Maria Moroz, Executive Producer: Every Ukrainian has experienced this at least once: hearing a thunderstorm and mistaking it for the sound of shelling or explosions. For those living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it has become an almost routine reaction. While working on Black Cloud, a team member from Zaporizhzhia mentioned that she knew Denys Vasyliev, who has been documenting the war by recording its sounds with professional equipment for the past three years. We realized it was exactly what we needed to express the idea of our installation.

Oleksiy Sai, Artist: We wanted to make the invisible threat of war visible, to create an experience that anyone standing under the cloud could feel. It’s not just about Ukraine, it’s about global responsibility and collective awareness. To bring this vision to life, we built a 100-foot-long inflatable sculpture made of 45 interconnected forms, weighing eight tons and filled with 90,000 cubic feet of air. Inside, 20 strobe lights flash like lightning. Sound plays a central role: real recordings from the war — sirens, explosions and missile strikes. These sounds are meant to immerse visitors in the reality of what Ukrainians are experiencing every day.

Question: You already presented Black Cloud in Kyiv. How did people react?

Maria Moroz, Executive Producer: In Kyiv, we simplified the audio to avoid triggering residents who have lived through the war. The response was intense — people paused, listened and experienced it together with us. The purpose was to show foreign audiences what we face every day and to evoke empathy and understanding.

Question: What kind of reaction are you hoping for at Burning Man? Do you think art can influence people’s opinions? 

Vitaliy Deynega, General Producer: The key message is: “The storm is coming for you too. Get ready.” We want audiences to understand that inaction, silence or apathy only allows the threat to spread. Black Cloud is a call for solidarity, responsibility and action before war touches everyone. At first glance, it may seem like just an art performance. But in reality, it’s a gesture that shapes thoughts and emotions. Many participants will return to their representatives in the US and Europe, and those impressions will influence decisions and actions. Politics is not separate from art and ordinary people, and art can help shape public opinion and solidarity worldwide.

Question: Why do you think Burning Man is the right platform for this message?

Oleksiy Sai, Artist: Every year, 80,000 people gather in Nevada’s desert, creating a unique global cultural platform. Here we can reach audiences who might never otherwise confront Ukraine’s reality. At first glance, Burning Man may seem like a space outside of politics, but in truth, politics is life itself. The people who come here will eventually return home, carrying new impressions and reflections. They will bring these perspectives back to their communities, to their representatives, and into their choices. In this way, art can shift perceptions and even influence policy. With Black Cloud, we want to go beyond entertainment. We want to make a powerful statement that stays with people long after the desert dust settles.

Question: Finally, what do you hope people take away after experiencing Black Cloud?

Oleksiy Sai, Artist: Perhaps the most important message is to challenge the illusion many Ukrainians once shared — that a full-scale war could never happen to us, not in a country in the heart of Europe, not in the so-called civilized world. But it did. And just as it reached us, it can reach the wider world too. We are now closer than ever to realizing that Ukraine’s problem is not ours alone. It is a shared challenge. The world must remain aware, no matter how weary we grow of bad news, and continue to keep its eyes on Ukraine, to influence these processes, and to stand in solidarity. We want people to feel the scale of a threat that exists not only in Ukraine but for the world, and to understand that art can speak where words are not enough. This is an experience that stays with you and prompts reflection on your own role and responsibility.

*The Ukrainian Black Cloud installation at Burning Man 2025 stood for just one day before being destroyed by a desert storm on August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day. The creators responded: “The storm reminded us that some forces are beyond control, like natural disasters. But war is not one of them — it is a human-made catastrophe, and we can, and must, act against it.”

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Interview: Black Cloud as a Reminder that Ukraine Affects the World appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Dennis Baron: You’ve heard of Banned Books Week? It’s becoming more like Banned Books Year. The biggest threat to free speech today is the attempt by a number of conservatively-led states to ban discussions of so-called divisive concepts in schools—from preschool through to university—and to remove books dealing with such concepts from school and community libraries. Forbidden topics include gender, race, slavery and negative portrayals of American history.

We’ve been here before: Congress banned speech critical of the government way back in 1798, and anyone protesting the war in 1918 could easily find themselves in jail. Mention communism in the 1950s and you could lose your job. States banned teaching about evolution in the 1920s  and even today some states reject current knowledge by banning certain topics or compelling speech about “both sides” of everything from the Big Bang to the Civil War to the Holocaust, even when a topic like the Holocaust has only one side.

History shows us that freedom of speech is a fluid and evolving concept that requires continual defense. It’s always under threat. And it’s never absolute. Taboos change, but there will always be some forbidden words. Topics change, but there will always be some that have negative consequences. Some of those consequences are social, others are legal. And there will always be some speakers who disregard the consequences and violate the taboos.

Q: The Internet and social media have radically changed what communication looks like and how fast and widely speech can be heard and shared. Can the laws around free speech keep up? 

Baron: When it comes to communication technology, the law is always playing catch-up. Once writing became an important communication tool, authorities sought ways to control it by limiting who could write, what they could say, and who could read it. Writers have always resisted such controls, finding ways to beat the censors. In response, censors found new ways to control speech. Then the cycle continues: rinse and repeat. Now, with the Internet, social media, and smartphones, everyone’s a writer, which means governments, pressure groups, religious authorities, self-appointed watchdogs, educators, and parents seek tighter regulations about who can say what online and to whom. What should be done to control hate speech? To counter or suppress misinformation? Fraud? Incitement and insurrection? Controlling online speech isn’t easy, particularly in liberal democracies where you can’t just flip a switch to shut the network down. Plus, whatever government or corporate regulations are put in place, there are sure to be speakers, writers and free-speech absolutists who will resist such controls, and hackers to help them do it. The laws will struggle to keep up. They’ll always be at least one step behind the technology. But the effort must be made to balance the rights of speakers against the public interest.

Social Media and the Cold War Around Free Speech

Q: How has the strengthening of Second Amendment rights impacted citizens’ First Amendment rights? Can citizens fully enjoy their right to free speech when someone who disagrees with them is holding an AR-15? 

Baron: The pen may be mightier than the sword, but when one side brings guns to a debate, the other side is likely to stop talking. Bank robbers know this. So do dictators. All parts of the Constitution carry equal weight, and that means the First and Second Amendments are not supposed to cancel each other out. But with more guns in more places, the Second Amendment is likely to trump the First. Going armed in public will enable the “Second Amendment veto,” and its impact on free speech could be fatal.

Q: You write about how powerful speakers weaponize free speech to suppress minority voices. Can you explain? Is this a problem on both sides of the political divide?

Baron: Although “both sides of the political divide” may wish to ban certain kinds of speech, it’s clear that today in the US, censorship from the right poses a greater danger. It’s well-organized, well-funded and operates on a national level, while similar efforts from the left to compel or limit speech are haphazard, local, relatively ineffective and generally unfunded. Who gets more press coverage? The right. Who does more damage? The right. Who puts more conservative judges, legislators and school boards in place to enforce speech bans? The right. Yet who claims they’re being silenced? The right, who manage to find a voice on every major media platform to complain about the “cancel culture” that they themselves are trying to legislate. And again, let’s be clear, in order to short-circuit any whataboutism: I’m talking about laws that compel or limit speech in liberal democracies like the US and the UK, not the private groups in these countries attempting to control their members’ speech.

Q: Forty-five years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) defended the First Amendment rights of the KKK in Skokie, and in 2017, they defended the Proud Boys and affiliated right-wing groups marching in Charlottesville. How have the issues evolved over time, and do you think it’s a tenable position? 

Baron: In 1934, the ACLU defended the right of American Nazis to speak at Madison Square Garden. They argued that everyone has the right to speak, and if that speech causes disruption or violence, then the police will intervene. In Skokie, an Illinois court agreed with that argument and reluctantly let the Nazi march go forward. Again in Charlottesville, in 2017, the ACLU relied on this reasoning, noting that the “Unite the Right” demonstrators had signed a promise that they wouldn’t be violent. The legal principle the ACLU was defending is called the “heckler’s veto”—the government may not ban speech simply because that speech might lead to violence. The difference between Skokie and Charlottesville was that the white supremacists who came to Charlottesville were armed, and the police did not intervene to prevent the violence that erupted. Clearly, now that the members of an audience may be armed, the rise of the “Second Amendment veto” requires us to rethink our response to the “heckler’s veto.” After Charlottesville, the ACLU decided that it would no longer defend speakers bent on inciting violence.

Q: People throw around the idea of free speech quite liberally these days, complaining about their First Amendment rights being trampled whenever there are negative consequences to their speech. How do you distinguish between the right to free speech versus the right for private individuals to react to that speech?

Baron: My book is about government speech restrictions. It’s not about the constraints on speech imposed by families, social groups, private organizations, political and religious groups, or businesses. There are plenty of such private restrictions—some of these social pressures we accept, often without thinking, because certain speech constraints facilitate interaction, like saying please and thank you, or acknowledging someone’s pronouns. Others make headlines, like when a group bars a speaker who’s racist, Islamophobic or antisemitic. To put it simply: in the US, the government can’t stop you from speaking (although there are always exceptions, and that’s why you should read this book). But in many cases your family can shut you up. Your friends can. Your club can. Your boss can. Failure to comply can bring a punishment, ostracism, or expulsion. Or it could cost you your job. Resistance is futile—and yet, we all know people who do resist. “It’s a free country. I can say what I want.” That’s fine, so long as you remember that freedom of speech won’t protect you from the consequences of speaking.

Q: The Supreme Court did not begin taking up First Amendment cases until the early 20th century. Why was that?

Baron: The First Amendment says “Congress shall pass no law” abridging freedom of speech. But at the time that the amendment was ratified, in 1791, there were lots of speech prohibitions that were not seen to abridge that constitutional right: laws against obscenity, profanity, defamation, incitement and threats, to cite a few. First Amendment defenses proved futile against convictions under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which banned criticism of the government. Fruitless free speech arguments surfaced again during the Civil War, as the government sought to suppress antiwar sentiment in the Union. But it was not until World War I, when opposition to the war, and to the draft, became even more vocal, that the Supreme Court got involved—essentially ruling that speech permissible in peacetime could be banned in times of war. Not exactly a free-speech victory. It wasn’t until well into the 20th century that the Court started to protect more and more political speech, gradually expanding protections for other types of speech as well.

How the American Public Understands—and Misunderstands—Free Speech

Q: What do you think the next 20 years will look like vis-Ă -vis free speech? Will the current Supreme Court change the trajectory of the First Amendment? 

Baron: Since the middle of the 20th century, the Supreme Court has positioned itself as a strong protector of free speech. It’s had a tendency to defend right-wing, conservative, even racist and fascist speech, and then apply that defense across the broader spectrum of opinion. Still, there have been some clear victories for left-wing speech, like Watts v. US, Cohen v. California, affirming antiwar protests, and NY Times v. US, the Pentagon Papers case. But the Court does have a history of expanding rights and then limiting them, and there are some indications that the current Court could do some backtracking on speech. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Court declared that teachers and students don’t leave their First Amendment speech protections at the schoolhouse gate. But Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that, historically, students had no free speech rights, and he’s indicated that Tinker should be overturned. The First Amendment rights of teachers have not been tested in the Supreme Court, and conservatives like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have recently argued that the government may limit the speech of teachers in public schools and universities because they are state employees. Justice Samuel Alito has suggested that requiring the use of inclusive language violates the First Amendment protection against compelled speech: you can’t be forced to say something you don’t believe in.

And there’s this thorny problem: the First Amendment covers both free speech and freedom of religion, setting up a scenario that can pit these two protections against one another, for example, when conservatives object to antidiscrimination legislation by arguing, for example, “Making me say your pronouns violates my deeply-held religious beliefs.” We have yet to solve the problem of how to balance free speech against the need to be protected from damaging speech. And that’s the paradox of free speech. Yes, it’s a free country, but we can’t always say what we want.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Interview: Challenges of Speech in a Free Society appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The magazine recently made waves in the gamer, sci-fi and fantasy world for generating an 80s period version of The Matrix (hypothetically) helmed by Chilean-French cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky.

In an interview with 51łÔąĎ, Philippe Klein—Infinite Odyssey’s creative director—tells us about the origins of the publication and future of “human-less art”. He also shares his views on the AI plagiarism debate, the competing realities of the virtual world, whether virtual sex can ever be better than the real thing, and much more.

Philippe’s work can be found . 

[We have edited this interview lightly for clarity.]

Vikram Zutshi: How did the idea for Infinite Odyssey come about and what is your creative/technical background?  

Philippe Klein: Well it started a couple of months ago—nine months ago—when I sat down with some of my colleagues and we came up with the idea on how to use AI for something that has never been done before. And since we all have, kind of, this creative and fantasy background—or at least a huge interest in those things—we were like, “Okay let’s do something where we use nothing but AI.” And, to create something that we would have liked to read as children: that we would have liked to develop, but we didn’t have the chance up until now when we were able to use AI programs like MidJourney, Dolly, Stable Diffusion and, of course, programs like GPT.

Since I’m a writer myself and I used to work for television as an author and producer, I was also always interested [in] developing stories, characters, [and] different scenarios, so that came very naturally. And this is why we all sat together and said, “Yeah, let’s make this project.” It’s something where we were waiting for so many months until we got access to all the apps, to all the applications, but in the end it was really worth [the wait] and we [were] quickly finding a new passion.

Zutshi: The art displayed in IO is pure sci-fi eye candy. What are the programs that you are using to create the images?Can you give us an overview of your creative process?

Klein: First of all, thank you that you like our images so much and I’m always happy to hear that they resonate with people.

The main programs we are using are Mid-Journey and Stable Diffusion. Sometimes we use Dolly, but Dolly has a little bit of a too realistic approach, I would say. And usually doesn’t give us the pictures we are looking for. So, Mid-Journey is kind of cool if you want to create something fast and you already have a vision.

And Stable Diffusion is a bit more complex to understand, it’s a bit more complex to use, but we can make many cool things.But with Stable Diffusion we are mostly working on videos and stuff like that.And this is also something we are going to pursue in the next couple of months: AI-augmented videos and all these things.

But overall the creative process for creating the magazine is that we have [weekly] team meetings where we brainstorm together with AI. What are the subjects, what are the stories we are going to tell, [what] we want to tell in this next issue. And—based on those ideas that we create together with AI—we start writing our stories.

So first you have the text, the literature, being created by machine.What’s happening then is that, adding to the literature, we start developing pictures.This is really the most fun part of creating the magazine, I think.And my teammates would agree on this as well, that we are experimenting with different styles, with different approaches, but sometimes you are trying to get the perfect picture.

But Mid-Journey or Stable Diffusion just doesn’t give you the right angle or the picture you are trying to fantasize. But in those moments we are like, you know what, it’s AI and AI gave us this picture and we are going to go with it. Because we are not trying to make something that a human could do.We are not trying to do something that we could maybe do with Blender or with Maya or with Photoshop.

We are trying to do a performance [just] using AI. And this is why sometimes we would go with pictures that maybe would not 100% fit with what we want, but we are really trying to bend the AI with everything we have. And [our knowledge on prompting] is why we get pretty cool results 99% of the time.

And yeah, as soon as we have the images fixed, we will get them to our magazine layout. But in the end, everything we post on our Instagram as well is not necessarily made for the magazine, because we use lots of sources like Star Wars or Matrix and stuff, which is basically copyrighted material. But we are remixing the idea of it, so we are not getting any money.

But we are doing something that we like to look at, which is fun. This is basically the divided process. Very individual arts that are just created by machines and coming directly from our mind for the magazine and everything else basically for the Instagram page.

Zutshi: What are the future applications you see for Generative AI other than just creating beautiful images? Do you see virtual worlds as real as our own which can interact with our senses in the same manner as reality and what are the dangers? How will this technology transform filmmaking, or medical research and treatment? 

Klein: Well, as you just said, I don’t see virtual worlds as real. They are virtual reality, but one can argue now what is real anyway.

If you’re a believer that we humans live in a simulation, does it make that more real or less real? I don’t know, I can’t really answer that question. But you’re gonna have to decide in which world you want to spend time. Do you want to spend time in the virtual world or do you want to spend time in the normal world?

Let’s call it normal, the world that we live in right now. Some people might believe that the world we already live in is full of dangers, yet a virtual world seems like it hides a less dangerous environment, but that doesn’t mean that the danger can’t come in a psychological form.

People who live in a certain environment are more likely to adapt to their surroundings, and as evolution showed us, you always adapt to your environment and, in the end, it’s survival of the fittest. So, if you’re adapting more and more in your virtual reality because this is the reality you choose to live in, that can be very harmful for you if you want to get back into the real world.

But the other way around, if you’re living in the real world, most likely or probably the virtual reality is not really interesting for you.I believe that right now we are in this state of curiosity where we try to move along these fast developing AI systems and all these different technologies that we sometimes don’t understand to which extent we might hurt or put ourselves in danger.

I’m not saying that there is any danger, but everything is moving so fast forward and we as humans are always trying to keep up with everything because we can’t tell the machine to slow down. So I think right now, it’s just out of curiosity that everyone is seeing these things either as a threat or absolutely marvelous. Time will show how people will use it in the end.As far as I’m concerned, there’s a difference between experiences in the real world and experiences in the virtual world.

And speaking for myself—and probably on behalf of the team—we are interested in both and what kind of augmented reality can give our own reality.

So we’ll see where this is going. Right now I think we just should watch out that we don’t lose ourselves or don’t lose our sense for moral and human behavior in between all these softwares that are being published. Because as the question implies, it’s not reality. We kind of make it real but also I don’t want to get too fundamental on this and it’s probably a subject you can talk about for hours. For now it’s super exciting to see all these softwares being developed with Stable Diffusion.

You can do those infinite loop videos, you can do transformation videos, you can put AI on top of a real video. Filmmaking will be transformed hugely in the future I believe. Until that point where you just give a couple of prompts and you can generate your own little movie or your own little scenes.

I don’t know. I can’t really tell you where this is going to get us soon but I guess at some point each one of us is going to be their own little filmmakers. And in the end what the people are asking for the people will get.But we’ll see, we’ll see. It’s definitely a very interesting time to be alive because we are the first generation and maybe even the only generation. The last generation of me being 30 years old now to actually know how it was before AI came and how it changed everything.

So many people will grow up with AI—just as we grew up with the internet—and for them it’s going to be normal. Since I’m not a doctor and not really a scientist, I can’t really tell how much medical research or treatments are going to profit from them. But I believe that with the help of AI, we can see how possible treatment methods can be improved or how diverse [illnesses] can develop on the human body. 

So it would be like a look in the future [to] see what kind of medicine might help someone and how the whole disease will develop in someone’s body.I guess, more lives will be saved in the end. So I’m not talking about the aspect of some medical researchers or doctors, future doctors getting their PhD just because they asked CHET GPT to help them with it.

I think there are going to be so many barriers also for people to be frauds on important jobs like this. But overall, I believe the benefits in medicine or medical research and science we don’t even know how huge they’re going to get. I think it’s going to be so unbelievable and big that it’s ridiculous just to think about it now.

Zutshi: There is a raging debate about AI generated art stealing from the works of human artists and rehashing it to come up with its own version. Should there be a legal code that disallows unauthorized use of artistic works? More importantly, is it possible for AI to compose original images without any derivation whatsoever? 

Klein: Yes, there is this debate of [if] AI art [is] real art This is something I just simply don’t answer anymore, because everything can be turned into art and everything can be art. People [who] say AI art is not art are [gatekeepers] to me. And having an artistic background as well—which is filmmaking, TV show producing, and also painting on huge canvases myself—I can [liberally] say that there are so many ways on how to express art.

So regarding the debate, if Mid-Journey, Dolly, or Stable Diffusion and all these other programs have been trained on unauthorized art from artists not giving the validation, I believe this is a very important subject, because it is [very] immoral, if you use something that nobody gave consent to. Yet since I haven’t programmed this software, I can’t really go into detail about these things, because I just don’t know.

What I can say so far is that it is super important that all these lawsuits happen now at the very beginning of AI art, because of course artists need to get compensated if they got scrapped. There is no nice way in saying that if AI companies really trained their models on art that was not given without the artist’s consent, that of course is a lot of horseshit in the end.

But I’d like to see this whole issue with Mid-Journey, Dolly,or Stable Diffusion a bit differently. For me it’s a bit like they were sent, you know, like a human person going to art school at some point in their life. And being a young student in art school, you don’t really know which style you have, what you’re going to develop, so you take inspiration out of everywhere a little bit. And this is [usually how] art students find their style.

After spending multiple hours and hours of getting your knowledge and recreating stuff, yet the Diffusion system—which most of these softwares are using—is you train the software with art. It can be Picasso, it can be Van Gogh,but can also be some guy making comics and stuff. Yet in the end, this is the stuff that he’s been trained on. Yet all this stuff is not being found in the final version again. So when Mid-Journey, Dolly, or Stable Diffusion released their software, there was nothing left. The models have already been trained, yet the models are continuing to train themselves based on the user’s output. 

So what we the community, artists,lawyers, and judges have to really look at, okay, was that process of feeding the software training material, which they will end up using through Diffusion: was that step legal? Because right now we the users, we’re using it, we’re paying for it, and we’re not scrapping anyone. The scrap could only have happened while they were training the models. But those companies are multi-billion [dollar] companies. We’ll see what happens. If they really fucked up, they will know it very soon, and of course there should be a legal code that disallows unauthorizeduse of artistic works. 

But in the end, people who are creating the art are always gonna try to recreate something, are always going to try to come up with innovative ideas—but someone somewhere will always call them, “Oh yeah, but someone in Japan and Africa and Estonia already did it.” So what is true or originality? So what is actually original? Because—as artists and knowing how work as an artist works is—you’re always heavily biased by your surroundings and you’re always trying to express yourself based on the impressions you get from your surroundings. So there will always be some kind of original unoriginality.

Zutshi: A lot of people are talking about AI generated porn and virtual sex partners. It sounds like fun! Do you see this happening anytime soon and what are the pros and cons? 

Klein: Personally, I haven’t made use of any of this.

I’ve heard about some dating or virtual AI partners. A little bit like that movie Her from Spike Jonze with Joaquin Phoenix. I think it’s been heavily advertised on Instagram.

It’s called Replica AI, where you can talk to someone who is not real.Basically to a computer, yes.So as a matter of fact, a friend of mine talked about this.He used this app for a day or maybe a week, I don’t remember.

First of all, you had to pay. 

Second of all, the whole AI was trained based on what you were asking, what you were looking for. So of course, that AI was always super friendly and trying to make you feel as comfortable as needed.I think this is actually one of the biggest dangers in using those things.Because an AI-like Replica AI uses comfort to help people, to give them a human-esque experience. Yet human experience always comes up with confrontation as well.So I believe the huge problem in these systems are, [for] women and for men, is that people will always get what they want. And this is not how the world works. 

You can’t always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones were singing 30 years ago. It’s not good if people always [get] what they want and get it at any time. Yet it will help some people to get out of their shell. It will probably help some people to grow more self-esteem.Yet in the end, it’s always like a shortcut to pleasure, to dopamine exchange. Like, you want sex? Yeah, here, sure you go.This is dopamine. Go watch porn. Go have virtual sex. You will get virtual sex devices sent to your door and you will have to mount them on you and the pleasure will be taken care of by a robot.

Just for the fun of it, I believe that everyone would be curious about using this and seeing what it does and how real it feels.Yet in the end, for people who are highly introverted or people who are just addicted to dopamine,let’s call them drug addicts in that moment, because you can get addicted to sex. For them, it’s crucial that they know how to use these things.

I believe this is going to be a very hard time for people who are already lonely in this world.They are going to end up even lonelier because all their basic needs are being fulfilled.You can buy freaking food through your computer. You get it delivered to your door.You don’t have to go to the supermarket anymore. You can order people to have sex with and now you can even order machines who take care of your pleasure and you have the metaverse.

So people don’t even have to get out of bed to live a certain kind of life.

Which brings us back to question number three. Yes, all these dangers are interconnected and if you’re not well educated on them,you’re going to fall for them. You’re going to fall very, very hard for them. There’s going to be a new era of addiction coming after us.

It sounds very dark, but you don’t have to be a psychologist or professional to see these things coming. So you see, maybe I’m more on the con side than on the pro side, but we’ll see where all these things go. But I believe it’s never healthy for someone to stay in this room the whole day and being taken care of. It kind of gives me those matrix vibes where you’re just, yeah,incarcerated in those little boxes of fluid and you have all these tubes and mechanical beasts surrounding you. It’s very scary.

Zutshi: Finally, what do you hope to achieve with ‘the first fully AI-created, Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy magazine?” and how do anticipate content creators and generally creative people benefiting from it? 

Klein: I just have to say that starting we didn’t really hope for anything for the first fully AI-created, sci-fi, horror and fantasy magazine. We were just experimenting with possibilities and in the end experimenting took quite some hours of our daily life, so we [asked ourselves]: “how can we make this somehow profitable for us?” But also with the Infinite Odyssey magazine, we will give people a platform who just don’t have the time or maybe not really the ability to express themselves in an artistic way because they’re having the nine-to-five jobs or they’re having [families] and they have to take care of and [they] just can’t live an artist’s life.

So the whole point is—even though we started with a small team, now our team is growing and we started to take submissions as well—[we] started to watch out for people who would be interested in being published in our magazine. This is what we want. [In] the end, we want to be a place where people can live their fantasies, their dream[s] and contribute to it with AI without knowing how to draw  perfectly or to write perfectly. 

So consider the magazine a little bit like the weird tales magazine where it’s AI—it’s already weird and we didn’t know that we were at first, but yeah, while we were working on it we saw, “yeah no one else is doing it and also not at this professional extent because we’re not using chat GPT, we’re not using all these tools, we’re using open AI, the GPT, da Vinci as a foundation and have this API connected to our Python code and we have our own fine-tuned Python code that helped us to generate all these stories and all these fantastic ideas.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

So, I believe the biggest benefit is going to be in having this artistic expression, which in my opinion, is something that each and every one of us have because the process of creating is something that can be so amazing to someone and the process of creating—I mean it’s like creating life. You bring something into this world that has never existed before and I believe that way too many people were given way too little chance back in the days, but now AI is giving it to so many people. 

So on one hand, you’re gonna have tons and tons of content that is basically useless or just full and plain bullshit, but also people who have super interesting ideas they’re gonna be finally able to share them with the world and I believe this is going to be a huge success in humanity. It is also statistically proven that people who have the ability to express themselves creatively are leading much happier lives and are so much more [fulfilled than] people who just go to a nine-to-five job, going home, have some microwave food, drink abeer, and watch soccer or play video games. 

Overall I believe that AI is gonna make our lives easier and much more enjoyable and hopefully take care of all the jobs that no human being wants to do.

[This piece was edited by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Proponents of the latter view argue it’s unfair to frame caste as an integral part of Hinduism while bypassing the religion’s spiritual and artistic contributions. They argue that if one applied the same logic to studying other faiths, slavery, genocide, and jihadi terrorism would be seen as covalent to Christianity and Islam.  

There are rigorous anti-caste laws in effect in India. prohibits the state from discriminating against any citizen based on religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. states the practice of “untouchability” is abolished, and its practice is forbidden. The marginalized and vulnerable are afforded similar protections in democratic societies, yet these vital protections are flouted with impunity worldwide due to various socio-political and cultural factors. 

Targeting people of faith as the sole driving force behind bigotry of any kind is condemned as bigoted and ignorant. Yet this is how Hinduism is framed by the far-left in India—particularly opponents of India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—and by activists in the West that superimpose western racial hierarchies over the caste system.

In February, Seattle, Washington, became the first city in the United States to discrimination based on caste. Along with race and gender, caste can no longer be the basis of discrimination in this city. Proponents of the law claim casteism is no longer confined to the borders of the Indian subcontinent and has reached American shores with the burgeoning Indian diaspora; the legislation is a necessary corrective.

A prominent Hindu advocacy group, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), has fought tooth and nail against this legislation and against efforts to portray caste as endemic to the Hindu religion. I spoke to Suhag Shukla, the HAF Executive Director, about the effect of this legislation on the day-to-day lives of Indians in the United States. 

She spoke to me at length about the origins of the HAF and responded to accusations of “Hindu nationalism” that bedevil the organization. She shared her thoughts on why it is a category mistake to conflate western racial hierarchies with caste and why the legislation is a “self-goal” for the diaspora. 

[We have edited this interview lightly for clarity.]  

Vikram Zutshi: The HAF’s cultural and political advocacy is well known, but only some know its origins. As a founding member, can you explain how the HAF came into being? 

Suhag Shukla: HAF was founded by second-generation Hindu Americans. Raised in various parts of the country, we experienced the conflict between our understanding of teachings, culture, history, and challenges and the perspectives of peers, teachers, and communities. 

We were affected by different aspects of this breakdown in understanding. Distortions in Hinduism teaching, pressure to conform to Christian norms, mis-portrayals in media, lack of voice in policy spaces, and human rights atrocities faced by Hindus compelled us to “do something.” Recognizing the Jewish community’s need, we built a US-based, independent, non-partisan institution with professional experts promoting Hinduism and Hindu well-being.

Vikram Zutshi: You recently stated, “Seattle caste ban is not historic, it’s a self-goal. After cows and curry, Indians will face this.” How is anti-caste legislation going to impact Indians in the United States daily? Who are the political actors behind this movement, and what, in your view, is their agenda? 

Suhag Shukla: The movement’s agenda is fueled by anti-Hindu hatred, which has thrived on the far ends of the left and the right. It is led by neo-Buddhists or Ambedkerites who equate the cause of any social inequities in India with Hinduism. 

The supporting cast includes individuals and organizations with long histories of anti-Hindu activism, including supporting separatist or terrorist movements calling for the creation of independent theocratic states of Khalistan and Kashmir. It also brings in conservative Christian organizations, which have used the caste trope for centuries to target marginalized communities throughout South Asia for “missionizing.” Caste legislation impact on US Indians: increased workplace uncertainty, decreased opportunities, perception as nuisance and liability. 

They’ve opened the floodgates to ethno-racial profiling Indians and attributing “guilt” or wrongdoing by seeking a policy that singles out and targets people of one ethnicity to the exclusion of everyone else. They’ve frauded the public with falsified data and misleading examples such as being a vegetarian or talking about taking children to Bala Vihar as examples of “casteism,” creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty for Indian workers on what’s safe to share and what’s not. 

Policy administrators will be left having to take on the liability of implementing a discriminatory policy. In the long run, it will be more expedient not to hire South Asians.

Vikram Zutshi: In some quarters, the HAF is considered the “American arm” of India’s ruling party, the BJP. What are your views on this notion of ‘dual loyalty’ that an American organization could lobby for a foreign political entity? 

Suhag Shukla: Under US law, any organization/individual that lobbies or otherwise represents a foreign entity must register with the US Department of Justice. Lobbying for a foreign entity without registering has serious legal implications, so any allegations need to be backed by unequivocal fact, not insinuation, as is usual in the quarters you refer to. 

The fact is HAF is a wholly independent American organization. We have no affiliation or ties to organizations or political parties in the US or abroad. The notion that we answer to or do the bidding of India’s ruling party, let alone any political party, is false. 

Accusations of dual loyalty are used to otherize us as somehow not being “truly” American. They fearmonger about us doing the bidding of a foreign government instead of having legitimate concerns and aspirations as Americans. 

It paints American Hindu efforts to self-define as a suspect. It robs us of the agency to engage in the public square as Hindu Americans, invest in our community needs, and contribute possible solutions rooted in Hindu teachings to the most critical issues of our age. 

Those accusing HAF of being “an arm” or “Hindu right” or “Hindu nationalist”—essentially dual loyalty—should be seen for what they’re doing: exhibiting their bigotries or ideologies and inciting xenophobia. 

Vikram Zutshi: In a statement about a case in which the state of California filed a caste discrimination lawsuit against Cisco Systems, you said, “HAF vehemently opposes all discrimination, and stopping it is a worthy goal, one that directly furthers Hinduism’s teachings about the equal presence of the divine in all people, but, wrongly tying Hindu religious beliefs to the abhorrent act of caste discrimination undermines that goal and violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of all Hindu Americans.”

Tell us about the CISCO case and HAF’s role in it. 

Suhag Shukla: On September 20, 2022, HAF sued the California Civil Rights Department in the United States District Court for violating Hindu Americans’ civil rights in the state. In its federal court filing, HAF asserts California acted “unconstitutionally” in its case, alleging caste discrimination occurring at Cisco Systems, by seeking to define what Hindus believe and decide how they practice their religion, in violation of the First Amendment. 

HAF’s lawsuit states the Civil Rights Department (formerly known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing) wrongly asserts “that a caste system and caste-based discrimination are integral parts of Hindu teaching and practices by declaring the caste system to be a â€�strict Hindu social and religious hierarchy,’ which requires discrimination by â€�social custom and legal mandate.’” This action followed previous legal action dating back to January 2021, when HAF filed for injunctive relief in the same case against Cisco. If HAF succeeds, the Civil Rights Department must revise its Cisco case filing, as it’s based on the false idea that Hindu belief involves a caste system and wrongly equates caste with color and race.

Vikram Zutshi: You have stated on social media and in articles that caste is being weaponized against Hindus by certain activist groups. Hindus For Human Rights (HfHR) and Equality Labs have accused the HAF of advancing “fascist” Hindutva politics in America. What is the HAF’s official response to these allegations? 

Suhag Shukla: Those labels are more a reflection of the ideologies of Equality Labs and HfHR than they are of HAF. Our position on any issue is based on a relentless pursuit of facts and deep consideration of Hindu principles and American values, such as freedom, equality, and justice. We advocate on various issues, allowing us to work constructively with lawmakers and stakeholders on different sides of the aisle.

An objective look at the policy positions HAF has advocated for accuses that any of them are “fascist” looks ludicrous. On most issues, HAF is aligned with groups promoting liberal values: women’s rights, LGBT rights, free speech, separation of religion and state, animal protection, environmental conservation, and others. 

HAF’s position has aligned with what can be called a “center-left,” “classic liberal,” or democratic position. On some foreign policy positions—human rights and counter-terrorism—HAF’s positions align with centrist or center-right positions in the US None of these can be described as fascist or extremist. 

Vikram Zutshi: There seems to be a well-coordinated effort in academic circles to equate race in America with the south asian caste system. Is caste comparable with race? If not, why? 

Suhag Shukla: The history of anti-black racism in America is tied to the slave trade, a system of capturing, transporting, selling, and exploiting Black Africans, accompanied by a denigration of them as sub-human based on their ethnic ancestry and skin color. All of this was backed by the force of law in the United States and was the primary cause of the US Civil War, followed by a period of legal racial segregation. 

Some Christians pseudo-scientifically and anthropologically justified it at the time and gave ethical approval based on their theology. (Some of the most powerful abolitionist voices were inspired by a different interpretation of Christian scripture. It is important to note this.) 

Many remaining social stigmas and economic challenges exist for black people in the US Racism based on skin color is far and away the largest form of discrimination in the US today. 

Social discrimination in India and South Asia continues based on perceived differences that are not unique to any culture. However, the “caste system” is distinct from the concept of race in America. 

There has never been a single thing known as caste, as some scholars and activists claim. Nor has there ever been a single unchanging, pan-Indian caste system that legally enforces a birth-based rigid, oppressive social and theological hierarchy maintained by so-called upper caste members of society, supported by Hindu scripture, across thousands of years. 

There has never been a skin color component to Indian social divisions. The central Hindu spiritual teachings and all leading Hindu teachers, gurus, and swamis today oppose such a concept and ask we see unity in our shared divinity. 

What has become known as “caste”—a word deriving from Portuguese and intertwined with European notions of social hierarchy being mapped onto their experience of Indian society—is a combination of the Indian concept varna (the categories of occupation in society), jati (endogamous social groups), and other categories of social identity. The interplay has been dynamic and complex throughout history, differing in attitude and application across the geography of India. 

None of these social dynamics has been codified into law or enforced by the state or rulers, like slavery or racial segregation in the United States. We believe social discrimination is wrong, no matter its origins, and that Hindu teachings fully support such a view. 

Vikram Zutshi: You’ve worked tirelessly for the Kashmiri Hindu cause in America. Tell us about your advocacy efforts for Kashmir’s exiled minority. 

Suhag Shukla: Throughout HAF’s history, we have highlighted the plight of Kashmir’s exiled Hindu minority — whether they have been internally displaced within India or have left and become part of the diaspora. We have documented this situation in our human rights reports. 

We have held numerous events in Washington, DC, for the public, media, and elected officials on this issue. We have produced many educational materials documenting the history of the situation, highlighting inaccurate and/or biased media coverage of Kashmir, and a video series on YouTube documenting the history of the Kashmir Conflict and the ethnic cleansing that occurred three decades ago. We have had interviews with young Kashmiris, from Hindu and Muslim communities, on the situation post-Article 370 and the perspective of independent international relations experts who have traveled to Kashmir. 

[ edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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These biases could worsen now that , the far-right leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party, was elected Prime Minister of Italy in October 2022. Already, Meloni has tightened immigration policies, and her discourse is undeniably protectionist. It is unclear how Meloni’s policies will influence Italians’ perceptions of immigrants, but many fear the worst. 

We sought the insights of Roberto Beneduce on this topic. He has extensively studied the reception and assimilation of migrants. Beneduce also has a clinical practice at the Frantz Fanon Centre where he and his team welcome migrants from many provenances. 

Interview

Roberta Campani: We are interested in Italians’ perceptions of foreigners on their territory. Since you have great experience in reception and accompaniment of immigrants, we would love to have a presentation from you on the current situation.

Roberto Beneduce: The perception of the Italians is certainly oriented by many events and many variables. Italy’s current economic and labor situation has had an impact. Political speeches and media biases have equally decisive weight. It is difficult to imagine a perception that is independent of all this. We have to conceive a model of hybrid, multiple causations to understand this perception…

There are three primary axes influencing Italian perception of immigration.

The first major influencer is misleading political speeches. Many Italian politicians express their desire for a hegemonic culture that representss native Italians. These speeches show a perceptual reality marked by concern for the number of immigrants seeking asylum or arriving on Italian shores through the and crossing the Mediterranean 

The concern is emphasized by right-wing political parties to motivate conservative choices when it comes to border control, humanitarian and international protection policies, and the need to tighten regulations surrounding the reception of foreigners. This conservative perception is often reiterated by the media as they intentionally highlight social conflicts between the native population and foreign nationals, competition for job opportunities or access to different resources (housing, for instance) while simultaneously skipping over more positive stories concerning immigration. This media practice acts as confirmation bias for those who wish to deny the realities of immigration. It could be argued that their way of representing the context of migration is an act of “linguistic terrorism,” to quote the words of Ferruccio Rossi Land, an Italian semiotician. 

The second axis influencing Italian perceptions on immigration consists of groups committed to the “.” These people oppose those who view the flow of immigrants as threatening. They see immigration in relation to the social, economic or war dynamics that are characterizing our present. Italians with this humanitarian perception want to rise up to the demands of asylum seekers and immigrants, and seek to create conditions of encounter rather than conditions of conflict. 

The perception in this second axis doesn’t find immigrants as threatening subjects and adheres to real statistical data instead of inaccurate and inflammatory news stories. People of this perception recognize Italy as a country endowed with resources which, unfortunately, are often not used or are dispersed. 

The bad use of resources concerns the humanitarian sector too. In particular, I am thinking of the chaotic management of contracts entrusted to the nongovernmental organizations that manage immigrants and asylum seekers. These organizations often hire civil servants who have no specific training in humanitarian work, which creates difficulties in communication with new immigrants. There needs to be more careful selection of humanitarian teams based on proven expertise in managing the reception of immigrants, more particularly of those who are affected by specific forms of vulnerability. We also need more forward-looking policies when it comes to welcoming foreign nationals and helping to integrate them into our society. 

Finally, the third axis is the dominant, quieter, more visceral one. Italians with this perception often swing back and forth between humanitarian attitudes and xenophobia. These people often react irrationally to the presence of the Other, the foreigner, perceiving them both as people in need and as threats to native culture.

In this hostile reaction, we recognize two major sociological problems. The first is the systemic racism, the unresolved knot of contemporary democratic societies. We have to recognize that racism permeates not only public opinion, but also institutions, such as schools and healthcare facilities. This institutionalized racism is a huge contributor to the perception of foreigners as a threatening phenomenon. This kind of racism breeds harmful opinions which often manifest as violence, aggression, and acts of humiliation against foreigners. In other words, we cannot forget the structural racism of the nation-state, of the modern State.

That is why I was talking earlier about a real denial of the objective reality when it comes to immigration. We perceive foreigners as threatening and aggressive, but we do not see the violence that is directed at them. We perpetuate narratives where Italians are the victims of conflicts with immigrants. However, it is native citizens who attack, mock, and threaten defenseless or isolated foreigners. 

By an unconscious mechanism of denial, these realities are ignored. When Achille Mbembe speaks of a “,” he touches the raw nerve of Europe’s contemporary social structure. Animosity towards foreigners is nurtured by political and economic processes that have their hidden roots in slavery, colonialism, institutional racism and capitalism.

We should consider at length why people care so little to question the systematic and daily racist violence against foreign nationals.

A portion of this violence has resulted in actual . In Italy, as in other countries (Japan, for instance), foreigners are the object of constant aggression by ordinary citizens as well as police forces: the case of death for health problems or suicide in what we call “administrative detention centers” became more and more common in last decades. Despite the nationwide prevalence of these aggressions and this institutional violence, people still refuse to consider the deeper implications behind such acts of violence, and just consider the immigrants and asylum seekers as a threat!

Too often, the legal aggravation of racism in these crimes is the subject of endless negotiations, interpretations, and disputes. True legislative progress is painstakingly slow when it comes to mitigating racism. This is a further issue that should be discussed when trying to understand the nature and reproduction of hostile, negative perceptions of foreigners. 

A Lebanese-born author, , used the term “reverse colonization” to describe the anxieties that arise in societies facing immigrants. As their presence grows, foreigners are increasingly perceived as those who could threaten the religious, ethnic, and cultural identity of our countries, as those who are colonizing our Europe. They believe foreigners will take employment opportunities from natives. They fear that the high reproductive rates of migrants could upset imaginary demographic profiles. Here, again, we meet the dark side of Nation-State’s, its projective (delusional) representation of the Other: the reproductive anxiety, the concern for the building of an ideal, â€�good citizen’ and an idealized loyalty to its beliefs, the need for frontiers that bar the route to foreigners… I call this whole “pathologies of citizenships”.

The many forms in which violence can be imagined, practiced, and projected. 

According to Hage, denial is an unconscious mechanism. In the past, slaveholders simply ignored the rape and violence inflicted on slaves but simultaneously feared being the object of such hostile attacks. Today, we tend to deny and erase the violence perpetrated in the past centuries -as well as in the present time- on other populations, other bodies, and other territories.

In other cases, violence takes on an invisible, mundane, but no less perverse character. For example, asylum seekers are subjected to endless queues while waiting for a visa, and they never become full citizens, as the cases analyzed by the Iranian anthropologist Shahram Khosravi well epitomizes (his expression, “stolen time”, summarizes these issues). At the same time, even people living in our countries for many years are often subjected to forms of control and scrutiny of their private life (family, house spaces, and so on), which could be defined as a new, miniaturized panopticon. Xavier Jonathan Inda speaks of “anti-technologies of citizenship” to analyze the current politics of citizenship in the US.

Violence and exploitation have not ended with colonization

The modern exploitation of migrants is no different from the project of European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As some scholars have documented, it is in the literature that sometimes we find the valuable traces of history and “involuntary documents,” as historian would say, of the violence against the Other.

Marc Bloch was a French historian who in his book, The Historian’s Craft, that “involuntary documents” are more credible historical materials than “intentional documents.” Intentional documents, such as official legislative documents, church records, and autobiographies, are often tailored to certain narratives and are limited in the insights they can provide about the past. Bloch believed that involuntary documents, such as letters and drawings, provide more objective and accurate historical insights.

Bringing to light the unconscious dynamics connected to our anxieties and to our reactions to those anxieties is a task as complex as it is urgent: the task of my ethnopsychiatry. Social reform should be made a real field of pedagogical work. We need “social clinics” where experts can help remedy the fears of indigenous communities as they receive more immigrants and asylum seekers.

Unfortunately, widespread racism continues to poison social relations and feed spasms of white supremacy are occurring far too often. All this results in a political class which is not representative of the entire population but however able to impose its hegemonic discourse: the immigrant as a danger. I do not frequently see minorities represented in the Italian political class, nor in that of other European countries.

Roberta Campani: Unfortunately we do not. What you say makes me think of an old reading by Ernesto de Martino, where he says, as early as 1964, that we should introduce Italians to interiority and to everything that is not European or of Judeo-Christian origin. Did this project take place, and has it been developed in one way or another?

Roberto Beneduce: There is a passage that Ernesto de Martino reaffirms in many of his writings. It is what he calls “non-bourgeois ethnology.” De Martino’s interest in anthropology did not arise from a mere attraction to the exotic world. In our writing of history, and in our process of giving meaning to history, a thread was missing. 

Ernesto De Martino used this expression to describe the missing link: the thread of the primitive. He believed that it was necessary to take up this thread again in order to recognize its role in history as it had been written, but also in our modern world and societies. For a scholar of social sciences, the incessant re-emergence of primitive, barbaric, and archaic practices in our societies, laws, and institutions constitutes a decisive theme. We meet here even the strong influence of Gramsci on de Martino’s thought.

It would take little effort to show how our discourses often trivialize the presence of irrational thinking in the societies of Italy, Germany, and France. Not all are protected from this re-emergence of irrational terrors and violence, which often has its target in the “.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

De Martino said that not only should this “missing thread” be analyzed historically, but it should also be recognized within our modern societies. An essay from one of De Martino’s most intriguing books, (1962), addresses the threats of witchcraft in 1950s Germany. 

Those pages are valuable, as they depict a German professor knocking on De Martino’s door and bringing him the dossier of a witchcraft trial in Germany, the same Germany that had just come out of another witchcraft, another barbarism. In Italy and around the globe, we have to deal with these shadows, these dark whirlpools of the irrational. From the “” that fueled the 6 January capitol in Washington D.C., to the satanic sects in Italy or in other Western countries, we must recognize that barbarism is something from which we modern humans are not spared.

