a dilution of national identity and the European Union.
In the European Parliament, nine far-right parties have formed a new bloc, called Identity and Democracy (ID).
So where in Europe’s political landscape do right-wing nationalists hold sway?
Italy
Italy’s Matteo Salvini – leader of the League – is a key figure in Europe’s nationalist scene, despite the collapse of his ruling coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement in August.
A surprise deal between Five Star and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) ended Mr Salvini’s tenure as interior minister.
The League’s popularity coincided with the aftermath of the financial crisis and a big influx of sub-Saharan migrants from North Africa in 2016. As interior minister, Mr Salvini spearheaded an anti-immigration policy that barred humanitarian rescue ships from Italian ports.
His party has long had a Eurosceptic reputation. It is leading the Italian opinion polls and has 28 MEPs in the new EU Parliament’s 73-strong ID bloc.
Germany
In 2017 the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered the federal parliament for the first time with 12.6% of the vote, becoming Germany’s biggest opposition party.
From its beginnings as an anti-euro party, it has pushed for strict anti-immigration policies, embraced hostility towards Islam and broken decades-old anti-Nazi taboos. It enjoyed a surge in popularity as Germany allowed in over a million undocumented migrants.
Despite attempts by Chancellor Angela Merkel to toughen her stance on immigration, the party has added to its electoral success and now has representatives in every state parliament.
In October 2019 the AfD came ahead of Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) in the eastern state of Thuringia – a shock to the political establishment.
The AfD is strongest in ex-communist eastern Germany. Its supporters chant “Wir sind das Volk!” (We are the People) – an emotive slogan from the anti-communist protests of 1989.
The AfD is also Eurosceptic and Nigel Farage, leader of the UK’s Brexit Party, took part in its 2017 election campaign.
The Brexit Party was the clear winner in the UK’s European elections in May, despite its lack of seats in the UK Parliament. The party insists that the UK must leave the EU unconditionally: it argues that this was mandated by the Leave vote in the UK’s 2016 referendum.
Spain
One of the big political stories in Spain has been the sudden rise of the far-right Vox party.
Spain held its fourth general election in four years on 10 November and Vox surged into third place, doubling its seats to 52. It only entered parliament for the first time in April.
Vox styles itself as defending the unity of the Spanish state, with a promise to deport illegal immigrants and repeal laws against gender violence.
It has made major gains by calling for a suspension of autonomy for the north-eastern Catalonia region, after separatists failed in their push for independence in October 2017.
Many believed that Spaniards would never endorse a far-right party due to its history under dictator Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. Just a single seat had been won by a far-right candidate since then – in 1979.
Austria
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) became the only far-right party in power in Western Europe when it joined a coalition as junior partner with conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in 2017. His People’s Party, along with the centre-left Social Democrats, have long dominated Austrian politics.
As in Germany, the migrant crisis that unfolded in 2015 was also seen as key to the FPÖ’s success, and an issue they long campaigned on.
During its time in power the Freedom Party became caught up in a series of race rows. Then, party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and parliament group head Johann Gudenus were caught up in a scandal over a video “sting” filmed in Ibiza in 2017.
Mr Strache resigned and the fallout led to the far-right party quitting the government and support for the FPÖ fell sharply to 16% in September elections.
France
Despite the efforts of leader Marine Le Pen to make the far right palatable to France’s mainstream, she was comprehensively defeated by Emmanuel Macron for the presidency in May 2017.
Her National Front (FN) failed to break through in parliamentary elections the following month, and the party was then renamed the National Rally (Rassemblement National).
Ms Le Pen’s party is opposed to the euro and blames the EU for mass immigration, and she has found a common voice with other nationalist and far-right parties in Europe.
There is evidence that the grassroots “gilets jaunes” (yellow-vest) protest movement has attracted some activists from the far right.
The anti-establishment protests over the cost of living have posed probably the biggest challenge to the Macron presidency.
Some gilets jaunes protesters include anti-Semitic abuse in their angry campaign.
Sweden
The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) made significant gains in the 2018 general election, winning about 18% of the vote.
The party has its roots in neo-Nazism, but it rebranded itself in recent years and first entered parliament in 2010. It opposes multiculturalism and wants strict immigration controls.
As with many of the countries featured here, though, the picture is complex. Sweden has welcomed more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country and has one of the most positive attitudes towards migrants.
Finland
The far-right Finns Party were narrowly beaten into second place in the April 2019 general election, coming within 0.2% of the left-wing Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Its success was built on two policies: opposition to immigration and a rejection of ambitious policies aimed at combating climate change.
It was an extraordinary recovery for a party that had also done well in the previous vote in 2015 but had since faded in popularity because of party splits.
Estonia
Estonia’s far-right Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) won its first seats in parliament in the 2015 election.
Four years later, EKRE has more than doubled its share of the vote to nearly 18%, making it the third-largest party. It used that power to negotiate a place in government, as it joined fellow runners-up the Centre and Pro Patria parties to stop liberal leader Kaja Kallas from becoming Estonia’s first woman prime minister.
EKRE campaigned on an anti-immigration platform, and is also critical of same-sex marriage. Its leader, Martin Helme, once said that only white people should be allowed to move to Estonia.
Poland
The far-right Confederation party got 6.8% of the vote in Poland’s 2019 general election.
But the main story of the election was the convincing win for conservative Law and Justice (PiS), returning to power with 43.6% of the vote.
PiS is led by a veteran anti-communist campaigner, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose bedrock support is in rural Poland, with its deep-rooted Catholic traditions. The party is strong on social welfare, as well as nationalism, making it rather different from many other right-wing parties in Europe.
The PiS government’s controversial overhaul of Poland’s judiciary has put it in dispute with the EU Commission.
Hungary
In 2018, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban secured a third term in office with a landslide victory in an election dominated by immigration.
The victory, he said, gave Hungarians “the opportunity to defend themselves and to defend Hungary”.
Mr Orban has long presented himself as the defender of Hungary and Europe against Muslim migrants, once warning of the threat of “a Europe with a mixed population and no sense of identity”.
In March 2019 Europe’s mainstream centre-right grouping, the EPP, suspended Fidesz because of its anti-EU stance.
Hungary has two nationalist parties – with Jobbik attempting to escape its far-right past and appeal to centrist voters – and gaining 19% of the vote in 2018.
Slovenia
Although it fell a long way short of a majority, the anti-immigrant Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) was the largest party in this year’s general election.
The party is led by former Prime Minister Janez Jansa, a supporter of Hungary’s Viktor Orban. He has said he wants Slovenia to “become a country that will put the wellbeing and security of Slovenians first”.
Greece
An anti-immigration, nationalist party called Greek Solution got 3.7% in Greece’s 2019 national election, giving it 10 seats in the 300-seat parliament.
The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party no longer has any seats in the parliament.
Voter frustration with Greece’s continuing economic malaise and the migrant crisis has not translated into a big surge for the far right.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36130006
Nationalism in heart of Europe needles EU
23 February 2018
Grinning cheerfully as he swipes his mop neatly across the glass front of an optician’s shop, Sandor the window cleaner tells me he doesn’t think much of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.
“They may say the economy’s thriving but we don’t feel it,” he says. “The one thing they do right is to keep the migrants out.”
Not far away, at Hungary’s southern border, the wind whips across the steppe, flattens the grass and whistles right up against the vast metal intricacy of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s border fence.
Few try to cross it these days. Even so a security patrol crawls, rather menacingly, along its barbed perimeter.
What is, for some, all about internal security, also represents this country’s decision to prioritise national interest above that of the EU. It’s a symbol of defiance.
It’s also a vote winner.
Politics and the migrant crisis
“By the end of 2014 the popularity of Fidesz had dropped dramatically and they tried everything. There was no stone left unturned to get this popularity back,” says Mark Kekesi, a human rights activist.
In spring 2015 the wave of refugees and migrants entering Central Europe via Hungary came as a kind of heavenly gift to Mr Orban and many other politicians in the region. They could exaggerate the potential immigration threats and then appear as saviours.
Hungary, of course, wasn’t alone in its opposition. It decided, along with Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, to reject EU migrant quotas, angering Brussels and earning the so-called Visegrad Four (V4) a reputation as the union’s troublemakers.
But their resistance has shone a light on a profound and dangerous division within the club. Not so much a stand-off between East and West but between the older, established member states and the former communist countries which joined in 2004.
Resentment in Slovakia
In the eerie, blue flashing light of a grimy factory in southern Slovakia, welders in overalls bend over huge chunks of metal. One lifts his protective mask to reveal a lined face.
During the socialist era, journalist Tibor Macak says, there was more security, more certainty.
And now? “Living standards aren’t the same as those in other member states. In Germany they earn four times what we get. If we’re talking about the European Union, it should be equal.”
There is resentment, a sense of injustice here – although Slovakia represents the very least of Brussels’s problems.
Its leader Robert Fico stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his Visegrad counterparts and declares: “I belong to a union of prime ministers who do not wish to see Muslim communities being created in our countries”. But that’s about as far as his anti-EU rhetoric goes.
Conscious perhaps of the relative prosperity that EU membership has brought (French and German car manufacturers are among the foreign investors here), Slovakia is, officially at least, open to closer EU integration. Slovakia is the only member of the V4 in the eurozone.
Inside the peculiar upside-down, concrete pyramid that houses Slovakia’s national radio station, Tibor Macak says: “Now is the big question: what happens if (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel and (French President) Emmanuel Macron put reform on the table? Slovakia in the majority supports that – it’s very clear.”
Not so its Visegrad neighbours Hungary and Poland. There, further EU integration is viewed with suspicion and resistance.
Polish patriots
In Poland’s rural east, the women of Zambrow gather every week to practise the old village songs. Boots tap, long skirts sway.
Jolanta shrugs back her flowered shawl and says: “The most important thing is to prioritise the interests of our fatherland, to support the interest of the Polish people.”
She recently became a local councillor for the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS). “Most importantly it was patriotism that drove me towards PiS, the patriotism I inherited from my grandparents and parents,” she says.
PiS, endorsed (in part) by the powerful Catholic Church, has won popular support thanks to generous child benefits and a decision to lower the retirement age. As one mum told me: “All the other parties make promises but they don’t deliver. PiS kept their promises.”
But PiS have enraged the EU and left their country horribly divided.
The party’s attacks on press freedom, on access to abortion, its decision to continue logging in the ancient Bialowieza forest, in breach of EU law, horrify many Poles.
But it was the government’s shake-up of the Polish judiciary which brought people out onto the streets in protest and stirred the European Commission into action, triggering Article Seven against a member state for the very first time. The article deals with adherence to the EU’s rule of law values.
Renate Kim, a journalist based in Warsaw, said “I went to the United States for the elections and when I listened to people, how they believed in what Trump promised them, it was exactly the same as here – ‘we’ll make Poland strong again, we’ll make Poland great again’.”
“People hear ‘we’ll be a big country with lots of pride, we won’t listen to Brussels and the leftist Brussels politicians’ and they like that, because they feel proud of their country again.”
No wonder, perhaps, PiS MP Dominik Tarcynski said last week that the Polish government would not back down over the reforms, which the EU Commission and independent experts argue flout the rule of law.
Brussels is unlikely to withdraw the country’s voting rights – it needs unanimous the approval of all member states and Hungary has signalled support for its neighbour.
Viktor Orban’s increasingly authoritarian rule, his shift towards a self-styled “illiberal state”, also flies in the face of EU values.
There are voices within the EU which hint at hitting both Poland and Hungary where it hurts most – by reducing their EU funding.
This week Ms Merkel issued a veiled threat with regard to the next EU budget.
“In the next distribution of structural funds,” she said, “we need to redefine the allocation criteria to reflect the preparedness of regions and authorities to receive and integrate migrants.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43157234
Belarus in the Multipolar World
02 August 2020
Strong political and economic ties with Russia prevent Belarus from becoming a fully neutral and independent state. And any change of geopolitical orientation or integration with the West seems out of the question. The only option Minsk has, if it wants to maintain sovereignty, is to find its place in the multipolar world, one that is now coming into view. In turn, this has implications for the EU and for any values-based foreign policy.
Recent talks about the possible incorporation of Belarus into the Russian Federation have brought wide attention to the country and its place in the changing world. It sparked a series of discussions on Belarus’s neutrality and multipolarity, which have been the foundation of the republic’s foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. First stipulated in Article 18 of the 1994 Constitution, it was repeated and further developed in official state documents. Yet for almost two decades, these two important principles were reduced to words on paper while the behaviour of the Belarusian authorities, especially President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, displayed a completely different approach. Indeed, almost since the beginning of his rule, Lukashenka was tightening co-operation with Russia. The milestone agreement in this regard, concluded in 1999, established the Union State of Russia and Belarus.
Three levels of multipolarity
For almost a quarter of a century Minsk authorities have been stressing the cultural proximity between Belarusians and Russians, enforcing Soviet nostalgia and treating Belarusian identity, language and culture as something hostile to official state policy. In the meantime, Russia, by subsidising the inefficient and unreformed Belarusian economy, has taken over through Gazprom, Belarus’s strategic gas industry system. Military and security co-operation was also sealed. The integration of the two states was further reinforced by Western ostracism directed towards Minsk authorities for their human rights violations and sad democratic record.
Since Russia’s recent proposals to deepen integration with its Eastern neighbour, the voices supporting greater diversification of economic partners, as well as the need to look for new ones, have become more distinct in the Belarusian public debate. Their appearance should not cover the fact that, for the Belarusian authorities, the idea of multipolarity is nothing more than attracting new investors and money. Realistically speaking, Belarus has no chance to establish any political alliance that would be anti-Russia. To be analytically accurate, the multipolarity of Belarus’s foreign policy should be presented at three levels: 1) multipolarity as a rescue solution for the Belarusian economy; 2) multipolarity as a game for sovereignty; and 3) multipolarity as a way to cement the political system.
Starting with multipolarity as a rescue solution for the Belarusian economy, two facts need to be considered. First, trade agreements are the fundamental element of Belarus’s foreign policy. Second, the Belarusian economy has never gone through a full transformation to a market economy. Thus, the elements of a capitalist system that have been introduced in Belarus were merely inherited from the Soviet Union and still remain based on state ownership and central planning. This machine, which is not very efficient, was supported with Russian money and loans for the last couple of decades. Therefore, it was Russia’s recent economic crisis and the Kremlin’s impatience of providing constant support that pushed Minsk to look for partners elsewhere.
The West appears like an obvious choice, geographically speaking. Belarus’s location between the EU and Russia gives it a unique opportunity to be an intermediary. However, relations with Western states and institutions are still a large problem for Lukashenka. Unlike Russia, these potential partners expect that, in exchange for credits and investments, Belarus will introduce reforms, liberalisation and free elections as well as make some concessions. These are things the Belarusian authorities are not ready for. The truth is there were times in the last quarter century when Belarus promised the West that it would reform. Yet it acted undemocratically in the aftermath of receiving aid, and opposition politicians were sent to prison while Western diplomats were expelled. Moscow, naturally, came to the rescue and the cycle was completed.
In search of new partners
That is why the authorities in Minsk are now looking for partners outside the traditional division between West (the United States and Europe) and East (Russia). The first bet was China, which was expected to turn Belarus into a “hub” of modern technology and an important element of its New Silk Road initiative. However, it turned out pretty quickly that the Chinese are not interested in working together with the Belarusians on developing modern technologies, nor do they want to share their know-how with them. Despite multi-million dollar investments in the Great Stone Industrial Park near Minsk, which is a flagship Belarusian-Chinese economic project, it is feared that China uses Belarus as an assembly plant for its goods (in addition, Chinese-built factories have a devastating impact on the environment). The annual trade balance does not help much either, as it shows China’s advantage in its relationship with Belarus.
Belarus has also established economic relations with some Latin American and Asian states. But even here what the statistics show is cruel. How can you talk about a successful multi-vector policy if the World Bank records that 44 per cent of Belarus’s trade balance is with Russia, followed by a mere 11.5 per cent with Ukraine? Even the trade exchange Belarus has with the EU, taken as a whole, does not exceed its trade with Russia. What is more, trade with the EU essentially means the export of petroleum products made from Russian resources.
Nevertheless, Belarus needs international partners to maintain sovereignty and to show that there is a difference between Minsk and Moscow. For these reasons, Lukashenka initiated Minsk I and Minsk II (the peace negotiations over the situation in Donbas), made calls for an OSCE-style security conference, and Belarus occasionally cast votes against Russia at the United Nations. Despite these gestures, as Kamil Kłysiński of the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) rightly puts it, “the close political and military relations with Moscow undermine Belarus as a neutral actor in the post-Soviet space.”
The wave of populism and departure from democracy, which has swept the Western world recently, has created potential partners for Belarus and strengthened existing ones. This includes the countries which once belonged to the second and third world and noticeably pay less attention to political values than Western liberal democracies generally do. Most importantly, these states are more open to pragmatic co-operation. Such are the relationships that Belarus has recently established with Turkey, Hungary and the United Arab Emirates.
In crisis moments, Belarus uses the “multipolarity” tactic as a tool to influence Moscow by showing signs that the Belarusian economy can become independent from Russia. Minsk also looks for new partners when it needs to push the Kremlin to support the deficient Belarusian economy. It also uses them as a security to reduce the risk of incorporation into the Russian Federation. When this proposal was presented by Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev in December last year, the main argument coming from the Russians was that with a deep political integration between the two states, Russia would be subsidising not an independent Belarus but an element of the Union State. Understandably, any attempts made by Belarus to balance the trade exchange through co-operation with other non-Russian partners would deprive the Kremlin of this argument.
When playing the multipolarity game with Russia, Minsk risks “overbidding”. It is clear that the Kremlin does not treat its Eastern neighbour as an equal partner. Instead, it sees it as a sphere of Russia’s influence and an element of the Russian world. Thus, should Vladimir Putin ever come to the conclusion that Minsk is attempting to leave the current arrangement, he will not hesitate to take adequate action to stop it. This could range from an exchange of authorities in Belarus to its complete incorporation into the Russian Federation.
A way to cement the political system
Belarus looks for partners and investors to save the economy and maintain sovereignty. However, it has another goal, and arguably the most important one: to retain the existing political system (i.e. Lukashenka’s rule) and ensure a fluid succession within the system – of course, when the time is right. For the moment, the system operates thanks to the stability, access to social services and public order which were promised by the authorities to the Belarusian people in exchange of their renouncing democratic values. In the long run, however, this contract can be quite costly.
Aware of this threat, the Belarusian elite knows that only a permanent inflow of “outside” resources can keep their system together – whether it is done with roubles, euros, dollars or yuans. Thus, finding partners outside Russia is needed to maintain the status quo. Otherwise, if the current “stability” disappears, society may withdraw from the unwritten agreement it had entered into with the authorities. A Maidan in Minsk is clearly Lukashenka’s greatest nightmare.
Strong political and economic ties with Russia prevent Belarus from becoming a fully neutral and independent state, one that freely selects its partners. Yet any change of geopolitical orientation or integration with the West is out of the question. The only option that Minsk has, if it wants to maintain sovereignty, is to find its place in this emerging multipolar world. Initiatives like the Minsk I and Minsk II peace negotiations undeniably show the regime wants to act as a partner for global powers. With new investments it can even become an experimental beachhead of the Eurasian Economic Union. In other words, Belarus could be a place where, due to sanctions against Russia, legal investments can be made and where goods could be exported to the huge Eurasian market.
Belarus’s multi-vector policy brings risks nonetheless. More than anything else, it could provoke Russia to force the authorities in Minsk into “deeper integration” which, in practice, means incorporation. However, in the face of an economic crisis it would appear to be a safer solution. If carried out skillfully, it could stimulate a slow transformation of the economy, help maintain Belarus’s independence and the stability of its political system.
Does this policy mean there will be gains for everybody? Certainly not. The Belarusian opposition and civil society have legitimate reasons to be concerned. Since the war in Ukraine, even the EU has started to be less outspoken about democratic values. At the same time, the number of potential partners who openly criticise liberal democracy has grown worldwide and at a disturbing speed. Maybe this is an indication that Belarus will also find its place in this “new world”?
Belarus students are protesting to stop Lukashenko from stealing their futures – as well as the election
11 September 2020
This week, as students around the world arrived at universities ready to continue education that will shape their futures, students in Belarus were taking to the streets to prevent a dictatorship from stealing theirs.
On a day that should be associated with making new friends and exploring new subjects, young men and women in Minsk were beaten, carried out of their campuses and bundled into police vans by the balaclava-clad goons of President Lukashenko. They represent the latest vanguard in the fourth week of resistance against the stolen election of 9 August.
The students’ bravery and resilience are not necessarily borne out of a deep understanding of their constitutional rights or from thorough study of Foucault or other political philosophers. Much of the stale education system in Belarus, with its enforced loyalty to the state and obsessions with revisionist history, is still a relic of the Soviet era and designed to encourage obedience, not independent thought. They were simply overcome with outrage over the injustice of a leader making a mockery of the political will of the country. This time, the lie was too big to ignore.
Consider the law student at a state-run university in Belarus (the last private institution, the European Humanities University, was forced into exile in 2004 and is now headquartered in neighbouring Vilnius). The student has just witnessed two presidential candidates imprisoned on trumped-up charges, the rightful winner made to flee the country and anyone who spoke out about it detained and terrorised without access to a lawyer. What use is a law qualification in a lawless state? It has as much correspondence with reality as a degree from Hogwarts.
In the space of a month, Belarus has become unrecognisable. For nearly three decades we have laboured under one of the world’s most totalitarian states with one sham election after the other. Even Russia has a more active oppositional political scene. Nobody expected us to rise up in unison and finally voice our contempt for the regime, let alone attempt a revolution, but the state unwittingly created the perfect conditions for it to flourish.
Despite its clunky and regressive political system, young people in Belarus over the years have been able to carve out creative hubs independent of the state. The country is home to a multibillion-dollar tech sector employing tens of thousands which has helped to produce a plugged-in population. Their skills and networks enabled information about the election, protests and strikes to be rapidly documented and shared to a domestic and international audience.
But even these successful homegrown companies suffer – their employees have been detained – and some are already shifting operations overseas in the face of ongoing political repression and internet shutdowns. A further blow to an already imperilled economy.
Lukashenko and his cronies always underestimated students as a potential political force and now it is too late to win them back. Through the state’s brutality, they have made permanent enemies of the country’s young people. It has become a heated generational clash too, videos circulating this week show a professor at Minsk State Linguistics University threatening to call in the riot police on protesting students. Even children are not spared. Schools are currently warning parents who attend protests that their children may be seized under a 2006 law on “dysfunctional families”.
We are witnessing the last desperate attempts of a discredited regime to regain control but that can only govern by brute force. The UN investigators have received reports of 450 documented cases of torture and ill-treatment of people in custody. Peaceful protesters punished with detention, beatings, rape and torture has left a nation scarred but more energised than ever to rid itself from its oppressor.
The values of strong institutions and an open society were barely instilled at their schools or universities before, but the state’s violations of basic rights have provided students with an invaluable education and one that may still hasten its downfall.
Belarus: 100,000 join rally against Lukashenko on eve of Putin showdown
Protesters hold placards criticising Russian support as they march on president’s Minsk residence
13 September 2020
Attempts by Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, to crush popular protests against him failed on Sunday when more than 100,000 people marched on his residence in the capital, Minsk, with other demonstrations across the country.
There was no sign that the anti-Lukashenko movement is declining or fading away. Instead protesters took to the streets in huge numbers for the fifth weekend in a row, defying riot police who blocked off the city centre with military vehicles.
The continuing scale of the protests are an embarrassment for Lukashenko, who will meet Vladimir Putin on Monday in the Russian resort of Sochi. It will be their first face-to-face encounter since Belarus’s presidential election on 9 August, widely seen as rigged.
Lukashenko’s claim that he had won a landslide victory triggered a popular uprising against his 26-year rule. In recent days his security forces have sought to regain the initiative by kidnapping and exiling members of the main opposition body, the Coordination Council.
But the strategy has failed to quell the anti-government mood. Demonstrators on Sunday gathered in Minsk for the latest Sunday afternoon protest. They sought to wrongfoot the authorities by changing route and walking towards Drozhdy, where senior regime officials including Lukashenko have homes.
Riot police wearing balaclavas charged on groups of protesters, knocking them to the ground and dragging them away. At least 250 people were arrested and dumped in minivans. The detentions follow the arrest on Saturday of 114 people taking place in a peaceful women’s march in Minsk.
The demonstrators carried the white and red flags of the pre-Soviet Belarus republic, which have become a symbol of the protests. Slogans included “Resign”, “We are the power here” and “Shame”, shouted at a long line of masked police who barricaded their path at the Arena City shopping centre.
Similar protests and arrests took place in other Belarusian cities including Brest, Gomel, Grodna and Mogilev.
The opposition slogan for Sunday’s protest was: “We won’t let him sell the country.” There are fears that a weakened Lukashenko will allow a soft Kremlin takeover of Belarus in return for Russian support and security assistance that allows him to stay in power. Some in the crowd carried placards critical of Russia.