When we refuse to recognize the presence of the “primitive thread”, and of the barbarism in ourselves, we end up projecting it onto the Other﹣the foreigner﹣ who, for many, continues to embody the negative, the threat, the obscure (bad motherhood, bad families, sexual promiscuity, bad manners…). 

These issues require urgent joint reflection among researchers, intellectuals, and the political class.Unfortunately, this kind of collaboration is largely absent today. In fact, there seemed to be more articulation between the political and intellectual classes in past years. 

Roberta Campani: When did this regression begin? Within the last two decades?

Roberto Beneduce: It began during the late 1980s and the 1990s. At the end of the Cold War, a radical crisis affected both communism and revolutionary theorists. Intellectuals from both spheres were left speechless and without direction. 

The fall of the is a perfect example, as it marked the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a crisis within communism. After the Cold War, many intellectuals failed to find adequate categories to understand the complexities of the advancing times. They ended up overlooking the fact that violence quietly inhabited the core of both the socialist state and the capitalist state.They couldn’t take on the task of re-thinking articulations of power at a sufficient level of complexity. This contributed, at least from the standpoint of intellectuals, to the loss of thrust in the possibility of influencing future political choices. 

Neoliberalism, on the other hand, does not require critical thinking. Neoliberalism needs a subjugated public opinion that believes in an unregulated economy and limitless consumption. A hoard of consumers bends to the image of progress, reaching for the utopian promise of being able to indulge any desire at any moment in time. 

By gently imposing the desire to consume to the point that the current economic model is the only thinkable one, neoliberalism has achieved great success. However, when critical thinking arises, neoliberalism also reacts violently..

Indeed, we see how movements fueled by critical thinking are now often criminalized and repressed (what is happening in France is an exemplary witness of this). The need to decolonize our categories of analysis, and our own desires, the cogent need to invent new models, as Frantz Fanon had already indicated referring to colonial societies, continues to be a priority of our present.

was a Martinican psychiatrist who studied in France. He was active in the liberation front in Algeria and theorized violence as a necessary way out of colonialism. His maintains that “all of us are entitled to moral consideration” and that “no one is dispensable.” Fanon’s assertions about human rights continue to inspire activists and scholars dedicated to social justice today.

Can a population, a country, learn to accept and accommodate this contradiction? How? 

Roberta Campani: Let us return to perceptions of foreigners in Italy. Can we think of something to reconstruct the bond between intellectuals, ordinary citizens, and political figures? Could something similar to South Africa’s be realized?

Roberto Beneduce: Undoubtedly, researchers who do not isolate in laboratories and in their own theoretical models are led to dialogue, listening, and the acceptance of contradiction. This is also what I try to convey to my students. 

Therein also lies the meaning of a discipline such as anthropology. On the one hand, the anthropologist studies these contradictions to bring light to these shadowy areas. On the other hand, a good enough anthropologist does not stop questioning the meaning behind these contradictory trends. Among these issues, the old question arises: Why do disadvantaged groups continue to pursue political projects that often go precisely against their interests and goals for society? 

Many experts theorize that no one is spared from the temptation and the responsibility of violence. Reconciliation is a process, one that cannot be completed in a short time period. It is a process that requires great patience and long-term commitment.

No authentic theoretical reflection could believe that it is possible to complete the complex process of reconciliation in ten years or less. Reconciliation is an infinite process that can facilitate dialogues with even the most beaten-up and belittled groups. Among those who are isolated and marginalized within our social landscape, one finds that the most enlightened figures too often stay silent in the face of such archaic and deeply ingrained social structures. This is what I recorded and understood these past years. 

Contradiction and conflict are part of the reality of every human group of every epoch (this is , which I make my own). When one fails to acknowledge this, the inevitable effect is that the poles of institutional operation, the social, and the intellectual, move further away from one another. This centrifugal dynamic is good for neoliberalism because it allows it to operate with maximum freedom, ignoring the needs of individuals and local communities. 

Consider this example: the dynamic that pits the right to healthcare and nutrition against the need to work to afford basic necessities. Those who want to defend the well-being of the environment in which they live will then often find themselves in conflict with those that just look for work. This fracture, as I observed in my fieldwork, can occur within their own families and communities, because despite their personal beliefs, the need to work and industrialize will always be imperative. 

Neoliberalism plays into this contradiction. We have seen it in Italy in the case of the in Basilicata region of Italy or industry in Taranto. We also see it in Rosignano with the of the Solvay beaches. We saw the same ferocious contradiction in Japan, where Chisso factory gave job opportunities and promoted �progress’ while killing and poisoning land, human beings and animals by mercure as the woefully well-known case of Minamata disease demonstrated. There are an infinite number of situations in which the right to health and ecological well-being is dramatically opposed to the demands of work and industrialization.

This contradiction is a metaphor that can be instructive to other fields as well. For example, if I, as an expert in the reception and integration of immigrants, cannot make it clear to natives that foreigners do not create economic competition for social aid or housing, do not introduce new diseases or political threats, then I have mistaken my discourse, my analysis. 

Another example of these conflicts is the of Romani immigrants in 2018. The establishment of immigrant housing in the area caused entire neighborhoods to explode, with some citizens even resorting to violent actions. Eventually, the immigrants were forced to give up their assigned homes. A typical expression of the struggle between the poor…

The fact that the institutions, experts, and social workers did not foresee these conflicts is shameful. Afterwards, they admitted their powerlessness by allowing these expressions of violence and racism to prevail over the law. This event is one of the darkest images of the defeat when it comes to the law and the principle of coexistence. Housing is needed by everyone, including natives. The fact that virtuous complicity cannot be created among even the most marginal sectors is a huge problem. 

If the choice is between work and health, between environment and salary, we have already failed. If one has to choose between providing housing for a foreign family or for a native family, between two kinds of poor, we have already failed. The weighing of rights against one another is a dichotomous logic that is properly lethal. I have even heard health workers say that “first, our citizens should be treated. Then, and only then, should foreigners receive care.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

To passively accept these drifts is to allow oneself to drift dangerously. Unfortunately, hegemonic discourses help reproduce negative perceptions of the Other. This is certainly a dramatic problem of our time.
edited this piece.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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While Gandhi encouraged India to return to its ancient roots, Nehru embraced industrialization and modernization instead. Nehru’s deputy prime minister, was Gandhian in his approach to politics and economics but practiced realpolitik to unify a nation. During British rule, India had over 500 princely states that had been propped up by its imperial masters as convenient local comprador allies. Patel brought this patchwork of princely states into one political union.

was an Indian Muslim politician known for his endeavors to unite Hindus and Muslims in the early 1900s. By 1935, Jinnah changed colors and came to head the , which increasingly argued for the partition of the country and the creation of a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad led the secular (INC), which made the case for a united India.

Truths, Not Myths, About Pakistan’s Founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah

The two political parties made intermittent efforts to cooperate. However, the Congress Party won the 1937 elections and excluded the Muslim League from the limited government allowed under British rule. Relations between Hindus and Muslims began to deteriorate. From now on, calls for a partition and the creation of a separate Muslim state grew stronger.

, a prominent Muslim poet and philosopher, was one of the first major advocates for partition. Notably, Jinnah originally opposed this idea. Arguably, the exclusionary tactics of the INC forced Jinnah to advocate partition. Some scholars also point to Jinnah’s lust for power that drove him to create a separate state where he would be top dog. The argument for a Muslim state was based on the idea that Muslims in India constituted a separate people and therefore deserved their own nation.

This idea was opposed not only by the top leaders of the Congress Party but also someone who is regarded as the founder of the current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): ookerjee. At the time, this Bengali leader was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha but quit and later formed the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP. Mookerjee was also president of the All India Civil Liberties Conference. He went on to serve as the minister for industry and supply in Nehru’s cabinet. Mookerjee had a strong Hindu identity, opposed the partition and insisted upon India remaining united. 

Tripurdaman Singh and Adeel Hussian have co-authored a landmark book, Nehru: The Debates that Defined India. They examine Nehru’s exchanges with four key colleagues and rivals: Patel, Jinnah, Iqbal and Mookerji. These exchanges provide illuminating insights into the thinking that shaped the modern Indian state – and which continue to influence statecraft, diplomacy and the politics of .

I spoke to Singh about the little-known dimensions of this period of history. We explored Nehru’s  Nehru’s ideologies and how they remain relevant and contentious. Singh explains Nehru’s blunders vis-Ă -vis Pakistan and China as well his wilful ignorance of the problems with Indian secularism. He also observes that Nehru was unaware of the vital role that religion plays in the lives of ordinary Indians. 

We also discussed how Nehru’s challengers have influenced India’s domestic and foreign policy. 

Our conversation also delves into the evolution of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—the parent organization of the BJP—over the decades. 

The transcript has been edited for clarity. Words in brackets are my insertions to provide context and clarity to Singh’s words.

Vikram Zutshi: Your book attempts to understand India’s first prime minister through his debates with four influential figures of the time. To what degree was Nehru able to persuade his colleagues—Mookerji and Patel—to go along with his vision?

Tripurdaman Singh: Nehru was a consummate politician and propagandist, and utilized multiple tools to try and get people to go along with his vision. The threat of resigning, for example, was used regularly – especially with [deputy prime minister Sardar] Patel. By and large, it has to be said that Nehru was quite successful at convincing both [Patel and Mookerji], to fall in line with his vision, often against their own instincts or better judgment. 

Now whether that can be termed “persuasion” depends on how one defines it. Could threatening to resign and destabilize the new government be termed persuasion? I don’t know. But [Nehru] largely got his own way. Of course, Patel acted as a crucial check on Nehru because of his grip on the Congress [Party] organization and his own stature.

Mookerji finally quit, unwilling to continue yoking his political horse to the Nehruvian chariot because he couldn’t go along with Nehru’s vision anymore.

Vikram Zutshi: How do you see the fault-lines reflected in these debates playing out in contemporary India, particularly with regards to the specter of  “Hindu majoritarianism”? Given that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) got only 45% of the vote-share in 2019, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scraped through with only 54% in the recently held Gujarat state election, does majoritarianism really pose a threat to Indian democracy?

Tripurdaman Singh: Westminster-style democracy is majoritarian by its very nature, with a minority of votes being able to deliver crushing legislative majorities. That was precisely the reason it was chosen by India’s founding fathers: it would mostly generate a strong government. 

Of course, [the founding fathers themselves] did not want to share power – or engage in the messy negotiation and compromise that characterizes presidential or proportional representation systems. We don’t stress this enough: India chose [the] First Past the Post (FPTP) [] precisely because it wanted a certain kind of majoritarianism. They simply did not expect that majoritarianism could take a very different turn.

The big question is about what axis the majority is mobilized along. Nehru personally shunned religion, but that did not mean that the Congress did not have its fair share of Hindu nationalists. Until the first election, the right wing in the Congress was still strong enough to thwart Nehru on the issue of the Hindu code bills. Religion was very much alive as a tool of political mobilization, and as a question in political life.

In the context of today, I find the debate with Iqbal particularly relevant because [his]  arguments, even though [they are] made from an Islamic point of view, are being re-deployed with vigor today. Iqbal believed religion alone could produce group solidarity – on which a nation could be built. [He rejected] both secularism and liberalism, as well as the idea of a fusion of communities. Many of the more traditional advocates of would find Iqbal conceptually quite palatable.

100 Years On: Can Hindutva’s Assertiveness Replace Hinduism’s Ahimsa?

Vikram Zutshi: In your view, was there a time when Nehru could have dissuaded Jinnah [from separating from India and establishing Pakistan as an independent Islamic state]? Were there any lost opportunities in the build-up to Partition?

Tripurdaman Singh: The 1930s [were] definitely a lost opportunity. The Motilal Nehru Report’s complete [rejected] Muslim anxiety [when it came to] being dominated by a Hindu majority in any future democracy, [calling it] a â€�baseless fear’. 

Nehru’s torpedoing of the proposed Congress-League coalition in UP in 1937, the belief that the Congress’ crushing victory in the 1937 elections demonstrated that the communal question [of Hindu and Muslim unity] had faded into the background and did not require substantive engagement, the unsuccessful Muslim outreach program mounted by the Congress to stamp out the League by riding on the coattails of the clergy – these were all opportunities lost.

 The only way Nehru could have dissuaded Jinnah [would have been] by agreeing to accept this framing of the communal question – and then agreeing to negotiate a political settlement (with a constitutional settlement to follow). Nehru and most other Congressmen were unwilling to do [this,] lest it legitimizes the League and the demand for Muslim political rights. [British viceroy Archibald] Wavell tried his utmost to force [Nehru and Jinnah] to work together and come to a compromise, but ultimately failed because he was handicapped by London.

Vikram Zutshi: Was Nehru too harsh on Shyama Prasad Mookerji for protesting article 370? Mookerji was ultimately arrested in J&K and died while in prison. What are the highlights of the debate between Mookerji and Nehru, and was there anything that foretold the coming tragedy?

Tripurdaman Singh: [The fact that] Mookerji and Nehru didn’t see eye to eye on major issues is well known. Kashmir, the situation in Bengal, the policy towards Pakistan, the question of civil liberties – there were multiple sites of disagreement. In fact, at one point Nehru even contemplated having Mookerji charged with sedition. So it is somewhat unsurprising that he was harsh towards Mookerji, especially given the fact that he saw Mookerji as a communalist or �hindu nationalist’. As I have argued in both my books, Nehru was a determined wielder of executive power.

The debate between Mookerji and Nehru that I highlighted was on the question of civil liberties and the First Amendment. Mookerji believed – and he was quite correct in this – that the primary reason for �friendly relations with foreign states’ being added as a ground on which the freedom of speech could be restricted was to clamp down on his criticism of the Nehru government’s policy towards Pakistan, of which he was a vocal and searing critic. Nehru [interpreted] such criticism as an attempt to rouse public opinion and force him into military action against Pakistan – something he was disinclined to do.

While there is nothing that really foretells the coming tragedy [of Mookerji’s death], one can see the rancor and bitterness with which the debate is laced, especially from Nehru’s side. It becomes apparent that Nehru did not particularly like Mookerji.

Vikram Zutshi: What did Nehru and Patel disagree on the most, and why did Nehru call him a “communalist”? Many claim that Nehru sidelined Patel because he saw him as a threat. How would Indian history have turned out differently if Patel had ascended to power instead of Nehru?

They disagreed on a fair bit actually, from economic matters and foreign policy to secularism. [To name a few points of contention]: attitudes towards Muslims, the royal princes of India, the , capital and labor, and so on. I’d guess disagreement was probably sharpest on [matters] concerning Muslims, and then perhaps foreign policy. 

“What ifs” are a minefield, we can never really know how things would have turned out. But if I [were] to speculate, several things are likely to have been different. Patel was more pro-capital than Nehru, so it is likely we would have avoided Nehru’s leftward turn [towards socialism]. Economically, that probably would have generated much better outcomes. Politically, we would have been unlikely to throw our lot in with the or pursue �’, our brief alliance with China.

Patel would likely have had a different answer to the Hindu-Muslim conflict as well. In reality, these things – Nehruvian socialism, Nehruvian secularism, Nehruvian foreign policy – were closely intertwined, and a different conception of one would inevitably have led to a different conception of the others.

If we were to go further back, many, including Viceroy Wavell, believed that partition may have been avoided if Nehru and Jinnah were not the key decision makers. But of course all of this is speculation, and tempting as it is to engage in such flights of fancy, we must recognise that history is non-linear and events unpredictable.

Vikram Zutshi: In hindsight, what were Nehru’s biggest blunders as prime minister and how did they affect India’s current relationship with China and Pakistan? How did they affect Hindu-Muslim relations in contemporary India?

Tripurdaman Singh: I’d probably pick two [specific blunders] that I think have constituted, and continue to constitute, a poisoned chalice for [Nehru’s] successors. The first is undoubtedly the inability to solve the Hindu-Muslim [conflict], which has now come to bedevil Indian politics with a renewed ferocity. 

Shaken by partition and constrained by the backlash it generated, Nehru allowed—or perhaps encouraged—Muslims to form political ghettos. [Muslims] were neither encouraged to frame their politics in the language of constitutional freedoms, nor were they given substantive political representation despite being treated as a political category. 

Instead, a pliant Muslim leadership cultivated loyalty to Nehru and planted its flag on the most regressive of cultural rights: , , etc. These defined Muslim politics, and clearly [were] not sustainable [solutions to the conflict].

The second [blunder] would be the passage of the , which I believe dealt a body blow to Indian liberalism and to civil liberties more generally. Perhaps [Nehru] was not cognizant of the fact that he was shaping the outlook and expectations of the office he occupied, and of the institutional order more generally. But the long term consequences have been severe. I delineate [this] story in my book Sixteen Stormy Days.

There were of course [other blunders as well]. [To name a few,] the pursuit of a vainglorious foreign policy that led to the disastrous of 1962, the pursuit of central planning that proved equally disastrous (chronicled excellently by Ashoka Mody in his recent ), [and Nehru’s] embrace of his own role as India’s thaumaturgic personality. [However,] we seem to have gotten over them, to some degree at least. But the Hindu-Muslim [conflict] and [its] debilitating effects on civil liberties are things we are still living with today.

Peace is Possible if India and Pakistan Listen to Each Other’s Stories of Partition

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 by , a physician from the Maharashtra region of India, who was deeply influenced by the writings of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who advocated for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ or Hindu nation.

The RSS is primarily a cultural organization that aims to foster unity among Hindus of all castes and classes. Many leaders from the ruling BJP, including current Prime Minister , have been members of the RSS at some point.

Vikram Zutshi: In your view, has the RSS evolved since its inception? The organization is often dubbed “fascist” and associated with Mussolini, given that its early founders lauded the Italian demagogue. What in your view is different about the new RSS, and has Modi been able to curb the extremist factions of the organization?

Tripurdaman Singh: Of course the RSS has evolved – look at its gradually softening position on homosexuality for example. It hasn’t embraced modernity in totality, but there is definitely change. Others might posit that the RSS is pushing back against the more universal assumptions of modernity and replacing them with [a] more culturally and historically-specific version. But no one would deny that there has been change.

There is little doubt that many early Hindutva figures were inspired by Italian fascism. BS Moonje would be a good example. And of course [these figures] never hid [their fascination with Mussolini and the militarism that he fostered. Many others were also equally fascinated with fascism in the early 1930s. Even as late as 1939 for example, on the eve of the Second World War, [a Nazi party in the USA infamously known as] the , could hold a rally and fill out Madison Square Gardens. In the 1920s and 30s, fascism seemed quite fashionable to a lot of people.

[However, a large portion of] Hindutva ideologies were largely  ignorant of what was really going on behind the scenes, in the same way that many of the left were oblivious to the excesses of Stalinism. All were searching for shortcuts to national regeneration. Some thought they had found [reclamation] in the discipline and militarism of fascism. Others felt that rebirth lay in the perpetual revolution and class war of .

The RSS is not easy to describe or understand from the outside. Unlike Mussolini’s fascists or the Communist Parties under Stalin and Mao, the RSS has a structure of internal debate. More importantly, its affiliates often speak in different voices, making the organization’s viewpoints hard to characterize on a host of issues. It is entirely possible for one political affiliate, like the BJP, to champion something, and another, such as the (BMS) or the (SJM) organization, to oppose it. At one level, this allows for obfuscation. At another, it makes for a much more totalizing Hindutva paradigm, within which these apparently contradictory impulses are to be resolved.

One thing that is definitely different in the RSS compared to the last BJP government, is the attempt to create more substantial intellectual foundations for its broader political project. [The RSS] has always skated on rather thin intellectual ice, and the intellectual output from that stable had previously been extremely meager – for a variety of reasons.

This time, [the RSS] is definitely [making] an attempt to generate intellectual output with the aim of engaging and challenging the paradigms that had come before. [While these efforts are] nowhere near the conservative intellectual traditions in Britain or America, it is a start. We will have to see how far it goes.

Vikram Zutshi: It is claimed that Nehru was clueless about the vital role that religion played in people’s lives, and that his British pedigree was responsible for this blind spot. What is the problem with the idea of secularism as defined by the Indian liberal establishment, and is Rahul Gandhi capable of correcting it?

Tripurdaman Singh: I wouldn’t say [Nehru was] clueless, [but] maybe willfully blind. [He] thought [religion would be eclipsed [by] materialistic and economic [interests, but he was clearly mistaken]. The horrors of partition were a graphic reminder that Nehru had [grossly] miscalculated, and [finally motivated] him to change course as far as Muslims were concerned.

The problem with secularism, as defined by India’s liberal establishment, has consistently been its inability to confront the Hindu-Muslim [conflict] head-on. Instead, [secularism] has found [a way to accommodate] religious enclaves and [bring] religion squarely into the realms of law and politics – the exact opposite of what secularism is supposed to [do]. 

Now this is not to say that [secularism as defined by India’s liberal establishment] was not well-intentioned. It was definitely [proposed as a] method [to allow] different religious groups [to] live with each other. But it was not secularism as the term or its related institutional arrangements are commonly understood – and has not proved to be a durable answer to the Hindu-Muslim question in Indian politics. . 

India’s Secularism Needs Better Interpretation to Retain Relevance

Practically every political leader embraces a public and performative religiosity – it is the greatest acknowledgement of the fact that we are not secular at all. The thing is that we have never been [secular], and we may not need to be. What is important is that [we find] a mechanism [which] allows religious groups to live and work together, and supports a robust and democratic political commons.

Contrary to what many believe, I do think is capable of correcting the mistakes of the previous liberal establishment. He has started by embracing Hindu religiosity, something that a profoundly religious country almost seems to demand of its leaders. To me that seems like the quiet burial of the �secular’ project, and the beginning of the attempt to find ground for a new social settlement. Whether Gandhi can find [both] the intellectual contours of this new settlement and the political capital to sell it, we will have to wait and see.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Launching Into the Lasting (Controversial) Legacy of Nehru appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, RT was taken off air in the US and so was Lee Camp’s show. So explosive were Camp’s revelations that, soon after RT was pulled, YouTube banned his videos globally and Spotify deleted his podcast. Note that Facebook has shadow-banned Camp since 2016. RT gave him unfettered freedom to express his views candidly. Now, American platforms have pushed Camp into the shadows.

Camp has been a biting critic of NATO expansion and American hegemony. So successful was Camp in upending prevailing tropes about the inherent goodness of America that both The New York Times () and National Public Radio ()published hit pieces on him in rapid succession.  

Ironically, the US, which likes to admonish other countries for muzzling dissent, is notorious for punishing those who dare to challenge its political and cultural hegemony. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were both branded as enemies of the state for spilling the beans on the largest illegal mass surveillance program in history. While Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is currently locked up in a dingy cell in Britain’s infamous Belmarsh prison, awaiting extradition to America, Snowden was forced to seek asylum in Russia, where he was recently granted citizenship by President Vladimir Putin.

In a candid and wide-ranging conversation with Camp, we spoke about his relentless activism to unmask the hidden face of the American empire, the origins of the US proxy war in Ukraine, the lies and distortions published in corporate media outlets, the way the CIA has infiltrated major media organizations and American military assistance to 73% of the world’s dictators. Camp responds to accusations of being a “conspiracy theorist,” shares his thoughts on the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s residence, opines on the rise and fall of the petrodollar and claims that asset management firm Black Rock is “the one entity that really owns the world.”

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Vikram Zutshi: A common accusation leveled against journalists like yourself, who regularly speak out against the crimes of the American empire, is that you are assets of the Chinese or Russian deep state. In fact, your show, Redacted Tonight, was hosted on the Russian state channel, Russia Today, later shut down by the US government in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. How do you respond to these charges?

Lee Camp: US media and television is kept carefully within a small Overton window, a small area of acceptable thought. There are no true anti-war voices regularly on US media, no anti-capitalist voices, and no anti-imperialist voices. Therefore, for an anti-war, anti-imperialist comedian/commentator such as myself, there was essentially nowhere one could host a comedy TV show like Redacted Tonight. In 2014, just about the only channel that would allow such a thing was RT America.

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I chose to house my show there because a) I could be unabashedly anti-war and anti-imperialist and b) I was completely uncensored and unrestricted. For the eight years Redacted Tonight lasted, I wrote every word I ever said. I was never told what to say or what not to say. I was not instructed on where to stand or what to believe. Such freedom is completely unheard of on American television.

Not only are news broadcasters and reporters heavily censored — just look at people like Phil Donahue or Chris Hedges being forced out for being anti-war — but even comedians are kept in a small cage. Even back to the days of The Smothers Brothers, comedians were “canceled” for being anti-war. Nowadays, there are essentially no anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist comedians on television. Well, for eight years there was at least one until the US government shut down RT and my show this past March.

So to sum up, if you’re asking why I would air my show on RT America, then you’re really asking why I would want to be free and uncensored. Hopefully the answer to that is pretty obvious.

Zutshi: On August 26, you , “New documents show the US & EU plans to plunder Ukraine have been in the works for years. They plan to sell off public infrastructure, destroy worker rights, and secure massive giveaways to billionaires. Much of this has already begun.” What is the invasion of Ukraine really about in your view and what are these “new documents” you refer to?

Camp: are the documents I refer to. And while this sort of plundering is the standard operating procedure when a country has been “acquired” by the West, that is not the root reason for the proxy war. I have said since day one that I’m opposed to the Russian invasion, but because I’m a thinking adult, I can say that and also realize the US and NATO have been creating this scenario for years. Anyway, the root cause for this proxy war is that the US is a late-stage empire, and the ruling elite believe they own the world. They are not willing to allow the rise of any other large countries.

Economically Russia is not much of a competitor to the US, but if Russia were allowed to align with China, France, Germany, India etc. then US hegemony would very much be at risk. The US ruling class deals with this threat by attempting to chip away pieces of Russia and China and create a wedge between them and the rest of the world. Of course in many ways, this plan is backfiring.

Rather than turning Russia into some sort of failed state, US/NATO actions seem to be speeding up the splitting of the world economies with many states moving beyond the petrodollar. Meanwhile the US has begun to collapse internally as we can see by the fact that the UN’s Office of Sustainable Development now us with Cuba and Bulgaria as a “developing country.” 

Furthermore, the moment the petrodollar is no longer king, the US empire will be over, because without it the US can’t print as much money as we want and still have a powerful currency. The ruling elite realize this and that’s the true reason they have destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Syria and tried to crush Iran and Venezuela. All of those nations were/are outside the petro-dollar and outside the grasp of our central bankers. (Not to mention if humanity is to ever do anything about the climate crisis, step one is to end the petrodollar). 

As it stands now, the most powerful country in the world will do everything it can to make sure oil is still the main energy source of the world – because the power of our currency depends on it.

Zutshi: You have spoken about the CIA’s tentacles spreading far and wide, infiltrating all aspects of public life including Google and social media. It’s been well documented that the US intelligence community is firmly embedded in corporate mainstream media. In this context, how do legacy organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post succeed in projecting themselves as stridently anti-establishment and champions of the underdog?

Camp: Well, it’s all just propaganda, marketing, and branding. The CIA has a long history of being heavily involved in mainstream media. Mockingbird in the 1960s and 1970s involved placing CIA personnel in most mainstream outlets to help control the reporting and slant the coverage. The CIA and the US government pretend all of those shenanigans are long over. However, nowadays they don’t need to do anything secretly. CIA agents and Pentagon officials are regularly interviewed and “consulted” on mainstream media. They are viewed as the final word in truth, when in fact it is their job to lie to the American people (and the world). 

The Washington Post and NYT act as if anything said by the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon or the State Department is the absolute truth. They are not reporters but rather stenographers for the corporate state. Of course this results in wild inaccuracies in their reporting.

Fairly recent fake stories like Russia the Taliban bounties to kill Americans or Cuba using advanced sonic weapons to give US diplomats mild headaches made the “legacy media” look like clowns. Then there are past epic like WMD in Iraq or the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

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The New York Times famously essentially to cover the Holocaust throughout World War II. Even when they covered the liberation of Auschwitz and the horrible acts that took place there, they still failed to mention the victims were Jews. They basically ignored the genocide of the Jewish people. NYT also talked very of Hitler all the way up to the US entrance into World War II. 

Anyway, why are these legacy media outlets still held up as the highest form of journalism? Because that’s what helps the US empire – repeating the lies of the corporate state and attacking those who reveal the truth, such as the piece NYT did on mewhich was filled with lies and misinformation.

Zutshi: Was there a singular incident or series of events that turned you stridently against the American empire and its relentless efforts to preserve and maintain economic and political hegemony at all costs? How do you respond to those who dub you a conspiracy theorist?

Camp.: To answer the last part first, those who call me a conspiracy theorist are either willfully ignorant or trying to defend the status quo at all costs. They clearly don’t want to discuss these subjects in an adult, rational sense. 

You ask when I turned against the American empire, but in fact, I believe I act in support of the truth and in support of freedom for all peoples. If someone is intellectually honest and they support freedom and truth, then they will find that they are opposed to the viewpoint being pushed by the American empire on most events that take place these days.

Empires in general are never built in order to spread equality, justice, and sustainability. They are built out of greed, ego, and hunger for power. For example, a report by the Congressional Research Service found that the US has perpetrated over 250 military over the past 30 years. I think any honest person would be hard-pressed to find one of these interventions that is motivated purely by a need to help others or defend human rights. Sure, those types of things sound nice when printed in The New York Times, but they’re never the truth.

With every US military intervention (and even with all of our economic sanctions), the true motivation is always power, wealth, and resources. One can see proof that the US does not care even remotely about human rights in the fact that our country gives military to 73% of the world’s dictators. 

Zutshi: You recently stated that the asset management firm Blackrock is the one entity that “really owns the world.” It’s a sensational claim but one that begs further enquiry. Tell us more about your investigations into Blackrock.

Camp: I’m certainly not the first to cover this, but BlackRock has over $9 trillion in , which is more than the GDP of every country except the US and China. To put $9 trillion in perspective, if you make $40,000 a year after taxes, in order to make $9 trillion, it would take you 225 million years. That’s not a typo.

And you won’t be surprised to hear that BlackRock does not generally use their insane wealth for good. They are one of the largest investors in weapons contractors, fossil fuels, and deforestation. They also are the one of the top stakeholders in every major media company in the US,so they can control the message. This is one of the reasons you hear so little about BlackRock. They don’t really want people talking about them, and they exert massive control over American media. They are also one of the top stakeholders in most big banks, including many outside the US. 

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Anyway, long story short, it’s tough to overstate the amount of control BlackRock has. No person or company should have anywhere near that amount of wealth and power. 

Zutshi: What is the truth behind the unprecedented FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence? Does Trump have the goods on Biden, Obama, Hillary and the intel community as some are saying?

Camp: No. I don’t think he has anything on them. Keep in mind I don’t support either of the main parties, which are really just one party representing only corporate America. The raid on Trump’s residence – and all other legal attacks against him right now, whether legitimate or not – are all meant to stop him from running (and winning) in 2024.

Trump represents a rift in the elite ruling class, who don’t actually care about the terms “Democrat” or “Republican.” The ruling class wants to continue American hegemony and continue the bonanza of wealth they’ve enjoyed. A certain percentage of them support Trump because he oversaw one of the largest transfers of wealth to the top percentile ever, along with a massive tax break for the wealthiest Americans. But a larger percentage of the ruling class don’t support Trump because he’s not a good CEO for America. He says things out loud that are meant to be government secrets. He alienates allies and befriends “enemies.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

Zutshi: Finally, do you see the American empire unravel as the dollar ceases to be the global currency standard and more and more nations begin transacting in their national currencies? Is there likely to be a new “rules-based order”, one that is not dependent on the NATO agenda?

Camp: Yes, the writing is on the wall for the American empire. It is in its last years, which could mean decades, and there are two or three ways America can deal with that decline. Accept it and transfer into a sustainable, mostly happy country that does not control the world but also does not have as much Ponzi scheme wealth for corporate America. Or use all military might to maintain control, thereby precipitating some sort of horrific nuclear war, which the proxy war in Ukraine has put us on the cusp of.

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Waning empires can shrink and not collapse, the way Britain has done, though not without hundreds of years of trouble. But waning empires can also collapse into a horrific kind of fascism. Right now the US seems to be racing towards the later choice. 

But another aspect that people should take into account is climate change. Climate catastrophe is putting all of this on steroids. And the end of the American empire and the climate crisis are inexorably linked in a way that most people are not talking about. I mentioned this in an earlier question.

When the US left the gold standard, we created the petrodollar to make sure our currency would still be incredibly powerful. We made a deal with Saudi Arabia that all oil sales would be in dollars and then all the other OPEC countries joined on. So in order for the US to maintain hegemony, the world must keep selling/buying oil in US dollars.

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The moment oil is no longer king and green energy takes over or the moment oil sales switch to other currencies, the US piggy bank will collapse. So unfortunately this means the most powerful country in the world has a very strong vested interest in making sure oil is the world’s main energy source. Therefore, the most powerful country in the world demands that climate change because of fossil fuel use continues unabated. It’s horrifying. And it honestly amazes me so few are talking about it. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post You are Free (Except to Speak Truth to Power) in America appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The Cold War may be a thing of the past, but the practice of using romance and sex as tools of extortion and blackmail is still flourishing the world over. The #MeToo movement that started as a chorus of feminist indignation mobilizing long-suppressed grievances has also been frequently deployed as a weapon to bludgeon men into silence or, worse, milk them for all they are worth. 

In India, Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a journalist and documentary filmmaker, has been hot on the trail of duplicitous women. Some of them work in groups, regularly blackmailing gullible males into parting with large sums of money after sleeping with them. Their victims are usually married and hold a respectable place in society, making them easy targets for extortion.

Bhardwaj is known for speaking out against the rampant misuse of India’s gender laws, especially section 376 of the 1860-vintage Indian Penal Code (IPC) that addresses rape and sexual violence. Sections 489A and 354 deal with domestic abuse and sexual harassment respectively. The journalist observes, “Increasingly, men in India are becoming victims of systematic abuse through gender-biased laws. Laws where their innocence doesn’t matter, where they are presumed guilty and where a mere verbal accusation by a woman them a puppet in the hands of police and judiciary for years to come.”

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Indeed, the on gender-based violence gathered by India’s National Crime Records Bureau is very revealing. Of the 120,306 total arrests under section 498A in the year 2020, 96,497 were men and a whopping 23,809 of the arrested were women. There are increasing reports of women who, after a few years of marriage, file false cases of domestic abuse in the hopes of winning large settlements. Subsequently the family is summoned and forced to settle the case by paying large amounts of money. Up to 75% of cases are withdrawn because it emerges that the purported victims are exploiting the law. This can only the credibility of genuine survivors of abuse and domestic violence.

I spoke to Bhardwaj about some of the most disturbing cases she has come across, including that of the woman who filed nine rape cases against nine different men at nine different police stations within one year — all in one city, Gurgaon. The journalist told me about the men who have committed suicide because of shame after they were falsely accused of rape. Bhardwaj also revealed the gaslighting and professional sabotage she experienced at the hands of many feminists. She has also shared her views on the hotbutton topic of marital rape and measures that the government could implement to address the misuse of biased gender laws.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Vikram Zutshi: You deliver a perspective on gender rights seldom seen in the media, highlighting both male and female victims of fraud, abuse and extortion. What are some of the most disturbing and unique stories you have covered?  

Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj: The most disheartening story I have covered to date is that of the late Arvind Bharti, which I have covered in my upcoming documentary, India’s Sons. Arvind was first forced into marriage by a woman who threatened to file a rape case against him. He married her and thought life would be smooth but she filed a false dowry case against him within a year of their marriage. Arvind fought those cases for eight  years, studied law to defend himself properly and when he won the cases finally, he still had to settle because the woman wouldn’t let him be. It was traumatizing for Arvind because he had a daughter too from this marriage. But he had to give up on his daughter because of his wife’s constant cruelty. Eventually Arvind got divorced and wanted to move on, but his estranged wife kept defaming him everywhere he went — at his office and his study centers.

She got him thrown out of his job and eventually got him booked under a false rape charge after getting him beaten up brutally and confining him for three days. Arvind was jailed for 15 days. This broke him deep inside. Eventually Arvind ended his life leaving a 26-page suicide note detailing the torture he went through for decades, and writing about how the laws are extremely favorable to women. I  reported on the case, and stood with his family. Eventually, after several campaigns, the woman was arrested for abetment of his suicide.

The most unique story I have covered is that of Ayushi Bhatia who filed nine rape cases on nine different men at nine different police stations within one year – all in one city, Gurgaon. I exposed this girl, which eventually led to her arrest for filing false cases, criminal intimidation, extortion and blackmail. After that exposĂ©, people from across India contacted me writing about women who are filing false rape cases.

I exposed another such woman, Sonia Keswani from Jabalpur, who has filed six rape cases against five different men in the city of Jabalpur over a span of six years. She filed a rape case on the first man she implicated, got married to him and then filed dowry, domestic violence and rape cases against him again. After this, from 2021 to July 2022, she filed four more rape cases against four other different men. 

In both these cases, while Ayushi and Sonia were both married, they kept filing rape cases on other men, claiming they were raped on a false promise of marriage. In my opinion, these two cases highlight how rape laws are being brazenly misused in our country today.

There are several cases I have brought to light involving suicide by men after they were falsly accused of raping a woman. Some of these names include Awadhesh Yadav, Manoj Kumar, Arvind Bharti, Amit Kumar and Rahul Agarwal.

Zutshi: Your film India’s Sons delves into a bizarre tale of deception and fraud set in Jaipur. Tell us about how the legal system was misused by its practitioners to entrap a number of unwitting men. 

Bhardwaj: India’s Sons is about the lives of men who were falsely accused of rape but then were honorably acquitted by the court after years of trial. By then, their lives were totally destroyed by the case. Justice Nivedita Anil Sharma from Delhi once asked, “If the woman who files a rape case is immediately called a rape survivor, then why shouldn’t we call men who are honorably acquitted in these cases after being falsely accused, as “Rape Case Survivors.” This is what forms the tag line of the documentary as well: The Tale of False Rape Case Survivors.

One of the cases discussed in the documentary is that of a honeytrap racket busted in Jaipur by the special operations group of Rajasthan Police. About 44 people including high court lawyers, policemen, two dozen women and others pretending to be journalists were arrested during this phase. These people did a recce of high net worth men, especially those who were married. They sent women to lure them into sexual relationships, gathered evidence of these relationships and then threatened to register rape cases against these men. They made about three million dollars, a whopping 24-25 crore rupees. This racket operated nonchalantly for about three years until it was busted.

I am in Jaipur right now for the screening of my documentary film and, even today, the anti-corruption bureau has arrested a few policemen and advocates for extorting money from a man accused of rape. In all such cases, the legal system has taken for granted that whatever the woman states is gospel truth. No investigation is conducted and, almost always, even if it is found that the woman has lodged cases falsely, she is not punished. In the honeytrap racket, these women casually changed their statements and turned hostile after receiving money from the accused. The legal system ignored such dubious actions and so did the law enforcement authorities.

Zutshi: Do you consider yourself a feminist in the modern meaning of the term? How have India’s usually hyper-vocal feminists responded to your work? 

Bhardwaj: Personally, I am unable to identify myself as a feminist in the way that the term is used in the modern era. More often than not, hyper-vocal feminists have this innate hate for men which I find very annoying. For them, this entire world is against women, and anyone who doesn’t speak their language is a misogynist.

Equal rights and opportunities for all is an absolutely wonderful thought and, even today, there are women and girls who are disadvantaged and need the support from society to realize their true potential. Having said that, life isn’t a cakewalk for every man out there either. They too have their own struggles, challenges, and now even face discrimination especially because of one-sided laws that need to be addressed. But anyone talking about men suddenly becomes an enemy of feminists.

There are many feminists who have attacked my work. One of them started a petition to Netflix, when my documentary was released, to take it off the air. Another one wrote to the organizers of a TEDx talk I was invited to, demanding not to allow me to speak. In contrast, I have received standing ovations at several events. Time and again, I get abused on social media by feminist warriors who often describe me as a “pick me woman”, “misogynist”, “traitor”, and much worse terms, which I can not mention here. However, it no longer impacts me . I can safely say that I have thousands of women supporting my work, and they actively recognise the need for someone to speak up for these men who are also suffering.

Zutshi: What do you think of the proposed marital rape legislation that is currently a hot topic of debate on social media? 

Bhardwaj: This is an extensive topic of debate. I would ask  you to check out my video on this issue, which details my reservations on the proposed marital rape legislation.

To sum the video up, we already have laws that address sexual abuse within marriage. If the current exception in the existing rape laws were to be removed, almost every matrimonial dispute could result in rape charges against the husband. We are already witnessing thousands of unsubstantiated allegations of unnatural sex that is illegal under section 377 of the IPC. These cases will eventually end in settlements whereby the husband will be asked to shell out significant sums of money to save himself. Certain countries have already instituted special provisions against marital rape. Most of these countries have a gender-neutral law, but in India, it would be rendered as yet another weapon in the hands of wives. 

Zutshi: In your opinion, what are the steps that can be taken to address the misuse of section 376 of the IPS on rape and sexual harassment? 

Bhardwaj: The courts should give credence to fair and impartial investigations. They must value evidence, not mere verbal allegations made by women. This could go a long way in addressing the misuse of section 376. Currently, the courts are not punishing women who misuse section 376 to victimize men. Judges need to penalize women who make false allegations of rape. Only then will the misuse cease.

In addition, I think the lawmakers need to differentiate between cases of sexual assault and those that involve false claims of a promise of marriage because they do not belong to the same category. Currently, all men accused of a promise to marry are thrown into jail. Even if it later transpires that no promise of marriage was made and, consequently, the sex was consensual and not rape, the accused has already enormously suffered. The time in jail and the loss of reputation can often drive such men to suicide. The system is not working and must change.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Shining the Light on the Great Indian Honey Trap appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Táíwò is a noted scholar and a provocative thinker. His views can be controversial. He says: “A lot of the decolonization movement is complete nonsense, it’s totally irrelevant. And I use very strong language because these people are causing a lot of damage in the continent.”

It is for this reason Táíwò fights back against the movement that spurred “Rhodes Must Fall’ and called for colonial reparations. Before this interview, he had just returned from Nigeria where his mother passed away but Táíwò says he’s keen to take his mind off his loss. And while he starts off gently, his appeals become more impassioned as he warms to his theme.

°Őáí·Éò’s , Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously, prompted a FO° Live discussion on June 28 earlier this year: In 2022, Can and Does Africa Determine Its Own Destiny?

°Őáí·Éò’s book has now been recommended by The Financial Times. As per this venerable British newspaper, the book “makes a powerful case for how Africans can get out of their malaise: not by being trapped in a psychological state of victimhood, but by reclaiming their agency.”

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Claire Price: Agency is a big theme of your book – how do you define it?

OlĂşfáşąĚ�mi Táíwò: One of the central tenants of modernity is the idea of the self. That’s the agency that I’m talking about – that the individual is the author of her or his life script. Many of us are messed up and write very terrible scripts for ourselves but however we write it, what is important is that we own it. The colonialists substituted themselves for the agency of the colonized. While that lasted, the colonized didn’t give up their agency – they kept on contesting the power and authority of the colonizers. But much of the decolonising literature does not take seriously this agency of the African. And by making it seem as if colonialism is the axis on which to plot Africa’s entire phenomenon is just wrong.

Price: Do you feel that many African writers deny their own agency by blaming colonialism for their problems?

°Őáí·Éò: Much of the decolonising literature, not African writers but decolonising literature, is vested in that. But the fact that we can’t blame colonialism for everything does not mean we can’t blame colonialism for anything.

Price:  Have you faced criticism that you underplay the impact of colonialism?

°Őáí·Éò: Unfortunately no, I haven’t faced criticism.

Price: Is that fortunately or unfortunately?

°Őáí·Éò: Unfortunately! Who knows, in this book, I might get some people’s goat and they might challenge it. But previously, it was thought that colonialism brought modernity to Africa. I argued in my first book that modernity was introduced to Africa by the missionaries and that those ideas were stifled by colonialism. And 12 years since its publication, no-one has challenged this thesis. That’s not a boast, it’s just the honest truth.

Price: I’m going to go through a few things that people blame colonialism for. First, borders. Isn’t the decolonisation movement right to blame Europeans for drawing up arbitrary borders and causing all sorts of trouble?

°Őáí·Éò: I have argued in the book that it’s been 60 years now that most of Africa has been independent. If Africans don’t like their borders, they could do something about them. Those borders are not sacrosanct – look at Eritrea, Sudan and the secessionist movements in Cameroon. There is no country in the world that is natural, all borders are artificial. In fact, most of the world’s countries are multinational states. Just look at the United Kingdom and Russia.

Price: The second charge is tribal conflict, which people claim was exacerbated by the colonizers’ divide and rule policy. We can see how that played out in the recent Kenyan elections.

°Őáí·Éò: First, you need to get rid of that terminology. There are no tribes. That’s straight out of racist colonial anthropology. You don’t look to the national group that I belong to and call it a tribe. It’s global, it’s multi-ethnic, there are a lot of different dialects with regional variations. It has a civilization that dates back at least one thousand years.

When Europe was making the transition to modernity and the feudal structure was being broken up, they migrated to cities under their tribal affiliations. As capitalism grew, they started organizing themselves according to guilds and that was the start of the trade union movement. Africans wanted to do the same under the colonial movement – but the colonial authorities pre-empted them and insisted that Africans organized themselves by tribal unions.

Price: So they can be blamed?

°Őáí·Éò: Yes, they could be blamed for exacerbating tensions but some Africans have tried to craft different identities since independence – and some of their experiments have succeeded. For example, you don’t have those tensions in Tanzania, which is made up of various ethnic and national groups. That’s not the way they organize their elections. Even when you talk about Zanzibar, those tensions are religious rather than ethnic. And in Senegal, everybody now speaks Wolof – we’re seeing the Wolofisation of Senegal.

Claire:  You’ve talked about languages there. Can African thinkers be truly “decolonized” if they write in English or French?

°Őáí·Éò: Why do people assume that you cannot domesticate a language? We live in a world of several Englishes. I work in the US and I went to school in Canada and they don’t speak the same English. And they are not the same as UK English. Why are Indians celebrated for calibrating English in their own way and Africans are treated as if they are still minions. It doesn’t make sense.

That’s the reason why a lot of the decolonisation movement is complete nonsense, it’s totally irrelevant. And I use very strong language because these people are causing a lot of damage in the continent.

English did not just come with colonialism. Africans have been writing in English since 1769. Formal colonialism did not come to West Africa until 1865. Do you want to throw away 100 years of history?

And who insisted that Africans should speak their own indigenous languages and only speak enough English to service the colonial machine? The colonizers!

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Price: Ethiopian American academic Adom Getachew has said that: “Acknowledging that colonial history shapes the current inequalities and hierarchies that structure the world sets the stage for the next one: reparations and restitution.” What are your thoughts on that?

°Őáí·Éò: Honestly, I don’t touch that. And the reason why is a very simple one. There’s a reparations movement for those who were forcibly brought to the Americas, which was later expanded to include reparations for colonial rule. People need to separate the two.

As an African immigrant to the United States, I cannot be part of the reparation movement for black people in this country because there’s no basis for it. If I come from West Africa; a country like Nigeria, Ghana or Sierra Leone, from which many people were shipped off as slaves, I need to do some very serious genealogy. Because if I’m from one of those families that profited from it, I should be paying reparations! We need to take history very seriously.

The idea that people went in and kidnapped people – yes that’s how it started but eventually a market was created. Willing buyer, willing seller. Unfortunately, we’re still making the same deals. If we say we were coerced then and we’re still being coerced now, then we’re permanent children.

In 50 years, maybe our grandchildren will be asking the Chinese for reparations for what they’re doing in Africa right now. And that’s the fault of the Chinese? No, I’m sorry. We need to have internal debates about this. We should not pretend that Africans are victims all along.

Price: Why do these ideas matter?

°Őáí·Éò: As I did my research for this book, I said wait a minute, is this what people are peddling about pre-colonial history? Are you suggesting that how life was led in Africa in 15^th century was the same as in the 19^th century?

The kind of granular engagement with the complexity of life and thought in different parts of Africa is being effaced on a daily basis. That cannot be good for the future of scholarship about the African continent. That for me is not just a disservice, it’s really bordering on the criminal.

I’m sorry that I have to speak in very strong terms. This is not a divergence, it’s not academic. It’s about how Africa is going to deliver for its citizens. These are ideas that go to the heart of human dignity.

I don’t see the decolonisation movement getting into all that. It’s all about chasing slights. Not slights for ordinary people but for academics.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post High Time for Africans to Reclaim Their Agency appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

For the last 70 years, Tibet has been under China’s thumb even as Hollywood stars swoon at the Dalai Lama’s feet. Many people think of Tibet as a separate nation with a definable history and a specific cultural identity symbolized by the Dalai Lama. Many are unaware of Tibet’s integration into China and its political subjugation by Beijing. In September 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear that Tibet was an integral part of China’s “impregnable fortress” as he decried the heresy of “splittism.” The fate of Tibet shines light on a key issue: can political entities bordering a hegemon exercise sovereignty?

We are living in a world where the 1945 postwar order is ending. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been followed by a bloody war between its two biggest successor states. Oil prices are soaring and inflation is skyrocketing. Fertilizers and food are in short supply because the two big exporters Russia and Ukraine are at war. So, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and many other countries could soon be short of bread, if not oil. 

As the current world order breaks down, what will emerge in its place? Will we see a more fragmented world with regional hegemons competing in their spheres of influence? Or will we see a more multipolar world where dispersed power centers will realize there is no way to survive other than mutual respect and creative collaboration?

I spoke to writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue on a range of issues, spanning from his experience as a Tibetan in India to the state of our modern world. 

The transcript has been edited for clarity. Words in brackets are my insertions to provide context and clarity to Tsundue’s words.

Roberta Campani: How do the Tibetans live in India? 

Tenzin Tsundue: There are about 100,000 Tibetan refugees in India, of which three generations are represented: those who left Tibet (as Tsundue’s parents did), their children who are now adults (like Tsundue) and a third generation (children of Tsundue’s generation) who no longer have direct ties to Tibet. There’s also another group, those who came out of Tibet later on, in the early 2000s and up to 2009 and then it became almost impossible to get out of occupied Tibet. There’s a law in India as per which someone who was born prior to in the country is a citizen regardless of the origin of their parents. (Yet most Tibetans have not applied for citizenship to avoid weakening the Free Tibet Movement.) Like other refugees, Tibetans cannot own property nor vote. In fact, Tibetans don’t even have refugee status because India, like most modern nations, does not recognize Tibet as a state or country. 

We are considered foreigners, we have to get a document that lasts one year. This makes it hard to plan long-term, build a house or start a family. Some can get the document extended for five years. But it is hard not to have any stability. On the other hand, the positive side of this situation is that it maintains the impetus to keep working towards going back to our homeland.

Even if India granted us 43 settlements where we have built farms, hospitals, and schools where we are self-subsistent, this was a lot of work. And now the young go to cities and have jobs in IT.

Tibet is known for being the home country of Tenzin Gyatso, now known as the Dalai Lama. He is recognized both as a spiritual and political leader. In 2011, the Dalai Lama gave up his political role and passed it on to the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). 

The CTA was formed in 1959. Some consider it a government in exile. The Dalai Lama’s handing over power to the CTA is historic. He wants Tibetans and Tibet to function democratically. The Sikyong, a figure analogous to a prime minister, and a parliament is elected every five years. 

Apart from 100,000 Tibetans in India, there are another 50,000 in other countries. All of them can elect members of the parliament and participate in activities of the CTA.

Roberta Campani: What can this impetus achieve given the current situation in China?

Tenzin Tsundue: China looks at Tibetan culture and religion as the biggest obstacle to assimilation. The Chinese want to homogenize Tibet and reduce it into Beijing’s backyard. They see that Tibetans are united over their cause. They are also united with Tibetans in exile.

Tibetan culture is very different from Chinese culture. China believes in bombing mountains, making money out of Tibetan minerals and resources, and damming rivers. In contrast, Tibetans believe that there are gods and goddesses in the mountains, and they are sacred for our living. Our environment is not to serve us. We are part of the environment. Philosophically, we look at land and resources very differently from the Chinese. They also look at people as resources to make them do cheap labor and make money for the capitalists. That is not how we look at life. Tibetan nomads and farmers are “rehabilitated” in reservations, kind of artificial villages so they lose touch and connection with their own land.

Tibet lies north of the Himalayas. It is a large high-altitude plateau inhabited largely by Buddhists who brave bitter winters and lead largely simple lives. Known as the roof of the world, historians speak of a geographical Tibet and a political Tibet. There is also a cultural Tibet associated with meditation, spirituality, esoteric practices, mystique and, in our Hollywoodish times, personified by the beatific Dalai Lama.

In May 1951, the Dalai Lama’s envoys were forced to sign a Seventeen Point Agreement with the Chinese. For the first time, an agreement formally recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. This agreement, though, was signed to avoid a brutal military invasion by the Chinese. Beijing has always claimed Tibet to be an autonomous region belonging to the Chinese nation.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims that it has brought progress to benighted and feudal Tibet. The CCP says that it has bettered the lives of ordinary Tibetans by bringing modern technology and economic growth. The question arises whether this progress was worth it given the decimation of Tibetan culture and the destruction of Tibet’s once pristine environment.

Roberta Campani: Can you give us some background about what brought the situation to this point?

Tenzin Tsundue: Tibet had been a free and independent country right from the beginning until China’s invasion in 1951. What is called the western romanticization of Shangri-La is Tibet — 2.5 million square kilometers of land, geographically the biggest and highest plateau in the world. Tibetans have lived in isolation, untouched by western influences  — they have hardly had any relationship with many other countries. Of course, Tibet had relationships with Mongolia in the north, China in the east, India to the south and by extension with other South Asian countries, like Nepal, Burma, Bhutan and Pakistan. And that’s how Tibet lived as an independent country for all these thousands of years. 

And this isolation has also created this very unique language, culture, and identity. In the last 2,000 years, we have received Buddhism from India. It wasn’t Tibetan, it came from India and today, we are keeping that and Buddhism has become the primary identity for Tibetan people. And that’s how we have lived as a free and independent country and that is still existing today.

The Tibetans inside Tibet that are fighting the Chinese attempt to 1. homogenize, and 2. to use Tibet as a colony, which the Chinese mine and make money off. The reason why Tibetans have not been co-opted by Chinese mining and industrialization is because Tibetans have a very different idea of natural resources and the environment and that is a part of Tibetan identity. We look at nature as a larger universe where human beings are part of. We are servants to nature.

This identity comes from a much larger picture of the Tibetan civilization. That civilization, what we are getting to see, is something many countries have lost. We have not. Our Tibetans in Tibet still believe that the country is more important than the people. We are part of the environment. So the continuity of tradition that we are seeing resists the damming of rivers, mining for resources and clear felling of trees in order to make money through all the cheap made in China products.

China is mining and taking all of these natural resources —  lithium, copper, and gold — to make cheap products for the world. See, how China looks at natural resources is very different to Tibet. The China that is emerging today is not even the China of Deng Xiaoping or of Mao Zedong. China has completed a cultural revolution in so many different phases. So many times, China has completely changed. Tibet may have modernized in different ways, but as a civilization, we are continuous.

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Roberta Campani: It seems that this view makes even more sense now that we have climate issues: how could your experience be made useful for the world in general?

Tenzin Tsundue: I don’t want to be condescending by saying we have the best ideas for the world to copy. We will continue our religion, our culture, we have our very unique civilizational beliefs, and if the world, if the international community see that this is of value, they will anyhow take it. 

Roberta Campani: Do you think there is something positive in the “common prosperity” doctrine that China has brought forward these past few years? In particular, if we consider that inequalities and the wider income gap are creating discontent in most of the traditionally democratic countries. 

Tenzin Tsundue: You and I know it very well, it’s all optics. It’s what political parties create to fulfill their own self-interest, like Trump tried to create something for America while pursuing his own interest and Biden is now trying to do that today. The same goes for the propaganda war between Zelensky and Putin. All these optics are for consumption and you cannot just blindly consume that. When China says that it is creating a more equal society by getting rid of the gap between the rich and the poor, we understand it very well. These are political agendas and not social services. 

And as I said earlier, homogenization means that China already has what it calls the Chinese identity and Beijing is trying to impose that on the rest of the people. Homogenization does not mean there is no culture. There is a culture but it’s the majority culture that they are trying to impose on the minorities or the people that are living under China’s occupation. That is homogenization and this is the biggest threat that is happening in Eastern Turkestan, southern Mongolia, and in Manchuria. And the same thing is happening in Hong Kong.

And there is a threat that China may physically, and militarily invade Taiwan in the future. So this homogenization is the main factor why Hong Kong didn’t want to become completely Chinese because the Hong Kong people have their own identity, a social and a cultural tradition there. And they say “we are not like the Chinese in mainland China.” So you see, the Hong Kong people resist because they don’t want to homogenize. They don’t want to be turned into a Chinese backyard.

Of course, physically, Hong Kong is a part of the People’s Republic of China. Still, they have lived separately for almost one or two hundred years. They have their ideas, identity, ways of living, and culture. It’s much more vibrant and democratic there. Now, they are being homogenized. And the international community did not care much about losing Hong Kong.

Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong are not legally recognized as sovereign states. Therefore, other states and the so-called international community cannot take a clear position on them. However, these three geographical and political entities are increasingly in the news.

According to Professor , “Tibet has been an international issue since the 1950s but no serious attempt has been made to address this problem on the main pretext that the status of Tibet was not clear. The lack of clarity on the status of Tibet is not just because of manipulation by the Chinese. The major contributing factor, in fact, was Tibet’s own failure to move along with the tide of the change that was sweeping the world in the 20^th ł¦±đ˛ÔłŮłÜ°ů˛â.”

As per , lawyer and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton:  “From a legal standpoint, Tibet has to this day not lost its statehood. It is an independent state under illegal occupation.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č; 

Roberta Campani: What are your thoughts about how the situation could unfold for Tibet? 

Tenzin Tsundue: Today there are many possibilities. I think that the 63 years of exile experience have given us enough sense of resilience and understanding of the world’s political scenario and our own existence. The early shock we got after coming out of Tibet to the outside world where there were already so many scientific advances. For example, when my parents came to India, they were unable to understand what is a bus, what is a car and what is a train. From there we have come to a situation where the third generation is working in IT companies in India. 

So you see this fast-forward advance and experience has given us the understanding that ultimately our freedom struggle is something we have to do ourselves. And we have created enough cultural resistance and even resilience that even if no one helps us today we are still able to maintain our resistance and we’ll come to a point when China collapses we will go back to our country and we will re-establish a free, independent, democratic Tibet. This much confidence is what we have now.

Today, the Tibetan issue is not isolated. More than ever, the issue of the Dalai Lama, who is the reincarnation (of his predecessor), is now more useful to the United States, to the European countries and to India because China has now evolved from a communist country to an industrial nation and a superpower. China is today a threat to the western countries, India, and many other countries that need to tackle China. Now, we have to work with these other countries that might find the issues of Tibet useful to their causes.

Roberta Campani: How could this happen?

Tenzin Tsundue: Look, when we were protesting in 2008, we were saying that China is killing Tibetans and that there is a genocide happening in Tibet, no one cared. Everyone went to participate in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

This year too, in 2022, when the Winter Olympics are happening, suddenly the United States realizes that there are human rights issues with China. That does not mean that they did not know about human rights violations in Tibet and East Turkestan in 2008. This year, 15 countries boycotted — a diplomatic boycott —  these countries are now finding these issues useful for them against China.

This is the understanding we are now getting as Tibetan refugees. Earlier, Tibetans were nothing —  oh, these are just nice, good, goodie people — and the Dalai Lama is non-violent. Now they find the issue of Tibet politically useful. So, how do we have to position ourselves with countries that want to deal with China differently? Are we able to do it? Perhaps, we can even work with China’s pro-democracy activists who would want to see their country as a democracy.

Tibet: A Nonviolent History of War

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Roberta Campani: Are you in touch with people in China who want democracy? 

Tenzin Tsundue: Of course, we are in touch with them but they were themselves persecuted in China and they are now living in foreign countries. 

Roberta Campani: How could this experience that has given you and the Tibetan communities skills and consciousness be helpful? How can you use that experience to raise awareness about other refugees, as it’s a problem all over the world?

Tenzin Tsundue: It is not that the West doesn’t know. It is pretending not to know because its interests up until today have been more into trading with China and not with promoting human rights. We are very well aware of this. As much as we would like to work with western countries on human rights and democracy in China and also freedom for Tibet, we are also aware that the West may be using Tibet today. We would like to work with western countries for democracy in China and freedom in Tibet. 

Roberta Campani: Do you know there is a fascination with Tibetan culture that is actually not so well known?

Tenzin Tsundue: I am not surprised. The consumerism that has taken over the world has, in a way, homogenized entire production units that have centered on easy production. This has come about with big international corporate companies as producers and the rest of the people are just consumers. This model is a danger to the environment and also to human civilization. (That is why there may be a fascination for Tibetan culture.)

Roberta Campani: What is the mission or role that you have chosen? 

Tenzin Tsundue: I am a small activist based here in India. The role I have assigned to myself is that of a writer, I look at certain changing aspects in the Tibetan community, culturally and emotionally, and I write about these aspects. Also, as an activist, an important part of my role is to keep the freedom struggle going, maintaining the restlessness in the movement. And also come up with new ideas on how to deal with the changing political situation in the world and how to guard against certain threats, and, at the same time, look at opportunities that might appear.

So, mine is a very small role. Still, I see it in the larger picture. There is the Tibetan government in exile, there is His Holiness the Dalai Lama, there are members of parliament, there are many other leaders, and as an activist and as a writer, I also play my small role. But in the larger picture, I see that the Tibetan freedom movement up until now has been inspiring both for the international community and us because we have maintained nonviolence as the main thrust of our movement led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. 

This has inspired many individuals, people in the West, in India and in many other places. They say that this is one peaceful community and a movement that they would like to support, and of course, we have a huge number of sympathizers and supporters, which is how we have maintained the health of the movement. We are hopeful that we will be able to carry on in this way, and when the opportune moment comes about, we can recreate Tibet as a free and independent state and a democracy. 

Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

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Roberta Campani: How could this happen? 

Tenzin Tsundue: There are three important factors. 

First and the most important are the Tibetan people themselves. As long as we don’t give up, there is always a chance for us to gain freedom. And if we do give up, no matter even if the entire world comes together to support us, there is no cause to support! 

So finally, the ultimate goal, the ultimate authority over the Tibetan freedom movement, is the Tibetan people. This is the most important fact. 

The second factor is China, because it is China who, without any provocation, entered Tibet, plundered Tibet, captured Tibet and, for the past 70 years, China has been maintaining a military occupation of Tibet. There should be a new kind of understanding within China. The Chinese must completely change the way they run their government and reform their entire structure. They are no longer able to maintain the occupation of Tibet.

China’s superpower status comes from how western countries use the country as an industrial factory floor to make cheap “Made in China” products and ship them to the West. That is how the West created China and made it into a monster. Until 1971, China was not even a member of the United Nations. And American intervention replaced Taiwan with China in the UN. That is how China became a permanent Security Council member at the UN and a superpower. Now, China is trying to throw out the United States from the United Nations. 

(So, China will not continue to be the workshop of the world and occupy Tibet forever.)

The third factor is how China is going to maintain its relationships with western countries, and, with that, what are the changes that are about to come about. We have seen in the past two years during the pandemic how the West has started to behave very differently towards China. Issues of human rights are coming out for the first time and the western relationship with China is changing. And I think this relationship will undergo dramatic changes in the next five years. All these things will throw up lots of opportunities for us.

Roberta Campani: Thank you! Are you still hopeful? 

Tenzin Tsundue: I have to be! There is no option. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The post Tibetan Activist and Writer Tenzin Tsundue Talks to 51łÔąĎ appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In 2014, Austria had the  unemployment rate in the European Union. That trend declined in the years that followed, but the economy remained largely competitive. Austria is also one of the top 10 countries with the number of unemployed young people among member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Debate Over COVID-19 Is Exactly What Austria Needs

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Austrians will head to the polls later this year for elections. The incumbent president, Alexander Van der Bellen, remains undecided over running again, but he is eligible for a second term in office. In the 2016 election, he defeated Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party of Austria, thwarting his rival’s attempt to become the first far-right head of state in the EU.

Recently  as the world’s fifth-most peaceful country in the 2021 Global Peace Index, Austria has seen substantial economic fallout due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government’s decision to introduce mandatory vaccination and hefty penalties for those who do not comply has stirred controversy.

Heinz Fischer, the president of Austria between 2004 and 2016, is a seasoned lawyer who had a long career in politics. He took his first step toward becoming a national leader in early 1963, when he served as a legal assistant to the vice president of the Austrian parliament. He later became a member of parliament himself and then served as the minister of science, before leading the national council, the lower house of parliament, from 1990 to 2002. He is currently the co-chairman of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens in Vienna.

I spoke to Dr. Fischer about the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee crisis in Europe, the Iran nuclear talks in the Austrian capital and more.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: Mr. President, according to Statistics Austria and the Austrian Institute for Economic Research approximations, the total fiscal costs of the COVID-19 pandemic for Austria amount to roughly €70 billion [$79 billion] in the 2020-22 period. As of May 2021, the government had earmarked €37 billion for relief measures. Do you think this is a liability for the Austrian economy that may result in a short- or mid-term recession, or is it a deficit that can be made up for soon? Has the government been able to handle the economic burden of the pandemic efficiently?

Heinz Fischer: When COVID-19 reached Austria and the first lockdown became mandatory, I was surprised to hear the finance minister from the conservative party announcing that he would compensate the economic burden with “whatever it costs.” This was unusual language for a conservative minister of finance.

All in all, the government’s relief measures were crucial for reducing Austria’s economic damage of the pandemic. The Institute for Economic Research as well as our National Bank claim that Austria will be able to go back to the path of economic growth; this will reduce unemployment and keep recession lower than a traditional conservative finance policy of strict zero deficit would have done. But the performance of the government fighting against COVID-19 was less successful.

Ziabari: It was reported that the government is planning to introduce mandatory inoculation starting in early 2022 and that those holding out will face fines of up to $4,000. Of course, vaccination is the most effective way of combating the effects of the coronavirus. But does a vaccine mandate and handing out substantial penalties not go against democratic practice in a country known for its democratic credentials? You are no longer in office, but as an observer, do you support the decision?

Fischer: This is one of the hottest or even the hottest topic of current political debates in Austria. To answer your question promptly and directly: Yes, I believe it is necessary and legitimate to introduce mandatory inoculation — with justified exemptions — for a limited period of time in order to protect our population and our country in the best possible way. Other European countries start thinking in a similar way.

It is not a one-issue question. You have, on the one hand, the obligation of the government to protect basic rights and individual freedom and, on the other hand, the obligation of the government to protect the health and life of its population. And it is obvious that there are different, even antagonistic basic rights, namely individual freedom on the one side and health insurance and fighting a pandemic on the other. It is not an either/or but an as-well-as situation. The government must take care of two responsibilities simultaneously, meaning that the democratically-elected parliament has to seek and find the balance between two values and two responsibilities.

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If I remember correctly, a similar situation existed already two generations ago, when the danger of a smallpox pandemic justified an obligatory smallpox vaccination until the World Health Organization proclaimed the global eradication of the disease in 1980.

Ziabari: Moving on from the pandemic, Austria was one of the countries hugely affected by the 2015-16 refugee crisis in Europe. When the government of former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz came to power, it took a hard line on migration and made major electoral gains as a result. Now, with the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a new wave of westward migration appears to be in the making. Does Austria have a moral and human responsibility to protect asylum-seekers fleeing war and persecution, or should the responsibility be outsourced to other nations for certain reasons?

Fischer: My clear answer is, yes, Austria has a moral and human responsibility to protect asylum-seekers on the basis of international law and the international sharing of responsibilities.

Of course, we must discuss the numbers, the conditions, the possibilities, etc. of the respective country. But immediately saying no, we will not take women from Afghanistan, or we will not participate in burden-sharing of the European Union with the excuse that earlier governments many years ago already accepted a substantial share of refugees, is not acceptable. One cannot outsource humanity and moral duties.

Ziabari: How is Austria coping with the effects of climate change and its human rights implications? While the average global surface temperature rise from 1880 to 2012 has been 0.85° Celsius, it has been 2° Celsius for Austria. Austria’s target for 2030 is to cut greenhouse gas emissions not covered by the EU Emissions Trading System by 36%, but the International Energy Agency has forecast it may only achieve a 27% benchmark. Will Austria need external help to overcome the challenge? Are you positive it can fulfill the EU expectations?

Fischer: I do not think that Austria needs external help to fulfill its climate commitments. I do, however, think it is urgently necessary for the Austrian government to find a way forward in combating the climate crisis, a way that does not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, but which will also help to achieve societal consensus on the measures that are to be taken. This means the government must also be supporting social coherence.

Combating climate change is a multi-stakeholder effort and includes a just transition to clean energy, rapid phase-out of coal and end to international fossil fuel finance. In Austria in 2018, already 77% of electricity came from renewable energy sources and the number is constantly rising. While building a sustainable and climate-friendly future, we must, however, not forget to create green jobs, uphold human rights around the world and leave no one behind. I am positive that Austria will fulfill its EU expectations because it has to. There is only one planet, and we have to protect it with all means.

Ziabari: Let’s also touch upon some foreign policy issues. The former US president, Donald Trump, was rebuked by European politicians for alienating allies and spoiling partnerships with friendly, democratic nations and embracing repressive leaders instead. But Austria-US relations remained largely steady, and despite Trump’s protectionist trade policies, the United States imported a whopping $11.7 billion in goods and services from Austria. Do the elements that undergirded robust Austria-US connections still exist with a transition of power in the White House and a change of government in Austria?

Fischer: Yes, the relations between Austria and the United States have a long history and stable basis. Austria has not forgotten the prominent role of the US in the fight against Hitler. It has not forgotten the Marshall Plan — 75 years ago — and other ways of American support after World War II. The United States was a lighthouse of democracy in the 20^th century, including the time of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Horthy, etc. in Europe.

Of course, the Vietnam War, the political and economic pressure on countries in Latin America, the false arguments as the basis for a military invasion in Iraq and the heritage of racism have cast shadows on US policy. But having said all this, it is also true that the US has strengths in many fields of foreign policy and good relations between the US and Europe are a stabilizing factor in the world.

I would like to add that Donald Trump was and still is a great challenge for democracy in the US and a danger for the positive image of the United States in Europe and elsewhere.

Ziabari: Are you concerned about the tensions simmering between Russia and the West over Ukraine? Should it be assumed that Russia’s threats of deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe are serious, or are the Russians bluffing to test the West’s resolve, particularly now that one of Europe’s influential leaders, Angela Merkel, has departed? Are Russia’s complaints about NATO’s exploitation of Ukraine to expand eastwards and the ongoing discrimination against Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populace valid?

Fischer: Yes, I am concerned about the growing conflict between Russia and the West, and this conflict has a long history. World War II was not started by Russia, the Soviet Union, but brutally against them.

After World War II, there was a bipolar world developing between the East and the West, between Moscow and Washington, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new situation emerged. Gorbachev was honestly interested in a more peaceful world. He was accepting over the reunification of Germany and accepted the former Warsaw Pact member East Germany to become a member of NATO.

But the deal was that Russia’s security should not be reduced, and other parts of the former Soviet Union should not become part of NATO. And, in this respect, Ukraine is an extremely sensitive issue. It is already a while ago, but let’s remember how sensitive the United States reacted to the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis — the stationing of Russian weapons near the US. NATO weapons at the border of Russia are not supportive of peace and stability.

Ziabari: German Chancellor Angela Merkel stepped down after 16 years in power. Aside from being referred to as the de facto leader of the EU, she was praised for her leadership during the eurozone debt crisis and her role in mustering global solidarity to fight COVID. What do you think about the legacy she has left behind? In terms of relations with Austria, do you think her differences with the government of Sebastian Kurz on immigration, Operation Sophia and the EU budget blighted the perception that Austrians had of her?

Fischer: Angela Merkel was a great leader, crucial for Germany, crucial for Europe, crucial for human rights, crucial for peace. I admired and liked her. When former Austrian Chancellor Kurz and former German Chancellor Merkel shared different views, Merkel was, in my opinion, mostly on the right and Kurz on the wrong side. She was “Mrs. Stability and Reliability” in a positive sense.

And her legacy? She belongs with Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt to the four great German leaders after World War II. Under her leadership, Germany was the most stable nation in the European Union and her relationship with Austria was a mirror to her character, namely balanced, friendly and correct.

Ziabari: In the past couple of decades, Europe has been the scene of multiple terror attacks with hundreds of casualties, including the November 2020 shooting in Vienna, which European officials and media unanimously blamed on Islamist terrorism and political Islam. What are the stumbling blocks to the normalization of relations between secular Europe and its Muslim community? Is this civilizational, generational clash destined to last perennially, or are you optimistic that the two discourses can come to a co-existence?

Fischer: The melting of different nationalities, cultures and religions is always a difficult task. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy finally collapsed because of unsolved conflicts between European nationalities.

Conflicts become even more difficult when they include different religions and ethnicities. We can say that the conflict between our German-speaking, Czech-speaking, Hungarian- or Polish-speaking grandparents is more or less overcome, but the conflict between Christians and Muslims will last longer. We can study this in the United States. But it is my personal hope that multi-religious integration is possible in the long run in a fair and democratic society.

Ziabari: Talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, are underway in the Austrian capital. Are you hopeful that the moribund agreement can be brought back to life? Do you see the determination to save the accord in the Iranian side and the other parties, for the benefit of international peace and security?

Fischer: I was very happy when the 2015 JCPOA was signed between Iran, the United States, China and several European countries. And I believe it was one of the very wrong and unwise decisions of Donald Trump to withdraw from that agreement. To revitalize this agreement is, as we can observe these days, very difficult.

As you asked me about my opinion, I am inclined to a more pessimistic outlook, because the present Iranian leaders are more hardliners than the last government and President Biden is under heavy pressure and has not much room for compromises. On the other hand, I recently met a member of the Iranian negotiation team in Vienna and, to my surprise, he was rather optimistic.

One of my wishes for 2022 is a reasonable and fair solution for the JCPOA negotiations and a détente between Iran and the Western world. But the chances for a positive outcome seem to be limited at the moment.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Former Austrian President Heinz Fischer Talks to 51łÔąĎ appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In 2001, a US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda and search for its leader, Osama bin Laden, who were harbored by the Taliban government. The presence of foreign troops sent al-Qaeda militants into hiding and the Taliban were overthrown.

How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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In declaring his war, Bush gave the international community an unequivocal : to either be “with us or against us in the fight against terror.” In 2003, he took this a step further. He leveraged his power and convinced US allies that Iraq was a state sponsor of terror and its president, Saddam Hussein, had developed weapons of mass destruction, which posed an imminent threat. It wasn’t long before the world found out that this narrative was constructed by the White House as the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq. The results were devastating: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi , the of over 9 million civilians and the political mayhem that continues to this day.

It has been argued that Islam has been conflated with terrorism not only in the media, but also in much of the political discourse. As a direct result of the war on terror, show that an attack by a Muslim perpetrator receives 375% more attention than if the culprit was a non-Muslim.

As these patterns grew with time, countries started to employ their deterrence capacity under the guise of the “war on terror,” only to undermine those who were resisting regimes or seeking self-determination. This was seen in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Even Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in 2001, quickly persuaded Western leaders that his country faced similar threats from Islamists and was dealt a carte blanche to crack down with brute force on insurgents and civilians alike.

The foreign occupation of Afghanistan ended in August 2021. After 20 grueling and miserable years, the US pulled out from Afghanistan amidst a Taliban takeover, setting a range of events into motion. Chaos filled Kabul Airport as scores of people were desperate to leave the country. The IMF Afghanistan’s access to hundreds of millions in emergency funds due to a “lack of clarity within the international community” over recognizing a Taliban government.  

The war led to irreparable damages and hundreds of thousands of Afghans paid with their lives. The US spent over on the conflict and had of its soldiers returned in body bags. Today, starving families in Afghanistan are their babies for money to feed their children and the world only looks on.

To understand how we got here, I spoke to Anas Altikriti, a political analyst, hostage negotiator and the CEO of , an organization aimed at bridging the gap of understanding between the Muslim world and the West. In this interview, we discuss America’s handling of the occupation and examine Afghanistan’s next steps now that the Taliban has assumed authority in the country.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kholoud Khalifa: Joe Biden has received a certain amount of backlash from both sides of the aisle for withdrawing abruptly from Afghanistan. What do you make of his decision?

Anas Altikriti: Looking from an American perspective, I believe Biden had no choice. We tend to forget that the president who actually signed the agreement to leave Afghanistan was Donald Trump and his deadline was May of this year. Technically, you can state that Biden was carrying out a decision made by his predecessor. However, in reality — and I think that this is what’s important — any American president would have found it extremely difficult and utterly senseless to carry on a failed venture. Afghanistan and Iraq were utterly horrendous mistakes. If not at the point of conception and theory, the implementation was horrid.

However, from a purely analytical political point of view, Biden had absolutely no choice. The fact that he was going to come in for so much criticism, and particularly from the American right, is no surprise whatsoever. I would like to assume that Biden’s administration had the capacity to foresee that and to prepare for that, not only in terms of media, but also in terms of trying to argue the political perspective. Although in America today, I don’t think that is really useful.

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So, generally speaking, I’m not surprised by the fact that he got attacked, because ultimately speaking, on paper, this was a defeat to the Americans. It was a defeat to the Americans on the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, the day in which the idea started to crystallize in terms of those who wanted to see American basis spread far and wide, and the whole intermittent 20 years has been nothing but an utter and an abject failure. Thousands of American troops have been killed, but on the other side, probably more than a million of Afghan lives have been absolutely decimated — either killed or having to flee their homes and live as refugees elsewhere. The cost has been absolutely incredible, and for that, I think the Americans can contend with themselves, as history will judge this to be a failed attempt from start to finish.

Khalifa: What are your thoughts on the Taliban as a political actor in today’s geopolitical landscape?

Altikriti: Well, we’ll wait and see. There is no question that from the military point of view, the Taliban won. They achieved the victory, and they managed to expel the Americans and to defeat them not only on the ground, but also at negotiating. For almost the past 12 years, there had been negotiations between the Taliban and the Americans either directly or indirectly, whilst at the same time, the Taliban had been fighting against the American presence in Afghanistan and never conceding for a moment on their objective that they wanted a full and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. That, itself, is something to be taught at political science departments across the world, and it has definitely affected my own curriculum that I teach to students.

Negotiations, as well as being backed by real power, are things that have proven to be extremely beneficial and quite successful in this particular time. Now, that might be easy in comparison to catering to a nation of 40 million that have been devastated for almost three generations — from oppressive regimes to conflicts, to wars, to civil war, to occupation, to absolute and utter devastation to the rise of violence, ideological militancy, to all sorts of issues that have ravaged that nation.

Governing Afghanistan is going to be a totally different kettle of fish. It’s not the same as fighting. You can say that actually fighting a war from mountain tops and caves is relatively easy in comparison with the task ahead. Whether they’re going to be successful or not is something that we wait to see, and I hope for the betterment of the Afghan people that they will be.

The reality is the Taliban have won and in today’s world, they have the right the absolute right to govern. Hopefully, within the foreseeable future, the Afghan people will have the choice to either hold them to account and lay the blame for whatever economic failures, for instance, or otherwise.

This struggle between nations and their regimes is a continuous one. Thankfully, where we live, in the West, that struggle is mostly done on a political plane. So, we fight politically and we hold our politicians accountable through the ballot boxes. That is not present in many, many developing countries. Afghanistan is definitely a country that needs to find its own model as to how to govern and how to create that kind of balance between people and regime. I think it is utterly hypocritical from the West to prejudge them and hold them to ransom via mistakes that happened in the past. Every administration commits mistakes of varying sorts. Our own government in the UK is now being investigated by an independent inquiry staff as to how it dealt with COVID and whether some of its decisions led to the death of thousands of people. So, mistakes can happen.

The West needs to contend with why they left Afghanistan after 20 years of absolute misery and suffering no better than when they came to it in 2001. That’s a question that the West, including the UK, need to ask themselves before passing judgment on to the Taliban.

Khalifa: You mentioned something very interesting. You said we’re waiting to see and we cannot judge them right now. Do we see any hints of change? Has today’s Taliban changed from the Taliban of the pre-US occupation? For example, the Taliban issued a public pardon on Afghan military forces that had tried to eradicate them.

Altikriti: Well, the hints are plenty and the hints are positive. The fact that the Taliban, as you put it, issued that decree that there won’t be any military trials or court marshals being held. The fact that from the very first hours, they said that anyone who wants to leave could leave and they won’t stop them, but that they hope everyone will stay to rebuild Afghanistan. I think from a political and PR point of view, that was a very, very shrewd way to lay out the preface of their coming agenda.

The fact that Taliban leaders spoke openly, and I’ll be honest, in quite impressive narratives and discourses to foreign media — to the BBC, to Sky — and, in fact, took the initiative to actually phoning up the BBC and intervening and carrying out long and extensive interviews. This has never happened before. We could never have imagined that they sit with female correspondents and presenters and spoke freely and openly. Also, the fact that they met with the Shia communities in Afghanistan at the time when they were celebrating Muharram and assured them that everything was going to be fine.

I think a big part of whether Afghanistan succeeds or not lies in the hands of the West. For instance, in the first 24 hours of the Americans leaving in such a chaotic manner, which exemplified the chaos of the Taliban as we know it, the IMF said that funds to Afghanistan would be withheld. Therein begins that kind of Western hegemony, Western colonization that I believe is at the very heart of many problems in what we termed the Third World or the developing world.

The fact that sometimes nations aren’t allowed to progress, they aren’t allowed to rise from the ashes, they aren’t allowed to recover, they aren’t allowed to rebuild, not because of any innate deficiency on their part, but because of the international order that we have today in the world. We have so many restraining legal organizations — from the UN downwards, including the IMF and the World Bank — that hold nations to ransom. Either you behave in a particular way or we’re going to withhold what is essentially yours. It’s an absolute travesty, but unfortunately, this goes across all our radars. There is very little response in terms of saying, hang on, that is neither just nor fair nor democratic.

If you really, really want the betterment of Afghanistan and Afghan people, countries should be piling in, in order to afford help, to afford aid and to make absolutely sure that the Afghan people have everything they need in order to rebuild for the future.

But, unfortunately, the opposite is happening. We’re tying the nation’s hands behind its back and saying, we’re just going to watch and see how you do in that boxing ring, and if you don’t fare well, that will be justification for us to maybe reintervene in one way or another sometime down the line.

Khalifa: After seizing the country, the Taliban promised an inclusive government, with the exception of women. Yet the current government only comprises Taliban members. What are the chances that they deliver on forming an inclusive government?

Altikriti: I’m sort of straddling the line between being an academic and an activist, and I have a foot in both, so it’s sometimes a little bit difficult. However, I would suggest that when the Conservative Party in Britain wins an election, it’s never assumed that they include people from the Labour Party or Liberal Democrats in their next government. The same goes in America: When the Republicans win an election, you can’t reasonably ask or expect of them to include those with incredible minds and capacities from the Democratic Party — you simply don’t.

So, the hope for inclusivity in Afghanistan needs to take that into consideration. The Taliban are the winning party — whether by force or by political negotiations — and therefore, they have the right to absolutely build the kind of government they see fit. For them to then reach out to others would be an incredible gesture.

But I think it’s problematic and hypocritical if the West doesn’t allow the winning party to govern. If after some time it doesn’t manage to, then maybe you’d expect it to reach out to others from outside its own party or from outside its own borders and invite them to come and help out. But that’s not what you expect from day one.

The fact that they haven’t done what many people expected, and I personally have to say I feared would happen, and it hasn’t. So, until we find that media stations closed down, radio stations barricaded and people rounded up — and I hope none of that will happen, but if it does, we hold them to account.

Khalifa: Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, says the international community must engage with the Taliban, avoid isolating Afghanistan and refrain from imposing sanctions. He says the “Taliban are the best bet to get rid of ISIS.” What’s your view on that?

Altikriti: If we’re looking back at their track record, they were the ones who managed to put an end to the civil war that broke out after the liberation from the Soviet Union. I mean, for about five to six years, Afghanistan was ravaged with a civil war, warlords were running the place amok. I remember an American journalist said the only safe haven in Afghanistan was something like a 20-square-meter room in a hotel in the center of Kabul. The Taliban came in and created a sense of normality, once again in terms of putting an end to the civil war. There remained only one or two factions that were still in resistance, but otherwise, the Taliban managed to actually bring Afghanistan to order.

It was only after 9/11 and the US intervention that returned the country back into a state of chaos. So, if we’re going to take their track record into consideration, then it’s only fair to say that they do have the experience, the expertise and the track record that shows that they can bring some semblance of normality and peace.

Now, obviously, we understand that Afghanistan is not disconnected from its regional map and from the regional politics that are at play, including the Pakistani-Indian conflict. It’s no secret that the Taliban were looked after and maintained by the Pakistani intelligence. I understand from the negotiations that were taking place since 2010 that there was almost always a member of the Pakistani intelligence present at the table. So, it’s not a secret that Pakistan saw that in order to quell the so-called factions that represented the mujahideen, the Taliban were its safest bet.

In that sense and from that standpoint, you would suggest that the Taliban are best equipped. Much of what was going on in Afghanistan was based on cultures, traditions and norms that Americans were never ready to embrace, understand or accept. That’s why they fell foul so many times of incidents, which could have been easily appeased with only a little bit of an understanding and of an appreciation of fine cultural or traditional intricacies and nuances. The Taliban wouldn’t have that issue.

So, you would suggest that what Imran Khan said has some ground to stand on. It’s a viable theory. But everything that we’re talking about will be judged by what see is going to happen. But before we do that, we need to allow the Taliban the time, so that when we come to say, listen, they fail, we have grounds and evidence to issue such a judgment.

Khalifa: I want to shift to the US. So we know that there was a US-led coalition, and its presence for over 20 years in Afghanistan and in the Middle East led to very little change in the region. You already alluded to that at the very beginning. The US spent trillions of dollars and incurred the highest death toll out of the coalition members. What has the US learned from this experience?

Altikriti: I think that’s the question we should be focused on. I fear that it has learned virtually nothing and that’s very worrying. Just like we were passing pre-judgments on the Taliban, we need to do the same everywhere. If that’s the kind of ruler that we’re using to judge a straight line, it’s the same ruler we need to judge every straight line.

We heard the statements that emerged from Washington, and to be perfectly honest, very, very few were of any substance. Ninety-nine percent, and this is my own impression, were about America looking back and how they let down the translators and the workers in the alliance government and left them at their own fate. The tears were shed, both in the British Parliament as well as the American Congress, which actually shows that these people didn’t get it. They didn’t get it and that is what worries me the most.

If something as huge as Afghanistan and what happened — this wasn’t a car crash that happened in a split second. This was something that was led over the course of the last 17 years and definitely since President Trump signed the agreement with the Taliban in 2020. This should have been a time for politicians and analysts to actually read the situation and read the map properly. But it seems that they never did and they never bothered to see if there was any need or inclination to take lessons from it.  

I’m yet to come across a decision-maker, a lawmaker, a politician, a senior adviser to come out and say there were horrendous mistakes carried out by the occupation and by the other alliance governments that led to this, and as a result, we need to learn what to do and not do in future. But there is this arrogance and pride that forbids us from doing so, and as such, they’re inclined to make the same mistake time and time and time again.

Khalifa: Given that the so-called war on terror, and more specifically the occupation in Iraq, was an utter failure, what is the probability in your opinion that America will engage in another foreign intervention?

Altikriti: From a purely political view, I find this extremely far-fetched in the foreseeable future. The reasons being that Americans had to endure bruising at every single level and because of the crippling economic crisis. So, it’s extremely difficult to launch an intervention or military intervention in the way that we saw in Iraq, Afghanistan or Panama in the next two to three years. But the thing is, often, American politics is driven by corporate America.

I mean, we talk about the trillions spent, but like someone said in an article I read in The Washington Post, that those trillions were more than made up by American corporations, by American oil, by getting their hands on certain minerals in Afghanistan. Even the drug trade itself, which Britain and America thought they would quell, it was actually the Taliban who brought it under control, who actually went around and burnt the poppy seed farms. The West reinvigorated that tradeline and stabilized it. Therefore, as a friend of a friend tells me, he says many of those who were scrambling for airplanes in Kabul Airport were poppy seed farmers because they knew that they had absolutely no future under the Taliban.

So, once we count the trillions incurred by the taxpayer, we forget that there is another side that you and I probably don’t even know that is gaining riches at the expense of the Afghans.

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The beast now is to try out new weapons. Lockheed Martin and others will always have a vested interest in trying out the new technology, and what’s better than to try it out in real-life situations? If I was to speak to any modern, contemporary, 30-something-year-old military analysts, they’d laugh me off because I’m speaking about a bygone age. We’re talking now about wars where we don’t involve human beings. I mean, in terms of the assailants, they’re flying drones, and there’s an intelligence level to it that I can’t fathom nor understand.

Another aspect that no one is talking about almost is the privatization of militaries. We’re coming now to find brigades, thousands of troops that are mercenaries, people who fight for a wage. Now, this is the new way to fight wars: Why would Britain employ some of its brightest and youngest when it could pay ÂŁ100 a day to have someone else fight wars on its behalf? And this is now becoming a multibillion-dollar industry. It first started out as a reality in Iraq, when we had the likes of Blackwater who were guarding the airports, presidential palaces and government officials. You’d try to speak to them only to realize they were from Georgia or Mozambique or elsewhere, and they don’t fall under the premise of local law. Therefore, if they kill someone by mistake, you can’t take them to court and that’s the contract you sign. That is where I think the danger lies.

Khalifa: In 2010, you appeared on Al Jazeera’s “Inside Iraq” alongside the late Robert Fisk and Jack Burkman, a Republican strategist. Burkman described Arabs and Muslims as a “bunch of barbarians in the desert” and the Bush administration as the savior bringing change. With its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, has the US perceptions of Arabs and Muslims changed, and if so, how?

Altikriti: I’d love to have a chat with Jack right now to see what he thinks 11 years on. To answer your question, it saddens me to say that yes, it’s changed, but only because America and American society are so polarized and so divided. It only took Donald Trump to become president or 50% of Americans to defy everything that Trump said. Being anti-Trump meant standing up for Muslims when he issued the Muslim ban for flights. So, people from their standpoint of being anti-Trump said, no, Muslims are welcome. It’s absolutely the wrong way to go on about it. That’s not how we recognize, for instance, that racism is wrong or evil.

However, the fact is that in the past, anti-Muslim sentiments were everywhere and the feelings that Jack Burkman expressed so horribly in that interview were widespread. I personally believe they still remain because 9/11 has become an industry and that industry has many facets to it. Part of it is ideological, part is media, part is educational and obviously part transpires into something that is military or security-based.

We still have Guantanamo. Why is it that the American people aren’t talking about Guantanamo to the extent that they should be? This is something that is on the conscience of every single American citizen — it is paid from their own taxes. Why no one talks about it is simply because no one dares touch the holy grail — the industry of 9/11. It’s a huge, huge problem.

I still believe that those sentiments expressed by Jack back then are still prevalent, but like I said, they were mitigated by the advent of Trump and by his declaration against Arabs and Muslims. This, as well as the highlighting of certain issues by the left in America, such as the gross crimes committed by the Saudi regime and that’s helped in two ways. Firstly, you expose the crimes committed by Saudis, but it’s also cemented that view that Arabs are barbarians.

Khalifa: Afghanistan wasn’t the only country that suffered. Iraq suffered more dire and devastating consequences from the so-called war on terror. What does a future look like for Iraq now that the US has withdrawn?

Altikriti: Oh, very grim, very, very grim. The Americans haven’t withdrawn — they’re less visible. There are current negotiations regarding the next Iraqi government in the aftermath of the elections that we’ve just had, which shows that the Americans are heavily involved.

Iraq is the playground of Iran. So, therefore, any policy of America or Britain or Europe that involves Iran has to have Iraq in the middle.

There are still about three or four American military bases, and from time to time, we hear the news that certain militias targeted this base or that base where Americans lie. Now, the personnel who are there within the bases might carry ID cards as construction workers, advisers, legal experts, bankers or whatever. But ultimately, they’re all there to represent the best interests of the United States. So, America is still there.

However, Iraq is in dire straits. I think the indices that go around every year that show us levels of corruption, levels of transparency, levels of democracy, levels of happiness of people and satisfaction — Iraq is regarded as one of the 10 worst countries on every single level. I think that shows what’s been done to Iraq and what’s been done to the Iraqi people.