The meeting on Monday in Sochi is likely to be a delicate balancing act. Lukashenko wants Putin’s backing, but insists he is not willing to sign away the country’s sovereignty. Putin, meanwhile, has long found Lukashenko a frustrating and unreliable partner, but has decided to back him, at least for now.
But by propping up an unpopular ruler past his sell-by date Putin risks turning public sentiment against Russia. Opposition figures have made clear their quarrel is not with Moscow but with a president they believe is illegitimate and whose brutal tactics have alienated many.
“Belarusians are really aghast at Putin’s support for Lukashenko,” who has become “totally alien to his own people”, Valery Tsepkalo, an opposition politician, told Bloomberg, speaking by phone from exile in Poland.
There’s a risk that “Russia will turn the most friendly neighbour they have into a population that sees them as an accessory to Lukashenko and his authoritarianism,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, the UK’s former ambassador to Belarus.
The evidence suggests Lukashenko is determined to defy international pressure and to use any means necessary to wipe out the opposition.
Last week masked men in civilian clothes grabbed Maria Kolesnikova off the street in Minsk. Kolesnikova is one of three prominent female opposition figures who led the election campaign against Lukashenko. Police also seized Maxim Znak, another member of the Coordination Council’s seven-person presidium.
Kolesnikova was driven to the border with Ukraine but early on Tuesday ripped up her passport and refused to leave the country. She is now in an interior ministry pre-trial detention centre and has been charged with calling for a coup. Kolesnikova faces between two and five years in jail.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who stood against Lukashenko and is now in exile in Lithuania, paid tribute on Sunday to those inside the country who are resisting Lukashenko’s rule. “Over the past month we have become a truly heroic people. We are continuing our fight for freedom,” she told supporters in a video address.
On Friday, the US said it would impose new sanctions on Belarusian figures within days and warned Moscow that continuing to back Lukashenko would only alienate its people. US deputy secretary of state, Stephen Biegun, asked how Moscow could “back such a regime and such violence against peaceful citizens”
“If the Kremlin continues down this path, it risks turning the Belarusian people, who have no grievance with Russia, against Moscow,” he said.
The European Union said on Saturday that it deplored “the increasingly open disregard for the rule of law in Belarus” and reiterated its determination to impose sanctions. It said it was “ready to take further restrictive measures as necessary”.
“Ahead of the vote, the independent election watchdog Golos warned that new voting rules, allowing for early and electronic voting, have made rigging easier and oversight more difficult. On Monday, Golos reported more than 1,690 violations.”
Russia’s regional elections bring rare win for Navalny
Russian opposition inflicts damage on Putin’s United Russia in regional votes.
14 September 2020
MOSCOW — Kremlin critics have been craving some good news since the star of Russia’s opposition, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned.
Late on Sunday, they got it: For the first time ever, in regional elections this weekend, prominent Navalny allies won deputy seats and stripped Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party of its majority in two cities.
“This is the answer to all the whining that Alexei allegedly has no support in Russia’s regions,” tweeted Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh as the results came in. “He has lots of support.”
But while champagne corks might have popped in Navalny’s campaign offices across the country, many ordinary Russians who wanted real change will be left feeling deflated. Early results showed that at higher levels of government, the Kremlin’s grip remains as firm as ever.
For Navalny, the elections in more than two dozen Russian regions for different levels of governance were above all a moment to test his “smart voting” strategy, ahead of an important parliamentary vote in 2021.
The goal was to undermine United Russia’s — and by extension Putin’s — hold on regional power by uniting voters behind a rival candidate. Some of Navalny’s own people were also on the ballot.
In Siberia, it proved to be an unprecedented success. In the student town of Tomsk, the head of Navalny’s local office Ksenia Fadeyeva won a seat on the local council, as did her colleague Andrei Fateyev.
In Russia’s third-largest city Novosibirsk, vocal Navalny ally Sergey Boiko won a local council seat and so did several members of his “coalition” of opposition-minded politicians.
In both places, according to early results, United Russia lost its majority.
The outcome is as much a testament to Navalny’s ability to tap into local protest sentiment as of his own clout as Russia’s second most prominent politician after Putin. The Kremlin has strenuously denied any involvement in Navalny’s poisoning, while major Western powers — including Germany, where he is now in hospital — have demanded an explanation.
Right before he was poisoned with the deadly Novichok nerve agent, Navalny had visited both Siberian cities to campaign for the smart voting system. He had also recorded two corruption investigations that have since garnered a combined 8.5 million views on social media.
Vote-rigging charges
For his allies, the wins in both cities are sweet revenge for his poisoning. But while they might claim a moral victory, the overall picture is much more ambiguous. In all 18 regions that held a gubernatorial vote, pro-government candidates won a landslide victory — even at a time of increasing discontent with the authorities over falling wages and Putin’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
For the Kremlin that is a better result than in similar elections in 2018, when four regions had to hold a second round of voting and United Russia lost three governor seats to dark-horse candidates.The arrest of one of those governors this summer sparked ongoing anti-Moscow protests in the city of Khabarovsk in Russia’s far east.
This time around, all pro-government candidates won by huge margins, in some cases beating even Putin’s own sky-high election record. Critics were quick to claim that such results, even in regions where protest sentiment is traditionally high, could only have been achieved through tampering.
Ahead of the vote, the independent election watchdog Golos warned that new voting rules, allowing for early and electronic voting, have made rigging easier and oversight more difficult. On Monday, Golos reported more than 1,690 violations.
Such reports are likely to sap Russians’ belief in the ballot box as an instrument of influence. “If these are the kind of elections we’ll get, power will change hands regardless. Just not through elections,” tweeted opposition politician Yevgeny Roizman.
Also overshadowing the outcome of the vote for the opposition is the question of whether the results of Navalny’s smart voting strategy will be converted into real political clout in the months to come.
With not enough of their own candidates, Navalny’s smart voting system has had little choice but to urge supporters to back members of Russia’s so-called “systemic opposition” parties. At a national level, those parties toe the Kremlin line on all important issues.
If they behave similarly at a local level, it will discourage Russians from voting “smart” next time around, making them wonder what is the point of the exercise.
So far, Navalny’s smart voting strategy has triumphed in votes where the stakes were relatively low, with the Kremlin apparently prepared to make sacrifices at the municipal level — while not relaxing its grip in votes for more important posts. That is the challenge for Navalny’s team ahead of next year’s parliamentary vote.
Alexei Navalny: Poisoned Putin critic ‘will return to Russia’
14 September 2020
The poisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is to return to Russia, his spokeswoman has said.
“It’s puzzling to me why anyone should think otherwise,” Kira Yarmysh posted on Twitter.
Mr Navalny also posted a picture on Instagram for the first time since he was poisoned, announcing that he was breathing free of ventilation.
He collapsed on a flight from Siberia on 20 August. Tests have shown he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.
He was transferred to the Charité hospital in the German capital, Berlin.
His team alleges he was poisoned on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin denies any involvement.
“All morning journalists have been writing to me and asking, is it true that Alexei plans to return to Russia?” Ms Yarmysh wrote.
“Again I can confirm to everyone: no other options were ever considered.”
The announcement came shortly after Mr Navalny took to Instagram.
“Hi, this is Navalny. I have been missing you. I still can’t do much, but yesterday I managed to breathe on my own for the entire day,” he wrote.
“Just on my own, no extra help, not even a valve in my throat. I liked it very much. It’s a remarkable process that is underestimated by many. Strongly recommended.”
There is a modest police presence outside the hospital where Mr Navalny is being treated, Ben Tavener from the BBC Russian service reports from the scene.
There are two armed officers by one entrance and a police van that has been stationed outside for days, our correspondent says.
Unconfirmed reports in German media suggest two further armed police units have been set up inside – outside the ward and by the politician’s bed.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has ruled out a meeting between Mr Navalny and Mr Putin after the opposition figure recovers.
“We do not see the need for such a meeting, so I believe that such a meeting will not take place,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Attack is the best form of defence for Kremlin
The Kremlin is sticking firm to its line that it has nothing to do with Mr Navalny’s poisoning and there is no surprise that Mr Putin’s spokesperson ruled out the possibility of a meeting between the president and his harshest critic.
Mr Putin has actually never called Mr Navalny by his name, trying to make it look like this politician is unknown and insignificant. They aim to persuade everyone – in Russia and abroad – that the Kremlin is not paying any attention at all to Mr Navalny’s activity, which is obviously far from reality.
Moscow’s reaction to Mr Navalny’s poisoning is based on its well-known policy that attack is the best form of defence.
Russia has not just rejected the allegations of any involvement in the attempt on Mr Navalny’s life, but insists that there hasn’t been any poisoning at all and the opposition leader simply fell ill.
And today the chief of Russian intelligence, Sergei Naryshkin, has stopped just short of accusing Germany of poisoning Mr Navalny with the Novichok nerve agent.
He said there had been no trace of poison in Mr Navalny’s body when the politician left Russia. Mr Naryshkin also said Russia had destroyed all reserves of Novichok and therefore Moscow has got questions for Germany.
What is the background to the poisoning?
Mr Navalny is an anti-corruption campaigner who has long been the most prominent face of opposition to President Putin.
Mr Navalny’s supporters believe his tea was spiked at Tomsk airport on 20 August. He became ill during the flight, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. Russian officials were persuaded to allow him to be airlifted to Germany two days later.
A nerve agent from the Novichok group was also used to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, in England, in 2018. They both survived, but a local woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after coming into contact with the poison.
Britain accused Russia’s military intelligence of carrying out that attack. Twenty countries expelled more than 100 Russian diplomats and spies. Moscow denied any involvement.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54163389
EU doesn’t recognize Lukashenko as president of Belarus, says top diplomat
Josep Borrell says any sanctions ‘should be adopted before the European Council if we want to keep European credibility.’
15 September 2020
The EU does not recognize Alexander Lukashenko as the president of Belarus, the bloc’s top diplomat said Tuesday.
“We are using all the tools that we have at our disposal to contribute to the end of the violent repression that has been developing in Belarus after the elections, which we do not consider to have legitimately elected Lukashenko,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, told MEPs.
Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, claimed victory after the contested August 9 presidential election, triggering mass protests that have been met with brutality, arrests and violence.
After the election, the EU said the result was “neither free nor fair” and urged the Belarus leadership to open dialogue with the opposition with the mediation of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It also called for an end to the violence and opted for what it described as a “gradual” approach on Minsk.
EU leaders decided at a meeting last month to impose sanctions on “a substantial number” of people responsible for violence, repression and the falsification of the election result, and said that the EU does not recognize the electoral result. But they stopped short of explicitly calling for new elections and hitting Lukashenko with sanctions, as requested by Lithuania and Estonia.
At the end of last month, Borrell called for a re-run of the election under the OSCE’s supervision and, speaking in front of the European Parliament on Tuesday, he added that sanctions “should be adopted before the European Council if we want to keep European credibility,” referring to a meeting of EU leaders next week.
So far the list of Belarus officials facing sanctions has reached more than 30 names, according to two diplomats, and includes the interior minister. EU ambassadors are expected to discuss Belarus sanctions on Wednesday, but diplomats were cautious about saying that Borrell’s words mean that Lukashenko could be put back on the EU sanctions list (he was under EU sanctions until 2016, when Belarus released a number of political prisoners).
https://www.politico.eu/article/josep-borrell-eu-belarus-alexander-lukashenko/
“Great at scoring electoral victories (by the use of lies, Russian dark money and deceptive propaganda), but unable to get things done, Brexiteers are still trying to blame all their shortcomings on the EU.”
The UK threatens to renege on the Brexit deal it signed with the EU just a year ago
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed changes to the deal that would break international law.
09 September 2020
The United Kingdom is threatening to renege on parts of its Brexit agreement with the European Union, potentially violating international law and upending trade negotiations with the bloc.
On Wednesday, the UK government introduced the UK Internal Market Bill, an anodyne-sounding piece of legislation that’s anything but. The bill targets a specific part of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement, otherwise known as the Brexit deal — the same deal that Prime Minister Boris Johnson struck with the European Union last October, which ultimately allowed the UK to leave the EU with a deal on January 31, 2020.
When the UK separated from the EU, it entered into a transition period in which both sides were supposed to work out their future relationship on everything from trade to security. That’s what’s been happening since — or not happening, really, as negotiations have largely stalled. That has meant the prospects of striking a comprehensive deal before the end-of-year deadline were looking slimmer and slimmer.
Enter the United Kingdom with a curveball of sorts.
The UK Internal Market Bill would change some of the terms in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which covered one of the thorniest issues in the first round of negotiations on the Brexit deal. Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, shares a border with Ireland, which is part of the EU. Keeping that border open to enable the free flow of goods and people is central to the Good Friday Agreement, a 1998 peace deal that sought to put an end to decades of conflict in Northern Ireland through seamless North-South cooperation.
The Northern Ireland Protocol was designed to protect those interests, no matter what happened in the larger trade talks between the EU and the UK. But Johnson’s government has now decided it would like to make unilateral changes to a plan it agreed to less than a year ago — undermining the agreement and the already tenuous negotiations with the EU on any future relationship.
The Brexit deal is an international treaty, so if the UK were to approve this legislation, it would be violating international law. And the British government has admitted that’s exactly what it is doing. “Yes, this does break international law in a very specific and limited way,” Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis told the House of Commons on Tuesday, in response to a question from a member of Parliament.
Breaking international law, even in a “very specific and limited way,” is still, well, breaking international law. (The UK’s top government lawyer quit in apparent protest.) Johnson has shown he’s willing to push the boundaries of the law — proroguing Parliament, for instance — but this seems to also be a pressure tactic in negotiations, an attempt to shake up stagnant talks with the EU.
But this move could backfire, derailing the UK’s negotiations with the EU and showing that the UK is not serious about its commitments.
It also sets a troubling precedent beyond Brexit. Just as it’s striking out on its own and trying to make trade deals with the rest of the world, the UK may no longer be seen as a reliable or trustworthy partner. And if a democratic country that champions the rule of law can so easily stomp on a treaty when it doesn’t suit it, it will be much harder to prevent allies and adversaries alike from doing the same.
How we got here
It took a while to get there and many things happened along the way, but in the end, the EU and the UK agreed to a Brexit deal last year.
That deal, or withdrawal agreement, was essentially the Brexit divorce papers: what the UK and EU needed to do to break up. One of the big sticking points of that phase centered on the status of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Hardcore Brexit supporters, Johnson among them, opposed the initial plan (the “Irish backstop”), which they saw as keeping the UK trapped within the EU’s institutions. Johnson was able to renegotiate the arrangement when he became prime minister last year.
The deal Johnson made would keep Northern Ireland closely aligned with many EU rules, including on goods. That avoided any checks on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But it also meant that some goods flowing between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be subject to checks, in case they risked ending up in Ireland — and as a result, anywhere in the EU’s single market.
Many of the details of how this would work in practice still needed to be implemented, and a EU-UK joint committee was supposed to figure that out.
That’s what the EU and UK agreed to in the Brexit deal, which both sides ratified. This allowed the UK to leave on January 31, 2020, and set up phase two of Brexit: negotiating that future trade relationship by December 31, 2020.
Those negotiations have not been going well at all, and both sides are at odds on key issues, specifically state aid and fisheries. The latter is as much a symbolic issue as an economic one, but the state aid is really the crux of the problem.
The EU is insisting that if the UK wants tariff-free access to its markets, it can’t try to undercut the EU by subsidizing industries or businesses, or by lowering standards on things like the environment or labor to try to give British businesses a boost.
But for the UK, which wanted to Brexit so it could be a rule-maker instead of a rule-taker, following EU rules is the opposite of what Brexit was supposed to deliver. It’s particularly anathema to the Brexiteers, who remain a vocal chunk of Johnson’s Conservative Party. (The issue of state aid also intersects with that of Northern Ireland, because NI must follow EU rules on state aid.)
Add a pandemic, which consumed leaders’ attentions and complicated negotiations by relegating EU and UK diplomats to meeting via videoconference this spring, and the prospect of a deal between the UK and the EU looked grim.
A “no-deal” scenario is still a possibility: All of the catastrophically disruptive things that could have happened if the UK left the EU without a plan in place before Brexit — trade disruptions and gridlocks at points of entry, just to name a few — could still occur if the EU and UK remain stuck. And unlike last time, the upcoming December 31, 2020, deadline is harder to fudge, as it’s written into that same withdrawal agreement — which, again, is an international treaty.
But the UK is now essentially saying, “Sure, it’s an international treaty — but so what?”
What the UK is proposing (the very, very short version)
EU-UK talks on their future relationship resumed in London this Tuesday. Johnson urged the EU to show “more realism” and set an October 15 deadline for reaching some sort of agreement. The EU, in turn, has told the UK that it needs to get real about its own demands.
But just as things already looked bad, the United Kingdom broke the news that, actually, it wanted to revisit the first Brexit deal and make some unilateral changes to that protocol on Northern Ireland. The text of the proposed legislation was introduced Wednesday.
The prime minister’s office has defended it as an attempt to clear up “ambiguities” in the protocol in case talks between Brussels and London fall apart. Amazingly, Johnson claimed the pressure of getting a deal done quickly left some issues open-ended, and the UK had to fill in the gaps.
“It was agreed at pace in the most challenging possible political circumstances to deliver on a decision by the British people, with the clear overriding purpose of protecting the special circumstances of Northern Ireland,” Johnson’s spokesperson said Wednesday. In 2019, though, Johnson said the agreement was a “great new deal that takes back control” and referred to it as an “oven-ready deal.”
But this legislation is more than a few tweaks; it’s pretty clear that this is the UK doing what it wants. The legislation says it will “have effect notwithstanding inconsistency or incompatibility with international or other domestic law.”
The legislation would affect state aid, and the flow of goods between the rest of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Here’s an example that Colin Murray, a reader in public law at the University of Newcastle, explained to me: The EU-UK joint committee is supposed to decide which goods flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland might be subject to tariffs if they’re at risk of making it into the EU single market.
But if they can’t agree, then the default is the goods may be at risk. So now the UK is saying, actually, nope, we just get to decide — never mind all that commission stuff.
The UK’s proposed legislation would, quite simply, violate the terms of the withdrawal agreement. The Northern Ireland Protocol was the compromise plan to keep that border open on the island or Ireland. But it always came with this caveat that it would entail checks somewhere else. But Johnson has repeatedly downplayed the need for those checks, though he himself agreed to them. And now it looks very much like an attempt to wriggle out of that reality.
“The UK knew what it was signing up to,” Murray said. “Now, simply, the government doesn’t like what it signed up to.”
By possibly backtracking on this plan, the UK brings back uncertainty to the status of Northern Ireland. It raises the dilemma once again: how to protect the EU single market while also avoiding the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
This was the very thing the protocol agreed to between the UK and EU attempted to solve. Now, the UK is muddying that, increasing fears that this move could undermine the Good Friday Agreement.
Neither the UK nor the EU, though, are there quite yet. The EU has warned the UK it can’t break international law, and it may reportedly seek legal action if the UK goes ahead with the legislation.
“This would break international law and undermines trust. Pacta sunt servanda = the foundation of prosperous future relations,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning “agreements must be kept.”
What does all this really mean?
The UK introduced text to this legislation to break its Brexit deal, but that hasn’t actually happened yet, and would still require Parliament to agree. Johnson has, thanks to elections last year, a very big majority in the House of Commons. But some Conservatives, including our old friend Theresa May, worry that this legislation would undermine trust in the UK.
Experts I spoke to see a few different dynamics driving this decision. One is Johnson himself, who used the furor over Brexit to get into power and replace May as prime minister. He promised to “get Brexit done,” and while he achieved an exit, that deal might not have been as “oven-ready” as advertised, the fine print a little less favorable to the UK than Johnson promised. This is almost an attempt to try to fudge reality, again.
Also, the future negotiations aren’t going well. That impasse is making the prospect of a no-deal exit more likely. So this may be Johnson’s attempt to see who might blink first, a kind of “macho brinkmanship,” as Murray put it.
Richard Whitman, professor of political and international relations at the University of Kent, who spoke to me before the text of the bill was introduced, told me that the timing could be seen as a provocative move. The UK is, in a way, warning the EU, he said: “If we don’t do a deal between the two of us on the future relationship, then there’s an awful lot of loose ends that are probably going to be tied up — in ways that we will tie them up rather than necessarily negotiate them with you to tie them up.”
And for Johnson’s supporters who are skeptical of the EU and want the hardest break with the bloc possible, this may be the kind of leadership they want to see: someone who isn’t going to be bullied by those EU bureaucrats. And if the EU and the UK do make a deal, Johnson can help sell it as a victory, proof that his pressure campaign against the EU worked.
But this idea — that if the UK is tough on the EU, it’ll cave — may be unrealistic. It could have the opposite effect, and blow up the Brexit negotiations for good.
It’s pretty simple: Why would the EU want to keep negotiating with the UK if it knows the UK is going to renege on the very things they negotiated just last year? Why would the EU make compromises and concessions if the UK will just turn around and do whatever it wants?
The implications extend beyond Brexit, too: Why would anyone want to make a trade deal, or any agreement, if the UK is not a reliable partner?
“Internationally, this potentially sets a bad precedent for future trade deals and risks damaging the UK’s reputation,” Chris Stafford, a doctoral researcher in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, told me in an email. “International trade deals take a lot of time and effort to negotiate, so some countries may be hesitant to do this if the UK shows it is willing to just ignore such agreements when it suits them.”
This is particularly relevant with the United States, which is in negotiations with the UK on a trade deal. Members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said they wouldn’t approve any US-UK trade deal if the UK violates the law and threatens the Good Friday Agreement. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s foreign policy adviser also reiterated the candidate’s commitment to the Northern Ireland peace process on Twitter, linking to a New York Times story about Johnson’s attempts to wiggle out of the Brexit deal.
All in all, the UK’s bill may make the prospect of a no-deal more likely, not less. That would be bad for all parties, but particularly for the UK. It could cause serious economic disruption at the exact same time the country, and the world, are trying to recover from the economic catastrophe caused by Covid-19.
But, weirdly, the pandemic-caused economic crisis could actually help Johnson and his allies by providing some cover for any economic fallout that comes from the Brexit debacle. If the UK public is focused on the pandemic and its consequences, they may not be paying attention to Brexit anymore. There will be economic disruption — but there’s already economic disruption. As Murray said, the UK government can file it all under Covid-19, diverting the blame for a problem of their own making.
For the Tories, breaking the law is just a sign of strength
Our leaders enjoy indulgent impunity while those they deem to be outcasts face ‘zero tolerance’ and merciless persecution
14 September 2020
It is six months into the British government’s calamitous coronavirus response, and almost a year into a regime of U-turns, gaffes and cartoon villainy. Surely, as the failures and violations accumulate, it is only a matter of time before the British public wakes up.
The Tory backbenchers are restive, we are told. The civil service is in open revolt. Why, even the rightwing press has turned, with hostile coverage of both Boris Johnson and his cabinet. They cannot get away with it forever.
Yet with every suspension of political norms, this government inches closer not to its demise, but towards the reconfiguration of those norms. Last week, the government admitted attempting to break international law over the EU withdrawal agreement. The justification, which became an internet meme, was that this was a breaking of the law only in a very “limited and specific way”.
Commentary on this violation already swirls in outrage, lamenting the demise of a country famous for respecting international law (not over its Iraq invasion, of course, but that’s for another day), the trashing of its reputation, and the decay of a governing party that was all about respecting the rules. Britain has, in an effort not to become an EU rule-taker, made the journey from rule-maker to rule-breaker. Yet breaking the law has always been a characteristic of this Conservative party – determined as it is to restore British greatness by unshackling itself from the conventions that limited its forebears. To this party, rule-breaking isn’t an outcome of the incompetence and the inattentiveness of its premier, it isn’t an impish prank; it is central to its pitch to voters. To them, rule-breaking implies strength, and establishes status and dominion over others.
This legal exceptionalism is an extension of a conservatism that was defined by a now famous blog comment by Frank Wilhoit, who said: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
In that sense, it is accurate to state that the party is going to break the law in a “limited and specific way”. Observing the law is only limited and specific to those who are considered out-groups, who are not only expected to follow the law, but will be stigmatised and hounded for not doing so. The government that does not hesitate to assail international law is the same one that has made “zero tolerance” – on undocumented migration, on crime – one of its core principles. And it has applied its zero tolerance, in several instances, by breaching human rights law through illegal detentions and deportations.
Far from being a chaotic, inconsistent approach that makes Johnson’s party look weak and amateur, this emerging two-tier legal system has an elegance and coherence that is easily understood by rightwing voters and Brexit supporters. As far as they are concerned, there is no jeopardy in the erosion of the respect for the law. There is no slippery slope that will eventually violate their legal rights. They are the in-group, and so are fortified. There is no “thin end of the wedge” for them. Their security is guaranteed by the redirection of the long arm of the law towards others.