The fact is that we have at least 30% of the Iraqi people living as refugees, either within Iraq or outside of Iraq. The fact that in an election only 20% of the people choose to take part.

You have to ask serious questions. You have to say, OK, so when the Americans accused Iran — and I’m a believer that Iran is the worst of all players in Iraq. But you have to ask: So you occupied the country, why did you allow it to happen? So, you can’t just brush it off and say, well, the Iranian militias and its people and its proxy agents in the sun. Well, what were you doing there? So, I think that, again, what has been done to Iraq and to all Iraqis — regardless of their faith, regardless of their sect, regardless of their ethnicity — all of what has happened is a stain. A huge, huge one on the consciousness of everyone in Britain, America, Spain and all the countries that signed up for this and took part in this, everyone has a responsibility to answer.

I mean, obviously, when we spoke about Afghanistan, we didn’t speak about the crimes, the actual crimes that were committed. The one that we come to recognize and know about is the crimes committed by the Australians, where they actually trained the young cadets to shoot at people and kill them to be acknowledged as soldiers. We didn’t talk about that because there are so many of those that were committed. To speak not of Arab and Muslim barbarity, but of Western barbarity — that’s something I think should be discussed.

Khalifa: In Egypt, it was a military coup in 2013 that overthrew a democratically elected government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. In Tunisia, a constitutional change led to the fall of Ennahda, an Islamist party. In Morocco, it was the people who voted out the Justice and Development Party, which ruled the country for 10 years and suffered a massive defeat in September; they went from having 125 seats to only 12. To juxtapose this, in Afghanistan, the Taliban conquered the country overnight from the US, the most powerful country in the world. What message does this send to Islamist parties in the Muslim world?

Altikriti: Only yesterday, I was discussing this with a group of colleagues, and someone repeated a statement that was sent to me by a fellow of Chatham House. He said to me something quite interesting. He said: “Don’t you see that many around the world, particularly young Muslims, will be looking to Afghanistan — and three months ago in Palestine and what happened there — and think to themselves that the way forward is to carry guns.” I said: “Listen, my friend, you’re saying it. I’m not.”

But in reality, it’s unfortunate that many of my own students are saying, “It’s been proven.” I mean, they say, “you academics, you always talk about empirical evidence. Well, here it is: Politics doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work. The ballot box does not work. What does work? There you go, you have Taliban, you have the militias. So go figure.” Unfortunately, that is the kind of discussion that I think will dominate the Muslim scene, particularly the political Muslim scene.

For the next few years, I believe, whilst we analyze political Islam and Islamic parties, whether in Egypt, Morocco or Tunisia, that will be the question. Is it a viable argument to say that these parties will have absolutely no chance, either immediately in the short run or in the long run? In Tunisia, they were allowed to run for about 10 years. In Morocco, they were in government for about 10 years. Before that, they were in opposition and they were thriving. But in Egypt, they weren’t allowed to stay for more than a year. So, ultimately, the end is inevitable. So, is it the need to shift and change tactics? It’s going to be quite an interesting and, at times, problematic discussion, but it’s a discussion you need to have.

And last, by the way, on this particular point, the West did not allow democracy, particularly in Egypt and in Tunisia, to exist. We spoke of democracy, we spoke of human rights, we spoke of freedoms, but when they all came to be crushed, the West did absolutely nothing, which told the others well, you know what? They don’t care, there are no consequences, and that is why it is that many, many Muslim youth today will say, well, there’s only one way to go there.

Khalifa: And lastly, what do you believe are the core causes for Islamic extremist groups, i.e., Daesh or al-Qaeda, to still have a foothold in the region, and in your opinion, what is the best way to combat these groups?

Altikriti: Their biggest arguments, and which works well for them, is the fact that democracy failed and that they got nothing from buying into Western values of how to run their societies.

Their biggest argument now will be the Taliban and how they won. So, those are the main standpoints [for] these extremist groups; they lie on people’s frustrations and their feelings that there is no other way out. That’s essentially the argument. I’ve seen it in groups where someone is trying to recruit for that idea. Their bottom line is it doesn’t work. There is no other way — that’s their only argument.

It’s not theological, by the way. People think they are basing it on these Quranic verses or on hadiths [sayings of Prophet Muhammad], but they absolutely do not, because on that particular front, they lose, they have no ground to stand on. [For them,] it’s the fact that, in reality, it doesn’t work — democracy doesn’t work. Human rights doesn’t work. Because ultimately, your human rights mean nothing to those in power. So, killing us is as easy as killing a chicken. It’s nothing. That is their argument.

So, it’s going to be a struggle, it’s going to be a big, big, big struggle for people who want to advocate democracy, want to advocate civil society and diversity. It’s a struggle we can’t afford not to have, we can’t afford not to be in there, because the outcome, the costs will be so hefty on every single part and no one will be excluded.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Legacy of America’s Failed War on Terror appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In 2019, a estimated that 75% of land and 66% of marine environments “have been significantly altered by human actions,” with livestock production claiming over a third of the world’s land and nearly three-quarters of freshwater resources. This human advance means that at least 1 million animal and plant species currently face extinction.

Jim Naughten’s Photographic Explorations (Interactive)

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Anthropogenic climate change a big part in this staggering loss of biodiversity. With the planet warming faster than at any time in the past 10,000 years, habitats are being destroyed or altered dramatically, driving the proliferation of invasive animal species, affecting food chains, and causing physiological and genetic changes.

The meat industry is thought to around 14% of greenhouse emissions associated with human activity. Each year, livestock burp and fart the methane equivalent of over 3 gigatons of carbon dioxide. The World Resources Institute estimates that between 2001 and 2015, was responsible for the loss of 45 million hectares of lost forest, an area roughly the size of Sweden. According to Greenpeace, a of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and deforestation. Despite all the individual efforts people may make in their daily lives to reduce their climate footprint, since 1988, just have been responsible for over 70% of global emissions.

While humans make up just 0.01% of all life on Earth, according to a comprehensive , we have managed to destroy 83% of all wild animals and half the plants. Wildlife, whose ancestors roamed the planet for millennia before Homo sapiens even evolved, makes up just 4% of all mammals in existence today. This loss is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the .

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British Jim Naughten’s new show, “Eremozoic,” which opened on October 7 at London’s , has man’s relationship with nature at its very heart. The title refers to what American biologist Edward Wilson has described as the “age of loneliness” that is the result of our devastation of the planet. Naughten’s work is striking and eye-catching, but it sends a disquieting message to the audience about our disconnection from the natural world.

With the crucial climate summit due to open in Glasgow on October 31, 51łÔąĎ talks to Jim Naughten about what drives his work, his vision for the future and, most importantly, hope.  

The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Anna Pivovarchuk: First of all, Jim, I want to congratulate you on your very successful show in London. The work in this series is based on dioramas — a 3D model representing a scene we usually see in natural history museums — and, first of all, it is striking. The first thing you notice about the works is how beautiful they are. But then it slowly becomes a little unnerving as you notice that something’s wrong: the colors, the setting, the dimension. What effect were you hoping to achieve here? What reaction did you want to provoke in the viewer?

Jim Naughten: With the current series, with “Eremozoic,” I think what I was trying to explore is what I think is our fictionalized, rose-tinted view of the natural world. I’ve known for about 10 years that it’s in fairly serious trouble. As a long-suffering Guardian reader, I’ve been reading George Monbiot and lots of books about our ancestors and how they were completely intimately connected to the natural world and how, since we’ve become modern humans, we’ve become entirely disconnected from it. It’s a huge and profound shift from the agricultural revolution. What we are now doing is attacking nature and destroying it.

I’ve grown up watching natural history documentaries and thinking that all is well in the world — we live here, the lions live over there, the orangutans live over there. In actual fact, we’ve lost, we’ve destroyed 83% of all the wildlife on the planet since the agricultural revolution. It’s all these things that I think people are beginning to learn about and wake up to and all — well, some of humanity is discovering.

I went to an exhibition in Chicago, in the Field Museum, about five or six years ago, when I was working on the “.” That project was a little bit goofy and frivolous, a sort of historical timepiece; it was supposed to be quite a fun project. When I was making that work, there was quite a lot of humor in the images and how I was making them.

While I was at the Field Museum, it was completely packed to capacity. You couldn’t move because there were so many people there, school buses and tourists. Upstairs there was an exhibition on extinction — not a single person in there; it was completely empty. It was quite weird. You could see people going up to the introduction board, getting halfway through the first sentence and rushing off at high speed to go and see T-Rex or all the animals that are already extinct. I was thinking, It’s tragic. Everyone wants to look the other way.

The statistics were really breathtaking. On the first board, you saw that 30,000 species per year were going extinct due to human activity. Below that they had a little digital read-about which said that since 8 o’clock this morning, 20 species have gone extinct; as I was watching it, it said 21, and there was this big sinking feeling.

Firstly, the statistics were horrifying. But secondly, the fact that there was no one in there, no one was interested. I thought, I have to try to do something about this. I just felt committed. I thought I’d try to make a project and the pictures have to be very eye-catching and they have to be beautiful and engaging. I haven’t quite worked out how it would translate into fictions, but I knew that I had to try. That was the genesis of the project.

Pivovarchuk: You preempted me a little bit. You have that a lot of your work “deals with historical subject matter and attempts to make connections with the past or reanimate history in some capacity.” Projects such as “Animal Kingdom,” “Re-enactors” and “Mountains of Kong” definitely follow this line. But “Eremozoic” has a very different feel, like you are drawing on the past to make a very strong comment about our future. The use of the pink color scheme is such a striking message — this was deliberate, wasn’t it?

Naughten: Well, in a way, it’s trying to create a fantasy world, trying to make a fiction. The reds are quite alarming. It’s interesting, because once the work’s in on the wall, it starts taking on a life of its own and people start interpreting the images in different ways, which I think is fantastic. That’s when art starts working quite well and functioning. I’ve had people say that they think the pictures are absolutely beautiful and joyful — and I am thinking, Ooh, well… And other people say that they find them really disquieting and almost a little bit unnerving. In a way, that’s fantastic, because you have the gamut of different responses and people thinking about the work differently.

But the original idea with the colors is to make them very eye-catching. What you are looking at is a fiction, even before I’ve altered it and colored it, adding layers of fiction on top. So we have a fictionalized view of the natural world, which is in incredible trouble, really. The extinction rate is extraordinary. This hasn’t happened since the dinosaurs were wiped out, 66 million years ago. This is the first time in the 542 million years of life on Earth that a single species has been annihilating all the other ones. It’s never happened before.

There is another fiction, the fact is that there’s a disconnection from the natural world. Obviously, I’m a modern human, so I’ve never been connected. I feel a sense of loss learning about our ancestors and how connected they were to the natural world. I think a lot of people feel that there is something slightly easy about where we’re going. And this fiction that we are disconnected is another one, in a sense that we are actually still part of the natural world, we are primates, we are subject to the rules of nature, and we are also susceptible to things like viruses, for example.

The other idea for the work is to think about how we are disconnected from it, how we regard it and put it in a kind of box — natural history happens over there, you only see it on TV or in a zoo; this is our world, and natural history is a little pocket of it.

Pivovarchuk: Before we dig deeper into the environmental angle, I wanted to ask you about your process. You started out as a painter, only later warming to photography. Could you explain your process of creating these images? What is the hardest bit? Because they are so intricate, so deep and real — and surreal at the same time. How long does it take to make one?

Naughten: So the natural history dioramas are from the late 1800s and through to the early 1900s. They are really beautifully made. Originally, they look incredible. What I do is I photograph them with very, very high-resolution camera. Some of them are made up of elements, so I’ll add skies or move elements around; other ones are just the case of altering the colors. But that’s very, very detailed. It’s usually a very long process. Working out with which colors work can be a very long process.

Some of them work very, very quickly, almost instantly, and then others can take months. “The Kudus” or “The Orangutans” both have 14 or 15 different incarnations as different colors, differently arranged. They just go on and on and on, like an oil painting.  

It’s quite tough. I really miss paint and I’m desperate to go back to it. But there is something you can do with photography — and PhotoShop — if you do it well. I think these images work.  

Pivovarchuk: Let’s get back to the heart of the matter here. You care very deeply about the environment. For instance, I know that you are a committed vegan, which is quite a commitment in itself. These themes are clearly close to your heart. What role do you think art can play in alerting people to the climate issue? Do you think artists are doing enough? Should they be doing more? Is it art for art’s sake, or art as activism, or something in between? Where do you see yourself on that spectrum?

Naughten: It’s really difficult to say. There probably is a lot of art on climate, less so on biodiversity loss. I’m a little bit worried I am in an echo chamber along with Greta and the kids, but it feels like there is a groundswell of people beginning to wake up to the situation. I am sure there will be more art created along the themes of biodiversity loss. I haven’t seen huge amounts. It’s good with this project that it’s caught attention and it’s engaging and hasn’t sent people the other way. I just hope that I get the message across.

And it’s not difficult being a vegan — I don’t see it as a sacrifice. The food is absolutely amazing. Once you start cooking, it’s a different mindset. It’s just wonderful.

Pivovarchuk: We have just had the first awarded by the duke and duchess of Cambridge. How do you feel about such events? Are they a good way to raise awareness of the issue, or is it just glitz and no action?

Naughten: That’s a good question. I find that if I read The Guardian too much, it just gets incredibly depressing, and I can be overwhelmed with the “ecogrief,” I think it’s called. What’s infuriating is that we know what to do, we know how to fix the planet, but we are trapped in these incredibly complex systems. I would say the financial sector driving fossil fuels and Xi Jinping not coming to COP26, for example — it’s just insane. It can get so overwhelming.

Something like the Earthshot Prize: I really enjoyed watching it, even though I am not a royalist. It’s just that you have to have some hope, and you have to have some positivity. So for me, even though it’s got the dramatic BBC music at the end and it seems a little bit overblown, it is really important to keep spirits up and to keep hope going. I think that’s critical.

There’s another person who does that for me: Jane Goodall. She’s incredible. She has a podcast called . She’s absolutely fantastic. She’s got a book called “The Book of Hope.” She talks a lot about how important a sense of — I don’t know if spirituality is the right word, or a kind of a love — she’s worried about science when it’s too cold. I think that’s a really interesting idea. I love listening to her, and that gives me some hope.   

Pivovarchuk: I wanted to ask you about other projects, the Hereros, a Namibian tribe that developed a sartorial tradition of dressing in Victorian-era garments and military uniforms. Again, the images are absolutely beautiful, striking and stark. Obviously, the subjects have made the garments their own, but you cannot unspool the colonial influence there. What is your connection to these images? Why did you find this [tradition] particularly interesting? What do they tell us about our history of colonialism and the way it is still around us these days?

Naughten: The clothing is extraordinary, and what is so interesting about it is the clash of cultures that happened around 1895 when the German missionaries first arrived in Namibia. They first met the Herero tribe, and they obviously tried to Christianize them. They wore animal skins — they looked incredible before they got the Victorian costumes.

Because the history isn’t really written about what happened in the early days, no one quite knows whether they took to them originally or if there was a certain amount of coercion; I’m sure there’s a combination. But now, it is an incredibly important symbolic thing to wear the dress. What they added over the years is the African color and made them their own.

Because they are cattle herders, they are pastoralists, they are completely obsessed with cattle. So the headdresses represent cow horns. It’s quite extraordinary that they would walk or glide, and you’re not supposed to see the feet — they are supposed to almost represent the way a cow moves. They do a cow dance. It’s just a very strange thing.

What happened in 1907 is that the Germans decided they would then take all the land for themselves — it’s a lot more complicated than that — but the Herero fought back and the Germans decided that they would try to annihilate the whole tribe, basically committing the first genocide of the last century.

So the dresses are extraordinary as symbols of survival and defiance. If you see a Herero, you know they are a Herero and you know they survived, you know they’re here. Eighty percent of the tribe were killed in really horrific ways. It’s amazing to see them walk around in these costumes — they are so bold, and you see them set against the desert background.

During the Herero-German wars, if a Herero killed a German soldier, he would take the uniform and wear bits of it, like the helmets, the jackets and boots, so they’d have these very strange, cobbled-together outfit. What that meant was that it was taking the spirit of the German soldier and taking the power from the German soldier, and that was symbolic of having subsumed the power.

That also stuck as a kind of tradition. The Herero have a symbolic army, which is called the paramilitary because it doesn’t actually fight, but it’s there to honor the ancestors. They have a fire that goes all the time, the smoke goes up and connects them to the ancestors, so there’s always a direct line, and the people who were killed are still there.

Pivovarchuk: There is an exhibition that has just opened at Somerset House, called “,” that draws the origins of climate change to colonialism, to the Industrial Revolution and the extrapolation of resources. How do you think colonialism ties to the present climate catastrophe that we find ourselves in? Is it a reflection of how little humans care about the world?

Naughten: Oh, that’s a difficult question. As the Industrial Revolution started to take hold, it’s just one of these things, like a runaway train. People are constantly looking further and further afield for more land to exploit, more opportunities to exploit, especially when they are going to Africa. It continues. It feels now, with hindsight, that it was inevitable that it would happen once the ball starts rolling.

I’m really interested in our evolutionary history and how we got to where we got to. Homo sapiens is really, really, really young — we are 200,000 years old, a blink of an eye. During these 200,000 years, for 99% of it, we were hunter-gatherers, we were foragers and we existed in small bands. We were directly connected to the natural world, we didn’t have a monotheist god, we were completely egalitarian — men, women, children. This idea that humans are more important than animals is a modern idea. You could be slightly rose-tinted about it, but it was a fundamentally different existence from the one we have now.

That changed very recently, 10,000 years ago, with the agricultural revolution. We were, they think, between 6 and 10 million humans on the planet at that point, and what we are now, since we started farming, we are 8 billion. We’ve exploded, exponentially, like a huge mushroom cloud all over the planet, and we are just taking all the resources. Before we were farming, we were living very, very, very, very lightly on the land, and had we not started farming, we would continue in this way for as long as the planet would allow us to. We certainly wouldn’t have climate change.

Before the agricultural revolution, humans made up less than a percentage point of all the mammals on the planet. The remaining 99.5% were wild animals. Fast forward 10,000 years, the tiniest amount of time in evolutionary terms: Humans now make up 36% of the mammals on the planet, our livestock, our caged, brutalized animals, make up 70%, and wildlife makes up 4%. And it’s reducing, very quickly. It’s just completely insane.

Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote “Sapiens,” [“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”], who is an incredibly clear thinker and is extraordinary to read, says that industrial farming of animals, in terms of pain and misery caused, is definitely humanity’s greatest crime. I think that’s true.

Pivovarchuk: To come back to hope. Your show opens in the same month as COP26 in Glasgow. Are you hopeful about our planet’s future? What’s going to happen to us?

Naughten: I think like everyone, probably nervous, very nervous. And you hear different points of view that people say it’s a mess, it’s not going to happen. It’s very difficult to have any faith in Boris or any of the leaders there — they all just seem utterly useless. I don’t know the answer to that to be honest.

I was thinking about the situation with how damaging the meat industry is to the planet, and that is one thing that is very difficult to get into the media, for example, or the politicians to talk about. They don’t want to talk about meat because they eat meat. It’s such an unpopular thing to say, even if it’s one of the biggest drivers of climate change, habitat loss. Even when you’re talking to zoologists or ecologists, they might eat meat and they can’t say, Don’t eat meat. So I think we are sort of, pardon the pun, hamstrung a little bit.

I’m an artist, I’m not an expert on these things. I don’t think anyone knows how this is going to go. I’m fearful, I’m nervous, I’m hopeful — I think I got all kinds of emotions. Biden seems to be very encouraging; he seems to be making the right noises. You read something, and you think, Ooh, there’s hope, and then you read something else and you think, Oh my god, this is horrific. So yes, it’s a clichĂ©, but it’s a rollercoaster.

I secretly hope that China is taking it more seriously. Wishful thinking: maybe China is understanding it. But at the same time, idiotically, they are investing in coal, and you think, Oh, come on, you can’t have it both ways. They perhaps understand the problem, they want to address the problem, but they also want to be in the lead.  

As you find in “Sapiens,” he talks about the fact that these enormous problems facing the world are global problems, and it’s incredibly difficult because you have these different nation-states with different ideas who want to be in charge of the other ones. I don’t know. We’ll see. What do you think?

Pivovarchuk: I do have a lot of hope in the young generation. I think they are incredible.

Naughten: Yeah, I went on Extinction Rebellion marches and I went on the school strike [Fridays for Future], which was great. I got there and it’s just thousands and thousands of kids, walking up to Parliament Square, and there was a lump in your throat. I started welling up when I got there — it was really emotional. It does give you some hope, which is really important. Hopefully, the kids are a bit more woken up. My godson, he’s great. He’s 21, he’s such a force for conservation. We talk a lot. So yeah, I’m kind of hopeful — you have to be, really.  

*[“Eremozoic” is on at until November 18. The show is supported by ; 10% of all proceeds from the show will go to FFI.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Do we start with the 1967 conflict that resulted in Israel occupying Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula? Or do we go back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War — what the Israelis call the War of Independence and the Palestinians the Nakba, or catastrophe? Or do we need to rewind further back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, a British of intent for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”? Or do we go all the way to the First Zionist Congress, convened in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897 amidst a wave of anti-Semitism rising across Europe?

The debate about the origins of the conflict goes on to this day. Regardless of the debate, the current situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has become unsustainable.

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Israel continues its crippling blockade of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as the capital of their future state. When Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza, fires rockets into Israel, the Israelis retaliate with what has been described by many as a “” use of force. The human rights abuses perpetrated against Palestinians living under Israeli control have led to accusations of apartheid by organizations like and .

The construction of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, which is considered under international law, has made a Palestinian state effectively impossible. At the same time, an estimated half of the Palestinian population lives Palestine. Millions of refugees and their descendants — most of whom were exiled in 1948 — are stuck stateless in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The wider Palestinian diaspora is scattered around the world.

With the peace process at a stalemate following years of failure, the end to this conflict is nowhere in sight.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Avi Shlaim, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Oxford and author of “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.” He explains what lies at the core of the conflict, the problem with the peace process, apartheid, US support for Israel and more.

Abul-Hasanat Siddique: At some media outlets, there is often a lack of historical context when it comes to Israel and Palestine. Some readers may think that the conflict began in 2021 with the recent clashes or in 1967 with the Six-Day War. If you had to explain the origin of the conflict, what would you say? Where do the roots lie?

Avi Shlaim: The core and the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. This conflict has been going on for over a century. There was one land and two national movements: the Palestinian national movement and the Jewish national movement, or the Zionist movement. Two peoples, two nations and one land. This is what the conflict is about.

In the late 1930s, the neighboring Arab states intervened in this conflict on the side of the Palestinians. They remained engaged in varying degrees until President Sadat of Egypt visited Jerusalem in 1977, signed a peace treaty with Israel and led the trend towards Arab disengagement from the conflict. So, there are two levels to this conflict, two dimensions: the local one, the Jewish-Palestinian, and the interstate level of the conflict.

The great turning point of the conflict was 1948, which Israelis call the “War of Independence” and Palestinians call the Nakba, or the catastrophe. The outcome of this war was that three-quarters of a million Palestinians — more than half of the population — became refugees and Palestine was wiped off the map. These are the real roots of the conflict.

The next turning point was the Six-Day War in June 1967. In the course of that war, Israel trebled its territory. It captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. From now on, the Arab states had a direct stake in this conflict. They wanted to recover their occupied territories. In 1979, Israel gave back the Sinai Peninsula as the price for the peace treaty with Egypt. In 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel signed the Oslo Accord. The Oslo Accord did three things: the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist, Israel recognized the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people, and the two sides agreed to resolve all their outstanding differences by peaceful means.

Edward Said was the first Palestinian to launch an all-out attack on the Oslo Accord. The reason for this was that the Oslo Accord addressed the 1967 file but not the 1948 file. It was an agreement between Israel and the PLO  about the Palestinian territories captured by Israel in 1967. It did not deal with the roots of the conflict: the rights of the 1948 Palestinian refugees and the collective right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination.

Siddique: There is a long-running debate over whether the solution lies in two states — one Jewish, one Arab — or one democratic state for both peoples. I know your view has changed over time from a two-state to a one-state solution. What led to that?

Shlaim: For most of my adult years, I supported the two-state solution. The two-state solution did not offer the Palestinians absolute justice, but in world affairs, it is very rare to get absolute justice. It offered them relative justice or the most minimal national rights. It took the 1967 borders as the basis for a settlement between Israel, on the one hand, and an independent Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank, with the capital city in East Jerusalem. This would have left Israel with 78% of Mandatory Palestine and the Palestinians would have only 22%. So, by signing the Oslo Accord, the PLO made a far-reaching concession and agreed to settle the conflict in return for a very small state alongside Israel.

There has always been, and there still is today, broad international support for a two-state solution. But that doesn’t take account of Israeli actions since 1967.  Israel did not stand still after the victory. Since July 1967, Israel has been building settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. It withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, but it continues to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank even as we speak. If Israel had been serious about a two-state solution, at the very least it would have imposed a freeze on settlements to give negotiations a chance. But Israel continued to expand settlements. Settlements are about land-grabbing. Land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together — it’s one or the other. By its actions since 1967, Israel indicated clearly its preference for land over peace with the Palestinians.

Another problem is that the Israeli so-called security barrier on the West Bank. The wall is not complete yet, but it’s already 650 kilometers long. The Palestinians call it the apartheid wall. The International Court of Justice has ruled that the wall is illegal. Israel would have been perfectly within its rights to build the wall on its side of the 1967 border, but most of this wall is on the Palestinian side. They say that good fences make good neighbors, but not when the fence goes down the middle of your neighbor’s garden! The wall annexes between 8% and 10% of West Bank territory to Israel and the wall goes around East Jerusalem and cuts it off from the West Bank. East Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel. The Palestinians in East Jerusalem don’t have citizenship, they have permanent residence, which is fragile and vulnerable and can be terminated at any moment by Israel.

To sum up, there is no longer the physical and geographical possibility of a viable Palestinian state. All that is left is an archipelago of Palestinian enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases. In other words, Israel, by its actions on the ground, has killed the two-state solution, which was the solution that I used to favor.

Since Israel eliminated this option, what is the alternative? The best alternative I can think of is one democratic state, with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion, gender or ethnicity. I do not regret the shift towards the one-state solution. What is wrong with a one-state solution with equal rights? It is a democratic solution. And what could be a nobler vision than a state that does not discriminate against any group and in which all citizens enjoy the same rights?

Siddique: Marwan Bishara, the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera, has spoken of whether the Palestinians need a Nelson Mandela-like figure. In such a scenario, an Israeli leader would also need to extend an arm. Yet this view doesn’t take into account the friction and opposition in both Israeli and Palestinian societies, nor does it address the influence of US politics and lobby groups. What would need to change for there to even be talk of a one-state solution — a democratic state for Arabs and Jews?

Shlaim: Palestinian leadership has always been a problem. Abu Mazen is a very weak leader: inarticulate, lacking in charisma, and lacking in legitimacy. So, he’s not a very convincing proponent of Palestinian national rights. Sadly, throughout their history, the Palestinians have had poor leadership, starting with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, then Yasser Arafat and then Abu Mazen. So, that is a problem: poor leadership on the Palestinian side.

But that is not the principal problem, because Abu Mazen is a moderate and the great majority of Palestinians are for a two-state solution — or at least they used to be. After the Oslo Accord was signed, roughly 70% of Palestinians and 70% of Israelis supported a two-state solution. But Oslo failed the Palestinians. The situation now is worse for the Palestinians than it was before Oslo.

What is the obstacle to one, democratic state? The main obstacle is the Israeli government: the Likud and parties further right than the Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Under American pressure, in the Bar-Ilan speech in 2009, Netanyahu said he would accept a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israeli. Since then, he has gone back on it and he has stated repeatedly that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch — he will oppose a Palestinian state all the way. More importantly, the Likud platform rejects a Palestinian state. The Likud has never accepted the need for a Palestinian state.

Further to the right is Naftali Bennett, the leader of Yamina, who replaced Netanyahu as prime minister in June 2021 at the head of a hybrid coalition. Bennett used to be the head of Yesha, the settlers’ council. He’s a religious-nationalist who fiercely opposes an independent Palestinian state in any shape or form. He used to advocate the outright annexation of Area C, which is 60% of the West Bank. 

In the present Knesset, 72 out of 120 members are right-wingers. This reflects a long-term trend. Israeli society has been moving steadily towards the right ever since the Second Intifada in 2000. Today, not just the government, not just the political elite, but Israeli society in general are strongly opposed to a one-state.

Siddique: You talked about Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, which leads me on to my next question. In 2013, you wrote that Netanyahu is “the double-faced prime minister who pretends to negotiate the partition of the pizza while continuing to gobble it up.” You have talked today about the problems with Oslo, including Edward Said and his criticism of the accord. Since the failure of Oslo, has Israel ever been interested in a peace deal, or has it been focused on eating that pizza and making a Palestinian state impossible?

Shlaim: Netanyahu never concealed his deep hostility to the Oslo Accords. After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Likud came back to power in 1996 under the leadership of Netanyahu, who set about dismantling, freezing and subverting the Oslo Accord and building more settlements and strengthening Israel’s military power in order to continue to subdue the Palestinians indefinitely. In the last few years, Netanyahu’s message to the Israeli public has been that Palestinian nationalism has been effectively contained and neutralized and that the Palestinians are powerless, divided — with Hamas in charge of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in charge of the West Bank — and therefore, there is no need to trade land for peace with them. His formula is peace for peace: to offer the Arabs peace in return for peace, without paying any territorial price.

With the help of Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — who is very close to Netanyahu — Netanyahu was able to implement this policy and it took the form of the Abraham Accords: peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. These were great foreign policy triumphs for Netanyahu, and he said to the Israeli public: You see, I don’t have to pay any price — there is nothing the Palestinians can do and we are achieving normalization with the Arab world.

But with the escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza in May, this whole conception of peace has collapsed. The Palestinians did not remain passive. They put up robust resistance to the Israeli provocations in Al-Aqsa and the ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah, the Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

These provocations eventually led Hamas to respond with rocket attacks. The last round of fighting was not confined to Gaza. There was a sense of outrage by Palestinians everywhere. There were also protests on the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, in Gaza, in the diaspora and, most importantly, within Israel itself.

Since 1948, an Arab minority remained inside Israel. Today, they constitute 20% of Israel’s population. These Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote, but they are treated as second-class citizens. In the past, violent clashes only occurred in the occupied territories. Now, for the first time, clashes occurred inside Israel, particularly in the mixed cities of Jews and Arabs like Lydda. This is a kind of incipient civil war. As a result of Israel’s provocations, we got something like a unity intifada in which all Palestinians, wherever they are, are united in the determination to resist Israel’s occupation.

Siddique: Considering that clashes took place inside Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Gaza was the main focal point, does that mean the peace-for-peace policy is unsustainable?

Shlaim: When he was prime minister, Netanyahu didn’t have a peace policy. Netanyahu does not believe in a peaceful solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He has never believed in a peaceful settlement. He is the proponent of permanent conflict and he is a unilateralist. He thinks that Israel has to remain militarily strong, Israel has to retain the full support of the United States, and then the Palestinians would be impotent to do anything; the international community can criticize Israel as much as it likes, but there will be no practical consequences — no price for the occupation.

That’s his view. He doesn’t have an endgame, he doesn’t have a solution. His solution is Jewish supremacy based on Jewish military force. This is apartheid, because between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, there is one regime: the Israeli regime, which is all-powerful. And one ethnic group dominates the other. This is not a democracy; it’s an ethnocracy. Another word for ethnocracy is apartheid.

So, that is the position today. Both µţ’T˛ő±đ±ô±đłľ, the Israeli human rights NGO, and Human Rights Watch issued reports recently with that conclusion: that Israel is an apartheid state. To my mind, apartheid in the 21^st century is not sustainable. The focus in world politics has shifted from borders and sovereignty to human rights. That’s what people feel strongly about. If Israel continues to violate on a daily basis the human rights of the Palestinians, and to oppress them, it will gradually lose international support. This is already happening and it’s been happening for some time.

Israel’s savage bombardment of Gaza in May was a real turning point. It provoked protests around the world against the Israeli occupation and it has led to popular public reframing of the conflict. Before it was seen as a dispute between two parties over territory. Now it is seen as a case of racial injustice. The Palestinian cause became strongly linked to Black Lives Matter. In the demonstrations, people carried banners that said, “Palestinian Lives Matter.” There were posters that said, “Palestine Cannot Breathe.” Americans are beginning to see this conflict as similar to the racial injustice at home, where white policemen shoot and kill black people. That’s the way more and more people see the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.

There is also BDS — the boycott, divestment and sanctions — a global, grassroots, nonviolent movement against the Israeli occupation, which has been gathering more and more support and gaining more traction. Israel is really afraid of BDS and it has led a campaign to discredit BDS and its supporters as anti-Semites, which is rubbish. It is important to stress that BDS is a nonviolent movement and that all its main demands are ground in international law: an end to the occupation, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Far from being an anti-Semitic movement, BDS is an anti-racist movement that espouses universal values of freedom and equality.

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I have been talking so far about the tide of popular opinion that is turning rapidly against Israel. But the position of Western governments has not changed. The position of the United States, Canada and the European Union is still completely biased in favor of Israel. The European Union, in particular, is really hypocritical because, officially, it supports a two-state solution and is committed to Palestinian rights, but in practice, it gives Israel all sorts of trading privileges and advantages. It does nothing to sanction Israel for its illegal settlements or its abuse of Palestinian human rights.

The policies of these Western governments are not going to change in the near future. Twelve European parliaments have recognized Palestine as a state but only one government, that of Sweden. The Irish parliament recently passed a resolution condemning Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank. The Irish foreign minister stated that the de facto annexation is just as bad and just as illegal as formal annexation. Ireland may well end up proposing EU sanctions against Israel. Let me point out this: Ireland was the first country to impose sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Today, Ireland is ahead of most other Western governments in its support for Palestinian rights. Today, the Irish flag is flying in Ramallah.

I believe that eventually, governments would follow their publics and modify their attitude towards Israel. America, in particular, may come to reassess its blind and unconditional support for Israel.

Siddique: Can all of these factors — Black Lives Matter, looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case of racial injustice, the apartheid label, the BDS movement, international public support, the public reframing of the conflict and political shifts like with Ireland — have an impact for Palestinian self-determination?

Shlaim: Growing popular support worldwide is not going to enable Palestinians to achieve independence and statehood. It is governments who make the decisions and the United Nations, which has overall responsibility for resolving international conflicts. But the actor that counts most in this conflict is the United States. Unless America shows real commitment to Palestinian statehood, it is not going to come about.

Since 1967, the Americans have arrogated to themselves a monopoly over the so-called peace process. They have excluded the Soviet Union and then Russia, the EU and the United Nations. They arrogated to themselves a monopoly over peacemaking. But they never delivered peace, they never pushed Israel into a settlement. The so-called peace process was all process and no peace, yielding no concrete results. It was a charade. In fact, it was worse than a charade because peace talks gave Israel just the cover it needs to continue to pursue its aggressive colonial project in the West Bank.

Americans like to think of themselves as honest brokers, but they are dishonest brokers. They are Israel’s lawyer, and you can’t be both Israel’s lawyer and a mediator. More than this, America is the enabler of the Israeli occupation. Without American support, American money, American military hardware, Israel would not be able to sustain the occupation. America gives Israel money, arms and diplomatic support. In the last 40 years, America has used the veto on the Security Council 42 times to defeat resolutions that are not to Israel’s liking. In effect, Israel has the power of veto on the Security Council. It doesn’t exercise it directly but through a proxy, its little friend, the United States of America. The Palestinians are not going to achieve statehood unless America moves from words about the two-state solution to deeds, to condition its support to Israel on real Israeli moves towards a settlement.

Siddique: Is it time for other nations, such as Arab and European, to join those efforts — so as to not give the United States a monopoly? Would they have an impact if they were part of the talks?

Shlaim: The European Union should be a player in bringing about a settlement, because the EU has real leverage with both parties. The EU is the main source of foreign aid for the Palestinian Authority, and Israel does 35% of its trade with the European Union. Last year alone, the total amount of trade between Israel and the EU was ÂŁ31 billion [$42.7 billion].

The EU undoubtedly has this leverage with Israel, but it has never exercised it because it is not a unitary actor. It has 27 member countries, some of them are very pro-Israeli like Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. These countries would most probably veto any resolution to impose sanctions on Israel. The EU has been ineffectual both because of its internal structure and because America has sidelined it. For the foreseeable future, it is likely to remain a payer, not a player.

The Arab world should be an important actor in all this because it has a direct stake in what happens in Palestine. Arab states also have a religious stake because Jerusalem is the third holiest city in Islam. But the Arab states have been pretty passive and totally ineffective when it came to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

In fairness to the Arab states, it has to be pointed out that they have got a clear and unified position on the Palestine question. It was formulated in the Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002, when a Saudi proposal was adopted unanimously and became the Arab Peace Initiative. The Arab Peace Initiative offered Israel formal peace and full normalization with all 22 member states of the Arab League, in return for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank with a capital city in East Jerusalem. This was the real deal of the century, not Trump’s phony deal. It gave Israel everything it had previously asked for, but Israel had to pay with land for peace. Israel completely ignored the Arab Peace Initiative.

Yet the Arab consensus on the Palestinian issue did not hold. There used to be a pretty general commitment to the Palestinian cause, but since the Oslo Accord when the Palestinians acted independently and signed a peace accord with Israel, the Arab states feel less bound to support the Palestinians. Particularly in the last four years, during the presidency of Donald Trump, the Arabs came under pressure to abandon the Palestinians. Trump’s idea was to have a united front of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Iran. The price that the Gulf Arabs were expected to pay America in return for support against Iran was to ditch the Palestinians. This is what the countries that signed the Abraham Accords have done. They did bilateral deals with Israel, which was a stab in the back to the Palestinians.

Siddique: Have the Abraham Accords killed the Arab Peace Initiative indefinitely — even a tweaked version of it?

Shlaim: No, definitely not. The Abraham Accords have not killed and not modified in any way the Arab Peace Initiative. It remains on the table and the big prize is Saudi Arabia. Israel and President Trump hoped that Saudi Arabia would sign a peace accord with Israel, and that would have effectively been the end of the Arab Peace Initiative. Saudi Arabia, however, did not pronounce on the peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. It did not support it publicly nor did it follow suit. The Saudi foreign minister stated that Saudi Arabia remains committed to the Arab Peace Initiative and support for the Palestinians. And the Arab Peace Initiative is still the official position of the Arab League.

Siddique: You didn’t have much faith in Donald Trump’s ability to mediate a peace agreement. The Biden administration has faced criticism over its response to the latest conflict. Progressive politicians in the United States, such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, have spoken out. Do you see hope that Joe Biden’s team would get the Palestinians and Israelis to talk, which they haven’t in many years?

Shlaim: I don’t have much hope in Biden breaking away from the traditional mold of American foreign policy, which is pro-Israeli. The default position of American administrations is to appease Israel. Biden has had a very long career in American politics, and he is one the strongest and most consistent supporters of Israel. He once stated that if Israel didn’t exist, America would help to invent it. He also said, on another occasion, that if he were a Jew, he would be a Zionist. He then corrected himself and said, “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. I am a Zionist.” It is even worse than that because he is, by his own account, an unconditional Zionist.

Biden was vice-president for eight years under Barack Obama, which gave Israel a huge amount of aid. Particularly at the end of the administration, they signed a military aid deal worth $38 billion over 10 years. This annual grant of $3.8 billion in military aid is unconditional. Biden was one of the people who always refused to tie American aid to Israel to Israel’s respect for Palestinian human rights and international norms. That is still his position: his support for Israel is unconditional.

One recent manifestation of this was International Criminal Court’s decision to investigate war crimes in the Occupied Territories. Trump had imposed sanctions on the ICC judges because they threatened to investigate Israel. Biden has lifted the sanctions, but he’s still strongly opposed to any investigation of Israel by the ICC. The most disturbing manifestation of Biden’s bias in favor of Israel happened during the May crisis. Two things happened.

First, the Security Council, on three occasions, tried to issue a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire. Biden vetoed all three attempts. All three attempts were supported by the 14 other members of the Security Council. America alone stopped a declaration, a statement in favor of an immediate ceasefire. That tells you a lot. It tells you that Biden looked to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu wanted more time to do even more damage in Gaza. Biden gave him that extra time to do his worst.

Secondly, Biden authorized — without consulting Congress — when the fighting was going on, arms sales to Israel worth nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, mostly precision munitions to fire on Gaza. In this instance, Biden paralyzed UN diplomacy and empowered Israeli militarism against the Palestinians.

Israel’s latest assault on the people of Gaza, like all its previous wars, inflicted death and devastation on Gaza but left the underlying problems completely unsolved. The use of military force does nothing to resolve what is essentially a political problem. If America takes the lead in resuming peace talks, which is not at all certain, Biden is unlikely to come up with any new ideas.

Biden is no longer representative even of his own party. Progressive members of the Democratic Party are critical of him and his conduct. The congresswomen that you mentioned and Bernie Sanders are now calling for an American arms embargo on Israel. This is unprecedented.

There is another factor at play in America: young, progressive Jews are increasingly disenchanted, even disgusted with Israel. Peter Beinart, who is the leading expert on this, estimates that AIPAC represents maybe 30% of American Jews and J Street roughly 70%. A growing number of young, American Jews are openly critical of Israel, critical of its human rights abuses, critical of the occupation, and they support a two-state solution. So, not only the American public has been turning against Israel, but Jewish opinion in America is also turning against Israel. Eventually, if not immediately, Biden would have to adjust to the new reality at home.

We have to remember that in America, Israel is not a foreign policy issue, it’s a domestic politics issue. The fact that there is such strong support for Israel throughout America, especially among Christian Evangelists, explains why America has been so biased in favor of Israel. But if the landscape in America continues to shift against Israel and in support of the Palestinians, official American foreign policy may eventually follow.

Siddique: That’s an interesting point you mention about Israel being a domestic issue, not a foreign policy issue. One final question for you, professor. For our readers who are interested in learning more about the conflict, which books and/or authors would you recommend?

Shlaim: I warmly recommend Ian Black’s “Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017” and Rashid Khalidi’s “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.” At the risk of sounding immodest, I would mention my own book, “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World,” a critique of Israeli policy towards the Arab world since 1948. But I should warn your readers that it is 900 pages long! In 1995, I published a Penguin book, a short paperback called, “War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History.” This is an easy introduction to the international politics of the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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The best book I know on America and the Arab-Israeli conflict is by William B. Quandt and it is called, “Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967.” On the Arab world in general, I warmly recommend a book by Fawaz A. Gerges: “Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East.” This book was published by Princeton University Press in 2018, and it deals with the two main trends in Arab politics: Arab nationalism represented by Gamal Abdel Nasser and political Islam represented by Sayyid Qutb.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Roots of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The economic climate changed somewhat during Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s tenure, when his finance minister, Manmohan Singh, carried out a series of long-overdue structural reforms in 1991 to spur economic growth by liberalizing Indian markets.

India’s League of Internationalists

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A notable holdout to the near-total Nehruvian consensus was the , committed to equality of opportunity of all people “without distinction of religion, caste, occupation, or political affiliation.” Created in 1959 by C. Rajagopalachari as an alternative to Nehru’s increasingly socialist and statist outlook, the party envisioned that progress, welfare and happiness of the people could be achieved by giving maximum freedom to individuals with minimum state intervention. Perceived to be on the economic right of the Indian political spectrum, Swatantra was not based on a purely religious understanding of Indic culture, unlike the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Jaitirth “Jerry” Rao, a former Citigroup honcho, MPhasis CEO and presently chairman of the Value Budget Housing Corporation, in his 2019 , “The Indian Conservative: A History of Indian Right-Wing Thought,” explores the philosophical roots of modern Indian conservatism in five domains: economic, cultural, social, political and aesthetic. The book clearly and concisely conveys the intellectual underpinnings of conservative thought based on indigenous traditions and culture. True conservatives advocate for evolution and not revolution, and the idea that conservative thinking is static, frozen and fixated on a Utopian golden past is a caricature designed by detractors, according to Rao.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Jaitirth Rao about what it means to be an Indian conservative today, about the history of right-wing thought, and the conflicts in Kashmir and with China.

The text was lightly edited for clarity.

Vikram Zutshi: What is your personal understanding of conservatism? Can you give us a timeline of conservative thought in the Indian context?

Jerry Rao: Conservatism is more a way of looking at the world than a philosophy. In politics, conservatives support gradual, peaceful, constitutional change where care is taken not to abandon the good things inherited from our ancestors. In aesthetics, conservatives have a love for old established traditions in music, dance, drama, painting, literature and, above all, in town-planning and architecture. A conservative will always oppose the Corbusier school of town-planning and architecture.

In economic affairs, conservatives support market-based systems not because they are efficient, which they might very well be. Conservatives support markets because they are time-honored, organic, voluntary institutions evolved by human beings and are predicated on peaceful intercourse, negotiations, bargains and consensus.

Markets have a positive moral dimension as far as conservatives are concerned. Symmetrically, conservatives opposed central planning in economics as it concentrates power and reduces citizens to serfs. Conservatives believe in a minimalist state which is strong. They do not believe in anarchic libertarianism. Conservatives believe in cultural cohesion in societies. We believe that the culture we have inherited from our ancestors, while always in need of modest change, is nevertheless a precious legacy which we need to preserve and hand on to our descendants intact or in an enhanced way. It is not to be abruptly jettisoned.

The same spirit pervades apropos of the environment. Our forests, water bodies and landscapes are sacred trusts given to us, which we need to pass on as trustees rather than as short-term owners. Conservatives are usually positive toward religion, which is seen as an important cultural inheritance —  conservatives are very fond of religious music, liturgy, chanting, painting, architecture, sculpture, dance and ritual — and also as being a very successful part of the moral cement that a society needs.

The roots of Indian conservatism go back to the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata and the Tirukkural. Modern Indian political conservatism has had two fathers: Ram Mohan Roy and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. The intellectual descendants include Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani on one side, and Deen Dayal on the other. In economics, the tradition of has been carried forward by Shenoy all the way down to contemporary market-friendly economists. In aesthetics, the traditions of Bharata Muni, Sarangadeva, Abhinavagupta and Appayya Dikshitar have been carried forward by Ananda Coomaraswamy all the way down to the present efflorescence.

Zutshi: To what degree does the current government in India embody conservative ideals?

Rao: The present government of India, in political terms, is the very embodiment of conservatism. The Constitution of India represents a gradual constitutional change over the Government of India Act of 1935, which represented gradual constitutional change over previous acts like the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, the Minto-Morley Reforms, the Indian Councils Act, the Queen’s Proclamation, The EI Company Charter Acts, the Pitt India act and the Regulating Act. We have retained the same constitution for 70 years, unlike Latin American countries which jettison constitutions quite quickly.

Changes to our constitution have been done through a complex amendment process and has been subject to judicial review. While conservatives are not happy with all the changes, we must perforce be happy with the gradual, peaceful, constitutional nature of the changes. No revolutionary changes here.

Now, coming to the current political dispensation, which has been in power for six years, we can state that it is more conservative in character than the previous dispensation. It is not as market-friendly as some conservatives may desire. But it is more market-friendly than the government of the previous 10 years. It is also more scrupulous about constitutional propriety — no outrageous acts like retrospective legislation. In its emphasis on subjects like yoga and Sanskrit, it certainly supports a cultural continuity so dear to conservatives. Its focus on the Ganga River and on solar power demonstrates a sense of trusteeship about the environment.  

Principally, the government needs to be more market-friendly and it needs to dismantle large parts of the intrusive administrative state which it has inherited. It needs to hasten slowly in this area. I cannot think of any serious blunders.

Zutshi: At what juncture did your political philosophy begin to crystallize? To what extent does Indian conservatism resemble its American and British counterparts?

Rao: This took some time to grow. Reading a biography of Edmund Burke in 1975 may have been when it started. It has taken years, even decades to crystallize. There is an amazing synchronicity between the ideas of the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata, the ideas of the Tirukkural, the ideas embedded in the Apastamba Sutra of the Yajur Veda and the ideas of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli and Roger Scruton. In modern times, great Indian conservatives like Ram Mohan, Bhandarkar, Bankim, Rajaji and Masani acknowledged their debts both to the classical Indian texts and to Burke. 

Zutshi: There is much noise in the Indian media about the silencing and incarceration of dissenters. Many activists and academics have been locked up without due process, for example, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Hany Babu and others. Do you think such draconian measures are justified?

Rao: The Indian state and republic have been under attack. The previous prime minister, Manmohan Singh, emphatically stated that Maoists were India’s greatest security threat. So there is a continuity between governments in the threat perception. We are dealing with people who wanted to destroy bourgeois democracy from within. In recent times, the alliance between Maoists and jihadists who are bent on an Islamic reconquest of India has led to considerable concern and alarm. Those who supply the ideological basis for violence against the republic, those who shelter the extremists, those who help the extremists acquire arms and those who create a penumbra of respectability around people who violently murder Indian police personnel and ordinary citizens, have much to answer for.

These ideologies have until now taken advantage of the soft Indian state. They have been foolish. The Indian Republic has contained Naga, Kashmiri and Khalistani separatists and the bomb-throwers and murderers of Naxalbari. Sooner or later, the velvet glove was bound to get a little loose. That is what has happened.

Zutshi: What is China’s long-term agenda with regards to India? What are we to make of the ongoing aggression between the two powers? Can India afford another war at this point? If not, what are its remaining options?

Rao: In my opinion, China’s leaders see India as an irrelevant pinprick. They see America as their natural rival. Having said this, the Chinese do have a desire to break up India and they will try their best to do so. There is no “aggression between the two powers.” There is only Chinese aggression and aggressiveness. I don’t know what we can make of it, except to assume that their expansionist and irredentist stance is not likely to abate. In strictly economic cost-benefit terms, we cannot afford it. But if the other option is servitude and disintegration, they do not leave us with much choice but to resist irrespective of the economic calculus.

Truman articulated the doctrine of “containment” apropos of the Soviet Union. A global coalition along those lines is the answer. We do not have the choice of being non-aligned now. The Soviet Union was far from us and did not attempt to encroach on us or weaken us. China is our neighbor and seems to have decided that we are like Poland of the 1930s. We might need to demonstrate that we are closer to the weak and inefficient Russia which suffered much but still did halt the efficient German juggernaut in the 1940s.

Zutshi: Finally, do you agree with the abrogation of article 370 in Kashmir? More importantly, is the lockdown and curtailment of civil liberties justified?

Rao: Yes. It was a serious anomaly. It was detrimental to Kashmiri women, religious minorities like the Hindus and the Buddhists, Dalits, refugees and so on. It was allowing for the retention of a space for Islamist groups like the ISIS to infiltrate; 370 had to go.

Noisy sections of the valley’s population took the public and publicized position that a self-proclaimed ISIS terrorist was a hero and a martyr. The previous local government either could not or chose not to do anything. When such things happen, any organized state worth its name has to take drastic intrusive action. Let us not forget that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the American Civil War and Pitt suspended habeas corpus during the Napoleonic Wars.

Zutshi: What will it take to bring Kashmir back to normal again, or is that just a pipe dream?

Rao: The Kashmiri Sunni leadership has to realize that if they do not change, in 40 years, they will resemble the Naga Muivarh faction leaders seeking medical treatment in Delhi and talking gibberish. The rank-and-file Kashmiri Muslims need to realize that they have been fed ridiculous propaganda. Joining Pakistan means joining a failed state that is a bit of an international joke. Given the years and decades of educational damage and brainwashing that has happened, this is not going to be an easy task for the Indian state to accomplish. But slowly, inevitably, inexorably, it will get done.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post A History of Indian Conservatism appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Greenhouse gases produced as a result of anthropogenic activity such as the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes are being at rates higher than at any point in the past 800,000 years. The resulting greenhouse effect is destabilizing the planet’s climate in hazardous ways. Extreme weather events are now more frequent and violent than ever. Heatwaves, droughts, blizzards, hail storms and floods are occurring with greater intensity, exacerbating poverty and forced migration. 2019 was the hottest year on record, with nearly 400 unprecedented instances of high temperatures in the northern hemisphere last summer alone.

Will Millennials and Zoomers Save the Future?

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Aside from the loss of biodiversity, the disappearance of small island nations and the proliferation of new diseases, climate change is currently responsible for the of 150,000 people annually, and will expectedly 250,000 fatalities per year between 2030 and 2050. This is a wake-up call for societies, lured into complacency by technological advances, that our lifestyle and consumption patterns are not sustainable.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to professor Ashok Swain, UNESCO chair of International Water Cooperation at Sweden’s Uppsala University, about the human rights impacts of climate change, the ensuing conflicts over resources, and the interplay between global warming and poverty.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “have an affirmative obligation to take effective measures” to mitigate the impacts of climate change on human rights. With political, economic and security concerns that are consuming resources, coupled with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, do you think enough is being done to address climate change and its human rights implications? If states have an “obligation” to combat climate change, how is it possible to make sure they are living up to those commitments?

Ashok Swain: Both climate change and COVID-19 are global crises and [are] interconnected. Degrading ecosystems, unsustainable lifestyles and declining natural resources have led to a pandemic like COVID-19. Thus, the world should not forget the threats of climate change while confronting the pandemic. Adding to these two serious crises, human rights are increasingly under threat, and civil and political rights of people are growingly compromised in a world that is witnessing a democratic decline. Climate change has multiplied the human rights crisis in a more unequal and undemocratic world by causing threats to human health and survival, food and water shortages, and weather-related disasters resulting in death and destruction of property. A healthy and robust environment is fundamental to the enjoyment of human rights.

The world has been committed for 72 years to the observation and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and these principles have been at the heart of international agreements. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap that exists between the international commitments on human rights and climate change, and the national policies adopted by the countries. Climate change and policy responses to meet its challenges will have a significant impact on the human rights of millions of people.

The world is also witnessing the climate justice movement in a big way. Only comprehensive and collaborative actions by the states in line with protecting human rights will make it possible for the planet to meet these unprecedented challenges. Countries must commit to ambitious climate mitigation targets to keep the global average temperature increase within a manageable limit. Countries providing climate mitigation assistance and those receiving the support must commit to protecting human rights.

They must incorporate human rights norms into their domestic legal frameworks. While countries need to take important steps toward fulfilling their obligations at home, they need to work cooperatively with other countries to combat climate change and ensure the protection of the human rights of people across the world.  

Ziabari: As reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 60% of the world’s population on agriculture for survival, and 12% of the total available lands are used for cultivating crops. In what ways does climate change impinge on the development of economies that are centered around agriculture? 

Swain: Though the impact of climate change is very comprehensive, its effects on the agriculture sector are easy to notice. Changing rainfall patterns and rising average temperatures due to climate change affect agriculture and those who are dependent on it in a very big way. Floods, droughts, new pests and weed problems add more to their woes. Climate change brings food insecurity through its impacts on all aspects of global, regional, national and local food production and distribution systems. It severely affects the people who are already poor and vulnerable, and dependent on an agriculture-based economy, but the risk and vulnerability are gradually going to shift to other economies.

However, while most tropical, arid and semi-arid regions are likely to experience further agricultural production losses due to rising temperatures, food production in the temperate developed part of the world is expected to benefit in the short term from a warmer climate and longer growing seasons.

With climate change, increasing natural disasters, recurring droughts, salinity intrusion into water systems and massive floods are invariably affecting agricultural production and resulting in food shortages in developing countries. Increasing agricultural production for a growing population while facing climate change has become a major challenge for these agricultural economies as they already face serious shortages of freshwater supply and arable land. High concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reduces the number of nutrients such as zinc and iron in rice and wheat, and bring harmful effects on people in the countries whose diets are highly dependent on these crops.

The adverse effects of climate change on food security, health and economic wellbeing in the agriculture-dependent countries are undermining their ability to achieve their sustainable development goals in a big way. 

Ziabari: Small size, remoteness, insularity and susceptibility to natural disasters are some of the challenges faced by island nations. Last year, the Maldives’ environment minister  that for small island nations, climate change is not only a threat, but its impacts are already being felt. What is at stake for the island nations as a result of global warming and extreme weather conditions? Do you agree that for these regions, climate change poses an existential threat?

Swain: If the present trend of greenhouse gas emission continues, the UN climate science panel warns against the possibility of sea-level rise up to 1.1 meters by 2100. The rise of the seawater level to this magnitude will not only inundate large areas in the highly populated low-lying countries but also can potentially submerge many small island states in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Way back in 1987, the then-president of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdool Gayoom, made an emotional appeal at the UN General Assembly that a sea-level rise of only one meter would threaten the life and survival of all his countrymen. More than three decades have passed, and the threat of several small island countries disappearing from the global map altogether looks more real than ever before.

While they are not underwater yet, these small island countries are already facing the impact of climate change in various ways. In these countries, most human settlement and economic activity take place in coastal areas. Climate change-induced coastal erosion has already brought significant changes in their human settlement patterns and socioeconomic conditions.

Coral reefs play a big role in the wellbeing of the small island countries by supplying sediments to island shores and restraining the impact of waves. Unprecedented coral bleaching due to increased water temperature and carbon dioxide concentration are adversely affecting the reef systems, which is critical for these small countries. Changing rainfall patterns, decreasing precipitation and increasing temperatures have also presented critical challenges for the freshwater supply on these islands and to their food security.

Frequent climate change-induced natural disasters like hurricanes and floods are also bringing devastation to their economy and infrastructure. And also, these severe weather-related events affecting their key tourism sectors. Climate change will affect every country in the world, but small island nations are most vulnerable to its impacts.

Ziabari: Is it accurate to say that climate change effects are disproportionately burdening the developing and low-income countries, and that nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia are making up for the shortcomings of the developed, industrialized world in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement?

Swain: Despite disagreement and debates, science is now unequivocal on the reality of climate change. Human activities contributing to greenhouse gases are recognized as its primary cause. It is a serious irony that people and countries that suffer most from climate change have done the least to cause it. The 52 poorest countries in the world less than 1% of global carbon emissions.

The poor and the powerless have very little say in the actual climate negotiation process. Several disagreements had kept the countries of the world away from a global treaty. The primary contentions had been over how much and how fast countries were going to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and, upon reaching an agreement, who would monitor it. However, to address global climate change, 194 countries of the world have finally come to an at the Paris Climate Conference on December 12, 2015. [To date, all of the world’s have signed the accords, with the US set to rejoin the agreement after the Biden administration assumes office next year. — 51łÔąĎ] In Paris, industrialized countries also promised to mobilize $100 billion to support carbon emission cuts and climate adaptation.

The Paris Agreement signals the turning point for the world on the path to a low-carbon economy — not only to cut the carbon emission but also to provide financial and technological support to poor developing countries for climate mitigation. However, the withdrawal of the USA from the Paris Agreement has been a serious setback, but, hopefully, it will return to it soon after the change of administration.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, in which only rich industrialized nations had climate mitigation targets, the Paris Agreement includes every country. Though the ratifying countries to the Paris Agreement enjoy the independence on how to lower their carbon emissions, it is binding on them to report their progress. It is true that developing and low-income countries are asked to do their part to mitigate climate change even if they had no role in contributing to climate change. However, the global fund [created] by rich industrialized countries is going to somewhat address this injustice by providing financial support to the most vulnerable countries and also helping them with clean environment technologies for climate change mitigation.

Ziabari: Water stress levels are high in parts of northern Africa, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Indian subcontinent. How can the lengthy periods of drought and variability of water supply in these regions lead to conflicts and violent uprisings? Can we think of water as a determining factor in the political stability of nations in the 21^st century? 

Swain: The world is already experiencing a serious global water crisis. More than 40% of the global population is suffering from water scarcity and, by 2050, an additional 2.3 billion people from Asia, Africa and the Middle East are expected to live in serious water stress. Climate change is expected to seriously aggravate the water scarcity problem in these regions. Moreover, the increase of global surface temperature due to the greenhouse effect is expected to lead to more floods and droughts due to more intense, heavy precipitation. Not only floods and droughts are going to be frequent in the future, but even recent studies have also confirmed that climate change is already contributing to more intense precipitation extremes and the risk of floods.

As climate change brings changes to water supply and demand patterns, the existing arrangement of sharing water resources between and within countries in arid and semi-arid regions are likely to be more and more conflictual. There is no doubt that the projected impacts of global climate change on freshwater may be huge and dramatic, but they may not be at the same intensity and follow a similar periodic pattern in each region.

Climate change is also likely to cause extreme weather events, changing sea levels or melting glaciers that can generate serious threats to existing freshwater management infrastructure. It is easy to foresee that climate change will force comprehensive adjustments in the ongoing water management mechanisms as they need to have the flexibility to adjust to the uncertainties. The emerging unprecedented situation due to changes in climatic patterns requires countries and regions to cooperate and act collectively. There is no doubt that climate change poses extreme challenges to water sharing, and it has all the potential to create political instability and violent conflicts. Thus, climate change requires countries to have more flexible, hands-on politically smart management of their water resources.

Ziabari: Walk us through the interplay between climate change and poverty. Does the current pattern of the Earth getting warmer and extreme weather episodes unfurling more frequently have the potential to tip more people into hunger, unemployment and poverty? What do scientific forecasts say?

Swain: With sea-level rise, the world is also expected to witness serious storm surges in regular intervals as tropical cyclones will combine with higher sea levels. This is likely to enhance the risk of coastal high flooding, particularly in the tropics. Climate change also threatens to change the regular rainfall patterns, which can potentially lead to further intensive flooding, drought and soil erosion in tropical and arid regions of the world. Food production is going to be further affected due to extreme weather, unpredictable seasonal changes and wildfires. The Fourth National Climate Assessment Report of the US Global Change Research Program in 2018 warns that heatwaves, drought, wildfire and storms will increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity, bringing serious food insecurity and loss of farming jobs. 

Different countries and societies are responding to and will cope with climate change-induced food insecurity and economic decline differently. Existing cultural norms and social practices will play an important role in formulating their coping mechanisms. Some countries and societies are better at planning and implementing adaptation strategies to meet the hunger and unemployment challenges posed by climate change. The effectiveness and coping abilities of existing institutions of the countries also play a significant role.

No doubt that the adverse impact of climate change will be more severe on the people who are living in the poor and developing economies. Climate change will not only force more people back to poverty, but it can increase the possibility of more violent conflicts, particularly in societies and countries affected by poor governance, weak institutions and low social capital.

Ziabari: Since 2008, nearly 24 million people have been annually on account of catastrophic weather events. One of the concerns scholars raise about these climate refugees is that they lack formal recognition, definition and protection under international law. What is the most viable way to help them?

Swain: Global warming leads to sea-level rise and that is taking away the living space and source of livelihood of millions of people. There are many estimates regarding the size of the climate-induced population migration the world is going to witness in the future. For the last two, three decades, several forecasts have been made, but there are no reliable estimates of climate change forced migration as the future forecasts vary from 25 million to 1 billion by 2050. Not only there is a lack of any agreement over the numbers on climate migration, there is also no clarity on how many of them will move beyond their national borders. But there is no doubt that climate change will displace a large number of people and will force them to move to other countries in search of survival.

However, climate or environment-forced migration is not included in the definition of a refugee as established under international law, which are the most widely used instruments providing the basis for granting asylum to persons in need of protection. International refugee agencies in the past have not been able to save the lives of many environmentally displaced people in the south due to the absence of their mandate.

In this context, the recent ruling of the Supreme Court of New Zealand is quite significant. Though the court recognized the genuineness of a Kiribati man’s contention of being displaced from his homeland due to sea-level rise, it could not grant him refugee status, reasoning that he wouldn’t face prosecution if he would return home. So, there is a need for the definitional fiat of “refugee” to be expanded to address the increasing challenge of climate-forced population displacement and possible international migration.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Change Will Impact the Human Rights of Millions appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

His take on the refugee crisis has taken a different spin, however, through a fictional narrative of a couple from Sudan, torn apart by conflict and who reunite in the dream world. It’s an audiobook called “,” which collaborates with producers ToneO and Essence, starring actors Mustafa Khogali and Hind Swareldahab, who were involved with the Sudanese uprising and have some experience of navigating the British asylum system.

What follows is the gripping, outlandish and also very real-to-life tale of Sameh and Ahlam. Facing barriers in the form of the European and UK immigration systems, they defy powers keeping them apart using the practice of lucid dreaming — having dreams where the dreamer is aware they are in a dream and even gaining control over some of the dream’s elements.

A Rich River of Life: The Importance of Free Movement

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Potent explains the concept as part of the book using his signature , the “The Rhyming Guide to Lucid Dreaming,” and in which he offers another perspective on dreams: “They won’t let us dream, / They want us living their illusion. / That’s why dreaming is a radical act. / Dreaming is resistance.”

It’s a fascinating take on the politics of freedom of movement through the metaphysical and genre of romance, set against hip hop and poetry. And the project has led Potent to do workshops on lucid dreaming and the freedom of movement with young marginalized people. Without a doubt, the project is timely. As the peak summer period for migration has seen record numbers of people crossing the English Channel on flimsy boats, hostile anti-asylum rhetoric has stepped up.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Sophia Akram talks to Potent Whisper about the inspiration and the concepts behind “Lucid Lovers.”

Sophia Akram: A lot is going on in the final output: storytelling, poetry, music, politics, metaphysics intertwined with love and human-interest genres. What made you feel this was the best way of telling a story that is fundamentally a lesson on migration?

Potent Whisper: Somebody will tell you they oppose freedom of movement until they fall in love with somebody from another country and become separated by borders.

It seems to me that people only care about stories that reflect or benefit their own lives in some way. By introducing leading themes of love and dreams, I am speaking to experiences that people share all around the world.

Hopefully, by using this common ground, I have, in some way, provided a non-politicized audience with the space to venture beyond their own lived experiences; to recognize their shared humanity with the characters and begin to care about them beyond the book.

Akram: A passion and compassion for the subject of freedom of movement and the plight of asylum seekers come through. What galvanized you on the issue?

Potent Whisper: The idea that immigrants and asylum seekers are problematic is one that has been relentlessly smashed into the consciousness of the general public by politicians and the mainstream media. This is not only a lie that causes the suffering of immigrants and asylum seekers — which is more than enough reason to write this book — but it is also a lie that simultaneously enables the suffering of the average “English” person who was born in this country.

If you were to ask a random Brit why their grandmother couldn’t get the operation she desperately needed, they may well point to immigrants. If you were to ask a young family why they can’t get a council house, they wouldn’t complain about the demolition of or lack of provision for social housing — they would point to immigrants.

The average British person who is struggling to make ends meet does not feel angry with a government that needlessly chose to implement austerity measures. Instead, they would point to the vulnerable and desperate asylum seeker who came to this country in the simple hope of finding safety.

I am not exactly the smartest guy in the world, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the scapegoating of immigrants (and Muslims) is one of the major enablers of the transferal of public wealth into private hands, via government, in this country and around the world. To quote a passage from “Lucid Lovers,” when Ahlam asks Samer to explain Brexit:

“The British government decided to give bankers hundreds of billions of pounds after the financial crisis in 2008, crippling the British people through austerity measures. They had ten years of misery and the country saw a genocide of the poor but the government managed to redirect their anger away from the powerful people who are consciously killing them and instead towards immigrants and Muslims. This was coupled with the notion that leaving the European Union aka ‘Brexit’ would stop immigrants from entering the country and thus improve living conditions in the UK. The truth, however, is that the effects of Brexit will worsen their real situation. But when the leader of the opposition tried to warn everybody, he was portrayed as a racist and terrorist sympathiser and so the British public voted for an actual racist terrorist and now they’re all screwed.”

Akram: Lucid dreaming sounds wild. Is it real, and how did you come to know about it?

Potent Whisper: Lucid dreaming is 100% real, scientifically proven and well established as a practice. I was introduced to it by my brother after our grandmother passed away last year, and it gave me meaningful hope that we might exist beyond our bodies after we die. After all, if we can exist without our bodies in dreams, perhaps we can exist without our bodies after they decompose.

Akram: I sometimes know when I’m dreaming — is that the same thing? You also touch on dream sharing — is that possible? How would someone find out more about lucid dreaming and what are its benefits?

Potent Whisper: To become lucid means that you are aware that you are in a dream. With some practice, you can then learn to control or direct elements of your dream, which not only allows you to do things that are impossible when awake — like flying — but can enrich your life and improve your wellbeing in the waking world too. For example, lucid dreaming can be used to practice and develop skills whilst we are asleep: If you are learning to play the piano, you can use lucid dreaming to practice playing and, when you wake up, you will have improved accordingly.

Lucid dreaming can also be used to help us process emotional traumas, heal our bodies, consolidate and memorize new information, and so much more. On a more spiritual level, many people have reported that they use lucid dreaming to communicate with ancestors or seek guidance from their spirit guide.

Certainly, I have found that when I face a difficult challenge in life, a solution can often present itself to me whilst contemplating the problem in a lucid dream. The practice also has huge creative potential with many iconic artists and inventors pointing to the dream world as the source of their work. Believe it or not, I actually wrote parts of the audiobook whilst I was in a lucid state. My “The Rhyming Guide to Lucid Dreaming,” which features in the audiobook, explores the benefits of lucid dreaming in more depth.

In terms of dream sharing: It is important for the audience to understand that the character’s ability to share a dream and inhabit the same dream space is very different to lucid dreaming. Unlike lucid dreaming, sharing a dream is not widely reported or scientifically recognized as being possible in real life. Though that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been or can’t be done!

*[The project, funded by Arts Council England, is available to stream and download for free at LucidLovers.co.uk.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Rapper Breaking Down Borders With Dreams appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Now, along with Sudan, there are five Arab countries that recognize Israel, and there are rumors that others like Oman will join the bandwagon. This recent development could have implications for the Palestinians, including the bitter realization that Arab and Muslim countries are betraying them. A 2019 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research  that nearly 80% of Palestinians feel they are abandoned by Arab states.

The task of bringing Israel into compliance with its obligations as the occupying power vis-Ă -vis the Palestinians has become ever more convoluted. UN Security Council resolutions addressing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are routinely disregarded by the Israelis. A case in point is the Security Council , adopted in 2016, which terms Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as “a flagrant violation under international law.”

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Richard Seaford is a professor emeritus of classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. A distinguished scholar, he has been a fellow of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and a member of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Seaford about the Israeli public’s perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” and the global reception of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

Kourosh Ziabari: How do Israel’s political, intelligence and military elites, particularly those on the right, perceive the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The Israeli author Micah Goodman  the dominant narrative is no longer about the “sanctity of the settlements, the fulfillment of biblical prophecies, and imminent redemption.” Rather, for him, the main concern is guaranteed security. Do you agree with this assumption? Can it be inferred that Israeli leaders are prepared for a compromise with the Palestinians, and possibly making territorial concessions, provided that their security concerns are addressed?

Richard Seaford: The answer to both questions is no. The Israeli elite is no doubt concerned about security, and I recognize the problems that they face. But if security was their main motive, they would have established, and could still establish, an impregnable state on their own in pre-1967 borders, if necessary with a massive wall and all the sophisticated technology available to them.

Instead, they have illegally filled with settlements conquered land that belongs not to Israel but to more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs. In doing so, they have made a two-state solution impossible and created a further massive security problem that is used to justify unbearable suffering for the Palestinians and the further expansion of settlements. No doubt some of the elite are aware of the present and future nightmare created by this expansionism, but there is no sign of any political will to do anything substantial about it.

The basic problem is that Israel is a military superpower up against a defenseless people — the Palestinians — with no genuine international pressure to prevent Israel from stealing as much land as it wants.

Ziabari: In late June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a meeting of the Security Council that Israel’s plans to annex swaths of the West Bank would threaten the vision of a two-state solution and represent a most serious violation of international law. Since the Trump administration has reversed the US position on the settlements and no longer considers them a breach of international law, do you expect the Security Council to take action to block further annexations? Is there any legal barrier dissuading Israel from annexing more West Bank lands?

Seaford: No! Firstly, the past record of the Security Council does not encourage the belief that it will take action to require Israel to conform to international law and UN resolutions.

Secondly, there is no reason to believe that Israel will reverse its decades-long disregard of international law, especially given the encouragement now given to its lawbreaking by Trump. A Biden government may not continue the policy of encouraging illegality, but it will probably do nothing substantial to prevent it.

Western countries adopted sanctions against the Russian Federation after rightly regarding its annexation of Crimea in 2014 — after a referendum there — as a violation of international law. But when Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights in 1981, where were the sanctions? The double standards are so obvious as to be embarrassing, and they encourage Israel to further acts of illegal annexation.

According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.” The United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice and the High Contracting Parties to the Convention, among others, have, unsurprisingly, all affirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the territories occupied by Israel. Trump has, in order to please his base, de facto withdrawn from the Geneva conventions.  

Ziabari: In August 2018, the Trump administration suspended all US funding for UNRWA, the UN program supporting Palestinian refugees. UNRWA is now believed to face a major financial challenge, hindering its ability to provide education for 520,000 students, health care for 3 million patients and food assistance for 1.7 million refugees. On other occasions, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and other countries have also cut or reduced their contributions. In what ways will these cuts affect the prosperity and wellbeing of the Palestinian people?

Seaford: To cut off funding for those who live in some of the worst conditions in the world, while maintaining much more funding for the state that has dispossessed them, speaks for itself. A [recent] letter appeared in The Guardian signed by numerous European senior politicians stating that UNRWA needs funding desperately, not least to use its proven expertise in preventing the coronavirus from spreading through densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in the region.

Apart from the further intensification of the misery of the Palestinians, there are two less obvious consequences of the defunding. One is the potential for an increase in regional instability caused by the despair. The other is to diminish yet further the standing of the US in the region and in the world generally. One effect that the defunding will not have is the one desired by Trump: to force the Palestinians to give up their claim to their homeland.

Ziabari: The United States has long worked to position itself as an intermediary in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Trump has renewed efforts to play this role by tabling his long-awaited “deal of the ł¦±đ˛ÔłŮłÜ°ů˛â.” Does this deal make any positive contribution to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Given the Palestinians’ lukewarm and uninterested response, does it have any chance of being successfully implemented?

Seaford: No. The idea that the US is a neutral intermediary in the conflict is now absurd. The discussions that produced the “deal of the century” entirely excluded the Palestinians. It gives Israel virtually everything that it wants, and the Palestinians virtually nothing of what they want. It confirms the illegal expansionism of Israel, gives the Palestinians limited control of the fragments of a very small part of their historic homeland, and leaves by far the largest part of it to a state formed and controlled by 20th-century Jewish emigrants to Palestine and their descendants.

I could go on and on detailing the one-sidedness of the plan. But people may be thinking: Why propose a plan that is so absurdly one-sided that it has no chance of being agreed by both sides?

One answer might be the sheer ignorance of the people responsible for it — for example, Jared Kushner. But the more substantial reason is a kind of propaganda that has been used in the past. The plan helps to instill in the millions who do not bother to ascertain the details of the idea that Trump is trying to create peace, and that the Palestinians are being unreasonable in rejecting it.

Ziabari: The UAE recently announced normalized relations with Israel. Negotiations are also underway between Israel and Oman. Why do you think a growing number of Muslim, Arab states are leaning toward forging closer relations with Israel? What are the implications for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people?

Seaford: The causes of the Gulf states’ rapprochement with Israel include their fear of Iran, the various consequences of the Arab Spring, and perhaps also the steep decline in the price of oil over the last few years, which will endanger states that are almost entirely dependent on it.

However, the rapprochement should not be exaggerated on the basis of a few highly publicized statements or events. For the elites of the Gulf states, whose only concern is to remain in power, it retains its dangers. Surveys show that concern for the Palestinians amongst Arabs has generally risen, rather than fallen, over the past few years.

The UAE has long had commercial and security links with Israel, and its claim to have averted annexation of parts of the West Bank in exchange for normalizing relations is bogus. The annexation was postponed earlier, for other reasons. Anyway, the fact is that the Arab states over the last decades have not succeeded in improving the political position of the Palestinians. What they have provided is financial support, which continues.

Ziabari: Efforts are underway by independent scholars, public figures, artists and athletes as well as some businesses in Europe to boycott the Israeli government, institutions and universities in the framework of the BDS movement. What are the costs for Israel? Will it be induced into changing its policies?

Seaford: The costs to Israel are so far not great in material terms, but there are some cultural and academic consequences. The reason why Israel and its apologists do so much to combat BDS by the anti-Semitism slur is what it calls its delegitimating effect. BDS does not, of course, seek to destroy the state of Israel. What it seeks to delegitimate is its defiance of international law and of UN resolutions.

Citizens, when their governments have abdicated all concern with international law, feel that they must act to enforce it. And the most immediate way of acting is to adopt the boycott personally, as well as urging companies to divest and governments to apply sanctions. Anybody can do it.

Moreover, the call for BDS becomes a way of creating publicity and raising consciousness of the crimes of Israel. It is this change of opinion, especially among US students, that Israel fears, because it may eventually, though not any time soon, limit their expansionism. Israel will be induced to change its policies only by external pressure, a combination of the reduction in the massive amount of US aid, with diplomatic pressure, sanctions, boycott and divestment — the kind of combination that helped to end apartheid in South Africa.

One imagined objection to BDS says: But what about the horrible things going on elsewhere? What is unique about Israel is the combination of illegal colonization, the inaction of governments and that the victims by a large majority are asking us to boycott. When someone who is being beaten up and robbed asks me to do something simple, safe and legal to help, I do it. Wouldn’t you? I boycotted apartheid South Africa, and so consistency requires me to boycott Israel, or anywhere else with the same combination of circumstances.

Ziabari: Have international organizations and blocs, including the United Nations and European Union, lost their competence in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Israel is the subject of several dozen Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions, but it continues to defy them. How is it possible to be brought into compliance?

Seaford: The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second is that Israel will be brought into compliance only by external pressure. There are many good and brave Israelis who deserve our support, but any idea that the Israelis may elect a government that wants to dismantle the settlements, comply with international law and so on has been shown by the last few decades, especially recently, to be fantasy. A just peace will come only from citizens in other states, especially the US, raising consciousness and electing governments that will exercise the required pressure on Israel. It is our historic responsibility.

In the UK, in the 1980s, there were only a few thousand of us in the anti-apartheid movement. But Western politicians who had done nothing to help the imprisoned Nelson Mandela or isolate apartheid attended his funeral [in 2013]. When we succeed in dissolving Israeli apartheid, there will be numerous Western politicians who will falsely take the credit. But it feels better to have changed history than to pretend to have done so. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Israel Will Continue Disregarding International Law appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

His death sparked frenzy and unrest in the Middle Eastern country, further straining the US and Iran’s delicate relationship. The assassination of Soleimani revealed that the US was willing to go to any extent to prove its military might over its self-declared enemies.

Under President Donald Trump, the US has used several measures for the last few years to demonstrate American power over the world. From Soleimani’s killing to the imposing of tariffs on China to pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, the US has disrupted the world order and threatens to continue doing so.

Will Donald Trump’s Bad Deals Cost Him the Election?

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In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, DC. Kuznick speaks about the most important foreign policy areas for a US president, America’s raging desire to wage war, why the US has a fraught relationship with Iran, and how the US can mend its relationship with North Korea.

The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in early 2020.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: With the US elections looming on the horizon, what should be the key areas of focus in foreign policy for the US president?

Peter Kuznick: The danger is that the new president of the US will be the old president. Trump will get reelected. However, Trump has not been as catastrophic when it comes to foreign policy as we feared he might be. He started off with a good idea, that the US and Russia should be friends. No one understands why he took that position, given that he is mostly wrong on everything else. Most of my Russian colleagues and friends were supporting Donald Trump during the 2016 election. I asked one member of the Russian Senate why did he and everyone else support Trump. He said because Trump wants to be friends with Russia.

I told him he was being naive as what Trump says and does usually has no connection. Hillary Clinton was terrible too in her own way. She was very hostile to Russia and too hawkish for my taste. But I believe she’s a reasonable, rational actor. Donald Trump is potentially quite reckless. If we see what he’s done — with the recent confrontation with Iran, be it the tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA), which Obama negotiated with the help of several other countries like Russia and China.

Trump wasted little time in tearing that up. He’s been pushing for a confrontation with Iran ever since. The danger is: Trump’s advisers didn’t agree on a lot of things, but what they agreed on is that they hate Iran. It was striking to me that Jim Mattis, who had been demoted by Obama because he was such a hawk when it came to Iran, was actually a restraining influence in the Trump administration. Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, said when he was fired that he was sick and tired of trying to be stopped on what [he] wanted to do against Iran. Tillerson referred to Trump as a fucking moron because of his hawkish policies.

Let’s be optimistic that Trump is winning again. Whether he will lose depends on who the Democratic candidate is. My priorities are number one, the New START [Strategic Arms Reduction] treaty. The New START treaty is set to expire in February 2021. That would be a disaster. It will dismantle the world’s nuclear arms control architecture. It began with the US leaving the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] treaty in 2002, it accelerated with the US pulling out of the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] treaty last year. The only thing in place is the New START treaty that puts limits on the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems that both sides are allowed to maintain.

Trump intends to end this treaty. This is evident from his phone conversation with Putin. The Russian leader said to Trump, we should renew the New START treaty. Trump said hold on, he put down the phone and asked people in the room, what’s the New START treaty? He didn’t even know what it was. He got on the phone and said: It’s not a good treaty, we don’t want to renew it. Putin has been pushing ever since for the renewal. The US and Russia have about 93% of the world’s nuclear weapons between them. In March 2018, Putin revealed [Russia’s five ] nuclear weapons, all of which can circumvent US missile defense. China has only 290 nuclear weapons, and China has a no-first-use policy. China is not a threat to the world order like the US and Russia. Now Trump says, we should rip the START treaty up.

In February 2018, the US released its nuclear posture review to expand the role of nuclear weapons. The problem of using nuclear weaponry goes back to the era of Barack Obama. Obama had implemented a trillion-dollar  to make nuclear weapons more deadly. Trump inherited this, but he’s added more insanity.

Another area where Trump has been criminally reckless is global warming and climate change. The second thing the new US president should do is convene a new international conference on climate change. We have to do this as we can’t go along with the Paris Climate Accord — it’s far too minimal. We got to have a crash program to deal with this crisis.

If the new president doesn’t want to keynote the conference, let’s get Greta Thunberg to do it, but we need to take it as seriously as she takes it. There’s a lot more we can do beyond that. We have to deal with the militarization of the planet. We have to deal with the fact that the richest eight [people] of the world have more money than 3.8 billion people. There’s a crisis of epic proportions.

As a US president, I want to see the US military footprint drastically cut back. The US has 800 military bases in the world. Other countries have maybe 29 overseas military bases combined, while China has one. Right now, we have Trump saying make America great again, Putin saying make Russia great again, Xi Jinping saying make China great again, Narendra Modi saying make India great again. We have got nobody who thinks and speaks for the planet.

Mukhopadhyay: The US has been particularly stern with Iran’s nuclear policy, despite building its own nuclear arsenal. Trump has already torn up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). What will happen if Iran doesn’t rein in its nuclear program?

Kuznick: It was absolute insanity on Trump’s behalf to tear up the JCPOA deal. It was a good deal and it would have constrained Iran’s nuclear program for 15 years. During that time, we could have done many things to bring Iran back into the international community. They were supposed to get economic benefits as a result of the JCPOA, but Trump imposed more sanctions. The Europeans were furious because not only did Trump impose sanctions on Iran, but Trump threatened very harsh penalties on any country — including India — that continued to trade with Iran, especially for oil. The Europeans eventually tried to set up an alternative international banking system to trade with Iran outside of the US orbit.

The US goes around sanctioning everybody. It’s out of control. The sanctions against Russia, Europe, Iran, China — it’s crazy. People need to be sanctioning the US. When the US acts like a rogue power, the rest of the world needs to stop being cowards and hypocrites and employ the same standard the US applies on other countries.

Countries need to be standing up to the US. The US can’t be a pariah as much as it wants because it’s so powerful. I don’t like this cowardly behavior. In the US, TV commentators say Russian interference in the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s such hypocritical behavior. I don’t approve of Russia’s interference in US politics, but the US interferes in everybody’s elections. They have been doing so since 1947 when the CIA was founded. The commentators condemn what’s happening to the US, but they don’t see what the US is doing on a global scale.

On the Iran deal, we don’t get as much criticism as necessary for tearing this up and creating havoc. The US in the early 2000s, under George W. Bush, was itching for a war with Iran and wanted to take down Iran’s nuclear facilities using nuclear weapons. When that got exposed, the joint chief of staff threatened to resign and they took that proposal off the table.

Let’s back up a little bit to understand Iran. I will go back to 1990. In 1990, Charles Krauthammer, a leading neoconservative thinker, in the Henry Jackson address, called it America’s unipolar moment. He said that after the collapse of the Soviet empire, nobody can challenge the US — economically, geopolitically. The US must recognize that and assert itself everywhere.

Krauthammer said this unipolar moment could last 30-40 years. In 1993, neoconservative thinkers came up with a defense planning guidance so that no country should be allowed to emerge in any region to challenge the US globally. They walked back when this was released in The New York Times.

The neoconservatives cheered the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Krauthammer revisited his article and said that he underestimated the strength of the US. It’s the unipolar era. It’s going to last indefinitely. The neoconservatives were ecstatic. Even before the invasion of Iraq, on January 5, 2003, the NYT was, “American empire, get used to it.” Then we invade Iraq. Now they are saying, well we have got to have regime change in a lot of places. Start with Syria, Libya, Somalia and Lebanon.

Iran was always on everyone’s hitlist. Iran did abandon its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But US never abandoned its dream of overthrowing Iran.

Mukhopadhyay: Is the dissatisfaction with Iran and the JCPOA to do with overthrowing the government?

Kuznick: For that, we need to understand the American mentality. The Americans accuse Russia of interfering in the 2016 election. In fact, the Israelis interfered more than Russia in the 2016 election. Benjamin Netanyahu openly campaigned for Trump, opposed the JCPOA and addressed a joint session of Congress. Obama knew that he couldn’t even get the JCPOA passed through Congress as a treaty, with a two-third majority, so he had to say that it was a deal to get it through with a simple majority.

Once the Republicans got in there, one of the first things we wanted was to tear it up. Trump knew nothing about the deal, and he is an idiot. It’s a crisis of America’s own making. Trump said he will negotiate a better deal. He’s a disaster when it comes to negotiating, as we see with North Korea.

Then Iran responded, we got a couple of incidents in the Gulf there, shooting down an American drone — things were heating up already. The reason the US wanted to take the Korea issue of the table is to focus on Iran. The killing of Soleimani on January 3, 2020, was very dangerous and very reckless.

I am glad that some people acted with diplomatic aplomb and eased the crisis there because many of us feared that we would go to war [with Iran]. It was a disaster for US policy and a disaster for the world.

What kind of principle do you establish that you can go around killing anyone with our drones (shame on Obama for legitimizing that) and even killing American citizens without due process. But to take out a leader of another country — the second most powerful and respected person in Iran, a top general — was to force Iran to take military action. Fortunately, Iran didn’t take Trump’s bait. Iran had a measured, limited response when they hit two American bases in retaliation.

At that time, had Iran retaliated in any other way, the US was set to strike. Iran has capabilities throughout the region — they can hit Israel, they can hit American bases, they can use Hezbollah, they have proxy bases in Syria. Fortunately, they didn’t do that. However, like India and Pakistan, this can erupt at any point.

Iran is going to retaliate at some time. Iranians were out on the street asking for military action against the US after the death of Soleimani. Americans need to understand that Iran is not Iraq. We underestimate what a war with Iran would mean. A war with Iran will be 10 times costlier than the war in Iraq was militarily and in terms of human lives. Iran is a bigger country, with 80 million people, much bigger capabilities and a much more competent military. If someone thinks that Iran is going to be like the “cakewalk” in Iraq (which we are still not out of, 17 years later), they are terribly mistaken.

Iran has increasingly abrogated its own part of the nuclear deal. It was a great deal. They shipped 97% of their nuclear material outside of Iran. They mothballed most of their centrifuges. They shut down the Iraq plutonium facility. Now, they are increasingly bringing more centrifuges, raising the level to which they can enrich, and this is a crisis of Trump’s making. It’s off the headlines in the US recently — that’s not going to last forever. There are people in this cabinet, in this administration, who believe that a war would be good for Trump’s reelection.

They might miscalculate that this may help them. This is why people were suspicious when Soleimani was assassinated. Why did Trump do this? Why did he do it now? Bush and Obama had looked into knocking off Soleimani and decided to not do it because the repercussions would be horrendous. The speculation around Trump is that he is trying to distract the people from the other crisis.

Mukhopadhyay: Why is waging war so important in American foreign policy? How does this war-centric mentality affect the US’ relationship with other countries?

Kuznick: The American empire is based on military presence everywhere. India would not define something that happens in Central America as part of its national security concerns. The US does. In January 2018, the US changed its national security strategy. Before that, the US said that global terrorism was the main threat to American national security. In January 2018, the US announced that Russia and China posed the greatest threat to national security.

The US under Trump sees the world as a zero-sum game. Anything that Russia or China gains anywhere is a loss to the US, in terms of trade, geopolitics or military. The US wants to maintain this global empire through Boeing, BAE, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and the American defense contractors.

For example, they make billions of dollars in weapon sales to India. India is a country that should not be spending billions of dollars in weapon sales when they have so many social needs. This is what [Dwight] Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in 1961, that it has a disproportionate influence on American policymaking. Every drone shot is money in someone’s pocket.

One of the things we were hearing in the US Senate in the 1930s was to nationalize the defense sector. Why should people make money off killing? It makes no sense to me. The second level is American hegemony and American global domination. Look at America’s wars. The US wants to control the economy all over the world. Why are we involved in Central America and Afghanistan? It is estimated that Afghanistan has mineral resources worth a trillion dollars. Look at the rare earths, the pipelines that go through that region. On one hand, it’s just naked economics and that’s always a factor.

Trump wants Iran’s oil, Syria’s oil and Iraq’s oil. He said that we should maintain our control over Syria’s oil. Which is why he shifted the American troops from the western part of Syria to the eastern part of Syria — to the oil-rich zone. That’s the way he feels. A lot of American policymakers feel the same way.

During the Iraq War, one of the most popular signs was, “what is our oil doing under their sand?” We wanted the Iraqi oil, we thought we deserved it. And this goes back to [Franklin D.] Roosevelt. In 1944, he said to Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, that Saudi oil will belong to the US, Iranian oil will belong to the British and we will share Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil. So, when Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalizes the oil industry in Iran, the British freak out and Americans freak out.

The problems with Iran run back to 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency ran a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh. Why? Because the Anglo-Iranian oil company, which had 100% of Iranian oil, was giving the Iranians 16 cents on the dollar. The British were keeping 84 cents on the dollar. The Iranians were very impoverished as a result. Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia negotiated a new deal and they got 50 cents on the dollar. That infuriated the Iranians even further. They did what the British had done a few years earlier — they nationalized the oil industry. The British were outraged and decided they had to overthrow Mosaddegh.

Mosaddegh was immensely popular. He featured as Time magazine’s man of the year in 1951. The US ambassador in Tehran wrote back to Washington that Mosaddegh had the support of 95 to 98% of the Iranian people. He was a hero throughout the Middle East for standing up to the imperialists. [Harry] Truman hesitated, but in 1953, when Eisenhower took office, he ran Operation Ajax and overthrew Mosaddegh. They had terrorist gangs, the CIA bought out the military leaders — it was outrageous — and then they brought the shah.

The shah ruled for another 25 years through a brutal dictatorship. He used SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency, in order to impose domination in Iran, and then in 1979, the Iranians finally overthrew the shah and imposed their religious-nationalist regime under [Ruhollah] Khomeini. The people of Iran will obviously retaliate against the CIA. Especially after the US allowed the shah into the US for medical treatment.

[Jimmy] Carter had proposed that the Iranians should develop their own nuclear power industry. The US was giving them nuclear fuel and wanted to build 12 nuclear reactors in Iran. And then we say it’s outrageous, why do they need nuclear power when they have all this oil? We pushed them to do that.

The history of US-Iranian relations goes back further than 1979. If you look at the American media, when all this was happening, some people who were sensible traced it back to 1979. Any Iranian would trace it back to 1953. How would the Americans feel if Iran came here to depose a popular American president and replace him with a brutal dictator? The Iranians have got legitimate grievances against the US, not the other way around, obviously.