Anyone panicking that we are sliding towards anarchy misunderstands the populist licence that extravagant rule-breaking by the nation’s leader brings. There will be anarchy, but only for some. And as long as that anarchy remains ringfenced – impacting a growing list that includes the EU, remainers, migrants, the legal elite – then it will not only be tolerated, it will be welcomed.
The utility of this legal apartheid extends to British lawmakers themselves whenever their rulings do not chime with those of the governing party. The British supreme court judges have already been branded the “enemies of the people” for ruling that MPs must have a say on triggering article 50, and that proroguing parliament was illegal. And so it is guaranteed that any legal attempts to challenge the latest governmental breach will be manipulated into the narrative that attempts to secure the best agreement for the British people are being stymied.
Speculation as to Johnson’s Brexit endgame may occupy pundits, but as an authoritarian populist gesture, the proposed EU agreement violation has another, more immediate result – it glorifies breaking the law as a bold protective measure, one that its critics do not have the courage, the patriotism or the gumption to make.
In The Cruelty is the Point – a seminal Atlantic essay on the effectiveness of Donald Trump’s cruelty – Adam Serwer writes that, when he looks at photographs of lynchings of black Americans, what remains etched in his mind isn’t the burned and mutilated bodies, but the white men in the crowd. They were grotesquely jubilant. “Their cruelty made them feel good,” he wrote, “it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.”
We would do well to start seeing this government’s violations as a jubilant establishment of a system in which there is indulgent impunity for some and merciless persecution for others. We may spend another quarter of the year discussing the legal ramifications of a breach of international law, but the real threat comes not from the destruction of law and order, but in a new version that the government is creating.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/tories-breaking-law
“People always have and will move countries.
PointsBasedSystem is designed to make people easier to exploit when they do.
If the price of unionising could be getting your visa revoked, would you?
The government is screwing over ALL workers and telling us it’s for our own good.”
19 February 2020
https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1230236938789146624
Politics for Change: Black Lives Matter in Europe
11 September 2020
The murder of George Floyd in the US earlier this year exposed police brutality and galvanised action across the world. It has also demonstrated the deadly consequences inherent in the structural racism that plagues societies on both sides of the Atlantic. How can we ensure that this wave of anger translates into a politics for change? We spoke to Alice Bah Kuhnke, Vice-President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, about fighting structural racism in Europe and the role of democratic debate and the EU in this process.
Green European Journal: The murder of George Floyd sparked virulent protests all over the world, even though this wasn’t the first time that police brutality against African Americans has been highlighted. What makes this case different?
Alice Bah Kuhnke: It’s true. Unfortunately, George Floyd or Breonna Taylor are not the only people to have been killed by police brutality. This begs the question of why this indignation is only coming now. Since the death of George Floyd, there have been many outcries, demonstrations and local and even regional reactions. This time it is indeed different. I don’t have the answer as to exactly why, but it’s worth looking at the specific context in which the murder took place. It was so terribly visible on video and was shared millions of times on social media. In this day and age, news and information travel fast.
We also have to consider the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made many people all over the world more vulnerable than ever. Confined to their homes, people have had more time to follow the news and social media more closely than usual. These are some of the circumstances that have raised international awareness of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Everybody got to clearly see the ugly face of police brutality, while simultaneously being confronted with their own Covid-19-related vulnerability.
Do you think this will be a defining moment leading to lasting political change, or is it a momentary wave of anger and indignation?
That is still to be determined. It’s up to us to decide what will come out of this moment. I hope that we are mature enough to not only grieve and condemn the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but that we look beyond to understand that this isn’t just about police brutality and the murder of two African-American people; these acts were consequences of the structural racism in our societies. If we understand that, we will be able to translate these murders into a politics for change.
In America the Black Lives Matter movement has put forth a range of demands such as defunding the police and removing statues of people associated with racism. Are these the kind of policies you would associate with a “politics for change”?
The United States has its own context. You can’t compare the structural racism and its consequences in the US with Europe or the rest of the world. That’s important to understand because we cannot just copy-paste the demands and policy proposals from one country to another. That would be oversimplifying things, although some of the demands of Black Lives Matter in the US can also have an important impact in a European context.
Let’s take the demand to remove statues of people associated with racism. In the United Kingdom, a statue in Bristol of the slave trader Edward Colston was removed by protestors and replaced by a sculpture made by the Black Lives Matter movement [it was subsequently removed by Bristol Council].
First off all, racism and discrimination aren’t going to disappear because a statue has been torn down. If that’s what people think, then we are in big trouble because the problems are so much wider and deeper.
Let’s be very clear on this: people can’t just go out onto the streets and pull down whichever statue they don’t like. We don’t live by the law of the jungle. We live in a democracy where we have necessary democratic processes. We need to have discussions about what should change. I believe every responsible politician in every municipality in every EU country should invite their local citizens to an assembly to discuss the statues in their city and ask: are these the statues that we want? Are these the heroes that we need and how should we interpret them? Then, after these discussions – long discussions that should take several months – there should be a meeting where a democratic decision is taken on whether we take the statues down, put them in a museum, or keep them. That’s how we do things in a democracy. The idea that whoever is the strongest in the street at a given moment can tear anything down is deeply authoritarian.
Authoritarian tendencies are not solely confined to the far right but are also present in left-wing movements.
Indeed, and as Greens we must strongly defend democratic processes in which everybody is heard, including minorities and people with different opinions. Just because hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets wanting to take a statue down, that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Politicians need to be brave enough to say that and argue in favour of democratic processes. I often hear that people have had enough of talking and that now is the time for action. That’s wrong. Democracy is about conversation – not only about talking but also listening, especially to minorities and those who see things differently. Enabling such processes is our responsibility.
But what about the civil rights movement, civil disobedience and Martin Luther King? Aren’t civil disobedience and direct action also part of a democratic conversation, particularly when democratic processes prove unresponsive?
Green parties across Europe are all closely connected to green grassroot movements. Both on our own initiative and in support of broader agendas, Green representatives and supporters will always be found at demonstrations and publicly criticising injustice in any undemocratic society. As a politician, I see myself as a representative of their beliefs and political wishes.
Having said that, one has to push for change within the common juridical framework that is put in place by all of us, the people, through democratic decisions. Even if you want to change the framework – or the system, if you prefer – you have to start changing it from within. The process sometimes seems slow, but during my years in politics I have repeatedly seen ideas and wishes turning into concrete actions. With politicians in our political institutions who are driven by wishes that correspond with the people, change is possible. That is why the best way to change things is to vote for a political party and politician who you trust will represent your beliefs and fight your battles.
What’s the situation with anti-racism protests in your home country, Sweden? What challenges is Sweden facing in particular?
When it comes to racism and discrimination, Sweden is facing similar challenges to those in countries like Denmark or Germany. Most hate crimes committed are racially motived, and people of African descent are more exposed to physical violence than the rest of the population. Structural discrimination in Sweden is visible in different areas of society: in the workplace, in the education system, in political institutions, and in our everyday lives. The result of this is unequal life chances, where some are privileged with better opportunities than others. In the end it is all about power – the power to shape our lives and the society we are part of.
One problem is that we are lacking proper statistics and data on structural racism. Such information is necessary for politics to be able to deal with the issue. Most of the information available comes from civil rights organisations and NGOs. So there is first and foremost a need to strengthen data collection and awareness raising. Of course, we know there is racial discrimination on the labour market, when it comes to housing or even just entering restaurants and bars. This has been amply documented by NGOs and journalists. But not enough is being done about it because there is structural racism within agencies and the whole of society.
You once said that the Swedish Greens need to “go where the far-right extremists go”. What did you mean by that?
For many years in Sweden, it was considered a God-given truth that you shouldn’t debate with extremists. That you should just ignore them instead of giving them the floor to let them express their hateful views. That was a mistake. The idea that we shouldn’t debate with certain people is filled with conceit. I understand the arguments behind it, but I think Greens need to engage and let people also hear our arguments and points of view. We need to be brave and take that debate head-on, not shy away and let the extremists carry the debate to wherever they want to take it.
People of colour are also underrepresented in politics. What is necessary to ensure that people of colour are better represented in political institutions?
This is an incredibly important issue because our democratic system depends on one central factor – trust. If the parliamentary system and its representatives don’t have trust, then they don’t have anything. Trust is the most important, most valuable factor in politics and in maintaining democracy. When people can’t mirror themselves in their parliamentarians, they will never feel fully represented, and trust can erode. This is particularly true for the European institutions, which are mostly run by older white men. This make-up doesn’t represent the EU in its entirety. It is a huge problem which is actually undermining democracy, something we can’t afford to do.
However, it’s important to recognise that there’s no quick fix for this. It takes years to change an institution and its make-up. As Greens, we also need to look at our own parties and organisations. Looking at the Green Party of Sweden, for example, I see that we have a problem with regards to diversity from the top down to our youth organisation. We ourselves must do our homework. We need to make sure that young people – no matter how well-off their parents are, where they live, which schools they go to – want to join political parties and become involved in politics. That means we must be better at reaching out to all people.
The German Green Party, long considered a party of white academics, is planning to adopt a diversity statute which aims to ensure that minority groups are represented on all political bodies with a minimum rate equal to their representation in the general population. What do you think of such a proposal?
This is a great ambition and I’m proud that my sister party is setting such a goal. But this kind of proposal also demands a lot of work to ensure that competent people occupy these positions. That is key and here Greens can do better. Of course, being black can impart competence on certain issues, as can being a migrant. We need to understand that and take the time to identify the right people.
Apart from representation, what changes are needed to overturn structural racism in Sweden and the wider EU?
We need to use every tool at our disposal, including legislation at all levels. In a European context, a first step would be to unblock the anti-discrimination directive, which has been blocked in Council since 2008. Here, I have been appointed rapporteur. This directive aims to expand protection against discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, religion or belief and sexual orientation outside the labour market. In most member states, intersectional discrimination is not covered by national legislation. The directive remains a shameful symbol of the lack of political will to legislate on anti-discrimination from the side of the Council and the member states. It must be unblocked immediately. To this end, I expect the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to act and do her utmost to mobilise the Council during the German Presidency. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the worldwide protests that followed, send a clear message to politicans: the people demand action now.
He took a selfie with Angela Merkel in 2015. Their lives, and Germany, changed
10 September 2020
BERLIN — The selfie that changed both his life and Angela Merkel’s was snapped soon after Rodin Saouan arrived in Berlin in 2015. He’d spent more than a year trying to reach Germany from war-ravaged Syria, traveling on foot, by car, bus, truck and tractor and aboard an unseaworthy rubber dinghy packed with 44 refugees making the perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece.
Exactly five years ago Thursday, Saouan suddenly found himself standing just a few feet from Merkel, who had dropped by a refugee center in Berlin on an unannounced visit. With a smartphone in his hand and a smile on his face, Saouan, then 25, approached Germany’s chancellor, signaling hopefully that he wanted a picture together.
“My German wasn’t very good at the time, so all I could say was ‘Guten tag,’” Saouan recalled in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “She was just standing there with several bodyguards and staff workers and looking a little bit nervous. But she smiled at me and let me take the selfie.
“I was a little surprised it was possible. She then asked me where I came from, and I told her from Syria.”
Photos of the two posing together were featured on newscasts and in newspapers around the world. For Saouan, the improbable encounter inaugurated his new life in a foreign but peaceful land far from his original home. For Merkel, it became a symbol of her surprising decision, just a few days earlier, to abandon her usual caution and put out the welcome mat for what eventually became an influx of 1.1 million migrants and asylum seekers in Germany that year.
The move was initially hailed as a moral triumph for a country burdened with a dreadful history of fascism and genocide. Then came the backlash, against Merkel, her party and some of the new arrivals themselves, as the practical challenges of sheltering and integrating so many people grew apparent. U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Merkel of “ruining Germany,” her popularity plunged, allies of her conservative party lost elections and right-wing dissent — some of it violent — surged.
But five years later, the situation has settled to a significant degree as Germans set about absorbing the newcomers with their trademark pragmatism. Though there have been missteps and continued criticism that Germany has been overwhelmed by the new arrivals, and though far-right sentiment lingers, Merkel’s approval ratings have hit new heights, in part because of her able management of the COVID-19 pandemic, and tensions over the great in-migration of 2015 have largely eased, analysts say.
“What is striking is the perception in Germany and that the public has settled on a surprisingly positive narrative,” said Gerald Knaus, director of the European Stability Initiative think tank in Berlin and an advisor to Merkel on refugee issues. “The consensus two years ago looked more controversial. But now two years on, the mainstream opinion is that it all worked surprisingly well.
“Most Germans are content and proud of what they’ve done,” Knaus added. “And that’s a very important signal for democracies.”
In a poll last month, a majority of Germans said their country had accepted the right number of refugees or should have taken in even more. Overall, Germany welcomed more asylum seekers and migrants in 2015 — during Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War II — than the rest of the 27 European Union member states combined.
Saouan, now 30, can’t understand the heat that Merkel took, including over his famous selfie with her, which critics said only encouraged more people to strike out for Germany from such countries as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
“She was only helping people in a tough situation who needed help,” Saouan said. “What’s wrong with that?”
His adjustment to life in Germany hasn’t been without difficulty. After the relief of making it safely to what seemed the promised land, he and other migrants found themselves navigating a country with a tough language to learn and with such a bewildering abundance of rules and regulations that even applicants for work as a waiter or dishwasher need certificates documenting their training or skills.
Saouan now speaks German reasonably well, and tries to improve by watching lessons on YouTube. Although he has passed a series of proficiency tests that qualify him for various jobs, he’s bounced through a series of low-paying, part-time positions in pubs, restaurants and warehouses as well as undergone some bouts of unemployment.
“I had a part-time job as a barman and cook in a restaurant until March 1, but then the coronavirus came, and so I haven’t had much work since,” said Saouan, who lives in a small studio apartment that costs $500 a month.
“I’m hoping to find a good job with good pay and a real employment contract. The jobs I’ve been doing just don’t pay enough for the rent and everything else. I want to earn enough to take care of myself, but it’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Then there’s the bass note of homesickness that never quite fades. As an able-bodied young man, Saouan fled Syria out of fear of being recalled to the army to fight in the country’s brutal civil war, which went “against everything inside me.” His four brothers and sisters remain in their farming village near Damascus.
“I didn’t have a future in Syria,” he said. “But maybe I don’t have one in Germany either. Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy and glad to be here, away from the war. Germany has been very kind to me, but I don’t have any family here. … I’d like to find a woman I could marry and have children with. I’d like to meet someone with the same culture and religion. That’s important to me.”
Opponents of Merkel’s policies bemoan what they say is a lack of assimilation, as well as the competition that newcomers pose in Germany’s economy — which remains Europe’s biggest despite the pandemic.
“Millions of refugees have arrived in Germany but without any kind of integration into the labor market. One-quarter of the Syrians living here are on welfare,” Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany, said in parliament last week. “The heightened competition for housing and jobs among low-skilled workers has become a major burden, as have the added burdens on our social welfare system.”
Critics also accuse Merkel of recklessly endangering Germans’ safety. They point to several high-profile crimes committed by migrants, including a large number of sexual assaults in Cologne during outdoor New Year’s Eve celebrations in 2015, several grisly murders and a handful of terror attacks.
Anger fueled by such incidents resulted in a series of losses for Merkel’s party in regional elections from 2016 to 2018. Under growing pressure, Merkel herself — who has governed Germany since 2005 — announced in late 2018 that she would not seek a fifth term as chancellor in next year’s election and gave up her post as chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union party.
Hostility toward asylum seekers has at times found violent expression. Some refugee centers were torched, and xenophobic hooligans beat up people who appeared to be foreigners. Anti-immigrant protests still crop up, often in eastern Germany, such as the city of Dresden. A number of refugees, weary of the resentment or of the stresses of living in such an unfamiliar environment, have gone on to other countries or returned to their homelands.
Here in more cosmopolitan Berlin, Saouan said he has not been subjected to any overt racism or resentment. The same goes for Mohamed Rachid, whose family, from the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo, spent more than a year in a refugee camp in Turkey before being taken by smugglers, at dawn, on a treacherous five-hour boat ride to Greece in August 2015.
Rachid arrived in Germany as a 16-year-old with his parents and four siblings — and little knowledge of his new host country. Now 21, he speaks German fluently, is a hard-working and well-liked trainee at a busy Berlin barbershop and evinces a confidence, optimism and determination that not many native Germans his age seem to possess.
“My dream is to open my own shop in a couple of years,” Rachid said. “I’ve got another 11 months to go as an intern here, and then I’ll work in a hair salon for two or three years to save up as much as I can, and then hopefully I can open up my own shop. I’m sure it’s all going to work out well.”
Knaus, the think tank director, said stories like Rachid’s are more typical among younger migrants with strong family networks around them. He said that 50% of Germany’s refugees have either found a job or enrolled in school or a vocational training program.
Rachid and his two sisters, who have internships of their own at a postal delivery company and at a supermarket chain, were recently given their own apartment to share, costing $500 per month. His siblings, Rachid said, are as ambitious as he is.
“I’ve learned a lot during the internship and am confident I can make it work with my own shop,” he said. “It’s only going to be a small shop. … But it’s going to be great.”
Two weeks ago, as the fifth anniversary of her momentous decision on migration neared, Merkel was asked yet again whether she regretted throwing open her country to the hundreds of thousands of people streaming in from the east, through Hungary and Austria, to Germany’s doorstep in the hope of finding a better life.
“I would make essentially the same decisions again,” Merkel said of a bold and controversial move that will inevitably be seen as part of her legacy as chancellor, for good or ill. “I am for the most part satisfied with the way it all went, even if there has been some hardship.
“When people are standing at the German-Austrian border or the Hungarian-Austrian border, they have to be treated like human beings.”
Investing in the Future: Why Europe Needs a Green New Deal
02 March 2020
In early 2019, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released her plan for a Green New Deal, skyrocketing the proposal for rapidly and fairly decarbonising the economy into the public conversation. The Green New Deal draws on a long history across the Atlantic. We asked Ann Pettifor, one of the idea’s architects, about what a Green New Deal would mean for jobs and investment in Europe and what central banks, the EU, and governments need to do to make it happen.
Lorenzo Marsili: Everyone is talking about the Green New Deal. You are one of the thinkers behind it. How did it come about?
Ann Pettifor: In 2007, we convened a meeting of environmentalists and economists to discuss the link between the financial system and climate breakdown. We met in the evenings in my flat in London: I would cook risotto and they would bring wine. Our conversations became a report, the Green New Deal, that was soon picked up by the United Nations and that Barack Obama mentioned in his campaign. But still, it never really took off.
Then, 18 months ago, a group of Americans visited London to meet Jeremy Corbyn’s advisors and they knocked on my door. They said they had a candidate standing in the New York primaries. They said their candidate had no chance of winning but that they wanted policies for her campaign. So we produced a new document, again called the Green New Deal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez based her campaign on it and went on to win against the odds. From then on, it’s been a shooting star. Everyone is talking about the Green New Deal and everyone has a different idea of what it is.
What is the Green New Deal then?
The key idea is that we cannot fix the ecosystem until we fix the economic system, and we cannot fix the economic system until we fix the hyper-globalised financial system. There is a direct line between the gush of credit issued by banks and the current economic system based on ever-expanding consumption, production, and, therefore, greenhouse emissions. The banks are not concerned about how the money they supply is spent or with what effects. In the three years after the 2015 Paris agreement, America’s biggest bank, JP Morgan, lent 196 billion dollars to companies the fossil fuel industry. Cutting the financial system’s sustenance of climate change through structural change is at the heart of our Green New Deal. Behavioural change, like some Greens argue for, is not enough.
Speaking about structural changes to the financial system, we have a new President of the European Central Bank (ECB). What should be the role of central banking in your vision?
The ECB epitomises the problem with the financial and monetary system. The ECB is designed to be beyond the reach of democratically elected governments and their peoples. Nothing can be done with the ECB until that is changed. For the democratic health of the Eurozone as well as the realisation of the Green New Deal, the architecture that puts central banking beyond parliamentary accountability and that prevents governments from borrowing to invest must be transformed. In an extraordinary recent editorial, even the Financial Times was at pains to stress that it is the job of democratically elected politicians to “steer the fiscal-monetary mix”, not central bankers. The reason both social democracy and Christian democracy are collapsing in Europe is that they have gone along with the notion that decisions should be taken out of the hands of politicians.
Do you advocate direct monetary financing of states by the central bank?
No, I am not in favour of direct monetary financing by the central bank. Nevertheless, the ECB should manage the financial system, interest rates, and the value of the currency in the interest of the states and their taxpayers – not, as now, just in the interests of the private finance sector. Because it is states and their taxpayers that grant the ECB its power and authority. If the state needs money, the central bank should help to mobilise that finance – just as a commercial bank helps an entrepreneur mobilise finance. However, the mix of fiscal and monetary tools matters as much as the overall monetary policy stance. In most economies, that balance is tilted heavily to the monetary side with unfortunate consequences. Economically, ultra-loose monetary policy has inflated asset prices and may be slowing productivity growth by keeping uneconomic businesses alive. Politically, it has put central banks under enormous pressure from banking lobbies, hard-money ideologues, and from those in creditor countries who think low interest rates are a way to bail out profligate governments on the sly. In truth, central banks should not be blamed for loose monetary policy. As long as governments are not willing to fulfill their side of the bargain, and expand on the fiscal side, central bankers are necessarily obliged to try and make up the shortfall in demand.
How does financing the Green New Deal come in?
There are essentially just two ways of financing investment in the Green New Deal, as there are for any government investment in infrastructure: by accessing new credit and by drawing on existing savings. Credit is available to both the government and private sector from the traditional banking system. Commercial banks provide credit to individuals and businesses but can also lend to the government. During the Second World War, when significant funding was needed, high street banks helped pay for the British war effort by lending to the government. They received government bonds in exchange for that credit. At the level of the whole economy, the ECB provides credit, both directly and indirectly, to its clients: banks, financial institutions, and also governments. This process, dubbed ‘quantitative easing’, has helped EU governments finance spending at low cost, and has brought down rates of interest for all borrowers at the same time.
Alternatively, a government committed to a Green New Deal could draw on existing savings held by individuals, but most importantly, by banks, pension funds, insurance companies, and other savings institutions – including National Investment Banks. What this means is that a Green New Deal for the European Union costing at minimum around 100 billion euros a year could be financed by a government using a judicious mix of credit and savings. Governments could invest in creating jobs in essential green and renewable energy, transport, and land-use systems, while simultaneously creating a safe place for pensions and savings. The more jobs are created, the more income both for the employed, but also (in the form of tax revenues) for the state. That is the way to balance the books!
You know the classical objection: EU countries have high debts and taking on yet more debt will provoke a crisis in market confidence.
European countries are heavily indebted because the global financial crisis smashed the economy and caused massive unemployment, especially in Southern Europe. That has lowered incomes across Europe – and simultaneously tax revenues. Furthermore, the crisis both lowered income and deflationary conditions made it hard for the private sector to borrow to invest and produce new income. If you want to fix the debt, then the government should invest and employ people. Only when people are employed will they generate income, pay taxes and thereby help balance the books.
The state has to invest. If you borrow to pay for basic services, as many EU countries have done, and at the same time impose austerity and cut investment in new jobs, your system is going to become unbalanced, building up large debts without any means (income) to repay them. Right now, it is as if Europe is borrowing money to pay the rent.
Looking at a concrete scenario, Italy is in debt and still below pre-2008 output. Should the Italian government argue the case for more debt specifically for productive green investment and, on that basis, justify a violation of the Maastricht criteria?
Absolutely. The Italian government should be investing to protect the people of Italy from the threat of climate breakdown. There will be droughts and floods; the people have to be mobilised for the enormous amount of work needed to protect the security of the Italian nation. Today the Italian government sits on its hands, implying it cannot do or afford anything. Its’s crazy.
What would that look like in practice? Ilva, Europe’s largest steel plant located in the south of Italy, was recently bought by ArcelorMittal. The company now wants to pull out due to the high costs of guaranteeing basic environmental and health standards. How would a Green New Deal cross with industrial policy in this case?
The private sector will not take the risk of transforming old polluting industries while transferring and retraining the workers and ensuring they use their skills for more sustainable ends. Only the state can, and will, take that risk. The private sector, as Marianna Mazzucato says, is a timid mouse when it comes to risk-taking. The state is the roaring lion. The state should have a plan for what needs to be done to rebuild our energy and transport sectors. In the UK, steelworkers are worried that they will end up like the coalminers abandoned by Margaret Thatcher. That is not the Green New Deal plan. Workers in the steel industry have extraordinary skills, which can be redeployed to address climate breakdown, for example by designing and building flood defences, and recycling steel for sustainable use.
The question of jobs is always on the table when we discuss ecological transformation. Coupled with technological change, many people predict a low-jobs future and advocate a shorter working week and basic income. You instead seem to think that they’ll be plenty of work.