Americans don’t know history. Which is why we have a low attention span. Talk about America and the endless wars. Start with the two big ones. Americans don’t know anything about the Korean War. It’s called the forgotten war in the US. Americans don’t know that millions of people died in that war. The Americans bombed the crap out of both Koreas. In 1951, the British annual military yearbook said that because of America’s bombing, South Korea doesn’t exist as a country anymore.

We burned down almost all cities in South Korea and North Korea — and people were living in caves. It was horrific what the US did there. It was four times the number of bombs dropped in Japan and the Pacific in World War II.

That was a nightmare for the Koreans and they remember it. The Koreans have a very different historical memory. The North Koreans have drilled the war into their heads. There are billboards, museums about what the US did during the Korean War. It is a very different historical memory as compared to the Americans. The Americans have no historical memory.

Let me give you another example. The American and Russian understanding of World War II is completely different. For the US, World War II starts with Pearl Harbor. Then there’s a hiatus and we get involved a little in North Africa.

But the real war for the Americans begins on June 6, 1944, with D-Day and the invasion of Normandy. The Americans bravely take the beaches, which we did. The Americans march to Berlin, defeat the Germans, win the war in Europe and the Americans are the heroes of World War II.

The Russian narrative is quite different. The war there begins with the German invasion [of the Soviet Union] on June 22, 1941, when they looked at the US for economic support for war material, which the US promised but couldn’t deliver. The US couldn’t deliver it because we thought that Europe is built on military industries and partly because of sabotage.

We promised them the second front in late May 1942, but we didn’t open it up till 1944. The Russians know who won the war in Europe.

The Germans lost 1 million on the western front, 6 million on the eastern front. I once did an anonymous survey with college students and I asked them: How many Americans died in World War II? The median answer I got was 90,000. OK, so they were just 300,000 off. I asked them: How many Soviets died in WW2? The median answer was 100,000. Which means they were only 27 million off.

Which means these kids know nothing about World War II, they can’t understand what the Cold War was about, they can’t understand Ukraine now. That’s what Americans suffer from — a complete lack of understanding of history. In 2007, the national report card found that American high school seniors performed the worst in US history. Only 12% of high school seniors were found to be proficient in US history. Not outstanding, just proficient.

What we found out from that survey is that even that number is bogus because only 2% could identify what the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case was about, even though it was obvious from the way the question was worded. It’s obvious that Americans are historically ignoramuses. That’s why Oliver Stone and I did the â€ś to educate people about their own history.

Americans know nothing about the Korean War, they don’t even remember Vietnam anymore. When Robert McNamara, the former US secretary of defense, came into my class, he told the students that he now accepts the fact that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the war. But common Americans have no understanding of that.

Mukhopadhyay: Not just Vietnam, even Laos and Cambodia saw a heavy death toll in the Vietnam war, right?

Kuznick: Laos, Cambodia — the whole region was a disaster. The Vietnam War memorial in Washington has got the names of 58,280 Americans who died in the Vietnam War. The tragedy of Vietnam is that 58,280 Americans died. What they should have on that memorial is the name of 3.8 million Vietnamese, along with millions of Cambodians and Laotians, British, Australians, South Koreans — everyone who died. Right now, the wall is 492-feet long. If they include the names of everyone who died, the wall would be eight-miles long.

The scary thing is that in a poll, 15-20% of students said that the Vietnam War was necessary to fight. These are 18 to 29-year-old people who love Bernie Sanders. These are the ones who are opposed to war generally, but they don’t know history.

Mukhopadhyay: Why do people have such contradictory views about war in the US?

Kuznick: Part of the reason you have these wars is: one, they are profitable; two, they allow the US to maintain hegemony; three, Americans are historically ignorant; four, they happen over there. Lindsey Graham had once said that if there’s war, they are dying over there, not here. Americans don’t get touched by these wars.

The wars are fought by a very small tiny fraction of the population of professional soldiers, who are not from the middle classes. They come from mostly poor, rural backgrounds. They are mostly young people who don’t have good prospects in life. They are not my college students, they are not people I know — that’s the case for most of the middle class in the US.

It’s always another war, in another place, with very few American casualties. A lot of Afghans die, a lot of Iraqis die. These wars allow the US to maintain its hegemony and there’s a lot of profit. We have got 800 bases around the world. In 2009, Chalmers Johnson called it the . We justify that in part by finding enemies. Alexei Arbatov, the Russian-Soviet strategist, once said the Soviet Union did the worst possible thing to the US by collapsing because they left them with no enemy.

Once the Soviet Union collapsed, what did we do? We immediately intervened in Panama, overthrew the government there, we militarily intervened in Kuwait and Iraq. There is no enemy. We defined new enemies and we created them after the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a call to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, that was the goal. There was nothing to do with the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction which many people later exposed as a lie before the US invaded. This was just part of the US’ global agenda. The US doesn’t win these wars.

The US has not won a war since 1983 when the US invaded Grenada, which was Operation Urgent Fury. We were able to defeat a couple of Cuban construction workers, after which [Ronald] Reagan said, America is proud and standing on its feet again. We can destroy things, we blow them up, but we didn’t win. We have been fighting, not winning, in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. Iraq is finally wanting to throw the US out. We have a military meant for destroying things, for killing people, for blowing things up, but not for creating what is really needed.

Mukhopadhyay: A parallel I can draw is that both the US and India have not learned from history.

Kuznick: India has such a rich history. How Gandhi and [Jawaharlal] Nehru led the global fight against the Cold War. They led the fight against the nuclear arms race. It was Nehru who said that American leaders are self-centered lunatics who will blow anybody up who gets in their way. Do we see Modi standing up or welcoming world peace in any way? War can happen anytime.

Especially with these extreme nationalists in India and with the Pakistani military and intelligence community. Fortunately, both sides decided to hit each other in a way that wasn’t going to hurt last year, but the issue in Kashmir isn’t getting any better. The Indian army is twice as big and powerful as the Pakistani army. Indians would overrun the Pakistani army in the event of a war. Will Pakistan sit back and say, OK, you’re stronger and we surrender? No, they can use nuclear weapons. India will retaliate. We don’t know. There’s a real risk that it can escalate.

Latest studies show that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons were used would create a nuclear winter, cities would burn, it would send 5 million tons of carbon and soot into the stratosphere.

Within two weeks, it would encircle the globe, destroy global agriculture, temperatures on Earth would plummet to freezing; this would last for 10 years and that alone could cause up to 2 billion deaths. We [the US] have 4,000 nuclear weapons in the world, 80 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. We are risking the future of our planet. We are dealing with that and the insanity of global warming. We have an existential crisis which requires real leadership right now. It’s too dangerous a world.

Mukhopadhyay: You criticized Trump’s policy on North Korea. What should the president have done instead, and what can be done to diffuse the tension in the Korean Peninsula?

Kuznick: North Korea is a difficult problem that requires diplomacy, not military action. I take it back to the 1994 deal that [Bill] Clinton had negotiated with North Korea. In 1994 and 2002, North Korea produced no plutonium and they abided by the nuclear deal. There was some suspicion about their nuclear program, but it wasn’t proven or confirmed. They deny it. That deal was very effective.

The George W. Bush administration blew that up. Bush announced the “axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Rather than deal with North Korea diplomatically, he put it in crosshairs. North Korea was very nervous about the US overthrow of their government.

John Bolton, who is hated by North Koreans, said that the accusations against North Korea’s nuclear arsenal gave him the leverage to destroy the nuclear deal in 2002. He was happy that it happened. The North Koreans call Bolton human scum and a bloodsucker — and rightly so.

Then, in 2006, North Korea tested their first nuclear weapon. They have had six since then. Last year, they tested their nuclear bomb, which was 17 times more destructive than the bomb thrown on Hiroshima. The North Koreans said it wasn’t a fusion bomb but a fission bomb, a hydrogen bomb — it just blew up an entire mountain. Then they tested an inter-continental ballistic missile that seemed like it could hit the US. That gave Trump the excuse to give the threat to start fire and fury.

In 2017, it did seem like we were going to nuclear war and we seemed desperate to want to stop that. I was considering going to go to North Korea to interview Kim Jong Un and walk this back a little bit. We didn’t have to, as Trump decided to take a different tack. But I approved that Trump wanted to talk. I was glad that they met in Singapore. However, Trump has no diplomatic skills. That’s another powder cake ready to blow.

North Korea has enormous military capabilities and missiles poised to strike Seoul, a city of 25 million people, 35 miles from their border. The US is running these war games with decapitation drills to overthrow the government in North Korea — which is insane. The US has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea. I was upset with Trump for creating a crisis when it didn’t have to exist.

North Korea isn’t going to give up its nuclear arsenal. The North Koreans know that the only thing standing between them and being overthrown by the US is their nuclear weapons. When the US invaded Iraq, North Korea’s main newspaper said that Saddam made one big mistake: not having weapons of mass destruction. It was clear that North Koreans understood that and didn’t want to give up their weapons.

From the very beginning, when Trump is talking about denuclearization, it’s absurd and the wrong thing to demand from North Korea. The first thing we should do is foster an atmosphere of trust. How do we do that?

The Korean War has never ended. Instead of having a peace treaty at the end of the war, they signed an armistice. That war is still going on. One thing the North Koreans desperately want is a peace treaty to end that war. The second thing they want is for the US to stop their military exercises with South Korea.

The US is overmilitarized. We don’t need 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula — we don’t need all the military exercises that we do. The third thing they need is sanctions relief. The US is heavily sanctioning North Korea. Even the UN.

After the North Korea tests, China and Russia also supported the sanctions against North Korea. Everybody thinks that North Korea’s nuclear program is dangerous and that we should have a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. I obviously support that. But the North Koreans are not going to do that — until they are integrated in the global system and they have a measure of trust that they are not under attack.

Would I like to see a different government in North Korea? Yes, I would. Do I want to see more freedom in North Korea? Yes, absolutely. The Korean people will have to do that. My friends in the South Korean embassy tell me the gross national standard of living, per capita gross domestic product in South Korea is 42 times as high as it is in North Korea. Vladimir Putin once said the North Koreans would rather eat grass than give up their nuclear program. Putin is right.

It’s still a dangerous situation. We have to ease the sanctions. Nothing else has worked. The US program of maximum pressure has not worked. When something doesn’t work, you don’t double down on it, you try a different direction.

You lift the sanctions on North Korea, say for six months, and see how they respond. Stephen Biegun, who is the US negotiator, was getting nowhere with the negotiations. The North Koreans don’t trust him and they don’t trust the US. Trump says absurd things like Kim Jong Un writes me love letters, we are in love. Trump doesn’t know what the term love means, he isn’t capable of love or empathy. But he wants to be flattered.

The meeting in Hanoi is pointless. To get North Koreans to reciprocate, you do need the pressure from Russia and they do need assurances that the US won’t do a regime change there. At least UN sanctions need to be lifted so that North Korea’s economy responds. There isn’t mass starvation there, but they are under economic hardship and duress.

It doesn’t make sense to me that a country where people barely spend time eating spend[s] so much money on weapons of mass destruction. It’s the insanity of our planet. Someone coming from another planet, looking at the Earth would say it’s insane to have a world where the richest eight [people] have more money than the poorest 3.8 billion. It’s insane to have a world that spends such vast amount of resources on perfecting the means of killing.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The American Empire: Maintaining Hegemony Through Wars appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He  US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization.

The president has pledged to draw an end to the “” the United States has been involved in over the past couple of decades, and he has challenged the view that America should be the world’s “.” At the same time, his Middle East policy has been nothing short of hawkish, and he has  the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

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Some observers explain Trump’s overseas agenda by noting that he has been hellbent on scoring political points by hurling out of the window the foreign policy legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Others say he has been focused on pulling off his “America First” , premised on putting US commitments and global leadership on the backburner and emphasizing the empowerment of the national economy.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. A leading scholar of the US affairs in the Middle East, he is a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and an associate editor of the Peace Review journal. His latest book is “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresoluton.”

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Zunes about Trump’s foreign policy challenges, his relationship with autocrats and his strategy in the Middle East.

The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

Kourosh Ziabari: In a recent article on Foreign Policy, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, claimed that President Trump — after three and a half years in office — has “developed no foreign policy at all” and that his approach to foreign affairs has been one “without objectives, without strategy, [and] without any indication that it protects and advances US interests.” Is Trump’s foreign policy as disastrous as Sherman describes, or is she saying so merely as a former Obama administration official with partisan interests?

Stephen Zunes: This is a reasonably accurate statement. Indeed, many Republicans feel the same way, believing Trump has wasted an opportunity to further a more active foreign policy advancing their more hegemonic and militaristic agenda by failing to fill a number of important State Department positions and failing to articulate a clear policy.

By all accounts, Trump is profoundly ignorant of even the most basic facts relevant to foreign policy — the names and locations of foreign countries, modern diplomatic history and other things which most reasonably well-educated Americans know. His refusal to even read policy briefs his advisers have written up for him has made it impossible for him to develop any kind of coherent foreign policy agenda. His view toward foreign relations is largely transactional — what you can do for me will determine US policy toward your country — and therefore not based on any overall vision of advancing US interests, much less international peace and security.

His efforts to push foreign governments to pursue policies designed to help his reelection led to his impeachment earlier this year, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to convict him despite overwhelming evidence of illegal activities in this regard.

Ziabari: Some of the major foreign policy challenges of the Trump administration emanated from the threats apparently posed to the United States by Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. How has Trump dealt with these challenges? A June 2020 poll by Gallup found that only 41% of US adults approve of Trump’s performance in foreign policy. Is there a yardstick by which we can measure the president’s success in his overseas agenda?

Zunes: Virtually every administration, regardless of party, has tended to exaggerate overseas threats to varying degrees, and this is certainly true with Trump. There have been real inconsistencies, however. For example, he has been far more tolerant toward North Korea, which has violated previous agreements and pursued its nuclear weapons program, than he has been toward Iran, which had dramatically reduced its nuclear capabilities and was scrupulously honoring its nuclear agreement prior to the US withdrawal from the Iran [nuclear] deal. Similarly, he has tolerated a series of provocative actions by Russia while obsessively targeting China.

While hypocrisy and double standards is certainly not a new phenomenon in US foreign policy, Trump’s actions have taken this to a new extreme and have severely weakened US credibility in the international community.

Ziabari: How has foreign policy historically influenced the prospects of politicians winning elections in the United States? Do you expect President Trump’s divisive foreign policy decisions to derail his chances of being reelected in November? 

Zunes: Foreign policy is even less of a factor in this year’s election than usual, so it is unlikely to determine the outcome. Ironically, as in 2016, Trump may run to the left of the Democratic nominee, so, despite Trump’s impetuous and problematic foreign policy leadership, foreign policy issues may actually weigh to his advantage.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump successfully, if somewhat disingenuously, was able to portray himself as a president who would be more cautious than his Democratic opponent regarding unpopular US military interventions overseas. Despite having actually supported the invasion of Iraq, Trump was largely successful in depicting himself as a war opponent and Hillary Clinton as a reckless militarist who might get the United States in another round of endless wars in the Middle East. An  of voting data demonstrated that a significant number of voters in northern swing states who supported the anti-Iraq War Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections switched to supporting Trump in the 2016 election over this very issue, thereby making possible his Electoral College majority.

Already, the Trump campaign has begun targeting Joe Biden on this very issue. Biden played a critical role as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in pushing the war authorization through the Democratic-controlled Senate, limiting hearings and stacking the witness list with war opponents. He has also repeatedly lied about his support for the [Iraq] war — even after inspectors had returned and confirmed the absence of the weapons of mass destruction that he and President Bush falsely claimed Iraq still possessed — giving the Trump campaign an opening to press this issue even more.

Meanwhile, Biden has alienated many rank-and-file Democrats by pushing through a party platform calling for tens of billions of dollars of unconditional taxpayer-funded arms transfers to Israel while not even mentioning, much less condemning, the Israeli occupation and settlements. It criticizes efforts by both the United Nations and civil society campaigns to end the occupation as somehow unfairly delegitimizing Israel itself. This comes despite  showing a sizable majority of Democrats oppose the occupation and settlements and support conditioning aid.  

Neither candidate appears willing to reduce the United States’ bloated military budget or end arms transfers to dictatorships. However, Biden has promised to end support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen and the longstanding US backing of the Saudi regime, as well as reverse Trump’s escalation of the nuclear arms race, both of which are popular positions.

Meanwhile, Biden has won over the vast majority of the foreign policy establishment, including quite a few Republicans, who have been appalled by Trump’s treatment of traditional allies and cozy relations with the Russian regime. How much impact this will have on swing voters, however, remains to be seen.

Ziabari: Trump’s pullout from the Iran nuclear deal was one of his major and contentious foreign policy decisions. In a poll conducted shortly after he announced the US withdrawal, CNN found 63% of Americans believed the United States should stick with the accord, while only 29% favored abandoning it. Last year, a Pew Research Center poll revealed 56% of the respondents did not have faith in the president’s ability to handle the crisis with Iran. Has the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic yielded the results it was expected to achieve?

Zunes: Iran already made enormous compromises in agreeing to the JCPOA required it to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of nuclear facilities and material while neither the United States nor any of Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbors — namely Israel, India and Pakistan — were required to reduce their arsenals or any other aspects of their nuclear program. Iran agreed to these unilateral concessions in return for a lifting of the debilitating sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

Despite full Iranian compliance with the agreement, the United States not only re-imposed its own sanctions, but it effectively forced foreign governments and countries to do the same at an enormous cost to the Iranian people. Hardline elements in the Iranian government, who opposed the agreement on the grounds that the United States could not be trusted to uphold its end of the deal, feel they have been vindicated, and moderate elements in the government are on the defensive.

Some fear that the goal of the Trump administration in tearing up the agreement was to encourage the Iranians to resume their nuclear program, which is exactly what happened, in order to provoke a crisis that could give the United States an excuse to go to war.

The mistake the United States made in Vietnam was seeing the leftist revolution against the US-backed regime in Saigon in terms of its communist leadership rather than the strong nationalist sentiments which propelled it. Washington could not understand why the more troops we sent and the more bombs we dropped actually strengthened the opposition.

Similarly, looking at the Iranian regime in terms of its Islamist leadership misses the strong nationalist sentiments in that country. While a growing number of Iranians oppose the authoritarianism, conservatism and corruption of the clerical and military leadership, a large majority appear to support the regime in its confrontation with the United States. Iranians, like the Vietnamese, are among the most nationalistic people in the world. Iran, formerly known as Persia, has been a regional power on and off for the past 2,500 years and does not appreciate being treated in such a dismissive way. The more pressure on Iran, the greater the resistance.

Concerns raised by the Trump administration about the Iranian regime — its repression, discrimination against women and religious minorities, support for extremist groups, interference in other countries, among other points — are indeed valid. Yet each of these issues are also true, in fact, even more so, when it comes to Saudi Arabia and other close US allies in the region. The problem the United States has with Iran, therefore, is not in regard to such negative behavior, but the fact that Iran is the most powerful country in the greater Middle East that rejects US hegemony. Iran was willing to compromise on its nuclear program, but it is not going to compromise when it comes to its sovereignty.

Ziabari: One of the critical points President Trump’s opponents raise about him is his affinity for autocratic leaders and dictators. He has — on different occasions — praised, congratulated or invited to the White House President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; the far-right leader of the French party National Rally, Marine Le Pen; and the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Why is Trump attracted to these unpopular leaders? Can it be attributed to his desire for becoming a president for life? 

Zunes: Most US presidents have supported allied dictatorships. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, US arms have flowed to autocratic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other repressive Arab regimes as well as dictators in Africa, Asia and, in previous years, Latin America as well.

What makes Trump different is that while previous administrations at least pretended to support improved human rights in these countries, and often rationalized for arms transfers and other close relations as a means of supposedly influencing them in that direction, Trump doesn’t even pretend to support political freedom and has even praised their repressive tactics.

There is little question that Trump himself has autocratic tendencies. The US Constitution prevents him from becoming president for life and other more overt autocratic measures, but he has certainly stretched his presidential authority in a number of very disturbing ways.

Ziabari: Rescinding international agreements, reducing the commitments of the US government abroad and embracing unilateralism have been the epitome of Trump’s foreign policy. This is believed to have created rifts between the US and its traditional allies, particularly in the European Union and NATO. Some observers of US foreign policy, however, say the gulf has been exaggerated and that the United States continues to enjoy robust relations with its global partners. What are your thoughts?

Zunes: Due to the United States’ economic and military power, most foreign governments have little choice but to work closely with Washington on any number of issues. However, the United States is no longer looked at for leadership in ways it had been previously. This decline has been going on for some time, accelerating during the George W. Bush administration and paused during the Obama administration, but it has now plummeted under Trump to a degree that it is not likely to recover. The rejection of basic diplomatic protocols and other traditions of international relations repeatedly exhibited by Trump has alienated even some of the United States’ more conservative allies.

While Joe Biden is certainly far more knowledgeable, experienced and diplomatic in his approach to foreign policy than the incumbent president, his support for the Iraq invasion, the Israeli occupation and various allied dictatorships has also made him suspect in the eyes of many erstwhile allies. And many allies have already reset their foreign policy priorities to make them less dependent on and less concerned about the United States and its priorities.

Ziabari: President Trump appears to have taken US-Israel relations to a new level, making himself known as the most pro-Israel US president after Harry Truman, as suggested by several commentators and pundits, such as the renowned political analyst Bill Schneider. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, defunded UNRWA, closed down the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington and unveiled the “deal of the century,” a much-hyped peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Palestinian factions rejected outright on account of being overly biased in favor of Israel. Why has Trump prioritized pleasing the Israelis and advancing their territorial ambitions?

Zunes: The right-wing coalition governing Israel shares Trump’s anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and contempt for human rights and international law, so this is not surprising. While Democratic administrations rationalized their support for Israel on the grounds that it was a liberal democracy — at least for its Jewish citizens — what draws Trump to Israel is the right-wing, anti-democratic orientation of its current government.

Though Trump has brought US support for Israeli violations of international legal norms to unprecedented levels, in practice — at least for Palestinians living under occupation — it has made little difference. For example, previous administrations did not overtly recognize Israeli settlements and annexation as Trump has, saying such issues should be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. However, this policy ignored the gross power asymmetry between the Palestinians under occupation and the Israeli occupiers, an imbalance compounded by the fact that as the chief mediator in negotiations, the US has also served as the primary military, economic and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power.

By refusing to condition the billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military aid to Israel on Israeli adherence to international law and human rights norms and blocking the United Nations Security Council from enforcing — or, in some cases, even passing — resolutions calling for Israeli compliance with its international legal obligations, it gave Israel’s right-wing government no incentive to make the necessary compromises for peace. In many respects, Trump’s policies have simply codified what was already going on under previous administrations.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Today, there are 1.2 billion people aged 15 to 24 years, making up 16% of the world population. So, to achieve the SDGs, countries around the world probably need the support of young people. The youth can build on their creativity, dynamism and talents to make the world a better place to live and to tackle the challenges faced by the international community.

Young people would benefit from the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as the SDGs are officially known as. However, they are also active contributors in the development of the goals. The engagement of young people in sustainable development efforts is pivotal to achieving inclusive and stable societies.

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In September 2016, the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth the first class of the Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals. Their mission is to advocate for the UN SDGs, promote creative ways of engaging youth in fulfilling the goals and working with different UN departments toward accomplishing the 2030 Agenda.

Kristeena Monteith, a young Jamaican, was UN’s Young Leaders of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2018. She is also the creative producer of the Talk Up Radio show run by young people and broadcast nationally in Jamaica.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Monteith about the role of young people in the realization of the SDGs, the challenges ahead of democratic institutions and the media portrayal of youths.

The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in 2019 at the 3rd International Youth Forum on Creativity and Heritage along the Silk Roads in Changsha, China.

Kourosh Ziabari: What skills and abilities do you think young people need in order to be able to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals?

Kristeena Monteith: We need to develop a sort of social awareness of the issues affecting the world. I feel like sometimes we are, even in our own societies, unaware of what is affecting the people, but then on a global level, we’re even less aware of the different issues.

So, first of all, develop an appreciation for the fact that people deserve dignity, people deserve a level of quality of life right across the board — regardless of whether they are or they’re not like you — and then from there, you can start to really invest in understanding what exactly these people need. So, one thing that the Sustainable Development Goals give you is a framework within which to understand what quality of life could mean to people right across the board — whether it’s access to health services, access to quality education, or whether it’s on a bigger policy level being able to support themselves and their families and having financial stability in their countries.

All of these things matter because we’re trying to build a world where people feel comfortable, [and] feel like they can live to their best ability. So, once you pass the cultural understanding, then you need to be able to leverage your own skills, whether that is your writing or your talent as a business person. It’s about turning the things that interest you and the things that you are innately passionate about into putting them at the service of the world on a larger scale.

So, whatever skills it is, it doesn’t matter what exactly your skills are. It’s about framing a way to turn that into helping to build a more equal society and a world where everybody has the potential to live fully.

Ziabari: What organizations or entities do you think are responsible for giving young people these skills and capabilities in order to be able to work for the SDGs?

Monteith: That’s actually a very important question because you [need] to have support for developing this sort of mindset at every single level. So, every major institution in a young person’s life — whether it’s their family, school, church or religious institution — as you go along each and every one of these institutions, must have a sort of mindset of what we’re doing. [That is] building a better, more equal world for everyone. And so each and every one of them will put their power into different people from the standpoint of trying to embrace them and trying to help them to understand what skills they need to develop to contribute.

So, if it’s a multi-sectoral, multi-angle interest in creating that sort of sustainable future, then that’s where you’ll get the sustainability from because all of us are working towards a joint goal. So, at every single level, every stakeholder, every business, every church, every mosque, every synagogue, each and every one of us has to achieve if not all of the goals, [then] at least one you feel passionately about. Understanding how they interrelate with the other ones is all people really need to support young people along that journey.

Ziabari: Do you think that governments, especially in developing countries, are properly listening to young people and addressing their concerns on employment, education, social justice, health and wellbeing, equality and other similar concerns?

Monteith: I think there are some governments that are trying. I know for a fact that the government of Jamaica is trying. They’re trying to listen, they’re trying to balance this really politically diverse and complicated world that we live in and the region that we are in — with the global superpower, the USA — and the fact that we need money from China to build and to improve infrastructure. So, there’s a lot of tension going on.

Then, you have to balance that with being a sovereign nation, having to put your citizens just at the forefront of what you do. And so, you have very complex geopolitical issues that are playing out, and within that, you have a growing world population of young people who don’t necessarily know how they fit in the process of how much our issues should be prioritized — how much the things that we want and we need in order to live fully and to participate should be prioritized.

And I think a lot of times, governments don’t recognize the power of the youth voice. If you’re building sustainability, the people who are going to be here [the] longest are the youth. So, you have to find ways to incorporate them into what you’re doing and to also facilitate them in developing a voice that, first of all, they can support you and your agenda. Because if you want sustainability, if you want longevity, if you want to produce policy that outlasts your administration, you have to invest in young people. That’s the only way to do that.

Ziabari: Right, that’s interesting. You are a [2018] young leader for the Sustainable Development Goals and have worked closely with different international organizations. Do you think the United Nations specifically as well as other international bodies are doing enough to make sure that the voices of the young people are heard? Can you give us examples?

Monteith: Well, I think with the UN at the moment, from what I’m seeing from my perspective, there’s a lot of capacity-building happening. So, they’re creating pathways for meaningful interaction. You have the SDG Young Leaders, you have Generation Unlimited, and they’re creating these pathways where empowered young people who are creative and passionate can have that sort of platform from which they can launch projects and they can call upon other young people in their societies.

But on the other hand, I feel like they have a very massive platform, and there are some ways in which it could be utilized even to a greater extent, whether it’s beyond just the SDGs or the UN youth strategy. I think we need to send a greater message to governments [and] to businesses of the power of the youth voice.

And we have a youth envoy, Jayathma Wickramanayake, whose platform is very important, She is in direct touch with the UN secretary-general, and I know she uses her platform very well. But I would love to see more than one UN youth envoy. I mean, she has a very much a global perspective [and] she has a whole team behind her informing her, but this is still one young person out of the population.

Then you look at the head of the UN and the heads of the UN [agencies]. They are always, without fail, very old people, and right across the board it’s always the case. And I know with age comes experience and they’ve built long careers of long service and very good service, but I feel like as we go along the lines, we have to be pulling young people up with us and helping them to develop capacity.

So, you need to see more visibility of young people at the decision-making levels at the top of some of these UN boards. I think it would send a greater message if we saw more young people there.

Ziabari: Please tell us more about your work on Talk Up Radio. I know you offer opportunities to young people to have conversations with governments, leaders and authorities and ask them questions. How have been the reactions on both sides? Have these conversations generated concrete results, including changes in government policies?

Monteith: What we’re trying to do is to bring government leaders and young people together in more tangible ways, beyond just voting. We need to create more avenues so young people can make their voice heard and also to access accurate, youth-friendly political information. Because as [I said] throughout the [2019] International Youth Forum on Creativity and Heritage along the Silk Roads in China, a lot of the times, communication that [comes] from the government is hugely in legal and political speak, and we don’t speak like that and don’t understand that language.

So, we’ve been trying to bridge that sort of gap, but also, we’ve been trying to get politicians to use social media more often to be more accessible on a one-to-one basis. So, even on Talk Up Radio, when we bring the ministers of government into the studio to talk to young people, it’s not just the four or five young people in the room. Usually, for the two weeks leading up to that event, we’ll be putting up calls on social media for young people to send in questions via WhatsApp, via Facebook, etc. So that we have a body of questions that have come from all over the island, and then we pose those questions in the room to the minister.

Change at the political level is often a very long process. It’s never just, OK, this is a very good solution and let’s get it into parliament right now. Oftentimes, it has to be vetted and investigated and there needs to be some academic backing to it. But what we’ve seen is that, especially in the case of one minister in particular — i.e., the minister of health in Jamaica — he has changed his language in some sense in how he approaches issues. So since we spoke to him about issues like period poverty, we’ve seen period poverty enter the political landscape as a term.

And then you’ve heard from business leaders and people in society saying that they’re going to develop solutions to this — even from across the other parliamentary body, the PNP [People’s National Party], that’s the other party. They’ve actually different ministers and different opposition leaders that have come up with ideas as well. So, it’s that kind of change that we’re noticing where once an idea gets to the mainstream, then more people start to engage with it.

And I feel even that is a level of success. Obviously, we would love to see more tangible results, but we have to admit that political change is a very long process. And we’re hoping that as we go along and a new budget is stabled and new discussions are being held, these things would also come up and from this forum [in 2019]. I’m hoping to go back and have a conversation of that kind with the minister of culture, trying to get her into the studio to actually talk to young people about issues that were raised, like cultural preservation, incorporating young people and their energies and their creativity into cultural practice in a more tangible way. So, we would push the issue beyond, whether or not they bring it up.

Ziabari: Let’s get back to the SDGs. You may admit that the Sustainable Development Goals are not a priority for some or many governments, especially those with less-democratic and more repressive regimes. How do you think these countries should be involved in efforts to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals and make it a priority for the benefit of their own people?

Monteith: Well, you know, it’s a very complex, political situation because even as we [go] along, we recognize that nations are sovereign — they have all rights over what they do within their borders. Even if what they do will have negative repercussions for the globe, we still cannot impose our will on them. So, the best thing to do is really to sensitize the people of that country to what the SDGs are and why they’re important, and [then] hope that you can spark behavioral change. There is a level of respect and diplomacy that has to be maintained as we go along because we have to recognize state powers [as] that’s what they are. They were elected by the people — [though] sometimes not. But within those borders, we don’t really have jurisdiction over how the government behaves.

So, with people, you can reach out heart to heart, mind to mind and change them or sensitize them, give them the information in order to put pressure on their own government, and in that sense, you do empower them politically to advocate for the things that they want. Because if they see that the SDGs are important and their government doesn’t, it’s upon them now to rise upon perhaps and elect another government or to reach out to the world for help in more tangible ways.

There are structures in place, for example, when coups are happening or when countries are calling for liberation or that kind of thing. There are policies in place across the UN, across different bodies in order to support such movements. But especially in regimes that are less democratic, I feel like the real change will have to come from the people. They will have to be the ones that will lead it because we literally cannot impose any sort of power on them. So, it will have to come from the people.

Ziabari: What do you think, as a young leader, can be done to help young people affected by war and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa to regain their confidence, reassert their identity and become proactive, involved members of their societies, especially if they are suffering from trauma and distress?

Monteith: I have two ideas about this. First of all, I come from a small country in the Caribbean, and I see that we do not have any clue — especially the young people — about many things, including what’s happening in these regions because we’re so far removed and it’s so different from our reality that it almost doesn’t make sense to us. So, the first thing I think we need to do is to ensure that information is flowing from these areas and is accessible to youth.

Young people in Jamaica need to understand what’s happening in Syria, what’s happening in Lebanon, what’s happening in Egypt, what’s happening in Libya. We need to be aware of that because we’re global citizens. No longer [do] our people [live] in one area for their entire lives, and [no longer do] issues that are happening elsewhere [not] affect them. Increased migration to Europe comes with restrictions for who else can go there.

So, these issues will affect us, as these governments in Europe have to spend more on accommodating people from these areas, and they’ll have less in terms of international aid to send to our country. We need to understand the connections in terms of what’s happening and that issues happening in one place are not necessarily divorced from what we will experience in our place.

Let’s be honest: Anybody can enter war at any time. Conflict does not take much to kick off — it really is something that’s fragile. Peace is fragile. Peace has to be worked on constantly and being able to understand the issues that lead to the rise of certain instabilities in certain areas can only help us to make our own democracy safer and stronger.

But on another level, I think we need to be able to support people from these regions in telling their own stories. They need to be the ones that are leading how these stories are told, and we need to hear their authentic voices at the UN. At every level, we need to make space for them.

In our organizations, we have SDG young leaders who are from the Middle East. We need to ensure that we have that voice there so that we’re not getting an outside interpretation of the issue — so we’re getting the actual, accurate depiction from within. And I think that’s how you bridge the gap [and] that’s how you create the change that can be lasting.

Ziabari: Do you think the media are doing a good job when it comes to relaying information from the Middle East, North Africa, this part of world to the other parts of the planet and are making people aware of the realities of the region? Or do you think the coverage is distorted and is not helpful for young people across the world to understand what’s happening in conflict zones?

Monteith: In general, I think Western media are not paying enough attention to what I said before, which is to give people opportunities to tell their own stories. So, I think we have one understanding of how politics flows and we don’t necessarily give these people the opportunity to speak for themselves. So, even on Talk Up Radio, we’ve interviewed young people from Egypt, from Lebanon and what we did was just give them the opportunity to speak and tell their own stories and to interpret the conflicts and what’s happening from their own perspective.

So, in Western media, I don’t think we do a good enough job of doing that, and I don’t think we understand the importance of doing that. I remember being at a journalism conference in 2015, and the issue raised with the heads of CNN and BBC was that the news from outside of the dominant north tends to be one-sided — we only get reported on when we’re in conflict. We only get reported on when there are massacres and people are dying and there are natural disasters. I never hear in the news that Jamaica is doing financially well or something good has happened. I imagine that the same thing happens to different areas around the world, whether it’s the Middle East or Africa, for example, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

The media has an opportunity to set an agenda in terms of how people understand issues. When you don’t see something in the media, you tend to not think it’s important. I’m not seeing enough coverage of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, [and] I’m not seeing enough coverage of what’s happening right now on the ground and how people are feeling. The only place to get that information is [to] form our independent media, and you have to seek those sources because they don’t ascend to the mainstream. So, if you’re not, for example, a journalist, you might not be really interested in going to look for that information. And I think with social media, we do have some opportunities to do that, but I know it doesn’t have the same power — it doesn’t have the same reach or the same legitimacy as mainstream media.

Mainstream journalists have to do a better job, whether it’s bringing people from these areas into the actual platforms that they own or even going there and giving [the people] the voice. We have to do better.

Ziabari: There are many stereotypes and cliches attached to different cultures and countries, and there are many people who buy into such narratives. What do you think young people can do to bridge the gaps between cultures and civilizations, debunk the myths and make sure that stereotypes do not prevail?

Monteith: Let’s speak from my Jamaican perspective. We know what the world has said about us. We know how we’re perceived in a lot of places. I mean, governments make it quite clear in whether or not they give us visa-free access or how we’re treated in airports or the ways in which the media and movies and music depict us. To be honest, we do have a generally positive perception of our own world as fun and creative people, but there are some political issues to do with violence in our country and biased ways we’re perceived, and we have to counteract that with our own knowledge of who we are and being confident in who we are as we go throughout the world.

And so you will find Jamaicans living in every single country you go to because we’re not afraid to venture beyond our borders and represent ourselves as a sovereign nation of power and history and legacy. But beyond that, we also have to advocate at every single level for the reassertion of our power as a country. It’s not enough for governments to simply be biased in how they deal with us or for media to be biased in how they treat us and for us to say nothing about it. No! Jamaicans will always be calling out when there’s been negative portrayals of us in media.

We have to actively fight that perception. So as young people in different regions, I think yes, you can use social media and put out a more nuanced, more accurate version of who you are as a people and your culture and your country. But when there has been negativity, when it’s been maligned by people, you have to call that out. You have to speak truth to power at every level. So do both: Try to reassert a positive image and be confident in who you are, but also when there’s negative and when there’s a slant, call it out, talk about it and really say to these media organizations that no, you’re doing a disservice to my culture when you do this.

Ziabari: Racism and racial discrimination are plagues that are affecting many modern societies currently. Can you think of practical ways to combat racism, and do you think there’s anything that young people can do in this fight?

Monteith: First of all, we have to understand racism. I think too often, racism is reduced to discrimination, it’s reduced to prejudice and it’s reduced to micro-aggressions. While those things are bad, they’re not necessarily racism. Racism is a system, it’s a structure, it’s an ideology. It’s a huge undertaking that is across societies, that is bigger than individual nations and it’s asserted in policy. It’s asserted in how we interrelate as countries. It’s asserted in this sort of hierarchy that we have with Europe at the top and Africa at the bottom. It’s asserted with white people, light-skinned people being portrayed in positive ways and then the darker you get, the worse off you are in every single society.

When I look at Myanmar and I look at the Rohingya people, they are darker-skinned a lot of the time. When I look across the world, wherever you go, you have dark-skinned people. They tend to be at the bottom of the totem pole. And I need for countries that may not necessarily have black people per se to understand how they are perpetuating racism when they create this class division between the lighter-skinned people, the fair-skinned people in their societies and the darker ones. The same thing happens in India — the same thing happens in a number of countries around the world. So, we have to understand the global flow of racism and the ways that we perpetuate it. To practically fight it, they are a number of ways.

One, you have to think about media representation of people of darker skin. Too often we are villains. Too often we are stupid. Too often we have no agency, no power. Too often our countries are portrayed in ways that do not give us any agency and so you perpetuate racism, you perpetuate human indignity when you do that. We have to make it very apparent that these things are very violent. You know, when you portray people this way, you’re not just hurting their feelings, you’re doing actual violence against them — you’re sanctioning their murder sometimes. You have to do better. We have to call it what it is. Because a lot of times, we’re not talking enough about it and we’re not doing enough about it. We are brushing it under the rug.

And we need to do that on a larger scale. So, when companies have poor advertising campaigns, the backlash has to go beyond social media opprobrium. It has to go into them actually losing money because we as people stand for something greater than commercialism. We’re not going to support your business if you’re portraying black people and people of color in a bad way. We’re not going to patronize you at all. We’re not going to do anything with you because that kind of value is completely against what we stand for. So, we have to make a great stand in what we do. Sometimes, we talk a big game but we don’t actually take proper actions. And as young people, we have to do that because we are one of the largest economic blocs. We pay for a lot of things, we buy a lot of things. So, we have power in commercialism in that sense.

Ziabari: And a final question: We live in the age of social media and super-quick connections online. How can young people use these platforms to promote peace, understanding and intercultural dialogue?

Monteith: Talk to each other, first of all. Forums of this nature [the International Youth Forum] are very unique in that we meet a lot of people from a lot of different countries and then we get to add each other on Facebook and on Instagram, and so we get to understand how each person perceives their own nation and the issues that are happening. So, we need to take up the mandate of investigating what’s happening in these countries and consuming media from these countries in more tangible ways.

Young people have the opportunity to even see, very literally, what’s happening in different countries right away. If you go on Instagram and if you search the hashtag for Kingston, you’ll see our culture, you’ll see our national heritage, you’ll see our natural environment, you’ll get a real perception of who we are. And that helps to break some of the barriers. That helps to break some of the stereotypes. So, we need to do that on a greater scale.

I feel like more of us need to understand the importance of international solidarity, of understanding what it means to be a global citizen, of understanding the fact that our countries are not far apart, they’re not so divorced from each other in terms of issues.

So, as we use social media to access that kind of content, we have to really internalize it as a way of living where we look at each other and we don’t see somebody from a foreign country who means nothing to me. We see people and we understand that the same wishes and wants, interests and passions that we have, those people have their own as well. Those people are experiencing a life in very similar ways sometimes. You know, they have similar passions, and as long as we can relate on a human-to-human level through social media, I think we’ll be slowly moving in the right direction.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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At a time of a pandemic, Iran continues to face grueling international sanctions and domestic divisions. But it is an uncontested fact that the country has a long revered civilization, and getting to know the nation with all its intricacies and complexities is a challenging task. Universities around the world offer Iranian studies courses so students can learn about Iran and its history.  In recent , growing demand to explore Iran has led to more travelers visiting the country, which is not a popular tourist destination.

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Today, much of what the global public knows about Iran comes through the prism of the media. Most of this reporting is negative and focuses on political crises. Many people may not know that Persians — long before the advent of Islam — the world’s first monotheistic religion. It’s even unknown to many that Iran is to 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and that there’s literally a cultural, historical or natural attraction in every corner of the country worthy of visiting.  

Kamila Napora is a Polish travel writer and traveler whose adventurism has taken her to more than 70 countries worldwide. She is passionate about getting to know other cultures, meeting people from different backgrounds and learning about new places. In 2015, Napora traveled to Iran alone. She documented her experiences of traveling in the country in detail on her  and provided recommendations for those who are tinkering with the idea of visiting Iran.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Napora about her experience in Iran, her observations of Iranian society and her views on the portrayal of the country in the media.

The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place before the outbreak of COVID-19.

Kourosh Ziabari: Where did the idea of traveling to Iran come from? Given the international isolation that Iran suffers from, it’s not a very popular destination for many globetrotters and, at best, it received some 8 million tourists in 2018, which is still a low number compared to regional countries like Turkey and the UAE. What did you know about Iran before going there, and what motivated you to choose the country as one of your stops?

Kamila Napora: I remember reading about Iran and seeing pictures from there as a kid, and those images were so beautiful that they stayed with me this whole time and eventually made me want to visit Iran really badly. In the meantime, some of my friends have traveled there and shared some beautiful stories not only about the amazing places but especially hospitable people. These stories sold me on Iran and, shortly after, I booked my flights. Unfortunately, due to work, I had to cancel my initial trip, but my desire to visit Iran was so strong I ended up traveling there a few months later.

But indeed, before my trip in 2015, there was not much about Iran in the media or online, and most of the news stories were about politics. It was not easy to find many good travel resources about visiting Iran. I feel it has improved a lot since then. 

Ziabari: What were the first reactions when you first told your family and friends that you were planning to visit Iran? Were they surprised or scared that you had made such a decision?

Napora: I’ve been traveling to less-known places for a while, so people around me weren’t really surprised I chose Iran as my next destination. I got a lot of positive reactions, although there were some concerns that came mostly from the lack of information about traveling in the country.

Back in World War II times, Iran had helped Polish refugees a lot and some people still remember it here [in Poland]. I think that helped a bit too in the way people perceive Iran in Poland. Before my trip, the situation in the Middle East and the refugee crisis in Europe wasn’t so serious yet, so I didn’t [receive] any concerns based on that — unlike my trip to Lebanon a year later. I think I went to Iran at the right time, when there were still not so many tensions. I’m afraid right now, the reaction of my family and friends would be totally different, but this would come only from the unfamiliarity of the region and the bad press Iran gets.

Ziabari: There is a strong stereotype that Iran is an unsafe place, especially for an independent, solo female traveler. Is the cliché close to reality? How was your personal feeling while traveling across the country?

Napora: To be honest, Iran was one of the most difficult countries to travel around as a solo female traveler. This concept wasn’t very well known back then; in the 10 days I spent in Iran, I didn’t meet any other woman traveling alone. I had to do a lot of explaining that I was traveling on my own and that’s fine, I chose it to be that way.

But Iran was the only country where I had to deal with men trying to touch me, getting too close and asking for sex. This all happened usually in the middle of the day, in the middle of popular cities. On one hand, [being in a city meant] I didn’t feel too afraid as there were people around but, on the other, it made me feel uncomfortable and, eventually, I just avoided going outside after dark.

While I hated all these situations, I think I know where they were coming from. Just like people outside of Iran have some stereotypes about Persian people — who are often confused with Arabs — local people might have their own stereotypes about Western women traveling alone.

I would say that 95% of my time in Iran was incredible, but that uneasy 5% made me think twice before recommending Iran as a destination for inexperienced female solo travelers.

Ziabari: In a blog post about your trip to Iran, you wrote that many people confuse Iran and Iraq, believing that it’s a war-torn country and under the rule of ISIS. Where do you think this confusion and misunderstanding originates from?

Napora: The lack of knowledge about the world. But, at the same time, I don’t expect people to know about every single territory in the world and what’s happening there. I expect maybe 5% of the people to be really interested in the current affairs and geography. So, even if these comments about Iran and Iraq made me roll my eyes about that, I quickly remembered that if I’m interested in the region, it doesn’t mean everyone has to be.

I also come from a country that people, especially from outside of Europe, confuse with other destinations or have a completely false image of. Over the years, I just learned not to take these opinions too personally. And I think in the case of Iran, it wasn’t the realistic image of the country, just the lack of knowledge about the Middle East and what was happening there. After all, these two names [Iran and Iraq] are similar.

Ziabari: There is often worrying news about Iran in the media, which is mostly the result of the country’s dismal foreign relations and regional policies. However, those who visit Iran assert that the reality of Iranian people and the culture of Iran are totally detached from its politics. Did you also come to this understanding after concluding your trip?

Napora: Definitely! In every country, we should separate politics and people, as politicians don’t always represent their nation fully. It’s very accurate in Iran, too. The majority of people I met in Iran were warm, hospitable, welcoming and curious, and there was not a single moment when I felt they are not fine with tourists visiting their country. Quite the opposite, actually.

Ziabari: You wrote in one of your travel blogs about Iran that you had countless encounters with people on the streets, restaurants and public places who approached you to offer help or ask where you came from and what you thought of Iran. Why do you think this experience happened so frequently? Did it ever make you feel uncomfortable?

Napora: No, I was very happy to talk to local people as that’s what makes traveling so special too. Since there are still not too many independent travelers visiting Iran, those who venture there are somehow an attraction. I think locals were just curious [about] how I like their country and wanted to make me feel welcome there. All these friendly encounters were one of the reasons why I enjoyed my trip to Iran so much.

Ziabari: As you noted, Iranian people are known for their hospitality and friendliness. Tell us more about your experiences with Iranian people and the treatment you received in different cities. Have you had similar experiences in other countries?

Napora: I had a similar experience in other countries too, like New Zealand or Georgia, but Iran is among the top places I’ve met the most hospitable people. Except for the few uncomfortable situations I encountered as a solo female traveler, everyone was friendly and welcoming. I was invited to people’s houses for dinner, I was invited to join them in restaurants, and locals bought me Iranian dishes so I could try them out. It was one of the experiences I will never forget.

Ziabari: What’s the most attractive thing about Iran that you observed and experienced during your trip? 

Napora: Even if I experienced similar hospitality in other places, I think the incredible hospitality of Iranian people is one of the best things about the country and it can make every traveler feel special. I felt all these friendly encounters were genuine. Also, Persian culture and history are very interesting to learn about and should be more promoted.

Ziabari: Iran is the 17th largest country in the world in terms of territory. It has a population of more than 80 million people, the majority of whom are youths. It boasts 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and a history dating back some 7,000 years. Why doesn’t Iran receive many international visitors? What should the country do in order to become a popular tourist destination?

Napora: Unfortunately, the bad press Iran receives affects its tourism. The visa procedure isn’t also the easiest and might make some people doubt if it’s worth going through the hassle. With so many interesting places in the world, Iran doesn’t get enough attention as it is not very present in the media, including travel media, and people simply don’t know how beautiful and worth a visit the country is.

There is a lack of proper promotion of tourism in Iran, and all we learn is from other travelers who have visited the country. Opening up for travelers and making traveling to Iran easier should be a priority. A lot has changed for the better in the years since my visit, but there are still many things that can be done to attract tourists.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What a Serial Traveler Thinks of Iran appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Today, it is the site of a bitter territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, a conflict that has resulted in scores of casualties and the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Pandits, as Kashmir’s Hindus are commonly referred to.

Author Rakesh K. Kaul’s , “The Last Queen of Kashmir” (Harper Collins India, 2015), tries to shed light on the roots of this conflict by going back in time to explore the dramatic life of Kota Rani, the last ruler of the Hindu Lohara dynasty in Kashmir. Kota ruled as monarch until 1339, when she was deposed by Shah Mir, who became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir.

The Modern Indian Woman: A Conversation with Trisha Das

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His most recent , “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir” (Penguin India, 2019), is an unexpected foray into the far distant future. Set in 3000 AD, the book combines artificial intelligence, genetics and quantum theory with the ancient wisdom of Kashmir’s traditional Niti stories, which inspire Dawn to overcome seemingly impossible odds to save humanity from impending destruction.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Rakesh Kaul about the inspiration behind his two novels, childhood memories of his strife-torn homeland and how his grandfather, the famed Kashmiri mystic Pandit Gopi Krishna, guides the trajectory of his life and work.

Vikram Zutshi: You have written what is possibly the first science fiction novel set in Kashmir. What inspired you to choose the genre of science fiction to tell this story and how does it adapt itself to Kashmiri history and culture?

Rakesh Kaul: I wish I could claim the honor of being a pioneer with “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir.” But much as I admire them, I have many literary ancestors who are the equals of Joseph Campbell, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. I am a mere upholder of a literary tradition that is over 2,000 years old. Western science fiction imagines possibilities like time travel, space exploration, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life. There are robots who are more advanced in their intelligence than humans.

But all these themes were part of the stories in Kashmir, plus more. “Dawn” has in it an ancient story about a robot city with a remarkable safety override. The Puranic story of Indra’s net holds within it the concept of recursive universes. The pinnacle of these stories is of course the collection of stories in the Yoga Vasistha.

The word “˛ő˛ąłóľ±łŮ˛â˛ą,” which means “literature,” was coined by Kuntaka in Kashmir. Within sahitya, there was a genre which dealt with all the above-mentioned themes but went beyond. One could say that if science fiction’s domain was all the possibilities within the bounded universe, then in Kashmir specifically — and India generally — the stories explored all the possibilities within the unbounded inner-verse.

So, if you like “1984” or “Brave New World,” which are sci fi classics, then “Dawn” is going to take you to a whole new level. Even more than Joseph Campbell, the stories that I have brought are not mere myths or fantasies; they reveal a cognitive organ and knowledge acquisition capability which unlocks the deterministic laws of nature in a manner that science is just beginning to grapple with.

Zutshi: What does the story arc of the central character, Dawn, tell us about the state of the world today?

Kaul: All science fiction stories in the West and their Indic counterparts, the Niti stories, deal with the existential question of the arc of one’s way of life. The mind is seduced by utopia and yet ends up in dystopia. One ignores at one’s peril the addictive narrative wars happening today that are shaped and served by technology. The world, whether global or local, is heading toward a duality of monopolistic cults that fiercely demand total obeisance. Non-conformity results in a flameout at the hands of troll armies.

Artificial intelligence is the omniscient eye watching over us. What we cannot ignore is that is doubling every 20 months, data every six months, and the AI brain every three months. The champions of AI are promising that we will have sentience in 30 years. That is a close encounter of the third kind. That is within the lifespan of the readers. The danger to you as an individual has never been greater. One cannot take lightly the rising depression and suicide graphs coupled with desperate drug usage. Hence, the vital necessity for Dawn. 

Dawn is the last girl left standing on earth in 3000 AD. She is facing an army of weaponized AIs and mind-controlled automatons; they rule over a deadly world where men have lost their souls and women have been slain — all heading to Sarvanash, the Great Apocalypse. This is a story of a close encounter of the seventh kind. How does Dawn arm herself? Can she win? Great Niti stories remind us that if the mind is a frenemy, then the need to nurture what is beyond the mind that one can turn to and trust is paramount. The Dawn lifehack that is presented is time-tested but oh so amazingly simple, yet powerful.

Zutshi: Is the characterization of the main protagonist based on a real-life person?

Kaul: “Dawn” in Sanskrit is “usha.” Usha is the most important goddess in the Rig Veda, the oldest extant text in the world. By contrast, none of the goddesses that we think about today are even mentioned there. Dawn is the harbinger of the rebirth of life each morn. She is the only Indian goddess who has spread around the world. Usha’s cognates are Eos in Greek, Aurora in Roman and Eostre in Anglo-Saxon [mythology], which is the root of the word Easter —the festival of resurrection. Interestingly, Usha is also the name of the sanctuary city where the Sanhedrin, [Israel’s] rabbinical court, fled to in the 2^nd century. She is also the goddess of order, the driver away of chaos and darkness. She is dawn, she is hope, she is the wonder leading to resurrection.

Humans recognized her wonder a long time ago. They imagined Dawn born at the birth of the universe, whose one-pointed mission is to make darkness retreat and drive ahead fearlessly.

But Dawn is also a tribute to the warrior princesses of Kashmir, a land which was celebrated for its women in practice and not just poetry. They were not merely martial warriors, nor just holy warriors or ninja warriors, but much more. The Kashmiris enshrined the dawn mantra within themselves, men and women, and repeat it to this day. In my novels, the protagonists repeatedly draw upon it.

Zutshi: You have spoken about Niti, the traditional storytelling technique of Kashmir. Please elaborate on Niti for the lay reader and how it informed your work. 

Kaul: “Niti” means “the wise conduct of life.” The first collection of Niti stories from Kashmir is the 2,000-year-old celebrated Panchatantra, which is the most translated collection of stories from India. Kashmiri stories have found their way into the Aesop and Grimm fairy tales, Chaucer and Fontaine.

The Kashmiris maintained that one is born with only one birthright, namely the freedom to achieve what is one’s life quest. So, the existential question is, What is the “way of life” by which one can maximize one’s human potential? The Kashmiris defined life’s end goal in heroic terms as unbounded fulfillment while alive, not limited by the physical and encompassing the metaphysical. But how does a mere Niti story enable you to achieve fulfillment and consciousness? Niti’s cultural promise is that it enables one to face any threat, any challenge in reaching one’s goal as one travels through time and space.

How does Niti work? Let us start with the Western perspective first. Descartes famously said that wonder was the first passion of the soul. Kashmir spent a thousand years studying this phenomenon and helps us penetrate deeper here. When we have an experience that is a total surprise, we go WOW — an acronym for “wonder of wonder.” When we go wow, it is expressing, How can this be? We not only accept the limited capacity of our senses and the mind, but we also have a profound moment of self-recognition that there is an unlimited capacity in us to experience what lies beyond our knowledge.

The wormhole between the two brings the relish of the state of wonder which in India was described as “adbhuta rasa” in the text “Natyashastra,” written by another Kashmiri illuminati, “adbhuta” meaning “wonder” and “rasa” meaning “juice.” So, in the wow moment you momentarily taste the wonder juice. All Niti stories are written in the adbhuta rasa literary style, and so is Dawn.

Zutshi: Your first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir,” inspired by the story of Kota Rani, was a hit with Kashmiris in India and the diaspora. What would you like readers to take away from the book and how is it relevant in our times?

Kaul: Yes, much to my surprise the novel received critical acclaim and sold out! The second edition will be coming out worldwide in a month or so, with another beautiful cover of Kota Rani! “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is a historical epic about a great queen from India who informs and inspires. It engages audiences while serving as a cautionary tale for today. It was a precursor of what is now being called fail-lit. Much like Icarus, Kashmir’s humanist civilization of oneness and inclusivity flew too close to the Sun.

The story provides lessons on the importance of protecting, preserving and perpetuating our social freedoms in a unified society from being divided by religious and cultural conflict. Kota Rani’s story shows that we should look for leaders who protect freedom and defeat the pied pipers within who threaten us with tyranny in the guise of offering utopia.

Yet, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is eventually a resurrection story to show us how the light of knowledge and the power of freedom can conquer all enemies. Kota was described as always captivating, never captive. It is a highly recommended read for all women because its notion of femininity and feminine power may surprise them. Kota Rani is memory and Dawn is imagination. Both are reflections of the same double reflexive power. Memory is what makes who you are, and imagination is what makes who you can be. 

Zutshi: As a Kashmiri Hindu who moved to the United States fairly early in life, what are your earliest memories of your ancestral homeland? What do you hope to see in Kashmir’s future?

Kaul: My earliest memories are of the journey that we would take to my homeland from Delhi, where my parents had migrated to after the in October 1947. I remember my mother dropping a coin into the raging river Jhelum and praying for a safe journey as the bus would slowly creak across the hanging bridge in the hill town of Ramban.

Once there was portage across the old Banihal tunnel, where a section had caved in, only small, open jeeps could ferry us with our bags from our buses across to the waiting buses on the other side. The old tunnel was dark with a few small lamps that only accentuated the shadows. There were sections which were deliberately left bare in the older tunnel so that the massive water flow inside the mountain could rush out. They did not have the technology in those early days to divert the water. The sound of the rushing water still resonates inside me.

Kashmir was a place of sensory overload. I would sip the nectar endlessly from the honeysuckles, pluck the cherries growing in our garden. My cousin would rent a boat, and much like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn we would paddle through the water canals in our neighborhood raiding the mulberry trees growing by the banks of the river. We would wake up early in the morning and go for a hike to Hari Parvat, walking through the Shia neighborhoods with the graveyards. Once we saw a crowd of [Shia] self-flagellate as part of their religious observances, and we hid until they passed by. There would be other mob gatherings, but we were culturally trained to avoid them.

Once a year, we would go to my grandfather’s retreat overlooking the Nishat. It was a huge apple orchard. Evening time we would scurry back to the cabin because then the bears would come from the other side of the hill. Night was their foraging time.

Nothing compared, though, to the experiences when the family would rent a houseboat, technically a doonga. We would go to the shrine of Khir Bhavani for a week. The boat would move slowly, and there would be endless tea poured from the samovar accompanied by the local breads. Family life seemed to have kith and kin as an integral part. There was a feeling of intimate connectivity. At night, all the cousins would gather. We would spread the mattresses on the bottom of the boat and share the blankets. Then it was storytime. The girls would cry that we were scaring them when the boys would share the monster stories. But they would not leave the group because they did not want to miss out. I have brought some of these Kashmiri monsters and their stories into “Dawn.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

But, ultimately, Kashmir was about the mystic experience. I would sit in the inner sanctorum of our small temple at the end of the bridge on our little canal. There was barely space for a few. I would watch the water drops drip endlessly on the lingam. The small trident would be by the side. I would look at the paintings on the wall, each one a story and wonder about it all. The best, of course, would be the nighttime aarti at Khir Bhavani. It seemed that all of humanity was there with a lit lamp in their hands. The faces of the devout women and girls would be luminous, the moonlight would give them a sheen. There was beauty, love and innocence in the air.

As a Kashmiri, I would want the lakir ka fakir (blind ideologues) to disappear and the artist to reign supreme. Translation: Those who police others either morally or ideologically or religiously or by force of arms should go bye-bye. The rest will follow naturally, and the valley will emerge from its long, deep darkness.

Zutshi: You are the grandson of famed Kashmiri mystic, Pandit Gopi Krishna. In what way have his work and teachings informed and influenced the trajectory of your life?  

Kaul: The Pandit was the last rishi of Kashmir, a lineage that goes back to the formation of the valley by Rishi Kashyapa. Deepak Chopra said of him, “Pandit Gopi Krishna was a pioneer in the land of spirituality. His insights into the quantum nature of the body predate the scientific discoveries of today. I salute this great sage and scientist of the twentieth ł¦±đ˛ÔłŮłÜ°ů˛â.” Dr. Karan Singh, the crown prince of Kashmir who gave the eulogy at his funeral said, “In the 19^th century, India gave the world Ramakrishna; in the 20^th century it has given the world Gopi Krishna.”

I suppose he shaped me even before I was born. He made the decision that he was going to marry my mother without giving any dowry to break that pernicious social custom. His father-in-law begged him, [saying] that they had bought a priceless wedding sari the day that my mother was born. But to no avail. My mother was married in a simple cotton sari. My inception was in simplicity.

He was my first guru, and he continues to guide me. I learned from him the critical importance of being a family man, of community service, especially toward widows and destitute women, of being a fearless sastra warrior, of words being bridges, about poetry and the arts and, best of all, about the worlds beyond. I treasure his letters. I can never forget the talk that he gave at the United Nations where 600 Native American elders attended. It was a prophecy come true for them where it was stated that a wise man from the East would come and give them wisdom in a glasshouse.

Would I have dared to embark on a 12-year journey to bring the story of a hidden Kota Rani without the inspiration of what it took him to bring his story to the world? No. Especially when writing “Dawn,” his work was invaluable in steering me in describing the close encounter of the seventh kind. What is the biotechnology of the evolutionary force within us? And then in the epilogue for “Dawn,” it is all him because only he has traveled there. Even now as I write this, his beaming face smiles at me. I smile back.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Kashmir’s History and Future Meet in Literature appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In 1917, Ram Dayal Joshi Sharma and Ram Narayan Sharma, who are brothers, co-founded the Baidyanath Group to commercially manufacture ayurvedic medicine. Baidyanath immortalized Ayurveda for millions of Indians, eventually pivoting into several successful businesses such as Ayurveda research.

Ayurveda has seen a new lease of life during the coronavirus lockdown, as Indians are increasingly looking for natural products to boost their immune system to combat the virus. In March, Milkbasket, an e-commerce company, said that sales of products like honey and herbal tea had  by 17% month on month. The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), which is tasked with promoting the development of indigenous medicine like Ayurveda, even released an advisory in January detailing ayurvedic methods to be used against the coronavirus. (While have shown the drug can lessen the impact of severe disease in patients, there is currently no known vaccine or treatment against COVID-19, which is caused by the novel coronavirus.)

At a time when Ayurveda is more relevant than ever, Baidyanath is looking to capitalize on the wave by becoming more mainstream and diversifying from its core business.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Siddhesh Sharma, a third-generation scion of Baidyanath and president of the company, about his vision for the firm and his new ventures in a field very different from what Baidyanath usually does: beverages. Sharma’s journey stands out as it is rooted deeply in his personal experience as a professional tennis player.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: Baidyanath has a century-old legacy, yet the brand continues to be associated with older people. How do you plan to make Baidyanath a more accessible brand for millennials?

Siddhesh Sharma: Baidyanath focuses on a particular age group and demographic by design, but that’s not our objective. That said, for us to be relevant and to continue our legacy, we have to start making ourselves more relatable to the youth. We are slowly doing that.

The new ventures are all based on the science and know-how we have at Baidyanath. They are under the ambit of a new venture, but the research and development behind the venture is our Ayurvedic know-how that was built over 100 years.

At Baidyanath, meanwhile, we are trying to change format of certain preparations to reach a larger audience. For example, churan (powdered herbs) are now available in easier formats like tablets or capsules. This has made it easier for people to consume the old remedies in a new format.

Mukhopadhyay: Baidyanath has a set business with market leadership in several products. Why did you choose to diversify into the drinks segment at this point of time?

Sharma: I would like to rewind back a few years. I used to play tennis competitively since a young age. I won the silver medal at the national levels in India when I was 17. I qualified to represent India at the Davis Cup.

I have gotten significant exposure to what sports demands in terms of beverages. However, many of my teammates left India for many reasons. India has weaknesses such as infrastructure, nutrition, health, etc. I also eventually left India to pursue my engineering degree at Nottingham University in England.

Nottingham is also a great sports university. It has an amazing sports center where the pre-Wimbledon tournament is conducted. It was a great fit for me, as I could pursue my education and tennis side-by-side. When I started playing professionally in the UK, I realized that all our fitness coaches and tennis trainers paid more attention to our diet and hydration, as compared to those in India.

Because of this reason, while I trained lesser than what I used to in India, I was playing way better tennis and winning more matches. When I came back to India during the vacations, I realized how difficult it was for me to buy good ready-to-drink beverages in the Indian market. There were no lifestyle drinks that were healthy and every other drink was full of sugar, chemicals, preservatives and other nasty ingredients. I had set a goal back then — I will certainly do something in this space whenever the time’s right.

Fast forward to 2014. My entire passion for tennis led me to make a small investment in a tennis league here in India. By 2014, the whole food industry had also changed in India.

But there was still a gap in terms of the beverages we bought off the shelf. The ready-to-drink beverage category, where functional drinks are growing, we are still in a very nascent stage as compared to the US or anywhere in the West. I thought that this was a good time to venture into this space.

This led me to start working on the beverages. However, a drink based on Ayurveda and herbs was my number one priority. A hundred years of R&D, knowledge and know-how can’t be replaced or bought out. I was very clear from day one that I will lead my beverages with the super herbs or herbs story. But eventually, we will also have fortified vitamins, minerals, electrolytes in the waters and then launch the brand. That’s why the venture is also called Naturedge Beverages Pvt Ltd. because I want to focus on ready-to-drink products [and] I currently see a huge gap in the Indian market. That’s the background of my journey into drinks.

Mukhopadhyay: How do you plan to scale up your beverage company, Naturedge Beverages?

Sharma: Naturedge Beverages are functional drinks in nature. When I say functional, that means less sugar, low calories. The whole idea is that we grow slowly but surely, in Mumbai, Bangalore and the Delhi national capital region — three major hotspots of the country.

We are growing across all channels and we are very widely present in all modern-day chains in India such as 24Seven or Le Marche. We are in phase one, where we don’t want early adopters but an early majority. Early adopters will only take you to a certain distance. When you target an early majority, you’re looking at a sizeable chunk of the market share and you can reach the mark of 1 billion rupees [$13.3 million] mark in two to three years.

We are growing across all channels — modern trade, general trade and even hotels, restaurants and cafes. We are not leaving out any particular channel because we want to create that 360-degree impact. You know how difficult it is in the beverages industry as the industry is dominated by some big players. It’s a very difficult and competitive industry — with fast-moving consumer goods and beverages, the margins are cut-throat. At the same time, the market is so huge. If we are able to grow, if we are able to correctly do this, we can make a big dent in the industry.

Mukhopadhyay: Is there a certain target audience for your products?

Sharma: My whole idea of getting into beverages was that we don’t confine ourselves to the sports hydration industry only, because then that would make us very small in terms of the market share.

The idea was that I won’t just restrict the audience to sports or highly athletic individuals. The idea is to replace your everyday unhealthy drink with a healthy drink for any occasion. We are targeting the age groups of 25 to 40 because that’s the early majority in terms of the target audience. But we are definitely great in terms of benefits for anyone who is 6 years old to someone older like 18.

Millennials today want Ayurveda in their lives — they just don’t know how to. With Shunya drinks, I can cater to all those millennials and the Gen Z, who can embrace Ayurveda in their lives but are confused on how to have it. The idea is to actually offer great-tasting healthy drinks packed with the power of super herbs. Which is why we have both fizz and non-fizz variants.

Unlike the common perception, fizz is not all bad. Carbonated drinks have always been seen as evil and unhealthy, which is why people stay away from aerated drinks. Now, the funny thing is that most of the world is drinking sparkling water, right? It’s not that carbonation in drinks is harmful. It is just that, historically, all drinks in India have had a lot of sugar, chemicals and preservatives. [It] doesn’t mean that the sector doesn’t have any demand.

You will admit that, sometimes, you are tempted to have something aerated because it gives you that refreshing feeling. Which is why we have gone ahead and done the fizz variants in our beverage range. Our target age group is currently 25 to 40 because they are the ones who are constantly looking out for newer products.

I took four years to launch my products because I was clear that I don’t want to compromise on formulations. I wanted to be clear on the fact that whatever ingredients we use is as clean as possible and we arguably create one of the healthiest drinks you can buy in a bottle or a can in the world.

This means that the ingredients are slightly costly. So, if you notice, our beverages are 60 rupees [$0.80] a can and 75 rupees a bottle. We are more expensive than a mainstream brand, as the quality of our ingredients matter the most to us.

We are focusing in phase one on people between 25 and 40 because these are the young professionals, who want to take care of themselves, who can afford to pay a premium of 10 to 15 bucks more for their health. We have actually done clinical trials on our products. All drinks across the category are healthy for kids and diabetic patients.

I was clear that in my beverage brands, the formulations will always lead with the Ayurveda story and then come down to other functional benefits of a drink. We are leading our story with Ayurveda ingredients and flagship ingredients like Brahmi, Khus and Kokum. Globally today Ayurveda is very acceptable.

Several companies outside India have built an entire portfolio of products mainly based on Ashwagandha. It’s clear that everybody wants plant-based and natural ingredients now. When you say natural, the first thing that comes to your mind is Ayurveda. In India, the Gen Z and millennial generation are very evolved in their thought process — they are influenced by the West, but they are very accepting of something home grown.

Millennials today want Ayurveda in their lives — they just don’t know how to. If we can introduce that in the form of Shunya [drink brand], then I can cater to all those millennials and the Gen Z, who can embrace Ayurveda in their lives but are confused on how to have it. That was the whole idea of merging Ayurveda in beverages.

Mukhopadhyay: What exactly constituted the research in your products? What were you looking at?

Sharma: In December 2014, I had four key things on my wish list. First, the beverage has to taste well. At the end of the day, if you don’t like the taste, you won’t like the product. Second, we wanted it to be a very healthy drink. Third was that we will add no artificial ingredient. The fourth was we will have no sugar. We didn’t want to do this funny thing where we say no sugar and have this asterisk where we say fructose or fruit sugar has been added. These were the four pillars of our research — great taste, a healthy beverage, no artificial ingredients and no sugar.

The herbal story is something we understood well at Baidyanath. If I genuinely need to make a truly healthy beverage, then I need to extend the benefits of the drink even outside the purview of Ayurveda. Many drinks which have made millions worldwide are either vitamin-fortified or hydration drinks like Gatorade. They have electrolytes and certain minerals. Abroad, people need a reason to hydrate. In India, that isn’t the case. We are a water-drinking nation. In Shunya, we have got a full range of B vitamins and we have got vitamin C. Statistics say that 80% of Indians are deficient of the minimum vitamin allowance. Today, if you have a bottle of Shunya, that one bottle gives you 50% daily allowance of all vitamins.

I was very stubborn about the ingredients. There was a time when I had to replace one ingredient, and there were replacements available, but I wanted to replace it with the best. I had literally put everything on hold to wait for that ingredient to come up from the lab.

All these energy drinks, highly-caffeinated drinks and, of course, the energy drinks — such as Red Bull and Monster — have high quantities of chemicals like taurine. This, along with copious amounts of sugar, really spikes our blood sugar level at a rapid rate. This is the worst thing you can do to your body. Which is why on our label, we very clearly say that we add no flavors, no caffeine and nothing artificial.

Mukhopadhyay: Why did you start an entrepreneurial journey?

Sharma: I grew up in a business family and [was] surrounded by businessmen. I was also very passionate about the science of Ayurveda since a young age. My grandfather [wrote] a book on Ayurveda and the great benefits of the ancient science. The vision that he had with Baidyanath eventually came to my father. I was always proud and happy that this is something our family is doing — preserving the ancient Indian science in an era of allopathy and toxic effects of other medicines. I was always very keen to get into this business and make an impact.

After I finished my dual degree course in England, I had the option to stay back and continue to work there. There was a Rolls Royce manufacturing plant close to my university and I had an opportunity there. But I was very clear that I wanted to come back and create an impact on the Indian business ecosystem. We can see that the family businesses in India are like none other in the world in terms of their contribution toward the GDP. I never gave it a second thought. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

My brother and I have always felt that there’s a legacy that we have to take forward. Not many people have an opportunity that we do to take forward a business. The responsibility of having this platform is huge. While my father and grandfather took Ayurveda national, it is my responsibility to take it global. Which is why we are in 20 to 25 countries and growing at a very fast rate.

The way I think personally is that it’s great to be in the startup ecosystem and it makes you learn so much because you are running a reasonably big company with a 100-year-old legacy. It is great to also start from scratch and learn the various dynamic things that happen when you start a new business.

Which is why [I got] into Naturedge Beverages. I want to position myself as a strong health entrepreneur and ensure that people trust and have faith in our food, supplements, beverages and pharmaceutical products.

Product is the hero, but we are also building a nice community around it. Which is why we are using social media and all these below-the-line activities that are not like the traditional medium of billboards. We are not immediately getting an endorsement with a big name either. We are focusing on more on-the-ground activities, collaborating with the best events, any event like yoga, Pilates, where people are trying to seek an alternate product for a healthy lifestyle. A Gen Z or millennial is smart. They won’t buy a product just because a big star is endorsing it. They would rather look at an influencer the brand is collaborating with. This is the style of marketing we are adopting with our brands.

Mukhopadhyay: You have also launched an “anti-hangover” shot. Why did you choose to focus on an anti-hangover shot, and how do you differentiate it from other products? Is it the key selling point of Naturedge?

Sharma: We are definitely leading the nature story with Shunya as the brand under Naturedge Beverages. ARMR is an attempt to make Ayurveda user-friendly. ARMR is a 100% herbal shot. All it has is 15 [different] herbs which are amazing for your body. It is just positioned as an anti-hangover shot, but every ingredient in it is great for energy, immunity, detoxification and it’s great for your liver health. It’s positioned as an anti-hangover shot for our target audience of working professionals between 25 and 40.

Social drinking is a norm in office parties nowadays. People want to drink on the weekday and not go to the office with a hangover. ARMR is our attempt to say that indulge responsibly. ARMR enables you to indulge but in moderation. You may drink three times a week but wake up fresh, as you will remove the toxins of alcohol faster than ever. Again, it’s a great health shot. That’s the great thing about ARMR — it’s making Ayurveda cool and trendy. We are ensuring that we use the power of Ayurveda and let that aspirational millennial lead a complete life without compromise.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Making Ayurveda More Relevant for Millennials appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In 2018, a by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University found that only 43% of Palestinians and Israeli Jews support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. This was down from 52% of Palestinians and 47% of Israeli Jews who favored a two-state concept just a year prior.

In October 2019, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories as “a multi-generational tragedy.” He said to the Security Council that Israeli settlements — which are illegal under international law — on Palestinian land represent a substantial obstacle to the peace process.

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US President Donald Trump, who is by some observers as the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman, has himself as Israel’s best friend in the White House. Trump has overturned the US position on many aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the dismay of the Palestinian people and leadership. His administration has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law.

In January, the Trump administration unveiled its long-awaited peace plan. Dubbed the “,” the 181-page document was promoted by Washington as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian factions have rejected the proposal as overly biased and one-sided in favor of Israel.

Ian Lustick is an American political scientist holding the Bess W. Heyman Chair in the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He is an advocate of what he calls a “one-state reality” to solve the conflict. His latest book, published in October 2019, is called “Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.”

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Lustick about the ongoing skirmishes between the Israelis and Palestinians, the declining traction of the two-state solution, the BDS movement and the US support for Israel.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: In your 2013 in The New York Times titled “Two-State Illusion,” you note that Israelis and Palestinians have their own reasons to cling to the two-state ideal. For the Palestinians, you write that it’s a matter of ensuring that diplomatic and financial aid they receive keeps coming, and for the Israelis, this notion is a reflection of the views of the Jewish Israeli majority that also shields Israel from international criticism. Are you saying that these reasons are morally unjustified? Why do you call the two-state solution an illusion?

Ian Lustick: I do not argue they are morally unjustified. I am seeking to explain why they persist in the face of the implausibility if not the impossibility of attaining a negotiated two-state solution. I am trying to solve the puzzle of why public agitation for it continues by these groups, one that wants a real two-state solution and one that does not, even though the leaders of each group know that the two-state solution cannot be achieved. The key to the answer is a “Nash Equilibrium” in which both sides, and other actors as well — the US government and the peace process industry — can get what they minimally need by effectively giving up on what they really want.

The mistaken idea that Israelis and Palestinians can actually reach an agreement of a two-state solution through negotiations is an illusion because so many people still actually believe it is attainable when it is not.

Ziabari: As you’ve explained in your writings, the favorable two-state situation envisioned by Israel is one that ignores Palestinian refugees’ “right of return,” guarantees that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel and controlled by Israel, and fortifies the position of Jewish settlements. On the other side, the Palestinian version of the two-state solution imagines the return of refugees, demands the evacuation of Israeli settlements and claims East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. Do you think the two sides will ever succeed in narrowing these stark differences?

Lustick: No. The elements of the two-state solution that would make it acceptable to Palestinians are those that make it unacceptable to the majority of Israeli Jews who now have firm control of the Israeli government and of the Israeli political arena. But once a one-state reality is acknowledged, then both sides can agree that Jerusalem should be united and accessible to all who live within the state, that refugees within the borders of the state, at least, should have a right to move to and live in any part of the state, and that owners of land and property seized illegally or unjustly anywhere in the state can seek redress, or that discrimination in the right to own and inhabit homes anywhere in the state must be brought to an end.

Ziabari: You are an advocate of a one-state solution to the decades-old Israeli–Palestinian conflict. What are the characteristics of such a country? Do you think Israelis and Palestinians will really agree to live alongside each other under a unified leadership, share resources, abandon their mutual grievances and refuse to engage in religious and political provocation against the other side while there are no geographical borders separating them?

Lustick: I do not advocate a “one-state solution” in the sense that I do not see a clear path from where we are now to that “pretty picture” of the future. I instead seek to analyze a reality — a one-state reality — that is far from pretty, and thereby not a solution. But that reality has dynamics which are not under the control of any one group, and those dynamics can lead to processes of democratization within the one-state reality that could produce a set of problems in the future better than the problems that Jews and Arabs have today between the river and the sea.

The substantive difference I have with advocates of the “one-state solution” is that they imagine Jews and Arabs “negotiating,” as two sides, to agree on a new “one-state” arrangement. I do not share that view as even a possibility. But within the one-state reality, different groups of Jews and Arabs can find different reasons to cooperate or oppose one another, leading to new and productive political processes and trends of democratization. That is how, for example, the United States was transformed from a white-ruled country with masses of freed slaves who exercised no political rights whatsoever into a multiracial democracy. Abraham Lincoln never imagined this as a “one-state solution” — it was the unintended consequence of the union’s annexation of the South, with its masses of black, non-citizen inhabitants, after the Civil War.

Ziabari: Several UN Security Council resolutions have been issued that call upon Israel to refrain from resorting to violence against Palestinian citizens, safeguard the welfare and security of people living under occupation, halt its settlement constructions and withdraw from the lands it occupied during the 1967 war. Some of the most important ones are Resolution 237, Resolution 242 and Resolution 446. There are also resolutions deploring Israel’s efforts to alter the status of Jerusalem. However, Israel has ignored these formal expressions of the UN and seems to face no consequences. How has Israel been able to disregard these resolutions without paying a price?

Lustick: The short answer to this is that the Israel lobby has enforced extreme positions on US administrations so that the United States has provided the economic, military, political and diplomatic support necessary for Israel to withstand such international pressures. The reasons for the Israel lobby’s success are detailed in my book and can be traced, ultimately, to the hard work and dedication of lobby activists, the misconceived passion of American Jews and evangelicals to “protect” Israel, and the fundamental character of American politics which gives a single-issue movement in foreign policy enormous leverage over presidents and over members of Congress.

Ziabari: You’ve worked with the State Department. How prudent and constructive is the current US administration’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What are the implications of decisions such as recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, cutting off funding to UNRWA and closing down the PLO office in Washington, DC? Will the “deal of the century” resolve the Middle East deadlock?

Lustick: US policy has, for decades, been unable to realize its foreign policy interests in this domain for reasons I explained earlier. Now that the opportunity to do so via a two-state solution has been lost, the policies of the Trump administration hardly matter, except that by not emphasizing America’s emphasis on democracy and equality, it postpones the time when Israelis and Palestinians will begin the kinds of internal struggles over democracy and equal rights that hold promise of improving the one-state reality.

Ziabari: Is the Trump administration working to silence criticism of Israel by painting narratives that are unequivocal in censuring Israel’s policies as anti-Semitic? Do you see any difference between Trump’s efforts in protecting Israel against international criticism with those of his predecessors?

Lustick: Yes. The Trump administration has sided in an unprecedentedly explicit way with the extreme wing of the Israel lobby and with extreme and intolerant right-wing forces in Israel. 

Ziabari: The proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, who believe that denying Israel economic opportunities and investment will serve to change its policies regarding the Palestinian people, are widely smeared as anti-Semites. Is the BDS movement anti-Semitic?

Lustick: There may be some anti-Semites among BDS supporters, but the movement itself is no more anti-Semitic than the Jewish campaign to boycott France during the Dreyfus trial was “anti-French people.” In fact, as it becomes clearer to everyone that successful negotiations toward a two-state solution will not occur, the significance of the BDS movement will grow rapidly. 

It is an effective way to express, non-violently, an approach to the conflict that emphasizes increasing justice and quality of life for all those living between the river and the sea. Its focus is not on the particular institutional architecture of an outcome, but on the extent to which values of equality, democracy and non-exclusivist rights to self-determination for Jews and Arabs can be realized. Nor do BDS supporters need to agree on which forms of discrimination, at which level, they focus on. Some may target sanctions against every Israeli institution, but many will target the most blatant forms of discrimination, such as radically different rights and protections accorded to Arabs vs. Jews in the West Bank, in the Jerusalem municipality or in southwest Israel, including the Gaza Strip.

Ziabari: The settlement of disputes between Palestinians and Israelis requires a reliable and effective mediator, one in which both parties have trust. Which government or international organization is most qualified to fulfill this role?

Lustick: The time for mediation or negotiation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, as two groups, has effectively passed. That is no longer what is crucial. What is crucial are political processes within each group and across them. African Americans became empowered over generations, not because an outside mediator helped arrange an agreement between whites and blacks, but because gradually self-interested whites saw opportunities in the emancipation of and alliances with blacks. 

This approach does imagine a long-time frame, but when states with democratic elements are confronted with masses of formerly excluded and despised populations, that is the kind of time it takes to achieve integration and democratization. In addition to the American case vis-Ă -vis blacks, consider how long it took to integrate Irish Catholics into British politics after Ireland was annexed in 1801, or how long it took South Africa to integrate and democratize its long excluded and oppressed black majority.

Ziabari: And a final question: Will the unveiling of President Trump’s “deal of the century” change anything for the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Some Middle East observers say it is just a green light for Israel to go ahead with annexing more Palestinian territory. Others believe Israel doesn’t need such an endorsement and has been annexing Palestinian lands anyway. What do you think about the deal and how it will transform the demographics and political calculus of the region?

Lustick: The Trump plan is a hoax. In the pages it devotes to its own justification appear all the Israeli government’s favorite propaganda lines. The “negotiations” that produced it were between the most ultranationalist and fundamentalist government in Israel’s history and a group of “Israel firsters” in the White House who are just as extreme, though substantially more ignorant. Advanced originally as a plan to give Palestinians a higher standard of living instead of a real state, it actually proposes no money for Palestinians until they become Finland. Only after that will Israel be empowered, if it wishes, to grant them not a state, but something Israel is willing for Palestinians to call a state but existing within the state of Israel.

If realized as written, the plan would be an archipelago of sealed Palestinian ghettos. By awarding Israel prerogatives to patrol, supervise, intervene and regulate all movement to and from those ghettos, the plan affirms the one-state reality while offering Israel at least temporary protection against having to admit and defend apartheid by describing itself as a two-state solution. This is Palestine as Transkei or Bophuthatswana. As a plan, it has no chance of being implemented. Its real function is to give temporary cover to the deepening of silent apartheid.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The One-State Reality to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Robert McKenzie, a senior fellow at New America, a Washington-based think tank, in 2018 that “political rhetoric from national leaders has a real and measurable impact.” McKenzie led a data that logged anti-Muslim incidents.

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A by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding shows that 62% of Muslims in the United States, including 68% of Muslim women, experienced religious discrimination in 2019. The Pew Research Center that an overwhelming majority of US adults (82%) agree that Muslims are subject to at least some form of discrimination in America. This includes 56% who believe Muslims are discriminated against “a lot.”

In 2018, the last year for which the FBI released on hate crimes committed across the US, anti-Muslim offenses accounted for 14.5% of 1,550 cases motivated by religion. Yet the actual number is believed to be much higher as many incidents are often unreported. President Trump’s and policies regarding Muslims — most notably his executive order in 2017 banning immigration from several Muslim-majority countries — are linked to the spike in Islamophobic attitudes.

Arun Kundnani is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of the book “.” In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Kundnani about the rise in Islamophobia and President Trump’s views toward Muslims.

Kourosh Ziabari: Bretton Tarrant — the alt-right terrorist who killed 51 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 — had described US President Donald Trump “as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” in a manifesto. Is Trump’s position on Muslims and his rhetoric on immigrants emboldening white supremacists and racists within the US and beyond?

Arun Kundnani: Most activists in racist, nativist and neo-Nazi movements around the world have seen in President Trump a fellow traveler, if not someone who completely shares their political agenda. His choice of advisers such as Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon confirms for them that he is an ally. His racist policies, such as the Muslim travel ban and his mass separating of children from their migrant parents, are seen as the first steps in the creation of an “ethno-state,” in which Jews, Muslims and anyone not considered white will be violently eliminated.

Trump’s presidency, along with the election in various European countries of racist political parties, is taken to be a sign that racist nationalism is on the rise. In fact, the rise of the far right in the US and Europe is rooted in the crisis of racial capitalism that has unfolded since the 2008 financial crisis. But Trump’s presence in the White House has emboldened organized racists everywhere.

Ziabari: As you said, one of the most controversial decisions President Trump made shortly after taking office was to introduce a travel ban against citizens of several Muslim-majority countries. Was the “Muslim ban” constitutional and reflective of the values that the United States stands for?

Kundnani: Liberals in the United States often assert that policies of racial or religious exclusion are incompatible with American values and the constitution. This ignores the more fraught relationship between American national identity and principles of racial equality and justice. The US Constitution expressed the values of a class of slave-owning settler colonists in the 18th century seeking to overthrow an older regime. It considers the right to bear arms important, for example, because of the need for settler citizens to eliminate indigenous populations from captured territory. Private property is sacrosanct because the American Revolution was carried out by a capitalist class which owned slaves.

Trump’s Muslim ban is, from this angle, not an aberration but consistent with the long history of US racism and colonialism. From another angle, there are indeed values of equality and religious freedom expressed in the Constitution. But for them to be valid today, they need to be unstitched from narratives of American exceptionalism and woven together in new ways for the 21st century.

Ziabari: In March 2016, President Trump appeared in an interview on CNN and claimed that “Islam hates us … there’s a tremendous hatred there.” Do you think what he said is true? Do Muslims hate the United States?

Kundnani: What many Muslims and, for that matter, many others around the world hate is not the United States as such but its imperialism. The Middle East is a region where resistance to the US is especially strongly felt, largely because of America’s deep support for Israel. After the Cold War, US foreign policy planners mistakenly interpreted this resistance as signaling Islam’s cultural incompatibility with modernity and imagined “radical Islam” as the new threat that was to replace communism.

Trump’s comments repeat the Washington foreign policy establishment’s tendency to regard resistance to the US as rooted in a clash of cultures, rather than a political desire for freedom. But the Palestinian movement is not ultimately a fight for religious or cultural values; it is a struggle for political liberation from Israel’s military occupation.

Ziabari: Many media people and scholars believe Trump built on anti-Muslim sentiment, among other appeals, to please his support base — mostly white Americans in Southern states — and boost his popularity. Will he intensify his anti-Muslim rhetoric in the run-up to the 2020 elections as a campaign tactic?

Kundnani: In 2016, Trump styled himself as the brave outsider willing to speak truths that no one else in the establishment would do. There were two kinds of “truths.” He was willing to defy political correctness and make explicit in his rhetoric about Muslims and Mexicans what had previously only been implicit in counterterrorism and immigration policymaking; and he was willing to attack “globalist” elites who he said had abandoned “ordinary” Americans.

The dilemma for his 2020 reelection campaign is that running as an outsider won’t work after being in the White House for three years. He will have to stand on his record. Were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, his campaign would have focused upon lower taxes and an improving economy. Alongside that, he would have presented himself as a victim of a liberal establishment that tried to use the “deep state” to weaken him and attack the Democrats as now dominated by socialists in league with Muslim extremists.

With the economy devastated, that second part will be more significant. Anti-Muslim rhetoric will be used again, therefore, but in a different way from 2016. It won’t be about terrorists crossing into the US through weak borders but about accusing the Democratic Party of pandering to radicals — from Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who will be portrayed as anti-Semites and radical Muslims, to the “left-wing mobs” of Black Lives Matter.

Ziabari: Moving away from Trump, why do you think the acceptance of anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States and the broader Western world has become normalized? Are anti-Muslim bigots held to the same standards that other racists, including anti-Semites, are held to?

Kundnani: All empires require violence to sustain themselves, and the US empire is no different in this respect. In the modern era, imperial violence has to be legitimized and rationalized. The main way this happens is through racism. When empires confront resistance, they typically frame it as the expression of an inferior culture that does not appreciate the “benefits” that empire brings. The normalization of anti-Muslim racism in the US is driven by this dynamic; its impetus comes from the need to provide an interpretation of conflicts that are the result of US foreign policy. Since the 1990s, the US public has been repeatedly told that Muslim populations harbor a religio-cultural threat that can only be met through war, torture and the suspension of human rights (anti-Muslim racism at home has been the necessary correlate of the US’ imperialism abroad).

But all racisms are, in the end, connected. For example, today’s Black Lives Matter activists are monitored by the FBI as constituting a threat of terrorism, building on the language and institutional apparatus that was established after 9/11 to target Muslims. Likewise, the conspiracy theories that anti-Muslim propagandists have circulated over the last 10 years — which hold that Muslims secretly control the US government and the European Union — are structurally similar to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that emerged in Europe a century ago. And their circulation today has helped create the space for anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish manipulation to return again to conservative political rhetoric.

Ziabari: What is the role of mainstream media in perpetuating and spreading fear of Muslims and antipathy toward them? Do you think the corporate media are to blame for the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States?

Kundnani: The conservative corporate media have mainstreamed the most blatant racism against Muslims, giving credence to every stereotype and fear. To read and watch conservative media is to be presented with a view of Islam as violent, deceptive and hateful. The liberal corporate media is different but has also, in the end, enabled Islamophobia. Take, for example, an incident in 2019 involving Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. After she gave a speech in Los Angeles encouraging Muslims to be more politically active in asserting their rights, a few words were taken out of context and misrepresented in conservative media such as The New York Post, to give the impression that she did not take 9/11 seriously — an obvious Islamophobic slur. The liberal media condemned the attack on her. But the way it framed its response was to say that conservatives were wrong to characterize Omar as un-American and that her family had, after all, chosen to come to the US as Somali refugees.

What this does is set the terms of Omar’s acceptance by liberals: Were she to criticize US foreign policy in Somalia, for example, and — instead of expressing gratitude to the US— highlight America’s complicity in forcing her family to flee, she would then be cast as no longer worthy of defense. For liberals, the problem is one of conservative intolerance of a different religious identity held by a fellow American. But that means that victims of racism have to pass a national loyalty test before receiving support. And it erases from view the roots of anti-Muslim racism, not in religious difference, but in US foreign policies — such as drone strikes — that liberals have been eager to defend.

Ziabari: A 2018 by The Washington Post asserts that the majority of mass shootings are carried out by white males. This confirms the findings of a 2015 study by the Northeastern University scholar Emma E. Fridel, who revealed that most mass shootings in the US are perpetrated by African American and white males, not immigrants and Muslims. When a Muslim citizen carries out an act of violence, the entire religion is blamed. When a white American kills several people in a shooting spree, the assailant is referred to as a “lone wolf” with a mental illness. Why is it so?

Kundnani: The reason for this obvious divergence is the prejudice that everything Muslims do is driven by Islam, as if it is a monolith that mechanically drives people who believe in it to acts of barbarism. But no religion works like that. We are all shaped by a complex mix of social, cultural and political conditions, and then from those conditions [we] attempt to mold ourselves according to our own personality. Acts of violence are individual decisions, products of culture and laden with political meanings.