In my view, we need to substitute labour for carbon. Britain imports green beans from Kenya, even though they could grow plenty in the UK. In doing so, Britain uses Kenya’s scarce water, exploits its underpaid labour, and pollutes the world by flying the vegetables in. In the future, Britain will need to grow its own green beans. Robots, universal basic income, and the end of employment are the delusional dreams of digital capitalists who want workers that they need not pay and consumers with just enough money to buy their services. A green economy is going to be more labour intensive and more self-sufficient than a carbon economy. It will be a localised, slow food type of economy that will provide a much richer life and restore our common wealth. It’s wrong to say it’ll be a low employment economy. We are going to substitute human energy for fossil fuel induced energy.
There were some attempts in 2008 to regulate the financial system but they failed. Obama, who won the US presidency right at the heart of the financial crisis, even surprised the banks with how accommodating he was. Why should it be different now?
The Great Financial Crisis stunned the Left in Europe and the US. Many had neglected to understand the extent to which, thanks to neoliberalism, all economies are internationalised (globalised) and national economic policy-making is constrained. Europe’s elected governments exercise little policy autonomy. Hence the frustration with politicians by the public and the right-wing insurgencies against “elites” across the Eurozone. Whether we like it or not, most right-wing populist governments are anti-globalisation. Social Democrats have been pro-globalisation. The Right does not have answers, and the Left also has no answers to the problem of globalisation.
The failure of the Left to understand the internationalised system produced the failure to reform that system after the crisis. As a result, the globalised financial system consolidated its position. Today business is better than usual for globalised financial capital because, unlike during the pre-crisis era, speculation by the world’s big financial institutions is “guaranteed” by governments. This has led to a massive increase in private (especially corporate) debt, inflated asset prices, and a rise in inequality. When the next crisis happens, we have to be ready. It will happen; the global economy is now more unbalanced than it was back in 2007. The Left and in particular the Greens in Europe need to have an alternative plan ready – an alternative strategy and an alternative architecture for Europe and the international system. That plan is the Green New Deal.
California’s wildfire smoke plumes are unlike anything previously seen
Smoke plumes have reached 55,000 feet in height, with embedded thunderstorms, lightning and possible tornadoes
12 September 2020
More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year, part of a record fire season that still has four months to go. A suffocating cloud of smoke has veiled the West Coast for days, extending more than a thousand miles above the Pacific. And the extreme fire behavior that’s been witnessed this year hasn’t just been wild — it’s virtually unprecedented in scope and scale.
Fire tornadoes have spun up by the handful in at least three big wildfires in the past three weeks, based on radar data. Giant clouds of ash and smoke have generated lightning. Multiple fires have gone from a few acres to more than 100,000 acres in size in a day, while advancing as many as 25 miles in a single night. And wildfire plumes have soared up to 10 miles high, above the cruising altitude of commercial jets.
Scientists have been scrambling to collect as much data on these wildfires as possible, hoping to unlock the secrets to their extreme behavior and fury. Among them is Neil Lareau, a professor of atmospheric sciences in the department of physics at the University of Nevada at Reno. Lareau closely studies pyrocumulus clouds, towering explosion-like plumes of heat that develop above intense blazes.
He retrieved data from the National Weather Service’s network of Doppler radars, which scan the skies every few moments at up to 15 different vertical angles. By stitching these different elevation “slices” together, he was able to produce a three-dimensional model of each smoke plume.
The Creek Fire, which has burned nearly 200,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada mountains, was only 6 percent contained on Friday. On Sept. 5, a day after it was first ignited, its smoke plume soared to 55,000 feet. That’s taller than many of the tornadic thunderstorms that roll across Oklahoma and Kansas each spring.
Such clouds are both indicators of and contributors to extreme fire behavior, such as rapid fire spread and the formation of fire vortices including tornadoes, along with other dynamics that are hazardous to firefighters and can imperil communities.
“Anecdotally, this is the deepest that I’ve seen,” said Lareau, who was shocked by the height achieved by the smoke plume. “It’s about a solid 10,000 feet higher than we’re typically seeing with the highest of these plumes.”
Lareau says the extreme height is a testament to the fire’s rapid spread and release of heat.
“[That], as well as the large burning area, results in the total amount of heat being injected into the atmosphere just being tremendous,” said Lareau.
He also noted that the record-shattering heat wave in California, which brought Los Angeles County’s hottest ever measured temperature of 121 degrees on Sept. 6, also played a role in the “tremendous plume depth.”
A pocket of air will rise so long as it is warmer than its surroundings. Ordinarily, thunderstorm tops stop their vertical ascent at the tropopause, the threshold of the stratosphere, where environmental temperatures begin warming with height.
“But we’re beneath a record-setting ridge,” said Lareau, describing the strong high-pressure system that brought the record warmth. Because the air is so warm, it expands, causing the atmosphere to grow in height vertically.
“That’s going to have very high tropopause heights,” Lareau. “The background structure of the atmosphere and having these record … heights sets up the opportunity to have this really remarkable plume depth.”
Wildfires brew extreme fire behavior
In addition to the extreme fire heights, tornadic vortexes have been spotted by radar within three of this year’s colossal fires. The first, the Loyalton Fire in Lassen County, Calif., even prompted the National Weather Service to issue its first-ever fire tornado warning on Aug. 15.
Before 2020, only a few fires had ever produced documented fire tornadoes in the United States; now we’re seeing them every week or two. Lareau says the tremendous heights of the wildfires’ clouds, combined with more concerted and astute observation, are factors in the numerous fire tornadoes that have been reported this year. He thinks there may be some also truth to the apparent increase.
“We have a ton of eyes on every fire, looking at every frame, but still, we weren’t seeing these before,” he said. “And we’re seeing all too much of it right now. It’s rather worrying.”
The extreme fire behavior is so foreign and jarring that Lareau has found it a challenge to place it in context.
“These are still real outlier events,” said Lareau. “The way I’ve been trying to think about it, if it’s a 1 in 100 event, now we have, what, 7,000 fires on the landscape? The opportunity to experience these extremes of fire weather are off the charts right now.”
Similarities to past events
The North Complex West, burning in the Sierras of California, bears striking similarities to the Carr Fire of 2018. That inferno, which produced a deadly fire tornado near the city of Redding in Northern California, killed three firefighters and five civilians.
“I think [they’re] almost carbon copies of one another,” said Lareau. “You have the exact same direction of travel, same wind dynamics, same terrain, same fuels, very similar fire behavior.”
The Creek Fire, located farther south, has produced a number of clockwise-spinning fire tornadoes. That’s opposite to how most tornadoes spin in the Northern Hemisphere. Lareau is working with meteorologists from the National Weather Service, as well as research colleagues, to develop a conceptual model of how these rotating fire and smoke plumes behave.
He hopes that, in the not-too-distant future, it may be possible to forecast these events and issue warnings in advance.
Searching for a new understanding
While the radar animations Lareau produced are as aesthetically captivating as they are scientifically illustrative, he hopes that higher-resolution data, which is much tougher to come by, would provide atmospheric scientists with clearer insight as to how these fires behave under the hood. Ideally, he would target wildfires with ground-based mobile Doppler radars and remote sensing instruments mounted aboard aircraft.
“We’ve been proposing for three or four years now to do major field campaigns targeting these extreme behaviors,” said Lareau. “We’ve been arguing to the community that these are really vital data to collect.”
Thus far, funding has not been secured, but Lareau is hopeful.
“We really need to advance our understanding about what’s going on with the high-end fires.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/12/california-wildfires-smoke-plumes/
US West Coast fires: Row over climate change’s role as Trump visits
14 September 2020
Democratic politicians on the US West Coast have accused President Donald Trump of being in denial about climate change’s role in the huge wildfires there, before his visit to California.
Blazes in California, Oregon and Washington state have burned almost 2m hectares (5m acres) of land and killed at least 35 people since early August.
Washington’s governor called climate change a “blowtorch over our states”.
Mr Trump, a climate sceptic, blamed the crisis on poor forest management.
The president is due to be briefed on Monday by emergency crews who have been battling the fires, during a visit to McClellan Park, outside Sacramento.
What’s the latest on the ground?
Authorities in California, where 24 people have died since 15 August, reported on Sunday that firefighters were working to contain 29 major wildfires across the state.
They warned that the strong southerly winds and low humidity forecast for Monday could bring an elevated fire risk, and potentially have an impact on the North Complex Fire, which has scorched 106,000 hectares and is only 26% contained.
The US National Weather Service also issued a “red flag warning” for other areas of the West Coast, including Jackson County, Oregon, where the Almeda Fire has destroyed hundreds of homes.
The Oregon Office of Emergency Management said on Sunday that firefighters in the state were struggling to contain more than 30 active wildfires – the largest of which was more than 89km (55 miles) wide.
At least 10 people have been killed in Oregon in the past week. Officials have said dozens of people are missing and warned that the death toll could rise.
One person has died in Washington, where there were five large fires on Sunday.
What are the politicians saying?
Oregon Governor Kate Brown said her state was facing “the perfect firestorm”.
“We saw incredible winds. We saw very cold, hot temperatures. And, of course, we have a landscape that has seen 30 years of drought,” she told CBS on Sunday.
“This is truly the bellwether for climate change on the West Coast. And this is a wake-up call for all of us that we have got to do everything in our power to tackle climate change.”
Washington Governor Jay Inslee described the situation as “apocalyptic”.
“It is maddening right now that, when we have this cosmic challenge to our communities, with the entire West Coast of the United States on fire, to have a president to deny that these are not just wildfires, these are climate fires,” he told ABC.
The comments echoed California Governor Gavin Newsom’s statement on Friday that the fires showed the debate about climate change was “over”.
At an election campaign event in Nevada on Saturday, President Trump said he was praying for everyone throughout the West Coast affected by the wildfires.
But he insisted the blazes were “about forest management”, which includes tree thinning and brush clearing.
“They never had anything like this,” he said. “Please remember the words, very simple, forest management.”
Mr Trump has previously called climate change “mythical”, “non-existent”, or “an expensive hoax” – but has also described it as a “serious subject”.
He has decided to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement, which committed the US and 187 other countries to keep rising global temperatures below 2C (35.6F).
What role is climate change playing?
BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath says that while natural factors such as strong winds have helped the spread of the West Coast fires, the underlying heating of the climate from human activities is making these conflagrations bigger and more explosive.
Nine of the world’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and the UN warned this week that the five years from 2016 until this year will very likely be the hottest such period yet recorded. Both Oregon and California have warmed by more than 1C since 1900.
The sustained warmth has seen six of the 20 largest fires on record in California all occur this year. In Oregon, the spate of fires burned almost twice the amount of average annual losses in a week.
In California, a prolonged drought over the past decade has killed millions of trees, turning them into potent fuel for the fires. Mountain regions that are normally cooler and wetter have dried out more rapidly in the summer, adding to the potential fuel load.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54144651
Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election
Trump meanwhile promises to ‘put down’ leftwing protests and says US Marshals killing Portland suspect was ‘retribution’
13 September 2020
Roger Stone, whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Russia investigation was commuted by Donald Trump, has said Trump should seize total power and jail prominent figures including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg if he loses to Joe Biden in November.
The long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.
In turn, special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee suspected Trump lied when he said he could not recall discussing the leaks with Stone.
Stone did not turn on Trump and had his sentence reduced on the recommendation of attorney general William Barr. But he still faced prison before Trump acted. His conviction stands.
Both men were in Nevada on Saturday, Trump holding campaign events while Stone sought to raise money for himself. He outlined his advice to Trump should he lose in a call to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars online show, on Thursday.
Citing widely debunked claims of fraud around early voting, absentee balloting and voting by mail, Stone said Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity”.
Stone also said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!”
Nevada has not gone to a Republican since 2004 but is shaping up to be a crucial contest this year. Biden leads there, but polls have tightened.
Trump’s own rhetoric was not far removed from that of the man he spared prison. The president continued on Saturday to make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud. He and his campaign have also consistently claimed without evidence that “antifa”, or anti-fascist, activists represent a deadly threat to suburban voters that will be unleashed should Biden win.
Commenting on a Daily Beast report about leftwing activist groups planning what to do “if the election ends without a clear outcome or with a Biden win that Trump refuses to recognize”, Stone told Jones the website should be shut down.
“If the Daily Beast is involved in provably seditious and illegal activities,” he said, “their entire staff can be taken into custody and their office can be shut down. They wanna play war, this is war.”
Stone also advocated “forming an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections [to results] and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity”.
In an interview broadcast on Saturday night, Trump told Fox News he would happily “put down” any leftwing protests.
“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that,” he told Jeannine Pirro.
“We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to use federal troops to enforce federal law. Last used in 1992, it was much discussed this summer, amid protests over racism and police brutality arising from the killing of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis.
Ultimately Trump chose simply to send federal agents to confront protesters, most prominently in Portland, Oregon, a move which proved hugely controversial.
In his interview with Fox News, Trump discussed an incident in the city in which US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the killing of a member of a rightwing group.
“There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.
He also said protests such as those in Portland would lead to “a backlash” from the political right, “the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years”.
Willy, il rapper Ghali contro i colleghi: “Perché non parlate? Eppure la cosa ci riguarda da vicino… forse non ve ne frega niente? Oppure…”
10 Settembre 2020
Il rapper Ghali si è dimostrato da subito molto sensibile alla vicenda di Willy, il ragazzo ventunenne ucciso a botte, durante un vero e proprio pestaggio a Colleferro. Una vicenda che ha scosso l’opinione pubblica ma su cui, a detta dell’artista, si è mobilitato poco il mondo della musica.
Ghali se la prende soprattutto con gli altri rapper: “Come mai non dite nulla su questa vicenda che ci è così vicina? Siete tutti pronti a dire la vostra su quello che accade oltre oceano, perché è di moda… ma su questa vicenda non dite nulla. Perché? Distoglie l’attenzione dalle cose che avete in promozione? Secondo me o non ve ne frega niente o avete paura di schierarvi perché c’è della prossimità con certi ambienti…”
Fossero solo alcuni rapper a non volersi alienare le simpatie di un certo pubblico, il problema non sarebbe poi così grande. Purtroppo, a flirtare con quel tipo di sottocultura fascistoide è una parte anche abbastanza rilevante del cosiddetto mondo dello spettacolo, soprattutto quello legato ai media più popolari. Se radio e televisione hanno fatto da propulsori alla vecchia destra del ventennio berlusconiano, la nuova destra si alimenta soprattutto del consenso che riesce a trovare nell’inquietante far west dei social media. Ma il circo di nani, ballerine e pennivendoli che gira intorno all’uomo forte del momento obbedisce più o meno alle stesse dinamiche, seguendo il vento che promette maggiore visibilità. Una volta la macchina dei sogni era il GF, con le conseguenti ospitate sui programmi Mediaset. Oggi è soprattutto il web a dare l’illusione di una facile notorietà, assecondando l’esibizionismo e il narcisismo di chiunque abbia uno smartphone. Ma gli unici che riescono a spiccare davvero sono ancora coloro che si possono aggiudicare una solida presenza sui media tradizionali (particolarmente, in televisione). Comunque, l’immediatezza del rapporto con il pubblico è radicalmente cambiata, intensificandosi nello spazio multimediale della condivisione istantanea, spesso usata con eccessiva superficialità. Molto più facilmente di quanto avvenisse in passato, gli istrioni della ribalta mediatica, con le loro sparate e i loro atteggiamenti sconsiderati, alimentano fenomeni di emulazione che possono trascendere in episodi di violenza, di cui finiscono per rendersi protagonisti i follower più balordi. Sulla scia di eroi mediatici rappresentati come vincenti e potenti, arrivano le solite schiere di giovani cloni, ragazzi con molte lacune e poche idee, contenti anche solo di esibire identità riciclate. Ma bisogna che i modelli siano abbastanza accattivanti: ci vogliono dei personaggi decisamente cool. Opinionisti, neomelodici e vecchie glorie fanno solo sbadigliare: ecco allora che, anche per la gioventù sovranista, si cerca di sfornare un po’ di rap. E qui la cosa si fa grottesca, perché (escluso un caso psichiatrico nell’America di Trump) il rap di destra è una contraddizione in termini che si riesce a dare solo in Italia e in qualche altro grigio paese della galassia filorussa. A “Dio, patria e famiglia” si aggiungono sesso, droga e bling bling. Il mix, come possiamo vedere, è assolutamente micidiale: la combinazione di intolleranza e cultura della celebrità genera mostri. Ci sarebbe bisogno di meno conformismo e maggiore diversità, ma purtroppo in Italia il conformismo è una sorta di bandiera nazionale, mentre la diversità viene osteggiata in quasi ogni ambiente. Dove sono i comici, i giornalisti, i conduttori televisivi di colore? E dov’è la diversità fra gli insegnanti, gli impiegati pubblici e i membri delle forze di polizia? Non sembra affatto sufficiente ammettere qualche concorrente di colore nei talent show o qualche anche più raro candidato di colore nelle liste elettorali: il tokenismo non è altro che una forma più sottile (e ipocrita) di razzismo. Tutti sanno che razzismo e xenofobia si combattono introducendo maggiore diversità e dando maggiore visibilità pubblica ai rappresentanti delle minoranze, ma sono pochi a fare davvero qualcosa in tal senso. In Italia, persino un mestiere banale come quello del conducente di taxi, che negli altri paesi offre molte opportunità di lavoro agli immigrati stranieri, è quasi esclusivamente appannaggio degli italiani, e non c’è mai stato un governo, locale o centrale, che sia riuscito a liberalizzare davvero le licenze e a calmierare i prezzi delle tariffe, sempre altissimi. Non parliamo poi di quanto sia difficile l’accesso alle professioni, rigorosamente blindate anche per gli stessi italiani che non siano i soliti figli di papà. Gli ascensori sociali vengono bloccati da pregiudizi e privilegi di vario tipo, mentre i criteri meritocratici rimangono per lo più inapplicati. Si continua a ripetere che il nostro non è un paese razzista, classista ed omofobo, ma intanto gli episodi di cronaca e le numerose testimonianze di pratiche discriminatorie raccontano un’altra storia. E chiunque osi dire chiaramente che il problema consiste nel mancato eradicamento della cultura fascista finisce subito per diventare il bersaglio di un vero e proprio linciaggio mediatico. Così come la destra di ieri usava il metodo Boffo su stampa e televisione, quella di oggi ricorre al trolling sui social media: cambiano i mezzi di comunicazione, ma permangono sempre le stesse strategie di bullismo, denigrazione e intimidazione. Si continua ad alimentare l’odio verso i soliti capri espiatori (immigrati, antifascisti, persone LGBT ecc.), salvo poi prendere ipocritamente le distanze quando ci scappa il morto. Si fa riferimento ai valori dell’onore e del coraggio, ma poi si ricorre a vergognosi mezzi di propaganda diffamatoria e alla vigliaccheria della violenza (soprattutto verbale, ma non solo) contro i più deboli. Del resto, quando si sceglie come modello lo Zar di tutte le Russie, un “eroe” che fa avvelenare gli oppositori e se la prende persino con le femministe, allora nessun colpo può apparire troppo basso.
Sperona e uccide la sorella perché aveva un compagno trans
Acerra: secondo le indagini il giovane, arrestato, non accettava il rapporto della ragazza con un transgender, adesso ricoverato in ospedale. Don Patriciello: “La famiglia di Maria Paola è distrutta. Michele non l’ha speronata, è stato un incidente”
13 Settembre 2020
Una ragazza di 20 anni, Maria Paola Gaglione, ha perso la vita in via degli Etruschi ad Acerra cadendo rovinosamente dal motorino mentre, insieme al suo compagno, percorreva la strada provinciale Cancello-Caivano. Ma quello che in un primo momento era apparso come un gravissimo incidente stradale, con il passar delle ore si è trasformato in un’altra storia, delineandosi come il drammatico epilogo di una relazione osteggiata dalla famiglia per ragioni di genere.
Su disposizione della Procura di Nola, il fratello maggiore di Maria Paola, Michele, è agli arresti con l’accusa di omicidio preterintenzionale. Secondo l’accusa avrebbe inseguito e speronato lo scooter della sorella provocandone la caduta rivelatasi fatale. È in ospedale, ferito ma non in gravi condizioni, il compagno di Maria Paola, un ragazzo trans, nato di sesso femminile che si percepisce uomo. Tra i due il rapporto era molto forte, al punto che avevano deciso di convivere, trasferendosi da Caivano ad Acerra. Ma il legame non sarebbe stato accettato dalla famiglia di Maria Paola e questo avrebbe determinato il gesto che ha portato all’arresto del fratello della ragazza.
Nella ricostruzione degli investigatori (indagano i carabinieri di Castello di Cisterna) Michele, in sella al suo ciclomotore, avrebbe inseguito la sorella e il compagno per diversi chilometri, colpendo il loro motorino fino a provocarne la caduta che ha causato la morte della ventenne. Le indagini sono condotte dalla pm Patrizia Mucciacito coordinata dal procuratore Laura Triassi. In un primo momento, i magistrati avevano ipotizzato l’accusa di “morte in conseguenza di un altro reato”, poi modificata in omicidio preterintenzionale. Ora il provvedimento passa al vaglio del giudice che dovrà decidere sulla convalida alla presenza dell’avvocato difensore dell’indagato, Domenico Paolella. L’udienza è fissata per lunedì 14 settembre.
Su Facebook, la madre del ragazzo trans ha pubblicato un post carico di rabbia dal quale si desume l’ipotesi che la coppia fosse stata già minacciata in passato. Ma sono righe piene anche di amarezza, quando la donna ricorda che “i figli si accettano” e chiede che Paola adesso possa “riposare in pace”. È sconvolta Daniela Lourdes Falanga, presidente di Antinoo Arci Gay Napoli, che sottolinea: “Non si può negare una vita per la felicità di due persone. Se la rabbia e il dolore di questa madre confermeranno i fatti, non si potranno abbassare sipari di omertà. Troppo spesso i compagni e le compagne delle persone trans diventano prede della transfobia, subendo offese e umiliazioni”. Il segretario dell’Arci Gay, Antonello Sannino, avverte: “Purtroppo non parliamo di casi isolati. Abbiamo notizia di altre situazioni di sofferenze in famiglia che rischiano di avere conseguenze molto gravi”.
Diversa la versione dei fatti fornita dalla famiglia di Maria Paola e Michele Gaglione – e riportata dal parroco del Parco Verde di Caivano don Maurizio Patriciello: «Michele era uscito per convincere la sorella Maria Paola a rientrare a casa ma non l’ ha speronata, è stato un incidente». Aggiunge il parroco: «È una famiglia distrutta e che non si dà pace per una figlia appena maggiorenne. Ma stiamo attenti a dipingerla come una storia di omofobia. Forse non sanno nemmeno cos’è. Quel che è vero è che non erano preparati e non vedevano di buon occhio la relazione con Ciro ma so che si stavano abituando all’idea. Tuttavia erano preoccupati perché Maria Paola era andata via di casa a soli 18 anni e temevano per un futuro senza lavoro e più che mai incerto».
Omotransfobia #Femminicidio
“Frequentava un trans, era infetta”
Dramma nel Napoletano. Ferito il partner della vittima. Il fratello: volevo soltanto darle una lezione
14 Settembre 2020
CAIVANO (NAPOLI). Un bagliore nel buio, lo stridio, il silenzio. Tutto in pochi istanti. Sono quasi le due della notte tra venerdì e sabato scorso quando le poche auto in transito vedono due scooter sfrecciare sulla strada che da Caivano conduce ad Acerra, agglomerati urbani ad alta densità lungo l’inquinato e degradato confine tra il Napoletano e il Casertano. È un inseguimento. Sul primo mezzo c’è una coppia di fidanzatini – Maria Paola Gaglione e Ciro Migliore – mentre sull’altro c’è il fratello della ragazza, Michele Antonio Gaglione. Sono vicini e veloci, troppo. A un certo punto il primo motorino sbanda e si ribalta, forse perché viaggiava oltre i limiti, forse perché l’altro lo ha toccato nella folle corsa, forse (sostiene qualcuno) è colpa dei calci inferti dal trentenne, il quale, non contento, si sarebbe poi accanito su Ciro, che era rimasto a terra ferito, prima di accorgersi che Paola aveva sbattuto il collo contro un idrante ed era morta sul colpo (peraltro erano tutti senza casco).
Perché quell’assurdo inseguimento nella notte, perché tanta rabbia? A offrire una possibile risposta è lo stesso Michele dopo l’incidente: «Non volevo uccidere nessuno, ma dare una lezione, soprattutto a “quella” che ha “infettato” mia sorella, che era stata sempre normale», dice ai carabinieri. Parole che acquistano un senso quando si comprende che l’uomo si sta riferendo al fatto che il compagno della sorella è un transgender (biologicamente donna ma con un’identità maschile) e anche quando si chiarisce che i due ragazzi da una quindicina di giorni stavano praticamente vivendo insieme. Una scelta incomprensibile per l’uomo, che per anni alla sorella ha fatto da padre, anche ospitandola nella sua casa. Da lì le tensioni, i litigi, sino al raptus dell’altra notte.
L’avvocato del Gaglione – il penalista napoletano Domenico Paolella – prova a smentire la ricostruzione: «Non mi risulta abbia speronato lo scooter, voleva solo parlare con la sorella, e quando li visti cadere ha chiamato lui il 118 e i carabinieri. È disperato». Per la Procura, al momento, è un omicidio preterintenzionale (inizialmente rispondeva di lesioni personali, morte come conseguenza di altro delitto e violenza privata). Per l’opinione pubblica, intanto, è un assassinio tout court. E c’è chi ha ricordato gli omicidi nelle famiglie islamiche emigrate in Europa (con vittime quelle ragazze “infettate” dallo stile di vita occidentale).
L’asprezza della notizia e la dolcezza del sorriso nelle foto di Maria Paola hanno provocato un’ondata di indignazione in tutta Italia. Moltissime le reazioni di sdegno e di condanna. Anche dal mondo politico: tra gli altri hanno fanno sentire la loro voce Paolo Gentiloni, Giorgia Meloni e Nicola Zingaretti e Mara Carfagna. «Ecco perché è urgente approvare subito la legge Zan», ha scritto su Twitter la deputata dem Laura Boldrini.
Ma il primo a scendere in campo, come era prevedibile, è stato il mondo lgbt. Fabrizio Marrazzo, portavoce del Gay Center: «Quanto accaduto dimostra quanto siano duri i contesti che da tempo denunciamo con il nostro numero verde (800713713), per questo serve una legge seria contro l’omotransfobia». Sulla stessa lunghezza d’onda Daniela Lourdes Falanga, presidente di “Antinoo” Arci Gay Napoli: «Non si può negare una vita per la felicità di due persone. Troppo spesso i compagni e le compagne delle persone trans diventano prede della transfobia».
Infine l’analisi dello scrittore Maurizio Braucci: «La normalità, questa patologia d’ipocrisia e conformismo, è sempre alla fine un’epidemia e non un male individuale. Se una giovane donna, in una zona senza diritti di cittadinanza come il Parco Verde di Caivano, trova l’amore, allora deve essere ricondotta alla normalità, che significa l’orrore della quotidianità, solo perché i suoi riferimenti non sono uguali a quelli degli altri oppressi come lei».
“L’omicidio di Willy e la morte di Maria Paola hanno una matrice comune, che affonda le radici nella cultura patriarcale ancora radicata nel nostro Paese e che pone la virilità come elemento di sopraffazione. La responsabilità di bloccare questa tragica quotidianità è tutta in capo alla politica. Questa è una scelta culturale e sociale e quindi puramente politica, che in Italia ancora non è stata presa. Per questo dobbiamo approvare la legge contro l’#omotransfobia e la #misoginia.” (Alessandro Zan)
Maria Paola Gaglione, speronata e uccisa in scooter dal fratello che non accettava la storia con un trans. Famiglia lo difende: “Incidente”
La vittima è morta all’istante mentre il fidanzato è rimasto ferito. Secondo gli investigatori, mentre era ancora a terra, è stato picchiato dal 30enne, ora in carcere per omicidio preterintenzionale e violenza privata aggravata dall’omofobia. L’omicida: “Mia sorella era infettata”. Pd e M5s: “Necessario approvare la legge contro l’omotransfobia”
13 Settembre 2020
Michele Antonio Gaglione, 30 anni, non accettava la relazione di sua sorella con un uomo transgender, così lì ha inseguiti in moto mentre a bordo del loro scooter si dirigevano ad Acerra, nel Napoletano, e ha iniziato a prendere a calci il mezzo fino a farli cadere. Così ha ucciso Maria Paola Gaglione, 22 anni, secondo la ricostruzione degli investigatori che, interrogato il ragazzo, indagano adesso per omicidio preterintenzionale e violenza privata aggravata dall’omofobia. “Volevo darle una lezione, non ucciderla. Ma era stata infettata“, è stata la giustificazione del 30enne ascoltato dagli inquirenti. Ma la famiglia dei due ragazzi difende il fratello maggiore: “Michele era uscito per convincere la sorella Maria Paola a rientrare a casa, ma non l’ ha speronata, è stato un incidente“.”Se vogliamo capire cosa vuol significare che bisogna avere una legge contro l’omolesbobitrasfobia, questo è uno dei casi più espliciti”, ha dichiarato Daniela Falanga, presidente di Arcigay Napoli. Anche da M5s, Pd e LeU si torna a chiedere l’intervento legislativo.
Secondo la ricostruzione degli inquirenti, l’uomo ha inseguito la sorella e il compagno transgender Ciro (all’anagrafe Cira Migliore) mentre venerdì sera erano in viaggio da Caivano ad Acerra. Anch’egli a bordo di uno scooter, ha cercato con i calci di far cadere i due dal mezzo in corsa. Poi in una curva, il motorino con a bordo Maria Paola e Ciro, colpito ancora una volta dal fratello 30enne di lei, ha perso aderenza finendo fuori strada. La 22ene è finita su un tubo per l’irrigazione ed è morta sul colpo. Ciro è finito sul selciato senza però sbattere contro alcun ostacolo ed è rimasto ferito. Ancora a terra è stato picchiato dal 30enne che gli ha rivolto l’accusa di aver plagiato la sorella. Poi è stata portato in una clinica della zona: le sue condizioni non sono gravi. Gaglione, adesso, è stato arrestato e nella Casa Circondariale di Poggioreale in attesa dell’udienza di convalida.
La madre di Ciro, poche ore dopo l’accaduto, ha reso pubblico un suo messaggio su Facebook: ha accusato Michele Antonio “di aver commesso deliberatamente un omicidio perché non sopportava che la sorella frequentasse un uomo trans. I figli si accettano così come vengono. Paola riposa in pace”.
Arcigay: “Serve una legge contro l’omolesbobitrasfobia”
Quella dei due fratelli è una storia di intolleranza, litigi e minacce che duravano da un po’ di tempo: Maria Paola e il compagno per questo si erano trasferiti ad Acerra, dove avevano trovato maggiore tranquillità rispetto al Parco Verde di Caivano (Napoli), dove vivevano con le famiglie. Daniela Falanga, presidente di Arcigay Napoli, è scioccata e arrabbiata: “Si tratta di un caso efferato in cui si manifestano due violenze gravi, un femminicidio e un atto di transfobia – dice -, con una donna che perde la vita mentre il compagno vive il distacco dalla compagna. Questo episodio fa emergere anche un problema relativo alla stampa, a come narra di queste cose. Se vogliamo capire cosa vuol significare che bisogna avere una legge contro l’omolesbobitrasfobia, questo è uno dei casi più espliciti. Qui c’è un omicida, c’è la violenza di genere, c’è la negazione da parte di una stampa che non sa definire fatti e persone e l’Italia da cambiare”.
Antonello Sannino, segretario di Arcigay Napoli, risponde alle parole di le parole di don Maurizio Patriciello, parroco di Caivano, che alla stampa ha dichiarato: “Non credo volesse davvero uccidere la sorella, forse voleva darle una lezione, saranno le indagini a stabilirlo. Di certo non era preparato culturalmente a vivere la relazione della sorella”. “Non è solo una questione di mancanza di cultura – sostiene Sannino – Sono inaccettabili le parole di don Maurizio Patriciello, non si tratta di una questione di contesto culturale anche perché queste situazioni si registrano pure in contesti borghesi e di elevato livello sociale e culturale”.
Il parroco si è però fatto portavoce della famiglia e parlando pubblicamente ha dichiarato che “è una famiglia distrutta e che non si dà pace per una figlia appena maggiorenne. Ma stiamo attenti a dipingerla come una storia di omofobia. Forse non sanno nemmeno cos’è. Quel che è vero è che non erano preparati e non vedevano di buon occhio la relazione con Ciro, ma so che si stavano abituando all’idea. Tuttavia erano preoccupati perché Maria Paola era andata via di casa a soli 18 anni e temevano per un futuro senza lavoro e più che mai incerto”.
L’assessore campano alle Pari Opportunità, Chiara Marciani, scrive su Facebook che “la legge regionale approvata lo scorso agosto contro l’omotransfobia ha un urgente e necessario bisogno di essere attuata”. Il testo prevede la costituzione di un Osservatorio regionale sulla violenza e le discriminazioni determinate dall’orientamento sessuale e dall’identità di genere per raccogliere i dati e monitorare i fenomeni legati alla violenza e alle discriminazioni, oltre a collaborare con enti, organismi e associazioni per prevenire e contrastare i fenomeni oggetto della legge. “Maria Paola amava e stava con Ciro e la differenza è un abisso umano e culturale”, conclude Marciani.
M5s: “Vicenda di degrado, omofobia e brutalità. Serve un intervento legislativo”
“Una vicenda di degrado, di omofobia, di brutalità, di subcultura della vergogna e dell’onore. Una vita spezzata per una sola ragione: amare una persona dello stesso sesso”, ha commentato la vicecapogruppo del Movimento 5 stelle al Senato, Alessandra Maiorino. “Lascia sgomenti quanto avvenuto a Caivano – ha aggiunto la senatrice – è inaccettabile che, ancora oggi, l’amore venga considerato una vergogna“. Chiede un cambiamento in Parlamento Mario Perantoni, presidente della commissione Giustizia alla Camera e deputato M5S: “Non è più rinviabile – ha sottolineato – una normativa specifica contro la violenza e la discriminazione per motivi legati all’orientamento sessuale. La proposta di legge che abbiamo approvato in commissione Giustizia è ora in attesa dell’esame dell’Aula. Non sarà facile, per via delle resistenze di certe forze politiche, ma credo fermamente che a fronte dei tanti, troppi, ripetuti casi di omofobia, sia dovere del Parlamento intervenire”, ha concluso il pentastellato.
Zingaretti: “Serve il sì alla legge del Pd”
“A Caivano, in provincia di Napoli, Maria Paola è stata uccisa da suo fratello perché aveva una relazione con un ragazzo trans – ha scritto su Facebook il segretario del Pd, Nicola Zingaretti – Dolore, rabbia, indignazione. Altra drammatica conferma dell’urgenza di approvare la legge del Partito Democratico contro l’omofobia e la transfobia”.
Della stessa opinione anche Nicola Fratoianni, portavoce nazionale di Sinistra Italiana (LeU): “La tragedia sconvolgente di oggi in Campania con l’assassinio di Maria Paola, colpevole di stare con un ‘infetto’, come ha confessato il fratello omicida, ci dice quanto ci sia bisogno di una legge contro l’omotransfobia. Salvini e Meloni avranno ancora il coraggio di non riconoscere questa emergenza a cui la politica deve dare una risposta subito?. Non si può lasciare nessun spazio ai volenti pieni di ignoranza e pregiudizi da una parte e dall’altra a degli ipocriti sepolcri imbiancati”.
Meloni: “Serve pena esemplare”. Ruotolo (Misto): “Che Paese è dove si muore per amore?”
“C’è una violenza atroce che dilaga tra i giovani e che continua a sfociare in simili episodi. Un inaccettabile degrado che abbiamo il dovere di arginare al più presto. Lo Stato deve tornare a farsi sentire e dare il messaggio chiaro che la violenza non è tollerata e chiunque la pratichi ne dovrà rispondere davanti alla legge. Ora pena esemplare per questo schifoso assassino”, scrive su Facebook la leader di FdI Giorgia Meloni.
“Che orrore la morte di Maria Paola Gaglione. Che paese è questo dove ‘si perde la vita’ per amore? #notransfobia”, scrive su Facebook il senatore Sandro Ruotolo del gruppo misto.
Il fratello dice che la relazione della sorella l’avrebbe in qualche modo contaminata. Ma sembra che l’unico vero contagio in questa vicenda sia quello della transfobia, che serpeggia fra i familiari della vittima, come in molti altri ambienti. Suonano anche stucchevolmente inani le parole del parroco, quando si sforza di difendere questa famiglia così tradizionale, descritta come “preoccupata” per il “futuro più che mai incerto” che avrebbe atteso la povera ragazza. Non si può fare a meno di chiedersi se, adesso, la certezza del futuro in una bara li possa tranquillizzare. Non c’è bisogno di conoscere il significato di parole come omofobia o transfobia per essere portatori di quei pregiudizi: anzi, è proprio l’ignoranza che li alimenta. Siamo di fronte a valori arcaici come il rispetto dei tabù religiosi, delle consuetudini tradizionali e dell’onore, che i maschi di certe famiglie ritengono di dover ancora difendere, anche a costo di lavare col sangue l’eventuale onta di una trasgressione. Si tratta del retaggio di tradizioni secolari che un parroco può comprendere molto bene, e che forse spiegano certi sforzi giustificazionisti. Ma, visto che siamo nel 2020 e non nel 1020, ci sono anche altri valori che forse un parroco, assieme tutta la sua comunità, dovrebbero cercare di comprendere e tenere presenti: inclusione, diversità, tolleranza… Per non parlare di cose più scontate come il diritto alla vita. Se il futuro delle persone LGBT+ è tanto “incerto”, come si dice, allora bisognerebbe riflettere su cosa e su chi lo rendano tale. Le responsabilità di una parte del mondo cattolico (quella più tradizionalista), così influente sulla politica e sul costume, appaiono alquanto pesanti. Non si può pretendere di stigmatizzare certi stili di vita, e poi fingere di non avere nulla a che fare con tragedie come questa. Non ci si può continuare a nascondere dietro la solita vecchia scusa di chi “condanna il peccato ma non il peccatore”: sono sottigliezze teologiche del tutto prive di senso, nessuno le capisce veramente e servono solo da alibi.
“Although Pope Francis is certainly more open that his predecessors when it comes to LGBT+ rights, his stance has been confusing.”
Bergoglio ai genitori con figli Lgbt: “Il Papa li ama come sono perché sono figli di Dio”
Erano una quarantina i padri e le madri presenti, riporta Avvenire nella sua versione online. Un incontro emozionante proprio il giorno dopo i funerali della 18enne di Caivano. Al pontefice sono state consegnate alcune lettere
16 Settembre 2020
Un messaggio d’amore non come gli altri nei giorni disperati per la morte di Maria Paola Gaglione, per mano del fratello che non accettava la sua relazione con un ragazzo trans, Ciro Migliore. “Il Papa ama i vostri figli così come sono, perché sono figli di Dio” ha detto il pontefice mercoledì mattina, al termine dell’udienza, accogliendo un gruppo di genitori con figli Lgbt dell’associazione Tenda di Gionata. Erano una quarantina i padri e le madri presenti, riporta Avvenire nella sua versione online. Un incontro emozionante proprio il giorno dopo i funerali della 18enne di Caivano.
Mara Grassi vicepresidente dell’associazione insieme al marito Agostino Usai, ha donato a Papa Francesco il volumetto ‘Genitori fortunati’ – tradotto in spagnolo per l’occasione – che riassume le esperienze ecclesiali, non sempre agevoli, di queste famiglie insieme ad alcune lettere con richieste, speranze ma anche proteste di persone troppo a lungo considerate spesso indesiderabili dalle comunità ecclesiali. “La nostra associazione – ha detto Mara Grassi riferendo il discorso rivolto al Papa – vuole far dialogare la Chiesa e le famiglie con figli Lgbt. Prendendo spunto dal titolo del libro che gli abbiamo presentato, ho spiegato che noi ci consideriamo fortunati perché siamo stati costretti a cambiare lo sguardo con cui abbiamo guardato sempre i nostri figli. Quello che abbiamo ora è uno sguardo nuovo che ci ha permesso di vedere in loro la bellezza e l’amore di Dio. Vogliamo creare un ponte con la Chiesa – ha proseguito la vice presidente della Tenda di Gionata, che fa parte del Gruppo della parrocchia Regina Pacis di Reggio Emilia e del Gruppo Davide di Parma – perché anche la Chiesa possa cambiare lo sguardo verso i nostri figli, non escludendoli più ma accogliendoli pienamente”.
La risposta di Francesco è stata rasserenante e cordiale: “La Chiesa non li esclude perché li ama profondamente”. Al Papa è stata donata anche una maglietta colorata d’arcobaleno con la scritta ‘Nell’amore non c’è timore’ (1Gv, 4, 18). “Ha guardato e ha sorriso – conclude Mara Grassi, che ha quattro figli, di cui il più grande omosessuale – un momento di profonda sintonia che non dimenticheremo”. Al Papa sono state consegnate alcune lettere di genitori in cui sono descritti percorsi a volte dolorosi di accettazione. Anche perché sentendosi non amati o addirittura rifiutati quei figli spesso hanno lasciato le loro case e si sono allontanati dagli affetti più cari. Anche se nel caso di Caivano la mamma di Ciro ha dichiarato: “Ci ho messo un po’, ma i figli si accettano come sono”
Catholic Bishops tell parents to reject their transgender kids
20 December 2017
Catholic Bishops in the US are behind a new campaign encouraging parents to reject their transgender children.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a letter this week that brands transgender people “deeply troubling” and claims that changing gender is a “false idea”.
There is nothing in the Bible about transgender people or changing gender, but the Bishops have called for parents to refuse to allow kids to transition.
Studies have shown that an unaccepting or stifling environment drastically increases the likelihood that transgender youths will attempt suicide.
The letter says: “Children especially are harmed when they are told that they can ‘change’ their sex or, further, given hormones that will affect their development and possibly render them infertile as adults.
“Parents deserve better guidance on these important decisions, and we urge our medical institutions to honor the basic medical principle of ‘first, do no harm’.
“Gender ideology harms individuals and societies by sowing confusion and self-doubt.
“The state itself has a compelling interest, therefore, in maintaining policies that uphold the scientific fact of human biology and supporting the social institutions and norms that surround it. “
The letter adds: “The movement today to enforce the false idea—that a man can be or become a woman or vice versa—is deeply troubling.
“It compels people to either go against reason—that is, to agree with something that is not true—or face ridicule, marginalization, and other forms of retaliation.
“We desire the health and happiness of all men, women, and children. Therefore, we call for policies that uphold the truth of a person’s sexual identity as male or female, and the privacy and safety of all.
“We hope for renewed appreciation of the beauty of sexual difference in our culture and for authentic support of those who experience conflict with their God-given sexual identity.”
It also says: “We also believe that God created each person male or female; therefore, sexual difference is not an accident or a flaw—it is a gift from God that helps draw us closer to each other and to God. What God has created is good.
“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
The advice is particularly harmful to families with transgender children, and represents a giant leap by the USCCB to a position that does not appear to be based on any scripture or pre-existing Catholic teaching.
Earlier this year a number of Catholic organisations were accused of censoring a priest who has called for the church to reach out to LGBT people.
Rev. James Martin, a highly-respected Jesuit priest, is the author of recently-published book Building a Bridge, which sets out a framework for the Catholic Church to begin to engage with the LGBT community with “respect, compassion and sensitivity”.
In the book, the priest draws on the Christian ideals of “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” as a model for how the Catholic Church should relate to the LGBT community, igniting anger from the anti-LGBT lobby which is dominant within the church.
In the wake of the book’s publication, hardline opponents of LGBT equality within the Church began a campaign targeting Rev. Martin – successfully convincing a string of global Catholic organisations to cancel planned events where he had been due to speak about unrelated subjects.
The Theological College in Washington DC, where the priest was due to give a lecture about the Bible, abruptly cancelled the event last week, after conservatives raised issues with Rev. Martin’s beliefs on LGBT issues.
The Order of the Holy Sepulchre in New York also cancelled a lecture by Rev. Martin, confirming that his invite “was in fact rescinded”.
Rev. Martin had also been set to travel to London to deliver the 2017 lecture for Cafod, the overseas aid agency of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
After the backlash the event was shelved entirely, with Martin confirming that “cancellation of the 2017 Cafod lecture, scheduled for October, was out of fears of the backlash to my book”.
In a statement to PinkNews Cafod claimed that the 2017 lecture was actually just ‘postponed’ until next year for scheduling reasons and that an invitation “still stands” for Rev. Martin to speak in future.
This is somewhat incongruous given Cafod supplied a completely different statement to the Catholic Herald that confirmed it had been “considering” the future of the event due to “strength of feeling [Martin’s book] generated in some quarters”.
In a statement, Rev. Martin said: “I want to say that I bear no ill will whatsoever to Cafod, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre or Theological College. All of them are fine Catholic institutions that serve, in their different ways, the People of God.”
He added: “One of the many sad ironies of this episode has been that in each case the local ordinary was perfectly fine with my speaking – in London, New York and DC.
“Yet those who decided on the cancellations were ultimately influenced more by fear of protests and negative publicity than by the opinions of their ordinaries, in each case a cardinal.
“The situations were so terrifically fraught with fear for these organizations: fear of protests, fear of violence, fear of bad publicity, fear of angry donors, fear of lost donations, fear of offending, and on and on.
“When two of the organizers called me, I could hear the anguish in their voices.”
Addressing the anti-LGBT activists who had waged a campaign against him, he added: “So what do we do?
“Don’t give into them. To me, that’s an important lesson of the past few days. Don’t let them cow you.
“They’re like schoolyard bullies that keep taunting you? Well, you’re not 12 any longer. They can’t hurt you.
“And why let fear run your organization? It’s a sure way to disaster. And the PR from cancelling something is always worse. Don’t let them run things in your organization.”
He added: “If they are angry people, their anger comes from somewhere, which is ultimately sadder for them than for you. If they have a visceral hatred for LGBT people, it probably comes from a discomfort with their own complex sexuality, which is also sadder for them. ‘Hurt people hurt people’, as the saying goes.
“Often these sites or groups or individuals feel that they are being prophetic: i.e.,pointing out your supposed sins, completely contrary to Jesus’s command not to judge.
“Even more often, that prophecy morphs into pure hatred and obvious contempt and endless name calling. It’s called spite. But that doesn’t mean you yourself have to move towards hatred. That would be giving into the Evil Spirit.”
Others have been less forgiving.
Writing in America Magazine, San Diego Bishop Robert W. McElroy lashed out at those who had sought to censor Rev. Martin.
He wrote: “There has arisen both in Catholic journals and on social media a campaign to vilify Father Martin, to distort his work, to label him heterodox, to assassinate his personal character and to annihilate both the ideas and the dialogue that he has initiated.
“This campaign of distortion must be challenged and exposed for what it is—not primarily for Father Martin’s sake but because this cancer of vilification is seeping into the institutional life of the church.
“Already, several major institutions have canceled Father Martin as a speaker. Faced with intense external pressures, these institutions have bought peace, but in doing so they have acceded to and reinforced a tactic and objectives that are deeply injurious to Catholic culture in the United States and to the church’s pastoral care for members of the L.G.B.T. communities.”
Surprisingly, the active censorship of Rev. Martin has not aroused protests from any of the ‘free speech’ campaigners who have sprung up to defend far-right speakers on college campuses.
A Vatican with two popes perfectly reflects the confusion and the divisions that emerge within the Catholic world. Politics is tearing apart the church, but that’s hardly something new. Let’s just hope that the right-wing side will not prevail (as it did too many times in the past).
Pope Francis just threw his support behind a small community of Italian transgender sex workers
1 May 2020
Pope Francis has donated much-needed funds to a group of transgender sex workers in Italy who were struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Sex workers, particularly those who are undocumented, have been badly hit by the pandemic as many are unable to work or claim benefits.
This was the case for a group of trans sex workers in Italy, who found themselves plunged into poverty by COVID-19.
Two weeks ago, Father Andrea Conocchia was approached by a trans sex worker in his Blessed Virgin of the Immaculate Church. He gave her food and basic supplies from Catholic charity Caritas when she asked for help.
The next day the same woman came back — and this time she brought a friend. Over the following days, more and more trans sex workers arrived asking Conocchia to help.
In total around 20 trans women, mostly from Latin America, turned up at Conocchia’s church looking for vital supplies. The majority of the women are sex workers who were left without vital funds to pay for rent and food during the pandemic.
But Father Conocchia was unable to offer enough financial support to help the women weather this storm — so, he sent a message to Pope Francis asking for assistance.
Pope Francis gave money to trans sex workers to help them weather the coronavirus pandemic.
The Pope gave the go-ahead for papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the administrator of the papacy’s charitable work, to send money to the community of trans women last week.
The women sent an audio message to Krajewski to be played for Pope Francis in which they expressed their gratitude to him.
Most of the women are not Catholic, but have asked Father Conocchia to pray with them. He told Religious News Service that it is important “not to be judgmental”.
“This is a health emergency, but also a social emergency,” Conocchia said.
“Let’s try not to turn it into a human emergency. We must remain human.”
He added: “I would say that we treat these (transgender) people as if they were invisible.
“If the coronavirus had never happened, I might have never met them in person, they might have never asked for help in a church and maybe we wouldn’t have had the chance to dialogue, know each other and share.”
Meanwhile, Krajewski told Reuters that this kind of work is “ordinary” for the Catholic Church.
“This is how the Church is a field hospital,” he said.
He also said that some of the trans women who sought help are “really in difficulty” as they have had their passports taken away by “mafia pimps who control them.”
Krajewski praised the trans women for “having the courage to ask for help from the parish”.
Pope Francis accused of following the ‘homosexual agenda of the New World Order’ by prominent archbishop
30 Julu 2020
A prominent archbishop has accused Pope Francis of adhering to the “homosexual agenda of the New World Order”, and said he allows “heresy, sodomy and corruption” in the Catholic Church.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is an archbishop of the Catholic Church and former Vatican ambassador to the United States, who is well-known for his criticism of the Pope.
According to Premier Christian News, in a recent interview Vigano claimed that the leaders of the Catholic Church were “mercenary infidels who seek to scatter the flock and hand the sheep over to be devoured by ravenous wolves”.
The archbishop said that to Pope Francis “and his entourage, sodomy is not a sin that cries out for vengeance in the presence of God, as the Catechism teaches”.
Referring to the Pope by his real name, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Vigano added: “Bergoglio’s words on this topic – and even more the actions and words of those who surround him – unfortunately, confirm that an operation of legalisation of homosexuality is currently underway and that prelates and theologians are carrying this discussion forward who have manifested without equivocation that they are unfaithful to Catholic teaching.”
Vigano has previously accused church leaders of covering up allegations of sexual abuse against the now de-frocked cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
The archbishop believes that McCarrick is part of the “gay lobby” and that there is “close link between sodomy and paedophilia”, but accused Pope Francis of keeping silent on the issue “in order not to offend the current mentality that is widespread even among many prelates.”
Vigano added: “Let’s not forget that the legitimisation of homosexuality is part of the agenda of the New World Order, to which the Bergoglian church adheres openly and unconditionally – not only for its destabilising value in the social body but also because sodomy is the principal instrument with which the enemy intends to destroy the Catholic priesthood, corrupting the souls of the ministers of God.”
Although Pope Francis is certainly more open that his predecessors when it comes to LGBT+ rights, his stance has been confusing.
For example, in November, 2019, the Catholic leader condemned the persecution of gay people and compared the “hatred” to “Nazism” during a speech at the World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law.
Yet, just hours after his speech, Pope Francis gave a warm hug to a Muslim leader who thinks homosexuality is a disease and that gay people should be executed.
“Who am I to judge?”
Pope to Gay Man: ‘God Made You Like This’
The leader of the Catholic Church gave an affirmative message to a survivor of child abuse.
20 May 2018
A gay victim of sexual abuse said he received a moving message of support from Pope Francis.
Juan Carlos Cruz met with the leader of the Catholic Church last week, in order to discuss the abuse he suffered at the hands of Father Fernando Karadima. The Chilean Catholic priest was found guilty of sexually abusing minors by the Vatican in 2011, and Cruz is one of the survivors.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, Cruz recounted how the subject of his sexual orientation came up during the meeting, because it was used against him by some Latin American media outlets, which sought to smear him as a pervert and a liar about his abuse.
“He told me, ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are,’” Cruz said in the interview, as translated by The Guardian.
This is not the first time the pope has made headlines for remarks about the gay community — although it is his most supportive comment to date. “Who am I to judge?” he famously said in July 2013, in response to a question regarding the existence of gay priests.
Afterward, The Advocate named Francis as its Person of the Year. “LGBT Catholics who remain in the church now have more reason to hope that change is coming” in a religion that has been slow to evolve on its views on queer people, wrote editor in chief Lucas Grindley.
https://www.advocate.com/religion/2018/5/20/pope-gay-man-god-made-you
The Pope: “Sex is a gift, we must talk about it also in schools”
Francis’ words on the flight back from his trip to Panama: “We need an objective education, without ideologies”
02 July 2019
Sex is not a “monster” to escape from. It must not be a taboo. On the contrary, it is “a gift from God”. And we need “sex education” in schools. But there is more: it should not be “too rigid and closed”. In this way one can understand its true value. These would not be unusual words, if it weren’t a Pope to pronounce them. On the plane that took him back to Rome from Panama, where he was in recent days for World Youth Day, Francis talked, among other things, also about sex education.
Succede che a Cagliari due ragazzi si scambiano un bacio, in spiaggia. Il solito omofobo di turno comincia con le frasi trite e ritrite “andate a casa vostra”, “qui ci sono bambini”, fino all’immancabile “se ci fosse Mussolini”. Questa volta però a essere cacciato dalla spiaggia è l’omofobo, dopo il sostegno degli altri bagnanti alla coppia di ragazzi. Qualcosa sta cambiando, è davvero tempo di legge. #stopomotransfobia
https://www.facebook.com/alessandro.zan
Cagliari, aggressione omofoba in spiaggia: si erano scambiati un semplice bacio
A bloccare l’omofobo, stavolta, sono intervenuti i presenti. Ma l’aggressione rimane uno sfregio alla Cagliari gay-friendly.
24 Agosto 2020
Un bacio mentre facevano il bagno, nella spiaggia del Poetto, a Cagliari. Questo il “reato” della coppia di turisti LGBT, che volevano semplicemente passare una giornata al mare. Ma quel bacio non è piaciuto a un uomo, che davanti al figlio ha iniziato a insultare la coppia gay, scandalizzato dal gesto di affetto dei due ragazzi.
Oltre agli insulti, l’omofobo avrebbe anche cercato di colpirli con il bastone dell’ombrellone, ma l’intervento di tutti i presenti ha scongiurato che l’aggressione diventasse anche fisica. Fortunatamente, stavolta gli altri bagnanti si sono fatti avanti, bloccando l’uomo e difendendo la coppia gay.
A denunciare il fatto è stata l’associazione culturale e di volontariato LGBT e Queer di Cagliari ARC (abbreviazione di arcobaleno, arcu ‘e chelu e arc-en-ciel). Nel post di Facebook, hanno sottolineato come Cagliari sia una città gay-friendly, ma ormai sappiamo bene come l’omofobia colpisce in ogni dove, poiché qualcuno di intollerante c’è ovunque.
Cagliari, aggressione omofoba in spiaggia: si erano scambiati un semplice bacio
Il commento di ARC Cagliari dopo l’aggressione omofoba
Il post di denuncia:
Questo pomeriggio due turisti sono stati aggrediti nella spiaggia cagliaritana del Poetto. Ancora una volta dobbiamo registrare degli atteggiamenti e comportamenti contro la comunità LGBT+ e se questo succede in uno dei posti che reputiamo friendly ed accoglienti c’è da preoccuparsi.Come ARC ci rendiamo subito disponibili al sostegno dei due ragazzi nei confronti di questo vile personaggio che non ha avuto di meglio da fare che rendersi artefice, tra l’altro davanti agli occhi del figlio minorenne, di questa aggressione.
I due turisti sono rei di essersi resi protagonisti di un bacio in acqua e questo ha “sconvolto” l’aggressore. L’omofobo ha inveito sui due ragazzi non solo verbalmente ma anche con il bastone dell’ombrellone, per fortuna senza colpirli. In loro difesa si sono schierate tutte le persone presenti al momento in spiaggia. Ci auguriamo che non si ripetano più casi di questo tipo nella nostra città!
The far-right parties are in sync with the Italian bishops’ conference, which said the bill would mark “the death of liberty”. A priest in Puglia recently held a vigil among parishioners to pray for the law’s failure.
We’re living in fear: LGBT people in Italy pin hopes on new law
Debate on long-awaited bill that would punish discrimination and hate crimes towards LGBT people opens on Monday
26 July 2020
For 15 years, Marco and his boyfriend had lived together fairly peacefully in a town outside Rome. Then, in early June, a neighbour started harassing them.
“It began quite lightly, with him being provocative whenever we met in the street,” the 38-year-old said. “Then he came to our home and forced his way in, calling us ‘dirty faggots’. My boyfriend managed to get rid of him but he returned with a baton and threw himself against the door, repeating the same insults and threatening to set us alight when we were asleep.”
The man, who had recently moved into the same building, has incessantly taunted the couple over the past month, threatening to also torch their car. Marco has been recording evidence on his mobile phone, but his pleas to the police for help have so far been ignored.
“We’re living in fear,” Marco said, citing the example of a gay friend who was almost killed by his antagonist following repeated harassment. “Twice the police came, and twice they did nothing.”
The couple are hoping they will soon be protected by a long-awaited law that would punish discrimination and hate crimes towards LGBT people. Politicians will begin debating the draft legislation, already being virulently contested by far-right parties and religious groups, in parliament on Monday.
“We need this law,” Marco said. “This guy came to us simply because he hates gays. This isn’t anything new, it happens to gay people all the time, but many do not report it through fear.”
Although Italy approved same-sex civil unions in 2016, the country lags behind its EU partners in creating anti-homophobia measures. An EU-wide survey published last autumn showed that 55% of Italians accepted LGBT people – far below the EU average. Attempts at progress or even just meaningful debate have been stymied by a macho culture, Catholicism and support for far-right parties. LGBT rights associations have linked a rise in hate crimes in 2019 to the prominence of Matteo Salvini’s far-right League, which continues to poll as Italy’s most popular party.
Attempts by various governments over the past three decades to enshrine gay rights in law have either been stifled or sabotaged. If approved, the new law would be an extension of an existing law that punishes racist violence, hatred and discrimination. In addition, it would criminalise misogyny.
After a spate of recent attacks against gay people, proponents argue that the legislation is urgently needed. In late June, a 25-year-old man was brutally attacked by a gang of seven people as he walked hand-in-hand with his boyfriend in the city of Pescara. Less than two weeks later, a gay couple were assaulted by a group of six after they kissed each other at a train station in Cinque Terre, Liguria. At a recent demonstration in Rome in support of the law, two teenage girls, who were holding hands, were spat at and insulted by a man attending a nearby counter-protest organised by the League and its political partner, Brothers of Italy.
Fabrizio Marrazzo, a spokesperson for Gay Centre, a Rome-based association, said it received about 20,000 reports of discrimination against LGBT people a year, of which about 9% are severe.
“But many do not report the discrimination as their families do not know about their sexuality,” he added.
Alessandro Zan, a gay politician with the Democratic party, part of the ruling coalition, and architect of the draft legislation, was threatened with death by an online opponent unless he withdrew the bill.
Detractors, including Salvini and his Brothers of Italy counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, claim the law would suppress freedom of expression. At the protest in Rome, Salvini said: “I’m here to defend the right of a child to have a mother and a father … tomorrow I don’t want to be tried for defending family rights.” Meloni described Zan’s law as “a crime against opinion”.
“The idea that the law would restrict free speech is such fake news,” said Zan. “The law works to fight discrimination, not limit the freedom of thought. They are using LGBT people as an enemy to fly an ideological flag and ignite hatred, rather than discuss the merits of the law.”
The far-right parties are in sync with the Italian bishops’ conference, which said the bill would mark “the death of liberty”. A priest in Puglia recently held a vigil among parishioners to pray for the law’s failure. Another in Sicily who opposed the law said during a sermon: “If you express an opinion against homosexuals, or don’t agree with two men adopting a child, you could end up in jail.”
The Eurobarometer survey, published last autumn, showing 55% of Italians accepted LGBT people was far below the EU average of 72%. However, campaigners believe a significant part of the population would accept the new law.
“Those who attack it with such aggression are in the minority,” said Luisa Rizzitelli, an LGBT activist. “Italy is behind in respect of accepting diversity … but if we ask people if they want to make hatred against LGBT people a crime, I truly believe they would say yes.”
Zan said: “While it is true that there is still strong homophobia, stemming from a patriarchal culture, the country has also made progress. If you look at the pride events across the country, they are full of young people and this gives hope that, in the future, citizens will be much more open.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/26/italy-lgbt-new-law-debate
Donald Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
09 September 2020
Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a far-right Norwegian MP, and people aren’t sure if they should be laughing or crying.
Trump was nominated for the prestigious honour by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who praised the US president for “trying to create peace between nations”. Yes, you read that right.
In his nomination letter, Tybring-Gjedde told the Nobel Prize Committee that Trump deserved the award for his role in a Washington-brokered deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
“As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a game changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” Tybring-Gjedde wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Fox News.
Needless to say, Tybring-Gjedde failed to mention Trump’s steadfast commitment to tearing up the civil rights of LGBT+ people – particularly trans people – throughout his presidency.
He also failed to mention the president’s track record of stoking racial tensions and spreading lies and misinformation.
The internet breathed out in one collective sigh before dissolving into fits of laughter, as news of the nomination spread.
Ultra-nationalism leads India’s relations with neighboring countries astray
28 June 2020
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi might never have expected that his statement “China did not enter our territory, no posts taken” could trigger a furious challenge to his leadership. Modi, as a staunch nationalist, was even accused of selling Indian land. The irony is: This is not the first time allegations like this have been made toward him.
Modi came to power with a lot of charm and confidence and his “Neighborhood First” initiative. With this, he actually aimed at cleaning up India’s historical mess of soured relations with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation states. But an overwhelming right-wing nationalist sentiment is literally hijacking his policies with neighboring countries to destroy Modi’s efforts for good relations.
When hard-line right-wing nationalists butt in, they conveniently blame all domestic crises on their neighbors — and all of India is victimized to pay the price. China is not the only example of a neighbor that is being blackmailed by such fanatic public sentiments in India. Nepal also found itself bullied this May when India inaugurated a new road to Lipulekh. Kathmandu claims 17 km of it lies on its land, but New Delhi’s rejection to Nepal’s protest has ignited public resentment in Nepal.
Anti-Indian sentiment in Nepal is nothing new. Ironically, New Delhi never bothered to ask Kathmandu for permission to build the road and instead sought to teach any disobedient Nepali government a lesson. In 2015, Nepal was under pressure to change its constitution to accommodate India’s concerns, but it refused to cooperate. As such, a blockade was enforced and an economic and humanitarian crisis ensued in the small Himalaya state.
Further south, Modi might have rejoiced after he finalized the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh in 2015. At that time, he could still control prevailing domestic opinions that often criticized him for selling Indian soil. Since then, his handling of foreign relations has been severely handicapped. India’s relations with Bangladesh are no exception.
Right-wing nationalists took advantages of the discriminatory nature of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). This triggered violent domestic protests and international criticism. As India’s immediate neighbor, Bangladesh holds a particular concern on the matter. That’s why Modi’s planned visit to Bangladesh this past March was boycotted with street protests in Dhaka.
In January, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina publicly expressed reservations about her Indian counterpart’s adventure in playing the Muslim card to cater to domestic right-wing nationalism. Bangladesh was thus accused of daring to express dissenting opinions. Despite Beijing being a distant scapegoat, it is still blamed for closer ties with Dhaka — this fact may have alarmed and informed New Delhi’s assertiveness toward Beijing.
Who should be responsible for instilling fear into the minorities in India? Does Bangladesh have a legitimate concern over India’s anti-Muslim policies? After all, the two countries share a long border. Each has minorities from the other country living on their respective soils. There will be spill-over effects if domestic right-wing sentiments unavoidably increase — and hence damage India’s relations with its neighbors. India’s right-wing nationalists want to enforce higher moral standards on others, but not on themselves. This can’t be more true with regards to the case of India’s relations with Pakistan. Rushed moves to bifurcate India-controlled Kashmir on August 5, 2019 further demonstrated its disregard and ignorance of local sentiments. This severely damaged fragile India-Pakistan relations.
India’s right-wing nationalists always complain about and blame others for India’s poor relations with its neighbors, but ignoring others’ legitimate and reasonable concerns, thus New Delhi seems to have aggravated its neighbors’ distrust.
In India, catering to ultra-nationalistic sentiments has become a handy tool for political actors to fish in troubled waters, however, it may bring severe consequences to regional orders. All of India’s neighbors are watching and wondering now where the right-wing forces will lead the country.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1192865.shtml
“A fascist cocktail of media, politics and the misuse of legal machinery.”
Sushant Singh Rajput: actor’s death fuels media frenzy in India
Bollywood star’s tragic story has spiralled into a national obsession, with his girlfriend at its centre
12 September 2020
For 90 days, the death of a young Bollywood star has transfixed India.
The story that began in June, when the actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai apartment, was initially one of grief and tragedy. Police ruled that he had killed himself.
Yet the spectacle it has morphed into since – involving misogyny, drugs, money, media witch-hunts, feuds, police leaks, federal investigations, state elections and the arrest of a Bollywood star – has become an unprecedented national obsession, with everyone from senior politicians to Amnesty International wading in.
To outsiders, Rajput seemed to have everything to live for. Born into a poor household in the deprived state of Bihar, he had worked his way up through Bollywood over seven years and starred in six hit films including MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, in which he played the legendary cricketer, and his most recent box-office success, the comedy Chhichhore.
But behind the scenes his mental health had begun to deteriorate, according to a close family friend of his girlfriend, Rhea Chakraborty. During a trip to Europe with Chakraborty last autumn, he began to suffer manic episodes and fell into a deep depression, leading them to return to India early.
The couple withdrew from the public eye, fearful that if Rajput’s mental illness became widely known it would end his career. In January Chakraborty confided to the friend, who does not want to be named, that he had been given a range of diagnoses, from manic depression to schizophrenia, and eventually bipolar disorder.
“Rhea did everything she humanly could for Sushant, and every time he had a good day, she would call me up, so excited and determined she could help him beat this,” said the friend. “He moved into her family house and they looked after him like he was their own child. He did not feel like his own family really understood his mental illness.”
On 14 June, Rajput, 34, was found dead.
Mumbai police began investigating his death as a suicide. However, public speculation grew around the case when the actor Kangana Ranaut, known for her pro-government leanings, took to social media to blame nepotism and certain Bollywood elites for driving him to his death. She alleged that they had ostracised Rajput, attempted to sabotage his career and prevented his films from being released because he did not come from “pure” Bollywood lineage.
The anti-elitism narrative struck a chord and a social media campaign calling for “justice for Sushant” began to grow, with politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) weighing in. A lawsuit was then filed against eight Bollywood stars, accusing them of a conspiracy of nepotism that had forced Rajput to commit suicide, which amounted to murder. All vigorously denied the charge.
The media, already whipped up into a frenzy over the Bollywood mudslinging, were fuelled further when 10 days later Rajput’s father filed a police complaint against Chakraborty and three of her family members. The complaint accused her of abetment to suicide, stealing millions of his money, as well as denying that Rajput had suffered from depression.
In interviews, Chakraborty dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and “pathetic”, but as demand grew to assign blame for Rajput’s death, so too did an apparent witch-hunt. As public pressure increased, in mid-August the supreme court stepped in and ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to open an investigation into his death, defying legal precedent in the process.
On rightwing TV channels sympathetic to the government, the case has become an obsession that knocked India’s record-breaking coronavirus infections, China’s aggressions at the border and the worst quarterly economic recession since records began off the news agenda.
Reporters camped outside Chakraborty’s and her family’s houses, confronting her as she left her home. Online, she has been bombarded with accusations of being “manipulative”, a “gold-digger” who got Rajput addicted to drugs, and “sex bait” who “performed black magic” to drive him to his death.
“The campaign to bring down Rhea and blame her for the death of Sushant in the name of justice has been a surreal, shocking and hysterical witch-hunt, driven by misogyny, the strength of public voyeurism and TV ratings points,” said the actor Swara Bhaskar. “She had already been declared guilty by a media trial and so it feels like the agencies had to come up with any reason to arrest her.”
Rajput’s therapist even took the unusual step of speaking publicly about him, explaining he had suffered from bipolar disorder and depression, and that Chakraborty had been a crucial source of support for him.
Critics say the magnification of Rajput’s case, in particular the decision by the supreme court to approve a federal investigation into his death, appears to have been driven by a realisation that it could be used as lucrative political capital.
Rajput is from Bihar, a BJP state that next month will hold tightly contested elections, and “justice” for his death is being used as an emotive election issue by the BJP. In Bihar, the party is distributing 30,000 stickers and posters and 30,000 face masks with Rajput’s face printed on them, with the slogan: “We have neither forgotten nor will let one forget Sushant,” alongside the BJP logo.
Anna MM Vetticad, a journalist and author, noted the irony of the BJP positioning itself as a champion of justice for Rajput.
“The BJP and its supporters had viciously attacked the actor’s films in his lifetime for promoting Hindu-Muslim amity and for featuring Hindu-Muslim romances, at one point turning their wrath on Sushant himself when he publicly condemned extremism from the powerful Rajput community to which he belongs,” said Vetticad. “In the din surrounding Sushant’s death, political opportunists have sought to erase this inconvenient aspect of his legacy while they appropriate him for their own ends.”
The allegations that Chakraborty had abetted Rajput’s suicide and stolen his money are unsubstantiated, yet last Sunday she was summoned to the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) over further allegations that she had procured cannabis for Rajput, on the basis of WhatsApp messages. On Tuesday, on her third visit for questioning, she was arrested. The NCB asked the court to detain Chakraborty in judicial custody without bail, describing her as part of an “active drug syndicate”.
As she entered the NCB office to be placed under arrest, the message on Chakraborty’s T-shirt sent a clear message: “Roses are red, violets are blue, let’s smash the patriarchy, me and you.”
The supreme court lawyer Karuna Nundy criticised the investigation into Chakraborty as a “fishing expedition”, and said her subsequent arrest was “mainly to satisfy a manufactured public bloodlust before the Bihar elections”.
“This is a fascist cocktail of media, politics and the misuse of legal machinery,” said Nundy. “It’s a wag-the-dog style of creation of spectacle to take eyeballs away from the economy, which has shrunk by 24% in the last quarter, and Covid mismanagement. Both of which would otherwise be disastrous for the ruling party.”
The Guardian view on India’s strongman: in denial about a Covid crisis
Rather than rebuild the social fabric of his country during the coronavirus-driven economic slump, Narendra Modi has chosen to play identity politics
13 September 2020
Last month Narendra Modi, India’s strongman prime minister, performed the religious rites to consecrate the building of a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque whose destruction two decades ago sparked deadly nationwide riots. The ceremony saw Mr Modi appropriate the role traditionally performed by Hindu kings. “The entire nation is under Ram’s spell today,” the prime minister told his audience. “By God’s grace, a golden chapter is being written by India.” The message that a bright future is to be divinely blessed has not reached the heavens.
India used to boast of having the world’s fastest-growing major economy. It now has the fastest-growing coronavirus crisis, with almost 100,000 new infections reported each day. Its GDP has contracted by almost a quarter. The country makes up one third of the world’s new Covid cases and appears to have underestimated the disease’s prevalence. India’s youthful demographics help keep its Covid mortality rate low. However, in absolute numbers the country’s coronavirus death toll is only surpassed by Brazil and the United States.
The pandemic is not Mr Modi’s fault, but he owns his government’s dysfunctional response. He imposed a draconian lockdown in late March with no warning and no planning. The prime minister seemed to revel in the drama of a primetime announcement and its muscular message. But the national shutdown, which ended in June, destroyed millions of people’s livelihoods. Many of the most affected sit on the bottom rungs of Indian society, who were forced with no notice to leave cities for distant villages. Although the national lockdown has been lifted, local versions continue in many states.
One way of dealing with the economic crisis would be to boost India’s job guarantee scheme. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is designed to offer any citizen in rural India 100 days of work with (admittedly low) minimum wages provided by the government. The world’s largest public works programme kept India’s vast countryside economy afloat after the 2008 global financial crash. Yet Mr Modi resists wholesale adoption of the scheme and adequately financing it. Experts warn NREGA’s funding will run dry this month. Mr Modi appears unable to reconcile his dislike of a programme (it was introduced by his Congress opponents) with its obvious utility. Broadening and deepening the scheme – so that it could expand naturally to accommodate anyone who demands work at a living wage – would provide a timely fiscal stimulus to keep people in work when the urban economy cannot soak up labour.
Mr Modi’s short-sightedness will cost India dear. The country’s second Covid wave may strike harder than the first. Initially its major cities, which have the best hospitals, were hit by the virus. Now cases are taking off in rural areas, which have poor medical facilities. With tax revenue a fraction of normal levels, regional governments struggle to provide more than symbolic care or relief. This has been exacerbated by the central government’s refusal to send states the money it owes to them. The cash trail is deliberately obscured and Mr Modi should come clean about Covid spending to dispel concerns about corruption.
Rather than rebuild India’s social fabric, Mr Modi wants to build a panopticon. Critics of his government’s woeful performance have already been muzzled or locked up. A cold war with China blows dangerously hot in the Himalayas. To buttress support Mr Modi stokes Hindu nationalism. The temple ceremony is a way of stirring the emotions of Mr Modi’s fanatical supporters. It also reveals the depths of his denial about India’s Covid crisis.
Virologist who fled to US from Hong Kong accuses China of coronavirus cover-up
11 July 2020
HONG KONG: At a time when Covid-19 has infected over 12 million people across the globe, a scientist from Hong Kong has revealed that China knew about the deadly virus well before it claimed it did, in an extraordinary claim about cover-ups at the highest levels of government.
In an exclusive interview to Fox News on Friday, Li-Meng Yan, who has specialised in virology and immunology at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, said that China likely had an obligation to tell the world, given their status as a World Health Organisation (WHO) reference laboratory specialising in influenza viruses and pandemics, especially as the virus began spreading in the early days of 2020.
She added that her supervisors, renowned as some of the top experts in the field, also ignored research she was doing at the onset of the pandemic that she believes could have saved lives.
Mulan: Why Disney’s latest reboot is facing boycott calls
04 September 2020
It’s one of the first big movie releases since the coronavirus pandemic shut down cinemas and film production.
But Disney’s Mulan is facing calls for a boycott in some Asian countries.
Liu Yifei, the live-action film’s star, first angered fans last year with comments reportedly supporting Hong Kong’s police, who have been accused of violence towards pro-democracy protesters.
Now Thai and Taiwanese activists are also telling people not to see Mulan.
Hong Kong origins
You might remember the huge protests in Hong Kong last year. Young people led months of demonstrations against a law which would allow extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China.
The protests widened to include demands for democratic reform and an inquiry into alleged police brutality.
During a period of unrest Chinese-born actress Liu Yifei – who’s an American citizen – shared a post from the government-run Beijing newspaper People’s Daily on Weibo.
“I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong,” it read.
It didn’t take long for #BoycottMulan to trend on Twitter – a site that is banned in China – while Chinese citizens voiced their support.
That was last year, but things are still tense in Hong Kong.
The extradition law behind initial protests was dropped, but in April this year many high-profile pro-democracy activists were arrested by Hong Kong police. A month later the police watchdog said it found no significant wrongdoing on the police’s part during the 2019 protests.
Then in June, China passed a new security law that critics have called the “end of Hong Kong”.
Its details were kept secret until it was passed, but it criminalises many things that could pose a threat to China’s authority in Hong Kong – making them punishable by life in prison.
With all that history and everything still going on, prominent activist Joshua Wong has called for “everyone who believes in human rights to #BoycottMulan”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-54024810
Europe’s wolf warriors
Experts and policymakers calling for the EU to push back against Beijing.
13 September 2020
The coronavirus crisis has put China in the spotlight — and not just because of questions over the country’s responsibility for the pandemic (or its reluctance to investigate its origins).
Beijing made waves in Brussels and across Europe over its embrace of “wolf warrior” diplomacy. The term, inspired by a popular Chinese TV series, is increasingly being used to describe the aggressive approach of Chinese diplomats, who are no longer shy about hitting back against criticism of Beijing or picking fights with European governments.
The new tone out of Beijing — along with its strong-armed response to protests in Hong Kong, its inhumane treatment of the country’s Uighur minority, and its fast-growing economic power — has increased pressure on EU countries to come up with a stronger, more coherent China policy that makes clear the bloc won’t tolerate diplomatic attacks or human rights violations.
Here are six experts and politicians critically scrutinizing Beijing’s moves or advocating for a harder line against China — in their own countries and at the EU level.
Mikko Huotari
The German political scientist and Sinologist is the man whispering in every EU leader’s ear.
In his day job, Huotari — who is 38 and has Finnish roots — leads the influential Berlin-based think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS). He is also a trusted policy adviser to the big hitters in the EU-China debate: European Council President Charles Michel, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the European Commission and the German government.
Huotari is known for not mincing his words when it comes to criticizing China over foreign policy, human rights and trade issues. Nor is he shy about calling out EU governments and institutions when he considers their stance on Beijing to be too feeble.
“From the outset, I have been very skeptical about the prospects of success of the agenda of the German EU Council presidency vis-à-vis China,” he said, describing goals set by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — such as agreeing on an investment deal with Beijing this year — as “highly ambitious and doomed to failure.”
Kerstin Lundgren and Ulf Kristersson
These two Swedish opposition leaders are known as vocal backers of a tougher EU stance toward Beijing — in a country that’s already one of the EU’s most hawkish when it comes to China.
For both Lundgren, the foreign policy spokeswoman of the Swedish Center Party, and Kristersson, who leads the Swedish Moderate Party, the EU’s lack of firepower in responding to China has been a source of concern since at least 2015, when a Hong Kong-based bookseller with a Swedish passport went missing while on holiday in Thailand. Gui Minhai was known for publishing books critical of Chinese leaders and was later sentenced to 10 years in prison, sparking condemnation from Swedish authorities, who demanded his release.
The case was an early wake-up call to the increasing determination with which China is wielding its political and economic might to pursue its interests. Beijing’s diplomatic tactics are “very unusual,” according to Kristersson, highlighting the behavior of China’s ambassador in Stockholm, who has repeatedly sought to bully and intimidate politicians and journalists, he said.
Kristersson and Lundgren want the EU to develop a more united and determined response to China. “Simply saying critical words won’t change things,” said Kristersson. “The only language China understands is being [tougher], which implies economic activities like beefing up our investment screening mechanism.”
For smaller countries like Sweden, a joint EU approach toward China is even more important, he added. “In that regard, I’m very concerned that different EU countries have chosen different paths, for example when it comes to [Chinese telecoms supplier] Huawei.”
Antoine Bondaz
At just 32, Bondaz is at the forefront of a burgeoning debate in France about how to address Beijing’s growing assertiveness.
The Frenchman, a China researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank, has become a fixture in academic and political circles, as well as a person-to-follow on Twitter, where he frequently criticizes Western policies on China and calls out Chinese officials over false claims.
“I’m part of a new, young generation of researchers that looks with a more realistic and critical mind toward China,” he said.
France has been slow to have a real public debate about China, he said, partly due to the fact that few politicians focus on relations with Beijing. “The absence of such a debate — which should neither be directed against China nor in its favor — is a real problem,” he said.
That may now be changing, following comments by Chinese officials during the coronavirus outbreak that triggered outrage among French lawmakers, according to Bondaz. Beijing’s Embassy in Paris used a blog post to accuse Western democracies of reckless behavior and alleged that French health care workers left old people to die in nursing homes, for example. The incident was a wake-up call to “what is at stake,” he said.
Tamás Matura
Over the past few years, China has ramped up its presence in Eastern and Central Europe, financing infrastructure projects and setting up political partnerships as part of its 17+1 project.
As Western Europe became increasingly nervous that Bejing was trying to influence the EU through the backdoor, Matura, a 36-year-old researcher based in Budapest, decided to set up ChInfluence to find out what exactly Beijing was up to.
Since its start in 2017, his project has become the go-to source for independent research on China’s influence in the region — and has come to some surprising conclusions, shifting the narrative on what effect Chinese money has had on the region.
“In 2012, China was seen as an economic savior for the region,” he said. “Countries were expecting huge amounts of investment and a growth in trade. What we got instead was a very low amount of investment, and from the commercial perspective what has mostly grown is the trade imbalance in China’s favor.”
The 17+1 initiative, he added, “seems to be a failure from the Central and Eastern European side. The results are negligible and disappointing.”
Growing interest in Beijing’s activities in Eastern Europe has helped Matura attract funding for his effort, he said, but the work itself is difficult. “I have been accused of being too close to China as well as being too close to the U.S.,” he said. “But I’m doing independent research.”
Norbert Röttgen
The 55-year-old chair of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee has become the country’s most outspoken China-critical politician by vigorously pushing to exclude Huawei from the rollout of 5G mobile technology in Germany. He has also repeatedly called out Beijing over human rights, diplomatic tensions and the crackdown in Hong Kong.
Röttgen, who has thrown his hat into the ring to become the next chairman of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union — and to potentially succeed her as chancellor — is publicly lashing out at Chinese officials including Foreign Minister Wang Yi. He accused the Chinese diplomat of committing a “diplomatic and democratic affront” after Wang said that Czech Senate President Miloš Vystrčil will “pay a heavy price” for making an official visit to Taiwan.
While most political analysts doubt that Röttgen will succeed in his quest to become the CDU’s candidate for chancellor in next year’s elections, he is likely to stay on in an influential role in parliament and remain a strong critical voice when it comes to relations with Beijing.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-china-influencers/
China isn’t Europe’s ‘partner’ on climate
Treating Beijing as reliable undermines Europe’s ability to hold it to account.
12 September 2020
Dalibor Rohac is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
In its strategic documents, the European Union describes China simultaneously as a “competitor,” “a systemic rival” and “a cooperation partner.” The idea of partnership — with “closely aligned objectives” no less — refers to one single issue: climate change.
Without China on board, the reasoning goes, it becomes impossible to tackle global warming and achieve global targets for reducing carbon emissions.
That reasoning, rooted in a naïve view of multilateralism, is wrong. Acting on it seriously undercuts the EU’s ability to hold China accountable for its human rights abuses or economic distortions, all with little tangible benefit to the fight against climate change.
Even with a stellar record of decarbonization, which it does not have, China’s cooperation would not be enough to reverse the projected rise in global temperatures. The country may be the world’s largest carbon emitter, accounting for more than a quarter of all global emissions, but it is not the only important emitter among emerging economies.
If the rising demand for energy in India or sub-Saharan Africa is met with fossil fuels, a green China will have only a marginal effect on the outcome, hardly justifying the political concessions and pussyfooting extended to the regime to make it participate in periodic climate summitry.
The European Commission admits that China “is constructing coal-fired power stations in many countries,” undermining the goals of the Paris Agreement. Even more seriously, its own domestic pledges — including peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and reducing, by 2030, carbon intensity to 60 percent below its 2005 level — are deemed “highly insufficient” to slow down the growth in global temperatures by Climate Action Tracker.
Europeans might applaud themselves for bringing China to the negotiating table, but the reality is not cheerful. Between 2000 and 2018, China’s annual emissions tripled, from 3.71 billion tons of carbon to 11.18 billion tons.
Perhaps those would have gone up even more without its commitments. More likely, there are limits to what climate multilateralism can achieve, as the world learned the hard way in 2009 in Copenhagen, when leaders failed to agree to any binding commitments on reducing carbon emissions.
In many ways, the 2015 Paris Agreement was a bow to reality, an acknowledgment of the fact that there was no alternative to countries’ making progress on climate change at their own pace, driven by factors often unrelated to the politics on display at large multilateral gatherings.
The most important of those factors are available technologies and their costs. While the United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and President Donald Trump pulled the country out of the Paris Agreement, the U.S. economy has been decarbonizing since 2004. Even under the Trump presidency, with the exception of 2018, U.S. emissions have been falling due to the gradual move away from coal.
None of this is to suggest that policy does not matter. Accelerating the rate of decarbonization requires putting a price on carbon emissions, helping renewables get off the ground through subsidies and channeling public funds into research and development to help create better green technologies.
However, policymakers ought to remember that “the ultimate goal of [such policies] is to develop non-carbon energy supplies at unsubsidized costs less than those using fossil fuels,” as noted in the 2010 Hartwell Paper, written by a group of climate policy academics as a response to the failure of the Copenhagen summit.
As such, ensuring that all relevant stakeholders make binding commitments to reduce carbon emissions is far less important than bringing new technologies to the market that will make coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels obsolete and uneconomical.
The Chinese themselves understand this logic well. While Europeans were fretting that pushback against Beijing’s predatory practices might cause the regime to give up its efforts to stop climate change, China has become the world’s largest investor in solar energy, accounting today for practically half of the world’s production.
Many of the underlying reasons for China’s rise to dominance in this sector — catastrophic air pollution in Chinese cities or energy security — are only tangentially related to climate summitry.
That is both good and bad news for Western democracies. On the one hand, it brings the world, including China, closer to reducing its reliance on fossil fuels. It also suggests that the economics of green technology have a life independent of the tedious multilateral politics of climate change, which well-meaning Western liberals have elevated to an important article of faith.
On the other hand, there is a distinct first-mover advantage for those who bring cheap and reliable green technologies to the market. It is therefore in the interest of Europe, the U.S., and their allies that the bulk of the economic and political gains from such technologies not be realized by our “competitors” and “systemic rivals.”
The sooner European policymakers — and the aspiring Biden administration — realize that the route toward decarbonization goes not through a global “Kumbaya” with unfriendly regimes but through a deliberate competition for technological superiority, the greater the odds of avoiding the worst climate scenarios — without compromising our values to the service of the world’s authoritarians.
https://www.politico.eu/article/china-climate-problem-europe-partnership/
TikTok ‘Shadow-Banned’ LGBTQ+ Hashtags in Several Languages
The company admitted to restricting several terms. This censorship undermines TikTok’s claim that the app is not influenced by any foreign government.
10 September 2020
TikTok has “shadow-banned” several hashtags relating to the LGBTQ+ community.
A report released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute indicated that terms like “gay,” “lesbian,” and “transgender” were restricted in several languages for global users, “no matter where in the world they live.”
A shadow ban is a stealth form of censorship in which a user may not be aware that they are being censored. As the report explained: “TikTok users posting videos with these hashtags are given the impression their posts are just as searchable as posts by other users, but in fact they aren’t. In practice, most of these hashtags are categorised in TikTok’s code in the same way that terrorist groups, illicit substances and swear words are treated on the platform. On some occasions, hashtags are categorised as non-existent, when in fact they’re tagged on videos across the platform. TikTok spokespeople have repeatedly stated that the platform is not ‘influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese Government,’ and that ‘TikTok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities.’ But the censorship techniques outlined below disprove some of those claims and, instead, suggest a preference for protecting and entrenching the sensitivities, and even prejudices, of some governments, including through censoring content that might upset established social views.”
In the list it provided to TikTok, the institute found restrictions across at least eight languages. The term “gay” is shadow-banned in Arabic, Russian, Estonian, and Bosnian. The phrases “I am gay” and “I am lesbian” are restricted in Russian, while “transgender” is restricted in Arabic.
There is even a restricted English phrase, “acab,” short for “all cops are bastards,” a hashtag that trended during the Black Lives Matter uprising following the police killing of George Floyd.
In response to these findings included in the report, a TikTok spokesperson denied the social media platform was practicing censorship. Instead, it called the shadow bans a “localized” approach to moderation.
Some “were partially restricted due to relevant local laws,” while “other terms were restricted because they were primarily used when looking for pornographic content,” the spokesperson claimed. Other terms in English and Arabic were “incorrectly moderated,” they added.
“We are currently conducting a review of those terms that were moderated in error and will look for ways to improve our processes to avoid similar issues in the future,” they stated. “In addition, we want to be crystal clear that TikTok strongly supports our LGBTQ creators around the world and is proud that LGBTQ content is among the most popular category on the platform with billions of views.”
Citing national security risks, such as the potential that user data could be shared with Chinese authorities, President Trump has announced an upcoming U.S. ban on the Beijing-based company unless it sells all of its American operations. Microsoft, Walmart, and Oracle have emerged as potential buyers.
https://www.advocate.com/media/2020/9/10/tiktok-shadow-banned-lgbtq-hashtags-several-languages
It’s still racist if you have an all-white cast with just one black actor (or an all-asian cast with just one black actor). Tokenism is not inclusion, it’s just another form of racism: it might be more subtle (and hypocritical), but it’s just as bad. Besides, inclusion shouldn’t just be reflected in the cast, it should be in the crew too, even if it’s not that visible. Likewise, it’s still homophobic to have an all-straight cast with just one gay token (invariably portrayed as some kind of jester, because, you know, gays are funny), but that’s what we see in most movies and TV series. Most productions only seem interested in showing us a liberal façade, whereas the reality that lies behind it is quite different. We should demand more real inclusion in the media and entertainment industry worldwide.
To Ban Anti-LGBTQ+ Discrimination, Republicans Must Get on Board
The Equality Act will make bias in housing, banking, and public accommodations illegal, but we can’t pass it without bipartisan support.
13 September 2020
The LGBTQ community celebrated a historic victory in June when the Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ people are protected from employment discrimination under federal civil rights laws. The ruling immediately improved the lives of 6 million LGBTQ Americans who live in one of our country’s 28 states that lack explicit employment protections for LGBTQ workers under state law.
Importantly, the victory was a 6-3 ruling authored by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, for a majority conservative Court. Polls show that a supermajority of Americans — 72 percent in a recent PRRI poll — support protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination. This includes 61 percent of Republicans, whose support has grown to above 50 percent in every state. Bipartisan consensus for nationwide LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections is rising quickly, with the bipartisan composition of the Court’s majority opinion just one of the latest high-profile examples.
The fact that a growing majority of American conservatives are evolving toward a conclusion that LGBTQ people should be able to live with dignity and respect is a reflection of our movement’s strategy and key to our longterm success. All of the states that currently lack statewide LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections are partially or fully controlled by Republican legislatures. Similarly, passing a federal law through Congress to secure protections nationwide will likely require Republican support in the U.S. Senate. Yet, even without needing Republican votes to win, we should still seek to secure them. Bipartisan advances are unifying, less vulnerable to attack by future legislators or administrations, and more likely to be secure and permanent, as LGBTQ people need and deserve.
Freedom for All Americans was founded specifically to bring together Americans from all walks of life — conservatives and progressives, businesses large and small, people of faith, LGBTQ people, and other allies who support us — to turbo charge our movement’s efforts to make the case for nationwide nondiscrimination protections that ensure every American is treated fairly and equally. As the national climate becomes increasingly polarized, our work is more important than ever. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, LGBTQ people are still vulnerable to harassment and discrimination in most areas of daily life in most states. This includes being evicted from an apartment, turned away from a medical provider, rejected by a food bank, or denied service at restaurant, store, or hundreds of other public spaces where we all carry out our daily lives.
The lack of protections causes disproportionate harm to LGBTQ people in rural areas, where there are fewer services and businesses to access if they are turned away. And as always, LGBTQ people who are Black, Indigenous, or other people of color — particularly Black transgender women — face especially high rates of discrimination and violence. Being denied the ability to buy groceries, attain lifesaving health care, or access much-needed governmental programs is devastating at any time, but especially during a national public health crisis like the current pandemic.
That’s why it’s so important that we continue the work of uniting progressives and conservatives to pass LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections. Fairness, freedom and opportunity are not partisan values. They’re American values. The Golden Rule that guides each of us to treat our neighbors the way we want to be treated is not about politics — it’s about people. By telling our stories and helping more Americans become familiar with who we are, we are building a space for all people to open their hearts and respond to the needs of their LGBTQ neighbors. That’s how over the past five years, Freedom for All Americans has helped pass nondiscrimination laws for the first time in Republican-controlled states and municipalities, and in the South; and has successfully defended nondiscrimination protections with majorities at the ballot box from Alaska to Massachusetts.
For over 50 years, the LGBTQ community has worked to secure basic protections from discrimination in daily life. The recent Supreme Court victory is a milestone, but federal legislation is the only way to ensure LGBTQ people are uniformly protected in all areas of life.
The next Congress may offer that opportunity. We must double down on our efforts to bring all fair-minded Americans to the task of ensuring dignity and respect for their LGBTQ friends, family members, and neighbors. And we must secure a consensus-driven victory that will not only save lives, but which will endure over time.
Whether it acts or not on this issue, each Congress sends a message about where LGBTQ people fit in the fabric of America. It’s time that congressmembers come together to acknowledge that America’s heart is big enough to include LGBTQ people and pass the comprehensive LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections that will move us closer to the American promise that we all seek — liberty and justice for all.
Positionality Vs Intersectionality
Positionality:
the social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status.
Intersectionality:
the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
“As sociological concepts, positionality and intersectionality can work together to investigate cultural structures. But positionality doesn’t describe overlapping forms of oppression and complex power dynamics as accurately as intersectionality does. Intersectionality problematizes the very concept of position, highlighting the fact that it’s not monodimensional, but actually determined by the intersection of several social and cultural dimensions.”
These Three Black Trans People Died Far Too Young
London nightlife icon Elie Che has died in an accidental drowning; the death of another Black trans woman is under investigation.
10 September 2020
The recent deaths of three Black transgender people — one of which may have been a homicide, one the accidental death of a nightlife icon, and one an overdose — call attention to the challenges faced by this population, says the National Black Justice Coalition.
Newsweek and other sources have reported that a Black trans woman was found dead on a Brooklyn, N.Y., rooftop Monday; media outlets have not disclosed her name, but a release from the NBJC identifies her as Isabella Mia Lofton. She apparently fell from the roof of another building, but police are investigating the possibility that she was killed in a hate crime, according to NBJC. The release recommends calling police at (216) 749-1234 “to ensure that the investigation is fair and complete so that Isabella gets justice.”
Her family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to bring her remains back to Chicago, her hometown, for services.
“Nearly 30 trans people have been murdered this year that we know of, and Isabella is yet another example of a Black trans woman’s life being cut short due to violence,” NBJC Executive Director David Johns said in the release. “Black trans women face a disproportionate share of bias, discrimination, and violence compared to non-Black trans women and cis women. There is growing evidence of this fact and still not enough public discussion or action to address it.”
Another Black trans woman, Elie Che, 23, was found dead August 31 in another section of New York City — Orchard Beach in the Bronx. Her death has been ruled an accidental drowning. Che, who was also known as Ellie Williams, was originally from Atlanta, but she had lived in London for the past three years, where she became well-known in the queer nightlife scene, Patch.com reports. She had recently moved to New York and intended to complete her transition there, as she had been unable to access the treatment she needed in the U.K.
Che “was a poet, a dancer, a friend and an inspiration to many,” London Trans+ Pride said in an Instagram post; she sometimes performed at LGBTQ+ events. The group held a vigil for her Sunday, Pink News reports, and will dedicate its Pride march, set for Saturday, to her.
The third recent casualty was trans man KaKedius “Rebel” Reid of Stockbridge, Ga., who died of a drug overdose August 29. His family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help with funeral expenses.
“Trans, femme, and nonbinary members of our community face additional challenges that can sometimes lead to misusing substances, which can lead to addiction,” Johns said in the release. “Barriers to support and care can make it especially difficult for Black trans, nonbinary, and queer people to get help, including medical/health care, when we may need it most.
“Anyone committed to ensuring that Black Lives Matter should be committed to protecting Black trans women and girls, femme identified members of our community, and nonbinary Black people. As we work to hold communities and our country accountable for being anti-racist, there must also be investments in fighting transphobia so that trans people can live freely and safely, as cisgender people so often get to do.”
https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2020/9/10/these-three-black-trans-people-died-far-too-young
Why Black progressive women feel torn about Kamala Harris
We know we will have to defend Harris’s personal identity, while maneuvering against her political one
12 August 2020
Joe Biden has announced that Senator Kamala Harris will join his political pursuit of the White House.
Women of color, particularly progressives, might feel torn. Perhaps they will be excited. Harris is sharp, strategic and witty, undoubtedly qualified to be vice-president of the United States. She graduated from a historically Black college and belongs to a prestigious Black sorority. A biracial woman with Jamaican and Indian heritage, we have seen her break color barriers and shatter glass ceilings, even though poor, Black women have felt and swept the falling shards.
Thousands celebrated her senate seat win and even more were captivated when she picked apart presidential candidates at debates – especially Biden. Her one-liners were unforgettable. Until we remembered that she honed those argumentative skills in court as a prosecutor, including during fights to uphold wrongful convictions.
Then, there’s the fatigue. Progressives will have to defend the California senator’s personal identity, while maneuvering against her political identity. Political accession and racism go together like stars and stripes. Michelle Obama was horribly depicted as an ape. Donald Trump called Congresswoman Maxine Waters a “low IQ individual.” Just weeks ago, a congressman called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “disgusting” and a “fucking bitch.” Squad members and fellow representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib regularly experience xenophobic, Islamophobic, and racist attacks, which intensified after their statements regarding social justice. Like the rest of these women, Harris deserves safety and protection from harm. Black women, especially her sorors, will likely be her first line of defense.
Yet the defense against racist, sexist attacks must not interfere with the necessary offense required to push the Biden-Harris political ticket, for people who choose to play the electoral politics game. When activists criticized Barack Obama, we were scathingly reminded how hard it was for him to be a Black man in the White House. He had significant executive power and influence to shift resources, call for legislation, and even free people from prison (which his own administration seemingly neglected). We were told to wait. Then, after eight years, we were told that too much was at stake to organize for free college, universal healthcare, the end to police and prison violence, and a clean planet. Nina Simone’s song, Mississippi Goddam, calls this “Do It Slow:”
But that’s just the trouble, “Do it slow”
Desegregation, “Do it slow”
Mass participation, “Do it slow”
Reunification, ‘“Do it slow”
Do things gradually, “Do it slow”
But bring more tragedy, “Do it slow”
Fifty-six years since the song’s release, the time seems never to be right to push politicians towards progress. No more. No more imaginary ancestral, postmortem pleas on who died so that we can vote today. People fought and died for lots of reasons alongside voting, but most importantly, for the right of self-determination, which moderates defend for the right and dismiss for the left. No more.
This generational fatigue, from Nina Simone to Nina Turner, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Cori Bush, is compounded by the political fatigue of doing progressive work around a party that undermines progressive values. Biden and Harris will be determined to prove that their beloved party has not been hijacked by “the radical left,” as Vice-president Mike Pence described today. He continued: “So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine, and abortion on demand, it’s no surprise that he chose Senator Harris.” This inaccurate characterization is an unfortunate tactic that will push the Biden-Harris ticket further to the right. Together, Biden and Harris might still reject universal healthcare during the deadliest pandemic in recent memory. Together, they might promise expensive common sense “police reform” to a movement against senseless police spending. And together, they will affirm the power of the Black vote, while daring, even asking, do you really have any other choice?
I am doubtful that Biden and Harris can be pushed. My hope of being wrong is greater than my fear of being right. That hope comes from the countless activists who are choosing to organize across the state and local level, who are vigorously defending democracy on their blocks and creating care in their families and communities. That hope comes from studying the Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party, who, facing impossible odds and considerable violence and no resources, decided to forge an alternative to the political establishment. Hamer asks, “Is this America, the land of the free and home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”
So many of us are fatigued from laboring to change this country and that needs to be acknowledged. If we want to celebrate Black women, let’s start there.
“Kamala Harris has had a close relationship with Sheryl Sandberg […] The California senator offers some reassurance to the tech industry that has nervously watched the rise of the party’s far-left. Biden has not made tech issues a priority during the campaign.”
OK, now… does this mean we’ll have to say goodbye to a much needed reform of the big tech sector?
Kamala Harris is the choice Joe Biden needed to win over Silicon Valley
The California senator has glad-handed with tech elites for decades.
11 August 2020
For months, Silicon Valley hasn’t been quite sure what to make of Joe Biden.
But Kamala Harris? That’s a candidate the industry can get behind.
Biden’s selection of Harris — who has glad-handed with San Francisco elites for decades — as his choice for vice president is likely to usher in Silicon Valley excitement and money galore in a way that other running mates would not. For a top-of-the-ticket that has struggled until recently to excite the wealthiest and most powerful tech moguls, Harris will bring super-fans from the billionaire class that will super-charge Democrats’ coffers, especially over the next few days. Even though it makes Biden more dependent on these big donors.
And on policy, the selection of the California senator offers some reassurance to the tech industry that has nervously watched the rise of the party’s far-left. Biden has not made tech issues a priority during the campaign, which has created uncertainty about how seriously his administration would pursue regulation or even a breakup of tech giants. With Harris — a policy pragmatist who enjoys close relationships with many leading tech executives — Biden sends another signal that his administration will not veer toward the policies pushed by those like Elizabeth Warren, a vice-presidential short-lister that he didn’t choose who wants to break up Big Tech.
Cooper Teboe, a top Democratic fundraiser in Silicon Valley, said about one-third of major West Coast donors that he’s spoken to have been waiting to see who Biden would choose as vice president before deciding whether to invest tens of thousands of dollars into Democrats this cycle. Should Biden have chosen Warren, for instance, tech donors might’ve had concerns.
“She is the safest pick for the donor community,” Teboe said of Harris. “She will be the pick that the California, Silicon Valley donor community — who are worried about things like tech and repatriation and taxes and so on and so forth — she is the pick that they will be happiest with.”
Harris’ ties to this power set will be highlighted in just a few days’ time when she headlines a high-dollar fundraiser with a Bay Area fundraising group, Electing Women Bay Area, according to an invitation seen by Recode.
Harris’s special touch with the ultra-rich has been integral to her political ascent in San Francisco, where she first served for district attorney before her statewide wins as Attorney General and US Senator. Harris was a regular presence on the city’s cocktail circuit and has been profiled in society pages ever since her 30’s. Her campaigns were funded by the old-money families that predated the modern tech boom.
When that boom did arrive, Harris capitalized and built an orbit of new-money fans that she will further bring into the Biden fold. Her biggest donors over the last two decades reads like a who’s who list of tech moguls: Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has told Recode that Harris “one of the highest integrity people I have ever met.” Early Facebook president Sean Parker invited Harris to his wedding. Fundraisers for her presidential bid included billionaire Democratic power brokers like Reid Hoffman and John Doerr.
Chris Lehane, a longtime adviser to Bay Area donors, recalled Harris as a “workhorse” when it came to making fundraising calls during her first run for California attorney general in 2009.
“She’d work the whole list,” he said, “and then ask for more names.”
One particularly close bond for Harris has been with Democratic mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and the wife of the late Steve Jobs. When Powell Jobs appeared on stage to speak at the annual Code Conference in 2017, she brought Harris along with her.
“I thought you would find it more interesting,” than having just herself, Powell Jobs remarked on stage. On Tuesday, she tweeted that Biden had “made a great choice!”
But all these ties will prove double-edged in a Democratic Party that has grown concerned about the wealth accumulated by these billionaires and their political influence. The same goes for their tech companies, which are now the subject of antitrust scrutiny and a broader rethink of Silicon Valley’s corporate power.
Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor who has expressed concerns about Biden listening too much to tech billionaires, said Harris could pull off a “Nixon-to-China moment.” In other words, only someone like her could push through certain regulations, because of her credibility with the tech community.
“As senator from California, Kamala Harris was understandably aligned with Big Tech,” said McNamee. “As vice president, she has an opportunity to stand up for all Americans.”
Some activists are concerned that her personal ties to tech companies will temper serious regulations. Harris’ campaign manager for her first race for district attorney, for instance, now runs the California state policy shop at Google. And Tony West, her brother-in-law, with whom she is close, is the general counsel of Uber, where her niece worked until recently.
Harris also has connections at Facebook, a company at the burning core of Democrats’ ire these days. Harris — who served as California’s top law enforcement official — has enjoyed a particularly cozy relationship with Facebook no. 2 Sheryl Sandberg over the years, helping Sandberg market her book “Lean In.” Sandberg also sent her a congratulatory note when she won her Senate seat in 2016, as The Huffington Post detailed.
Sandberg hadn’t publicly said anything of significance about Biden this cycle. But then on Tuesday, Sandberg took to Instagram to note the historic selection of Harris as the first Black woman on a major ticket (although the longtime Democrat didn’t explicitly endorse Biden-Harris).
All of this leaves people wondering if Harris will be tough — or easy — on companies like Facebook if she becomes vice president.
Harris strongly pressed Mark Zuckerberg when he appeared before Congress. But she has equivocated when asked during her own bid how she would handle antitrust matters. She has dodged when asked point-blank whether the tech giants should be broken up.
“The tech companies have got to be regulated in a way that we can ensure and the American consumer can be certain that their privacy is not being compromised,” she told the New York Times.
She also tried at one point to get tough on Twitter, calling on founder Jack Dorsey to ban Trump from the platform. That didn’t go anywhere — and Harris dropped out thereafter.
Now, she has another shot at reining in Silicon Valley, if she wants to take it.
Waiting time for US Green Card to shorten for Indian H-1B visa holders: 10 points
15 July 2019
NEW DELHI – For thousands of Indian techies working in the US with an H-1B visa, getting a Green Card for permanent residency status could soon be easier as the US House of Representatives has passed by a bill to remove a 7% country-cap on applicants. Many of the 300,000 Indian H1-B temporary work visa holders in the US are in various stages of the Green Card process. […]
A similar bill being supported by a bipartisan group of senators, including Indian-origin Senator Kamala Harris, is slated to come up for consideration soon in the Senate.
Generally ill-prepared, but cheaper and easier to exploit.
Indian Programmers vs. American Programmers: Whose Code Is Best?
Online career development community Gild recently compared Indian programmers’ math, logic, software development and communication skills with those of American programmers.
06 July 2011
If there were ever an IT Olympics, in which software developers could compete to solve programming problems, the event would likely take place on Gild, an online career development community where IT professionals from around the world do just that.
On Gild, which launched September 2010, software developers participate in programming competitions, earn certifications and look for jobs. Through the competitions and certification exams, programmers can assess their math, logic, communication and software development skills, and compare their capabilities to other programmers across the globe. Nearly 500,000 developers have taken more than 1 million assessments, according to Gild. […]
Americans lead at software development. They outperformed Indian developers on mainstream programming languages, such as C, Java and SQL, where they scored eight percent higher on C and nine percent higher on Java and SQL.
Gild’s data shows that American software developers are particularly good at Web programming. When tested on PHP and HTML, American programmers’ scores were respectively 53 and 27 percent higher than their Indian counterparts.
Congress’s report found that the H-1Bs ‘received lower wages, less senior job titles and smaller signing bonuses.’
Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas To Pay Low Wages To Foreign Workers
23 March 2018
On the heels on its controversial immigration ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries, the Trump administration has drafted a new executive order that could actually mean higher wages for both foreign workers and Americans working in Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley companies, of course, will not be happy if it goes into effect.
The order aims to overhaul and limit work visas, notably the H-1B visa program. Tech companies rely on these to bring in foreign talent. Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false. The truth is that they want an expansion of the H-1B work visa program because they want to hire cheap, immobile labor — i.e., foreign workers.
To see how this works, note that most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S. permanent residency (green card) under the employment-based program in immigration law. EB sponsorship renders the workers de facto indentured servants; though they have the right to move to another employer, they do not dare do so, as it would mean starting the lengthy green card process all over again.
This immobility is of huge value to many employers, as it means that a foreign worker can’t leave them in the lurch in the midst of an urgent project. In a 2012 meeting between Google and several researchers, including myself, the firm explained the advantage of hiring foreign workers: the company can’t prevent the departure of Americans, but the foreign workers are stuck. David Swaim, an immigration lawyer who designed Texas Instruments’ immigration policy and is now in private practice, overtly urges employers to hire foreign students instead of Americans.
This stranglehold on foreign workers enables firms to pay low wages. Academics with industry funding claim otherwise, but one can see how it makes basic economic sense: If a worker is not a free agent in the labor market, she cannot swing the best salary deal. And while the industry’s clout gives it bipartisan congressional support concerning H-1B and green card policy, Congress’s own commissioned report found that H-1B workers “received lower wages, less senior job titles, smaller signing bonuses and smaller pay and compensation increases than would be typical for the work they actually did.”
Congress’s report found that the H-1Bs ‘received lower wages, less senior job titles and smaller signing bonuses.’
Salaries of software engineers are basically flat, rising at 2 percent or so per year for established workers. The rates are similarly mild for new graduates. This belies the industry’s claim of a tech labor shortage. And while Silicon Valley wages appear high on the surface, they come nowhere near matching the astronomical local real estate prices.
Another dirty little secret in all this is that the H-1B program is an enabler of rampant age discrimination in the tech industry. Age is actually one of the core issues in H-1B. Mind you, we are talking about age 35 as being “old” here, not 55. Almost all the H-1Bs are young, and younger is cheaper. And young H-1Bs are even cheaper than young Americans.
Age gives employers an excuse to shun American applicants, on the grounds that a given job opening requires only three to five years of experience, rendering the Americans “overqualified.” Or the employer will load the job description with unnecessary requirements, making the Americans simultaneously under- and overqualified. That doesn’t leave much room, does it?
Almost all H-1Bs are young, and younger is cheaper. And young H-1Bs are even cheaper than young Americans.
A popular tack taken by industry lobbyists and their congressional allies is to blame Indian firms that hire H-1Bs and “rent” them out to mainstream companies. The message is that the Indian outsourcing firms abuse the visa while the mainstream firms use it responsibly. This is pure scapegoating and a veiled appeal to xenophobia. It’s an attempt by Silicon Valley firms to distract attention from their own abuses of the system. The data show that the Silicon Valley firms do indeed underpay their H-1Bs, and individual examples of abuse by household-name firms are disturbing, to say the least.
Cisco, for instance, was exposed as routing job applications from American engineers to an immigration law office, rather than to engineering managers, apparently to gather evidence that no qualified Americans were available for the job taken by a foreign worker. The immigration lawyer was deciding who was “qualified.” A former manager at Oracle accused the firm of justifying underpayment of an H-1B by saying, “It’s good money for an Indian.”
The industry especially asserts a need to hire H-1Bs with a PhD, citing the fact that 50 percent of computer science doctorates in the U.S. are granted to foreign students. What they are hiding in that claim is that it simply doesn’t pay for an American student (i.e. U.S. citizen or permanent resident) to pursue doctoral study, as the salary premium for a doctorate is too small. That small wage premium is due to the flooding of the market by foreign applicants, something correctly forecast (with approbation) by the National Science Foundation years ago. The industry claim is doubly deceptive, as they are not very keen to hire PhDs because this level of study just isn’t needed. We actually have a surplus of computer science PhDs; 11.3 percent of them are involuntarily working in a non-computer science field.
A former manager at Oracle accused the firm of justifying underpayment of an H-1B by saying, ‘It’s good money for an Indian.’
The industry lobbyists’ ace-in-the-hole argument is that if they can’t hire more H-1Bs, they’ll ship the work overseas. But for projects on which H-1Bs are hired in the U.S., face-to-face interaction (between themselves and their American coworkers) is crucial. That is why employers bring H-1Bs to the U.S. in the first place rather than sending the work abroad, where the wages are even cheaper.
Aside from the reduced wages and reduced job opportunities H-1B and EB inflict on American workers, there is a broader impact that is far worse. We should of course support facilitating the immigration of “the best and the brightest.” But research performed at the University of Michigan and Rutgers University, as well as my own work for the Economic Policy Institute, shows that the former foreign students now in the U.S. workforce tend to be weaker than their American peers. On a per capita basis, the former foreign students in computer science file fewer patents, are less likely to work in research and development and have degrees from less selective U.S. universities.
Given the indirect and direct displacement of Americans by foreign workers, this amounts to replacing stronger people with weaker ones in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — the STEM fields. The harm this brings to our economy, our ability to innovate and our general national interest is immense.
We have a surplus of computer science PhDs; 11.3 percent of them are involuntarily working in a non-computer science field.
This problem can be easily solved, with political will and foresight. The Trump administration is reportedly considering doling out H-1Bs to the employers offering the highest salaries. This would be only a partial solution, though still a useful step. But this would need to be done strictly in order of salary, not in the emasculated form in the bill introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose salary ordering would be intertwined with the four experience levels defined in current law. Most H-1Bs are in the bottom two levels, again a major enabler of the age discrimination problem that forms the core of the abuse.
Employers claim that they hire H-1Bs for rare skill sets or outstanding talent ― traits that they would need to pay a premium for on the open market. Yet current law requires only that they pay the average wage. Worse, it is the average wage within one of those four experience levels. Instead, we should replace this with a single wage floor set at the 75th percentile of the overall wage distribution for the given occupation and region.
This approach would give the visas to those who can truly make exceptional contributions to our economy and society. If there is real interest in draining the swamp, this is a great place to start.
The choice of favouring some countries over others, depending on the needs of the big tech sector, is very questionable, particularly when it seems to be merely economical: just a matter of exploitation trying to masquerade as inclusion.
Investigation into US professor sparks debate over Chinese word
11 September 2020
A US university investigation into one of its professors has ignited a debate over the use of a seemingly innocuous Chinese word.
Professor Greg Patton at the University of Southern California (USC) was telling students in a communications lecture last month about filler, or pause words, such as ‘err’, ‘umm’ or ‘you know’ in English.
Footage of his lecture, which has now gone viral, shows Prof Patton saying: “In China, the common pause word is ‘that, that, that’. So in China, it might be na-ge, na-ge, na-ge.”
Enunciated, na-ge sounds like the N-word, which led several of the professor’s students to complain to the university. Responding to the complaint, the dean of the university, Geoffrey Garrett, told students that Prof Patton would no longer be teaching the course.
“It is simply unacceptable for the faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students,” he said.
The university says that Prof Patton “volunteered to step away” from his role amid the investigation into complaints made against him.
News of the spat reached China, where many posted on social media saying they thought his punishment discriminated against speakers of the Chinese language.
Lost in translation
In Chinese the word “na-ge” (那个) is a common filler phrase that people use when they’re hesitating or trying to find the right word. It literally translates to the word “that”.
But there have been many documented incidents of the word being used innocuously and leading to misunderstandings, and even violence.
In July 2016, a fight broke out on the subway in the city of Southern Guangzhou, after a black man heard a Chinese man saying na-ge and mistook it for the N-word.
Footage went viral online showing the black man slapping the Chinese commuter and shouting “you dare try that again” and “never say that again”
More recently, in April this year, Taiwanese news website UDN reported that two men nearly came to blows on the island outside a restaurant over the same misunderstanding.
Even Chinese basketball star Yao Ming has spoken of how the word brought him “some trouble” while playing in the US for the National Basketball Association (NBA).
‘A universal mistake’
CC Chen, a student at the USC, defended Prof Patton, arguing that it was “clearly an academic lecture on communication” and the professor was “describing a universal mistake commonly made in communication”.
“For him to be censored simply because a Chinese word sounds like an English pejorative term is a mistake and is not appropriate, especially given the educational setting,” she said. “It also dismisses the fact that Chinese is a real language and has its own pronunciations that have no relation to English.”
More than 11,000 people have now signed a Change.org petition calling for Prof Patton to be re-instated. And in China there are discussions taking place over whether the university acted too abruptly.
On the popular Sina Weibo microblog, more than 1,000 posts have used the hashtag #USProfessorSuspendedForUsingNaGe, with many viewing the move as a suppression of Chinese speech.
One post called the incident a “contemporary version of the literary inquisition” – referring to the persecution of intellectuals during China’s imperial era.
What began as an accusation against the professor of using discriminatory language has morphed, in China, into accusations of discrimination against the Chinese language.
“Is it now forbidden to speak Chinese in the United States?” asked one Sina Weibo user.
‘It’s about politics’
In recent months, many in China have expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. President Trump has been accused of stoking racist sentiment towards China over the Covid-19 pandemic by referring to the coronavirus as the “China virus”, “Wuhan virus”, and even “Kung Flu”.
His language has been regularly cited by Chinese media as an example of xenophobic attitudes towards the Chinese people.
Some Chinese posters on Sina Weibo argued that USC, in suspending Prof Patton, had chosen “political correctness” over genuine change. Others raised a note of optimism that the story would raise awareness of differences rather than marginalise them.
Many were of the view that shared discrimination in recent months meant that Asian and black communities should work to understand each other rather than fight against one another.
“There should be respect for differences,” wrote one Weibo user.
Back in the US, USC staff and students reacted to the decision to suspend Prof Patton.
“There’s no language superior to the other,” Chengyan Wu, Co-President of USC Chinese Student and Scholar Association, told the university’s student news organisation.
“Restating the rights of one minority group should not be at the expense of violating the other,” he said. “We have the right to use our own language.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54107329
Barbados to remove Queen Elizabeth as head of state
16 September 2020
Barbados has announced its intention to remove Queen Elizabeth as its head of state and become a republic.
“The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,” the Caribbean island nation’s government said.
It aims to complete the process in time for the 55th anniversary of independence from Britain, in November 2021.
A speech written by Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Barbadians wanted a Barbadian head of state.
“This is the ultimate statement of confidence in who we are and what we are capable of achieving,” the speech read.
Buckingham Palace said that it was a matter for the government and people of Barbados.
A source at Buckingham Palace said that the idea “was not out of the blue” and “has been mooted and publicly talked about many times”, BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond said.
Barbados key facts:
- One of the more populous and prosperous Caribbean islands
- Gained its independence from Britain in 1966
- Queen Elizabeth remains its constitutional monarch
- Once heavily dependent on the sugar exports, its economy has diversified into tourism and finance
- Its prime minister is Mia Mottley, elected in 2018 and the first woman to hold the post
The statement was part of the Throne Speech, which outlines the government’s policies and programmes ahead of the new session of parliament.
While it is read out by the governor-general, it is written by the country’s prime minister.
The speech also quoted a warning from Errol Barrow, Barbados’s first prime minister after it gained independence, who said that the country should not “loiter on colonial premises”.
His is not the only voice in Barbados that has been suggesting a move away from the monarchy. A constitutional review commission recommended republican status for Barbados in 1998.
And Ms Mottley’s predecessor in officer, Freundel Stuart, also argued for a “move from a monarchical system to a republican form of government in the very near future”.
Barbados would not be the first former British colony in the Caribbean to become a republic. Guyana took that step in 1970, less than four years after gaining independence from Britain. Trinidad and Tobago followed suit in 1976 and Dominica in 1978.
All three stayed within the Commonwealth, a loose association of former British colonies and current dependencies, along with some countries that have no historical ties to Britain.
It is actually quite unusual for a country to remove the Queen as its head of state. The last to do so was Mauritius in 1992. Other Caribbean countries like Dominica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago became republics in the 1970s.
Many of the 15 countries that are currently part of the Queen’s realm seem to value the relationship it provides with her and the United Kingdom.
Of course, some have talked for years of slipping the royal anchor and establishing their own heads of state. But other political objectives often get in the way.
Certainly this is not the first time that politicians in Barbados have declared their intention to become a republic.
The question is whether this decision will be matched by others. Jamaica has in the past suggested that this is a route it might follow.
What is significant is that the prime minister of Barbados cast the decision as “leaving our colonial past behind”.
In the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, it will be interesting to see if this sparks wider political pressure on other Caribbean governments to go the same way.
And if this happens, and the removal of the Queen as head of state is placed on a par with, say, the removal of a statue of a slave trader, then that could pose difficult questions for both the British royal family and the Commonwealth.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54174794
Biden says US trade deal hinges on UK ‘respect’ for Good Friday Agreement
16 September 2020
Joe Biden has said he will not allow peace in Northern Ireland to become a “casualty of Brexit” if he is elected US President in November.
The Democratic candidate said any UK-US trade deal had to be “contingent” on respect for the Good Friday Agreement.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been trying to reassure US politicians about the latest Brexit developments during a trip to Washington.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he trusted the UK to “get this right”.
But US Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there was “no chance” of a UK-US trade deal getting through the US Congress if the UK violated international agreements, undermining the Good Friday Agreement.
After a meeting with Mr Raab, the Speaker of the House of Representatives said the UK’s exit from the EU could not be allowed to “imperil” peace in Northern Ireland.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54171571
Brexit and the law: wilful incompetence
The prime minister believes that provoking chaos will get him a better deal in EU negotiations. He is wrong
16 September 2020
To outside observers of Boris Johnson’s government, it can be difficult to tell the difference between partisan provocation and rank incompetence. Both generate an aura of chaos. It does not help that members of Mr Johnson’s own cabinet also struggle to understand what is going on.
On a question as vital as the UK’s willingness to observe international law, there is confusion at the highest levels. Earlier this week, the Conservative frontbench voted for the internal market bill that repudiates aspects of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, thus reneging on a ratified treaty. Ministers who worry that they are breaking international law comfort themselves that the breach is insubstantial. It is only “limited and specific”, or so Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, told the Commons.
In parliament’s upper chamber, Lord Keen, advocate general for Scotland, was palpably uncomfortable with that caveated admission of unlawfulness. He suggested that it did not represent the official government position. But it did. Mr Lewis confirmed that he had been reading from a Downing Street script; Lord Keen, whose qualms had earlier been revealed in confidential advice seen by the Guardian, resigned on Wednesday.
Other lawyers with ministerial portfolios have found their own ways to resolve the tension between the oaths they took as legal professionals and fealty to Mr Johnson. Robert Buckland, the justice secretary and a barrister, has said that he would withdraw his support for a bill if it broke the law in a way that “cannot be judged finely or fudged”. That made it sound as if he is holding out for the government to perpetrate a more egregious offence before fully examining his conscience.
Suella Braverman, the attorney general, justifies the bill’s controversial clauses in terms that blend quasi-legal spin with political expedience. The EU has not been acting in good faith, she says. And parliament is supreme, especially “in the difficult and highly exceptional circumstances in which we find ourselves”. In other words, the government should be free to do what it likes because it does not like what the EU has been doing.
In reality, the bad faith is on the British side. Those “difficult circumstances” arise from Mr Johnson’s failure to secure a deal on his preferred terms. He is rejecting the withdrawal agreement out of frustration and panic. He hopes the ensuing crisis will change the dynamic in the negotiations, prodding the EU into concessions. If not, it sets him up for a rhetorical attack on Brussels as the aggressor. He wants an impossible deal or to blame foreigners for withholding it.
That tactic contains two miscalculations. First, Brussels has not taken the bait. EU leaders are not supplying lurid condemnation to feed Mr Johnson’s narrative of grievance. They will wait patiently at the negotiating table. If the UK ends up without a deal, it will be Mr Johnson’s choice. Second, the Tory party is not so in thrall to their leader as to casually forget the law. Senior figures, including two former prime ministers, have criticised the bill. Backbench MPs demanded dilution of its most aggressive provisions.
Mr Johnson, seeing that he had pushed his luck, agreed. But it is doubtful that even an amended version of the offending clauses would repair the harm done to Britain’s reputation as a trustworthy negotiating partner. That does not bother a prime minister who is mostly interested in the domestic political dividend available from striking defiant anti-Brussels poses. Such flagrant disregard for international opinion compounds the damage.
Downing Street attempted a controlled detonation of the Brexit process to advance the UK’s position and achieved the opposite. In this case, there is no distinction to be made between provocation and incompetence. Mr Johnson’s EU policy is a nasty cocktail of both.
BlogSalao 2020
http://blogsalao.wordpress.comhttps://massalao.wordpress.com
HOPE
“In this current climate it is easy to despair and it is easy to give up. But it is exactly at moments like this that we need to reorganise and redouble our efforts, because if we don’t then things could get a whole lot worse. From somewhere we must all find some hope, both to meet the challenges we are facing today, but also to ensure that tomorrow can be better.”
https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/nick-lowles-on-our-call-for-action-in-2020/
massalao 