It makes little sense to think of cultures in grand terms like “Islam” and the “West” but, if we do, there is evidence that Islam is less prone to violence.  of global public opinion suggest that whether one thinks that violence against civilians is legitimate has more to do with political context than religious belief; and such violence is considered more acceptable in the US and Europe than everywhere else in the world. In fact, “Islam is violent” is a false belief that has been used to legitimize US wars which, since 9/11, have the deaths of over 800,000 people.

Ziabari: What do you think needs to be done so that the gaps between American Muslims and the general public are bridged and anti-Muslim prejudice is eliminated? Are academics and advocacy organizations doing a good job in tackling Islamophobia?

Kundnani: Overcoming anti-Muslim racism in the US requires that we face up to the devastation that US foreign policy has inflicted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Palestine. We have to look squarely at the human consequences of war, torture and economic destabilization. We must not erase from these episodes in our history the victims themselves, their agency, their voices, their existence. Advocacy organizations and academics have spent too much time thinking of Islamophobia as a matter of individual attitudes and beliefs influenced by fringe publicity campaigns or right-wing politicians. The focus instead needs to be on the deeper drivers of anti-Muslim racism within the policies of US empire and the racial fractures of neoliberal capitalism.

The demand should not be for better cultural understanding of Islam or a more tolerant attitude toward religious differences. Instead, the argument should be that anti-Muslim racism is the means by which imperialist wars are legitimized and that these wars are not in the interests of working-class Americans. Ultimately, the issue of Islamophobia is inseparable from the question of how resources are distributed in the US: ending anti-Muslim racism means creating a US in which we use our resources to ensure the health, education, and well-being of everyone who lives here rather than to fund a military machine that serves the interests of corporate elites.

Ziabari: What do you make of President Trump’s response to the recent killing of an African American man, George Floyd, in Minnesota while in police custody and the ensuing protests against police brutality and racism? Does the president’s handling of nationwide protests and his reaction to Floyd’s death reveal anything about his broader worldview on the rights of minorities, including Muslims?

Kundnani: Historically, the role of the president in moments of what is euphemistically called “racial tension” is to deploy old clichés of overcoming. His function is to speak somberly of the “difficult” history of “racial animus” before uplifting us with pleas for “reconciliation” and “renewal” of basic values. Such narratives of “moving on” have enabled US white supremacy to survive to the present day by disguising itself as the past. No one will be surprised that Trump has chosen a different approach, painting the Black Lives Matter protests as acts of extremism and hatred.

One could be tempted to say that, in not expressing the usual establishment pieties, Trump is doing anti-racists an unintended favor: undisguised racism is perhaps easier to expose and challenge. But we should not ignore the extent to which Trump’s open defense of racist police violence empowers forms of racist oppression across US society, not least in law enforcement itself.

What’s more, the danger of Trump’s rhetoric is that, in our outrage at his statements, we fall into the trap of narrowing our focus to him alone. When that happens, we forget that the Black Lives Matter movement is about the need for deep-seated change to the whole way we deal with issues of safety and violence in our communities. We should not allow Trump’s statements to sidetrack us from pursuing this agenda in every way possible.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Why Has Islamophobia Risen in America? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, professor of international relations at the Catholic University of Milan and of “The Vulnerable: How the Pandemic Will Change the World,” proposes three possible alternative scenarios on the international system after COVID-19. Two are rather gloomy, with the international order characterized by a cynical return to “business as usual” or a turn toward self-centered nation-states, ruled by populist, nationalist leaders. A third scenario does give some hope, provided we recognize and effectively protect the most vulnerable members of our societies that form the most fragile part of the system.

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For Parsi, the real turning point for understanding what a post-pandemic international system may look like is the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Currently, both the ongoing pandemic and the countrywide protests following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police, dramatically demonstrate how the most vulnerable elements of society are the most exposed and the least protected. If the US government fails to effectively protect its citizens from both the health threat posed by COVID-19 as well as its socioeconomic fallout, the result will be catastrophic, with a consequent redistribution of power domestically that will echo at the international level.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Valerio Alfonso Bruno talks to Professor Vittorio Parsi about the possible state of the post-pandemic world and the various vulnerabilities COVID-19 has exposed within the existing system.

The text has been edited for clarity.

Valerio Alfonso Bruno: Professor Parsi, in your latest book, “The Vulnerable: How the Pandemic Will Change the World,” you argue that the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly exposed the fragility and weakness of the current international system that for long had been latent. You do so by using the evocative image of a vessel: Why did you choose this image?

Vittorio Emanuele Parsi: I like the image of the vessel, and I used it in previous books as well. The vessel represents our globalized world. It is important that we start considering ourselves as a crew, being a part of the very same vessel while navigating the oceans. It is important to understand that this vessel cannot be replaced, it is the only one that we have. The vessel is vulnerable, and the crew is its most vulnerable element. If there is no solidarity among the members of the crew or its security is at risk, there is no future and no sailing.

For a long time, we have considered, erroneously, the vessel as safe and invincible, and the safety of the crew as a “cost” to be squeezed, only to find out lately that nobody was actually at the rudder and that it was in a rather bad condition. Now, the catastrophic event of the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly requires that mankind, as the members of the crew, learns from its mistakes and takes on the responsibility of our world by leading the vessel. We should never forget that a vessel is conceived, built and operated from the awareness that its crew is vulnerable. After all, what is a vessel without its crew? A ghost ship.

Bruno: You propose three possible scenarios that may await us post-COVID-19. It is interesting that you name each of those scenarios after a specific historical event — Restoration, after the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15, the fall of the Roman Empire and, lastly Renaissance. Again, you use images, this time historical images. Do you mean history may repeat itself?

Parsi: I do consider the use of images and metaphors to be important in helping us understand the reality we are living, but it is important not to fall into anachronisms, being tempted to link completely different historical contexts. Images and metaphors can be extremely useful, but their danger lies exactly in the risk of being carried over and ultimately lost during the transfer between the two terms put in contact by the image.

Bruno: The first post-coronavirus scenario you propose is the most plausible, at least in the short term. Why did you name it Restoration? In 1815, European kingdoms and empires were trying to put history back to right before the French Revolution of 1789. Do you suggest countries and their executives may be tempted to act as if this pandemic had never happened?

Parsi: Exactly, I mean precisely to return to the “business as usual,” as nothing had happened. Globalization will resume its wild ride, however, with an increased number of the poor and the discontented, proposing again a now more than ever precarious and unstable process, with the US and China continuing their geopolitical confrontation for the global leadership, and the European Union keeping its marginal role. In particular in the EU, the domestic institutional settings of the member states will see an increased role of technical bodies and authorities, leaving less and less space to the participation of citizens to the public debate. As with the Congress of Vienna and the Restoration of 1815, this attempt will eventually show its limit to appear as an illusion.

Bruno: The second scenario you propose is the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire. Different to the first scenario, here globalization would slow as the result of the pandemic, with multilateral governance and international institutions becoming obsolete. Do you foresee a comeback of strong and powerful nation-states?

Parsi: If the impact of COVID-19 will be heavy, limiting international trade and the economic interdependence based on the current global value chains, then national-states will see their relevance growing again. The international system will be fragmented into several different areas of economic and political influence, substantially closed to each other. There will be no countries capable of expressing global leadership, with a relative decline of the United States and a proportionate rise of China. The European Union may fall apart, under the blows of nationalist, populist and radical-right parties that successfully mobilize a growing number of citizens.

Bruno: In the third scenario, Renaissance, you introduce an element of hope, betting on the possibility that we can actually learn from our mistakes in order to build a new international system by protecting its most fragile element — human beings. Do you think something positive may derive from the pandemic?

Parsi: Let’s make it clear: The pandemic is a huge, devastating defeat, which caught the world completely unprepared. But as I said, we should learn from our mistakes, as in every crisis there is an element of change and improvement — if we are able to recognize and grasp it. Historically, mankind has been able to rise stronger and more equal after catastrophic events, also in recent times, such as the crisis of 1929 and World War II. This could be a good occasion to build a more fair society by reconciling politics and economics, democracy and the free market. The European Union in particular may see the post-pandemic [period] as a possibility to relaunch the integration project by supporting member states hit more severely by the virus, such as Italy and Spain.

In order to achieve a real renaissance, a change in our behavior is paramount, a change based on the awareness that the fight against the coronavirus was a collective effort. This is the real lesson we got from the pandemic.

Bruno: In light of the current protests in the United States following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, do you think this may represent a turning point in defining a new US leadership, starting from the next presidential election?

Parsi: I believe the irresponsibility, the insensibility but also the carelessness expressed by [President Donald] Trump’s statements do concur in fueling violence. On one hand, this clearly signals that a change of leadership at the White House is necessary. On the other hand, it is also revealing of how far this president can go in order to keep power. He is fueling a war against the American people — the same people he vowed to defend, together with the Constitution. Trump’s game is clear: focusing on chaos and on the fear of chaos in order to hide the continuous slaughter provoked by his bad management of COVID-19, fueling the internal divisions of American society to avoid a united common front against his politics. Divide et impera.

Bruno: Recently, the Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden that “When 100,000 Americans died because of his incompetent leadership, this president golfed. When Americans peaceful protested outside the White House, this president tear-gassed them for a photo-op. Donald Trump was elected to serve us all — but he only looks out for himself.” The issues of incompetence and narcissism are growingly used to describe Trump’s presidency. Do you think are there connections between the pandemic and the protests?

Parsi: Yes, at least two. The first one is the role of unfairness and inequality. The pandemic has hit everybody, but not in the same way. African Americans and Hispanics, and people on low incomes, paid the highest prices to the virus. In the Bronx, the mortality of the pandemic was double that of Manhattan. Similarly, the chances that an African American may become a victim of violent behavior by the police are definitely higher than for a white person.

The second connection has to do with the Trump presidency itself. The unfit management made the consequences of the pandemic worse, just as with the consequences of Floyd’s murder. Not only that: The president fanned the flames of the protests to provoke a rally- around-the-flag effect in his electoral base around the fear of violence by the protesters. Trump is trying to make people forget about his responsibility in the disastrous management of the pandemic. What is most striking is the ruthlessness and the cynicism this president is using to jeopardize the US constitutional order to win reelection.

Bruno: In conclusion, it is possible to say that you see both the pandemic and the brutality of the police as affecting prevalently the most vulnerable in the US. So, rather curiously, we go back exactly to the title of your latest book, “The Vulnerable.”

Parsi: Either in an exceptional event (the pandemic) or a tragic, although common, practice (unprovoked police violence), if you are “expendable” — a black person, a Hispanic, an outcast at any level — your life is worth less than the lives of others. The injustice and the inequality discriminate always and in every case. Not only can’t the system to protect them from threats, but the system itself is a threat. What to some sounds as “law and order,” for others is “caprice and violence.” Paradoxically, the rhetoric of “we will win together against the virus,” recalling the unity of the society against the pandemic, was dramatically and suddenly denied by the usual divisions within the country. Disillusionment is a powerful accelerator.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Three Scenarios for a Post-Coronavirus World appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The government of Qatar is investing phenomenal sums of money into making the tournament a success. Between and billion is going into propping up infrastructure, stadiums, roads and hotels. For the first time, an integrated electric bus system connecting different parts of the country will be set in motion to actualize what experts say may be the first carbon-neutral World Cup.

In line with its National Vision 2030, Qatar to become a “pioneer in eco-friendly transport services,” and the Ministry of Transport and Communications is working on finalizing strategy and legislation to initiate the use of electric buses across the nation. Aside from slashing carbon dioxide emissions, the use of electric vehicles protects the transportation system from fluctuations in global oil prices, reduces maintenance costs and has the of generating less noise and vibration.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Dr. Abdallah and Dr. Bicer of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar, about the country’s transition to clean energy, the advantages of electric vehicles and the hopes for the first carbon-neutral World Cup.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: Does the electric bus project have the potential to open up new business opportunities? Aside from cutting carbon dioxide emissions, what are some of the benefits it can offer?

Mohamed Abdallah: Bus transportation networks around the world are mainly powered by fossil fuel derivatives such as gasoline, diesel or even compressed natural gas. Components used in conventional buses therefore operate along combustion theory lines and utilize different types of combustion engines. Electric buses not only help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions but also other pollutants attributed to conventional vehicles. These include particulate matters, especially in diesel vehicles, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides and sulfur oxides. In electric vehicles, these emissions are eliminated during operation. The use of electric motors in buses and other transportation also brings smarter components into vehicles such as batteries, intelligent power control units, diverse sensors and self-driving algorithm developments.

The electrification of Qatar’s public transportation sector will provide many new business opportunities including the manufacturing of spare parts for electric motors and development of electronic circuit elements. Vehicles aside, this initiative will provide further opportunities for charging station enterprises. As the world gradually makes the transition from centralized to distributed power generation, there will be several local prosumers in the electrical grid. These include companies and individuals with onsite power generation and the ability to sell electricity to specific consumers, such as charging stations. Charging station owners can then generate electricity onsite from renewables, store it and supply to electric buses or vehicles on demand. This enables energy trading business opportunities among prosumers and charging stations.

Ziabari: Qatar will be hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2022 — the first time such a major international sporting event will be held in the Middle East. How will the integrated electric bus project contribute to the facilitation of transportation during the games?  

Yusuf Bicer: Qatar wants to implement and host the first carbon-neutral World Cup. This environmentally-focused ambition necessitates sustainable approaches to the construction and operation of the country’s infrastructure, including its football stadiums. Electric public transportation also has an important role to play in enhancing the sustainability of the event. Since buses are associated with frequent stop and start cycles, they are more emission-intensive than cars. Conversely, electric motors are more efficient than combustion engines, making them vehicles of choice for reducing emissions and preserving finite natural resources.

Additionally, charging stations for electric buses are easy to install, making refueling an efficient and straightforward process. Once parked near stadiums, buses can be charged during games, thereby creating the conditions for more frequent services and reduced waiting times after and between matches.

Ziabari: Some experts say training drivers and technicians to operate electric buses is one of the challenges of utilizing such vehicles. How do you think Qatar will cope with this?

Abdallah: The principle behind electric buses is not much different than their conventional counterparts. Both have similar components such as steering wheels and pedals, which means they operate in pretty much the same way. Given that Qatar has already started to integrate electric buses into its fleet, training of new drivers is well underway. As the company responsible for public transportation, Mowasalat (Karwa), has created special driving schools for teaching the new curricula for electric buses. All drivers will be ready for the World Cup.

Ziabari: What are the environmental benefits of using electric buses in cities? To what extent does electric mobility decrease the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions linked to transportation?

Bicer: As mentioned, conventional buses release significant amounts of greenhouses gases and other contaminants including carbon dioxide, sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matters. Since most buses are used in urban areas, this creates more polluted air and health challenges. For example, breathing difficulties are among the main consequences of fossil fuel-driven buses.

On the other hand, electric buses do not release any of these emissions during operation, making them a cleaner, carbon-neutral alternative. Compared to the operation phase of conventional buses, there is a 100% reduction in the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. It should be noted that electricity production also causes emissions. However, when the whole life cycle emissions are accounted for, from production to disposal, there is the potential for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by about 25% to 45%, depending on the electricity mix, compared to conventional buses under the existing grid mix. In this respect, emissions associated with the power generation phase can also be minimized when renewable energy sources are utilized, implying that the emission reduction potential can even go beyond 50%.

Another important point to note is that power plants are mostly located outside urban areas in rural locations, which reduces the emission intensity within crowded public places such as stadiums.

Ziabari: The world’s major oil producing countries, including Qatar, are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. In 2017, Qatar had the highest per capita emission in the world, at 49 tons per person. Does the country have plans to change this pattern and minimize its contribution to air pollution by building up its use of renewable energy?

Abdallah: It is important to emphasize that the given emission value accounts for the exported oil and gas-associated emissions as well as being based on calculation methodology, which is not a fair comparison. Therefore, the emission per capita yields a high value compared to other countries.

That said, Qatar has a very comprehensive national plan for minimizing air pollution. As set out in Qatar National Vision 2030, the country is focused on developing sustainable oil and gas operation and minimizing environmental emissions. In order to achieve these targets, Qatar is planning to build several renewable energy power plants. The first large-scale renewable project was tendered by KAHRAMAA for Al Kharsaah Solar Power Project with Siraj Energy, Marubeni and Total under the build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) model for a period of 25 years. The solar power plant is expected to be fully commissioned in April 2022 and, once completed, will be able to meet 10% of peak electricity demand in the country.

In addition, there are multiple small-scale distributed solar energy applications across Qatar that are used for lighting, stations, air conditioning, to name but a few. There are also plants that develop biomass power using waste, which significantly contributes to Qatar’s waste reduction strategies.

Ziabari: Is electric mobility an option that will transform the future of transportation, including in countries that lack adequate and high-quality transportation infrastructure? Do you think more countries will turn to this alternative because they will soon realize that traditional modes of transportation are too costly to run and maintain?

Bicer: Electric mobility will definitely play an important role in future transport initiatives. Put simply, it offers higher quality infrastructure and more intelligent transportation systems. That’s because future transportation architecture is not only about travel but also the smart management of cities through intelligence, sensors and other technologies.

The main cost element of electric mobility concerns the charging of vehicles. However, once countries switch to distributed power generation, this challenge will be overcome and issues of access to electricity in non-developed countries eliminated.

It is now a fact that renewable source-based electricity generation is becoming cheaper day by day, even beating the price of fossil fuels in many parts of the world due to abundant availability. This includes solar photovoltaic and wind turbine power generations. In several solar photovoltaic projects recently conducted across the Middle East and North Africa, the cost of electricity was significantly lower than fossil fuel-based electricity. Once the technology is even more developed, electricity supplies will be even cheaper and easily used in electric mobility. In this way, electric transportation can become more affordable to the public.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Will Qatar Succeed in Hosting the First Carbon-Neutral World Cup? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In 2018, the government launched Ayushman Bharat, a health insurance scheme for the bottom 40% of India’s population. Access remains patchy. Furthermore, health-care infrastructure remains pitiable, acute poverty persists and so does lack of education or awareness. This leaves millions vulnerable to exploitation or neglect, or both. A 2018 by The Lancet found that 2.4 million Indians die of treatable conditions every year. Of the 136 nations examined in this study, India was in the worst situation.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Nilanjana Sen talks to Dr. I.P. Singh, a senior consultant in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi, about the state of the health-care system in India, the role of the private sector and the challenges faced by professionals in the field. 

This interview was conducted prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nilanjana Sen: Is corruption a big issue in India’s health-care system?

I.P. Singh: Corruption has been all pervasive in every sector and every walk of life right from the early 1960s. Unfortunately, it has spread to the health-care sector as well. In health care, corruption takes myriad forms such as unnecessary procedures, overcharging for necessary procedures and not providing treatment or services that have already been paid for. The mentality that pervades the environment outside the medical profession has finally seeped into health care too, and it is not possible to insulate the profession from the outside environment.

Quacks and abound and comprise between 57% to 58% of India’s so-called doctors. I remember a case from some time ago when some quack claimed that he had removed a dead serpent from the abdomen of a lady. He probably removed a necrose intestine and claimed to have found a snake. In another famous case, a doctor in Assam claimed to have transplanted a into a male patient. This doctor wanted to be recognized for his achievement even though the patient died.

Doctors and quacks also prescribe fake or substandard drugs in remote areas. We have to realize that 70% of our population lives in far-flung rural areas, and it is very difficult to monitor what happens there. Most people are barely literate, so a lot of unethical practices go unnoticed and unchecked. Corruption is now endemic in India’s health-care system.

Sen: In such an unequal country, what is the real state of health-care coverage? Can the new government-backed insurance system be a success?

Singh: There are two main reasons for poor health-care coverage. First, we don’t have enough trained medical personnel. The World Health Organization a ratio of 1:1,000, i.e., we should have one doctor for every thousand persons. For India, the doctor-population ratio statistic is unclear and murky. We do not know whether we have one doctor for 1,700, 1,500 or 1,000 persons. We lack clarity because we do not know how many doctors are registered medical practitioners, how many practitioners are still active, how many are out of practice and how many are quacks. The government admits that more than 75% of the primary health-care system is managed by people who are . This is one of the major reasons for poor health care in India.

Second, most of the trained medical personnel are not willing to serve in rural areas, which lack basic facilities and infrastructure such as electricity and roads. Even though basic amenities have improved in recent years, working at rural medical centers is often demoralizing. There is rampant pilfering of drugs, malfunctioning equipment and terrible waste management. Further, there is a lack of professional development opportunities, poor management and a lack of transparency at all levels.

The new insurance backed system of Ayushman Bharat is a very good idea to start with, but I hope that the people who have planned it have done their math correctly. It is an extremely difficult and arduous task to plan health care for roughly people. If you look at health care across the world, uniform and fairly good health coverage is limited to Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and some other countries in Europe.

Health care is fairly decent for most people in the US, but the American health-care system has its share of major flaws. Approximately 33% of the American population does not have and is left at the mercy of God. Many more Indians find themselves in a similar situation. India’s large population means that the government has to provide health care at scale and, therefore, must get its mathematics right for the program to be successful.

Ayushman Bharat must not only sort out finance but also build a team of dedicated staff. Only then can they plug gaps and leakages in the system. Last year, I was reading the newspaper and was shocked to learn that were practicing fraud. Of these, the government barred 97 hospitals from its insurance scheme. This year, it barred another . Such fraud will derail Ayushman Bharat.

Sen: The present government seeks to involve the private sector in the health-care system. Will this help improve accountability and reduce malpractices?

Singh: The intention behind this idea is good, but one man or one agency with good intentions cannot set everything right. There has to be a tectonic cultural shift. Many unscrupulous people will claim benefits at the cost of voiceless people who will lose out. There will be cases of wrong billings, overcharging or charges for investigations that are simply not done. So, auditing the system and holding fraudsters accountable is crucial. However, I am not sure the government would be able to find so many auditors or be able to prosecute most fraudsters. Besides, there is an acute lack of basic infrastructure.

Sen: What exactly is this lack of infrastructure you are referring to?

Singh: As I mentioned earlier, there is an acute shortage of medical facilities in the rural areas. Having said that, we must remember that health-care infrastructure doesn’t mean medical facilities such as a hospital or a primary health center alone. It also includes good training institutions, laboratories and research facilities.

There are hardly any such facilities in this country except for the Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and a handful of other places. Even existing facilities lack funds for research, which is dominated by foreign pharmaceutical firms who have the money to invest in research. They market, advertise and sell their drugs, equipment and medical devices at astronomical prices to make large profits. Sometimes, these drugs are hyped up and private hospitals become willing partners in prescribing them because they get a share of the profit.

One drug called Xigris was used for septicemia. A single dose of Xigris cost more than $8,000, and I know of no patient who survived after being given this drug. Later, Eli Lilly this drug from the market. Big pharmaceutical companies often sell such drugs in developing countries like India to make a killing.

Sen: Are you saying big pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of patients?

Singh:  Yes, big pharmaceutical companies spend huge sums on advertisements and rope in doctors through various inducements. Take the case of knee and hip implants in India. Many implants, which were stopped in developed countries a good two or three decades ago, were being used in India until very recently. If this is not taking advantage of patients in poor countries, I don’t know what else is.

Sen: If there are so many malpractices by big pharmaceutical companies, what can the government do to control them?

Singh: It is very difficult to exercise control over these companies because most of them are multinational. They do not lie under India’s jurisdiction. Furthermore, India depends on other countries for active pharmaceutical ingredients. In fact, 66.69% come from alone.

Foreign players are not prepared to negotiate with the government on price. The drug controller of India has tried to prices of some drugs such as antibiotics, anti-tuberculosis medicines and antimalarial tablets, but this has led companies to stop production of many life-saving drugs when their profit margins have gone down.

Sen: Is that not sheer blackmail and profiteering?

Singh: Yes, it is. Once the companies stop production, there are shortages and panic often grips the market. People start to hoard essential medicines and sell them in the black market. Once the trade goes underground, prices become very difficult to control, further aggravating the original problem. So, companies know that they have bargaining power over the government.

Sen: What are the other issues facing Indian health care?

Singh: Medical education has declined precipitously. When I studied at King George’s Medical College, my professors were extraordinary. Today, medical colleges are run by politicians, bureaucrats and property dealers along with corporate houses. It is bizarre that people who ran sweet shops or dairy farms have suddenly started medical colleges. Many students who graduate from such institutions are doctors only in name and are really little better than quacks.

The Medical Council of India is deeply compromised. Ketan Desai, one of its past presidents, was found guilty of . He was convicted of taking bribes to approve shady institutions as recognized medical colleges. With the fox guarding the henhouse, it is no surprise that regulation is utterly ineffective in safeguarding the interests of citizens.

There is another major issue. During British rule, the (IMS) and state medical services provided the backbone of health care to a limited population. After independence, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service continued, but the IMS was discontinued. Health care was now the responsibility of the states, but they were not given taxation powers to fund it.

India never planned its health-care system properly. Politicians and IAS officers had no domain expertise. Doctors, nurses and medical professionals were cut out of policymaking. Unsurprisingly, India’s health-care system is in shambles.


The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post India’s Health-Care System Is in Shambles appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come under fire for forcefully detaining protesters, attacking innocent people and clamping down on all forms of opposition toward the new legislation. The government also came under public scrutiny by placing the capital Delhi under the National Security Act that allows the police to anyone for 12 months without trial.

According to a recent by India Today, 43% of people believe that the CAA and NRC are concerted attempts to divert people’s attention away from more important issues, such as the country’s economic slowdown. India is facing its slowest growth in years, with unemployment at its level in over four decades. The government is reportedly withholding data on issues such as unemployment and is revising economic growth numbers upwards.

The BJP-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces several challenges, of which the most important is addressing concerns around the CAA, the NRC and the violation of secular tenets of the Indian Constitution. The government’s silence on critical issues is creating more anxiety among the public and, despite assurances from senior political leaders, fear that legal residents may face deportation is still widespread.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Sudhanshu Mittal, the vice president of the Indian Olympic Association, president of the Kho-Kho Federation of India and a member of the BJP, about the public’s concerns over the controversial legislation and the BJP’s image as a Hindu nationalist party.

The text has been edited for length and clarity.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: The National Register of Citizens will be registering all Indian citizens. Many fear that some citizens could be excluded from the NRC. These excluded citizens would largely be Muslim because Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians can claim citizenship through CAA. What do you have to say about such fears?

Sudhanshu Mittal: Let us understand why there is the need for an NRC in the first place and whether there is opposition to it. In Assam, agitation against illegal immigrants began once population doubled. In normal conditions, within 10 years, the population should increase by approximately 20%. In 1971, 2 million [to] 2.5 million people had immigrated to Assam. However, the rate of population growth since then isn’t even close to 20%; it is a staggering 43%, which shows that several illegal immigrants have entered India after 1971.

When the NRC was conducted, the total number of identified illegal Bangladeshis was between 7-8 million. These folks were scared that they can be identified anytime. The NRC gave them the opportunity of faking their documents and becoming Indian citizens. So, Badruddin Ajmal [the head of the All India United Democratic Front in the state of Assam] the final list of the NRC because all of his brethren who feared identification got the time to become legitimate citizens of India.

How is the experience of the NRC against Muslims? I believe there has been a deliberate attempt to spread misinformation and play on fear psychosis.

Mukhopadhyay: Systems have loopholes, and the NRC is one of them. A legal citizen can be identified as illegal under the NRC. What is the remedy in such a case?

Mittal: There are remedies for an error like that. When the first list of the NRC was out, it had identified 4 million people as illegal immigrants. The final list has 2 million names. There were startling cases of exclusion, and the mistake was rectified by including these people. In systems that have inadequacies, there is the possibility of abrasion. But should one use the abrasion to completely discredit the system? I believe that the system should be evaluated on its norms, not its exceptions or abrasions.

Let us understand what the NRC is. The NRC is merely a database of all Indian citizens. It is an exercise which identifies and records for the country who its citizens are. Every country must know who its citizens are. I fail to understand the opposition to this. I understand that there is an apprehension that it will leave out a lot of people. But we must understand that there are multiple documents to prove one’s citizenship in order to be included in the NRC. The apprehensions and fear psychosis that has been created around the NRC is unfounded because in the NRC, what is true for a Muslim person is true for a Hindu, Christian or Parsi. The documentation required for the NRC doesn’t look at religion — it only looks at documents that prove Indian citizenship.

Mukhopadhyay: There is a lot of confusion around the documents that need to be furnished to be included in the NRC. Why is the government silent on the guidelines of the NRC?

Mittal: There can be over 100 documents to prove one’s citizenship. When the NRC was conducted in Assam, there were some 17-18 documents that were declared valid to prove one’s citizenship. It’s not about possessing one card — it is multiple evidences that can establish your citizenship. If anyone has a problem with the process, there is an appellate authority to resolve the issue. It’s not a bureaucratic exercise that leaves no remedy in case of an error.

The eruption of fear around the NRC was largely fueled by some people with political interests. They spread false information to accentuate fear in the minds of Muslims, convincing them that this will be discriminatory to them, whereas facts are contrary to that. The NRC was welcomed by the Muslim leadership in Assam.

Mukhopadhyay: What will happen to those who are identified as non-citizens? Where will they go?

Mittal: Identification will not lead to deportation. This is a fact that must be understood by everyone. Every country takes decisions based on a few facts and makes decisions based on the practicality and desirability of the solution.

Identification has been misconstrued as deportation. You have to understand that if we deport people, the other country must accept them, right? I can push you out, but if the other country doesn’t take you in, then the entire exercise is fruitless. Once we identify that you’re not a legal citizen of India, we will disenfranchise these people. The fate of Indian democracy must be decided by its citizens and not by non-citizens. This is similar to a restriction on owning property in India. For example, a foreigner can’t own property in India without the permission of the Reserve Bank of India. There are various implications of the identification. Deportation isn’t the only implication.

Mukhopadhyay: Why has the government not explicitly mentioned this anywhere?

Mittal: As I said earlier, we haven’t explicitly mentioned this because that’s not been the experience of those who underwent the exercise of the NRC. Has anyone deported the people identified as illegal in Assam under the NRC?

Mukhopadhyay: There are of detention camps in Assam for those identified as illegal under the NRC. What is the purpose of the detention camps?

Mittal: Assam had detention camps … before the NRC was implemented. There were tribunals that decided the fate of a person who was presumed to be an illegal immigrant, and those identified were sent to detention camps. These camps were not made specifically for the CAA and NRC. This is also misinformation being spread by those with political interests.

Mukhopadhyay: There is a lot of confusion between the National Population Register (NPR) and the NRC. How is the NPR different to NRC? Are they related?

Mittal: There’s a lot of unnecessary fear about the NRC, and everything is being linked to it. This situation reminds me of the days when the Aadhaar card, India’s biometric ID system, was made a mandatory identification. People thought it would be an indirect route to conduct an NRC. But Aadhaar is merely an identification of residents, not citizens of this country. There is a distinction between a resident and a citizen of this country. Similarly, the NPR is a list of usual residents who have lived in a local area for the last six months or more.

Mukhopadhyay: The BJP has been criticized intensely for excluding Muslims under the Citizenship Amendment Act. What does your party aim to achieve through the CAA?

Mittal: I will reiterate what senior members of the BJP have said: That the CAA aims to give citizenship to people who are already in India, but on the ground of religious persecution.

Mukhopadhyay: What about those minorities like the Rohingya, who are persecuted in countries like Myanmar? Why were they excluded?

Mittal: Myanmar isn’t a theocratic state. India didn’t take the Rohingya in because they came to India via Bangladesh. And the Rohingya wanted to enter India for economic reasons, not because they were persecuted religiously. When Myanmar expelled them, the Rohingya felt the heat and went to Bangladesh. From there, they entered India. They are not people who migrated to India from Myanmar, they came from Bangladesh.

As I said, the persecution of one community in Myanmar is not equivalent to the persecution of religious minorities in Bangladesh, because Bangladesh is a theocracy and Myanmar is a non-theocratic state.

Mukhopadhyay: The BJP could have simply solved the illegal immigration issue by tightening the borders.

Mittal: Border fencing is being pursued strictly by this government. Earlier governments thrived on illegal immigrants. Why is Mamata Banerjee [the chief minister of West Bengal] opposing border fencing in Bengal? Because her largest vote bank today is the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who are settled in West Bengal. It’s the vote-bank politics that compromises with the national interest to prevent illegal immigration in this country.

Mukhopadhyay: How is the BJP planning to implement the CAA and NRC even amidst opposition in several states?

Mittal: As per the constitution, citizenship is the sovereign function of the center. A state doesn’t have any say on matter of citizenship. Indian states don’t have locus standi to prevent any exercise to identify illegal citizens of this country. We will go ahead with it as it’s the function and responsibility of the center.

Mukhopadhyay: The Delhi Police is under public scrutiny after policemen beat up protesters in Jamia Millia Islamia university and Seelampur. What happened? Do you think the police went overboard and has to be held to account for its actions?

Mittal: I have one question for you: Was there violence preceding the police action? Fundamental to law and order is the presumption that nobody is permitted to take law into their own hands. If order has to be maintained, law has to be enforced. If buses are burned, if violence is perpetrated, if public property is damaged, what is the police expected to do? Is it expected to be a mute spectator or go after the rioters?

The Delhi Police beat up the mob when it started to commit violence. The Delhi Police entered the premises of Jamia Millia Islamia after the mob entered the campus. Jamia’s administration had a responsibility to prevent outsiders from entering the campus. If outsiders are rioters who belong to the mob and damage public property, then they have to be held up, right?

Mukhopadhyay: There are reports of innocent students who were beaten up by the police in Jamia Millia Islamia. What do you have to say about that?

Mittal: If any excess has been committed, an inquiry will be conducted. The police has no right to beat up an innocent student. An inquiry will determine whether the students were innocent or not, whether they were part of the rioters or they were themselves perpetrators. Police has acted only when violence has taken place and public property has been damaged. In Jawaharlal Nehru University (), the police had to become a silent spectator as they weren’t allowed inside the campus. On one hand, people say things like, Where is the police when violence is taking place? On the other hand, you say the police shouldn’t enter a university campus. You can’t have double standards.

Mukhopadhyay: Why did the police choose to be a mute spectator when students were beat up in JNU?

Mittal: The police is not allowed to enter the JNU campus unless the vice chancellor allows them [to]. You can’t have rules of engagement suiting your convenience.

Mukhopadhyay: There is a lot of negative news coverage on the JNU incident and police violence against protesters. How does the BJP plan to address this negative image?

Mittal: Why is no one talking about the violence which took place during the protests? Why is everybody silent on that? Do we endorse rioting? Do we endorse damage to public property? Do we endorse the beating of innocent people by rioters? Do we endorse the burning of buses?

Mukhopadhyay: Who are these rioters?

Mittal: Either political activists or people who have been misled into believing that they will be discriminated against by the CAA and NRC. There are political outfits which have successfully created false campaigns and inculcated fear psychosis to the extent that at the slightest of bidding, violence can be instigated in India.

Mukhopadhyay: Recent government actions such as the passing of the CAA, the construction of the Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya and the abrogation of Section 370 in the state of Jammu and Kashmir have caused unease among Muslims. Is the BJP anti-Muslim?

Mittal: Let us analyze each issue. Jammu and Kashmir is not a Muslim issue. It’s a regional issue. How is the abrogation of Section 370 in Kashmir an anti-Muslim issue? This move was an administrative one. Jammu and Kashmir also has Kashmiri Pandits, who are as passionate about Kashmir as the Muslims. It’s a regional issue, and not an issue of Islam.

The other thing you talked about is the on the Ram temple. That is not the handiwork of this government. It was a judicial process and, in the process, the judgement was delivered. How can this be attributed to the BJP?

The CAA too has nothing to do with Muslims. A certain political section is frustrated and fears complete annihilation, owing to which they are creating false propaganda and distilling fear in the public.

We are nationalists. We perform what we think is our national duty. The BJP doesn’t do things for electoral gains. The electoral gain is incidental. Any government that has done good work will inform people about their work. And we like to be judged on our work.

Mukhopadhyay: Why has the Indian media been critical of these measures?

Mittal:  After a long time, the media has got an opportunity to lash out against the government. If you remember, most of Indian media is left-dominated and hostile to the right wing. This hostile media was on the receiving end after their doomsday seers incorrectly predicted a loss for Narendra Modi in the 2019 election. Now, reeling under that onslaught, the media got an opportunity to lash back, and they have exploited it to the full.

Another example is the that was showcased by the media in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). In UP, the violence was actually contained by the state government, as it was very forthcoming and strict, particularly toward those who damaged public property and took law into their [own] hands. Sporadic protests in the state were deliberately shown out of proportion to create an impression that this is an all-India phenomenon, which is quite unfortunate, in my opinion.

Mukhopadhyay: There are parallels being drawn between the BJP government and that of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The UPA government didn’t undertake any harsh or violent measures when a national anti-corruption movement was organized against the government by Anna Hazare in 2011. The term “state oppression” is being used for the Modi government. Does the BJP want to suppress any form of dissent?

Mittal: If the way Anna Hazare was picked up from Ramlila ground and his supporters were — if that was not state oppression, then what is state oppression? In 2011, the anti-corruption movement was completely silent and non-violent, but violence was carried out against innocent protesters by the UPA government. Today, there is violence being perpetrated on sites of protest. We are trying to contain violence by acting against it. There’s a qualitative difference.

Mukhopadhyay: India is currently facing an economic slowdown. Many attribute it to the BJP’s 2016 demonetization policy. Do you agree?

Mittal: I completely disagree. To date, nobody has been able to give me the analogy of how demonetization has affected the economy. Please understand that the money was not taken away by the government. What affects the economy adversely is a lack of liquidity. During demonetization, there was no lack of liquidity. The public was only inconvenienced for a month, when they faced problems in withdrawing money and conducting financial transactions. In fact, [all the] money that came into the economy following demonetization went to the banking channel. If the money [was put back into] the economy, I fail to understand how has it has affected the economy. This baffles me.

India is seeing an economic downturn because the kind of foreign direct investment (FDI) we anticipated didn’t come into the economy. An infusion of capital is fundamental to economic growth. There are multiple reasons for low FDI, including trade tensions between the US and China. In addition, a lot of judicial orders have created discontinuity in business, like the cancellation of licenses. India has also become riskier for investors.

Mukhopadhyay: What is the plan to get the economy back on track?

Mittal: Stable government is critical for economic growth. In the last five years, the Congress [India’s main opposition party] acted irresponsibly by opposing for the sake of opposing. They snowballed all reforms we attempted because they had a majority in the Rajya Sabha [upper house of Parliament].

The reaction to the goods and services tax (GST) by the Congress is a testimony of irresponsible politics. Instead of bipartisanship, they have chosen to play politics with the future of this country, which is unfortunate. Today, we have the majority in both Lok Sabha [lower house] and Rajya Sabha, I think we will see a lot of reforms and initiatives and lot of speed which were earlier blunted by the obstructionism of the Congress using their majority in the Rajya Sabha.

Mukhopadhyay: Under the BJP, the idea of a Hindu Rashtra has become prominent. Does the BJP plan to create a Hindu religious identity for India?

Mittal: The BJP has always rejected theocracy. We have rejected the concept of the Hindu Rashtra as the BJP doesn’t believe in theocracy. If that is the core stance of the BJP, then where is the fear of a Hindu Rashtra coming from?

Mukhopadhyay: Why is this fact not out in the public?

Mittal: This depends on media coverage. Although senior leaders of the BJP have stated this clearly, the has underreported this aspect.

Mukhopadhyay: However, your government is viewed as draconian owing to measures like the implementation of Section 144 that prohibits public gathering of more than four people, and directives being issued to the media for reporting on the protests over the CAA. Your government is also being labeled as fascist in the media.

Mittal: I fail to understand where this is coming from. In India, the media is free. Your independence to write has never been under challenge. The fact that so much is written against the government shows that the media is free. The evidence is out there, as the media freely and continuously writes against the government.

This kind of news is being propagated by the opposition that has chosen to become irresponsible in their lust for power. No low is low for the opposition. Once upon a time, national interest was paramount. When the Kargil War between India and Pakistan was going on in 1999, the Congress remained silent and never criticized the government. In fact, they supported the endeavor. Contrary to that, when the Pulwama took place, the way media acted indicated the lust for power of the opposition, which has discarded sensibility.

*[Updated: April 8, 2020, at 12:30 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The BJP Rejects the Idea of a Hindu Rashtra appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The deal sparked outrage by the Palestinians but was praised by the Israelis. Even though the plan addresses controversial issues such as Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, many observers have rebuffed it as one-sided.

The plan sets out both political and economic steps for peace. For the Israelis, Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel. They would also have full control over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Israel would retain most of the territories it captured during the 1967 war. For the Palestinians, the West Bank would be connected to the Gaza Strip via a tunnel or highway. However, the Palestinians would have to relinquish almost 40% of the West Bank and would have their capital in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem Governorate. The framework also contains economic advantages that are offered to the Palestinians, including an investment of $50 billion and 1 million jobs.

51łÔąĎ Debates the Trump-Kushner “Deal of the Century”

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In a televised statement shortly after the deal went public, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas  to it by stating: “[W]e say one thousand times no, no, no to the Deal of the Century.” In a joint communique, the Arab League  that it would not cooperate in the enforcement of the plan. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, welcomed the peace plan and : “[T]he deal of the century is the opportunity of a century, and we’re not going to pass it by.”

Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem-based Australian journalist. His latest book is “Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs.” Loewenstein has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is a frequent commentator on TRT World, CNN and Al Jazeera.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Loewenstein about the “deal of the century,” Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the role of international organizations in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This interview took place before the recent Israeli elections. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: No Palestinian official attended the White House announcement on the “deal of the ł¦±đ˛ÔłŮłÜ°ů˛â.” The attendees were evangelicals and the entourage of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Does it matter to Trump if the Palestinians perceive the deal as disproportionately biased?

Antony Loewenstein: I think the aim is to show that. It is quite clear that, for a long time, the close coordination between the Israeli government and the American administration is to almost guarantee that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, for that matter, will reject it. So, they can then turn around and say: You see, we gave them a deal and it was a great deal, but they didn’t want it. Now we have to go on and continue with our plan which is annexation, indefinite apartheid, etc.

So, to me, in fact, the idea was that Palestinians would reject it — they knew that they would, almost certainly. It’s hard to see how they could ever imagine that the Palestinian leadership would accept this deal — and it’s not really a deal, it’s more of a gun to the head. It’s basically saying that you have no choice but to accept this. And if you don’t accept this so-called deal, then you will not be treated with respect.

And to actually launch a peace deal in which one of the two sides are not present and have not been involved in drafting the process, and the key people who drafted it were all Orthodox Jews who support the illegal settlements in the West Bank, says all you need to know about what kind of absurd deal this is.

Ziabari: You said the Americans knew from the beginning that Palestinians would reject the peace plan. In the interim, the White House published a map, delineating the future composition of Palestinian lands and Israeli territory. The Palestinian response has been stringent, saying they’ll not accept this deal under any circumstances. Considering the map has been published, do you think that is the green light for Israel to annex more Palestinian lands, including the Jordan Valley, and to build more settlements in the West Bank?

Loewenstein: I think it’s almost inevitable and, in fact, one of the things that is important to remember is, in some ways, that Israel doesn’t even need this deal. I mean they’re annexing territory to an extent now anyway. There’s currently in Israel and Palestine a “one-state” solution. It’s an apartheid state for Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and the Jordan Valley, but what it means practically on the ground is that Israel has the freedom to do what it wants. There is one civilian law for Israeli Jews in the West Bank and one law for Palestinians, which is a military rule, and that’s discriminatory and apartheid by definition.

So, does the map guarantee Israel will continue on its part? I think the answer is: yes. But Israel doesn’t need the Trump plan or the Trump map or the Trump deal to do that. They’re doing it anyway and, frankly, they’ve been doing that for years.

The problem with this issue is not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a terrible, racist president, but he has only accelerated the trends that were happening here already. These problems were created long before Trump — for decades, in fact — by the Republican and Democratic presidents who allowed Israel to occupy and discriminate against Palestinians without any punishment, including Democratic presidents such as [Barack] Obama. So, Trump is really not the problem here; Trump has merely made the problem worse, for sure, but when he leaves office, Israel would almost certainly continue behaving as it does because there’s literally no international pressure on them to stop them.  

Ziabari: Do you think the economic incentives of Trump’s “vision for peace,” including tripling Palestine’s GDP, investing $50 billion in the new state and creating 1 million new jobs for Palestinians over the next 10 years, are attractive enough to satisfy the Palestinians and compel them to accept the plan?

Loewenstein: Well, I’ve read not one Palestinian who’s accepted it. That’s pretty much all you need to know. I can’t say there’s not one Palestinian amongst 5 million in the West Bank or Gaza who do accept it, but I’ve read no one who says they accept it. And, to be clear, the offer that Trump has apparently put on the table is not actually that amount of money — it’s an aspiration for that amount of money, maybe down the track if Palestinians accept a demilitarized, weak, broken-up state.

So, frankly, I’m not surprised Palestinians won’t accept it and reject it, and if you’re a logical, sensible person, you would as well. So, I think really that the issue here is Israel and the US can throw money at the problem but, ultimately, unless you make a political deal and you actually imagine what an equitable solution will be, this problem will continue to get worse.

And that will happen if Netanyahu loses the upcoming election because it’s the third Israeli election in a year happening in early March; he might win or he might lose. We don’t know yet, of course, but the likely alternative, the opposition leader, thinks pretty much in exactly the same way. He supports annexing territory. He’s a right-winger in Israel. He doesn’t see Palestinians as equal human beings.

So, the sad reality politically here, in Israel at least, is that both major sides of politics think exactly the same way. In fact, even before Trump’s plan, Benny Gantz, the leading opposition leader, flew to Washington to essentially meet Trump and give him his blessing for the plan, essentially saying that if I win the election in March and I become prime minister, I’ll move forward with that plan as Netanyahu will if he wins. So, this is a very elaborate but sick game that the Israeli elites are playing, because Palestinians are simply seen as irrelevant and viewed as subhuman and it’s not surprising, therefore, that every sane Palestinian would 100% reject this deal.

Ziabari: The Organization for Islamic Cooperation has rejected President Trump’s peace plan and called on its 57 member states not to cooperate in the implementation of the deal. Does the refusal of major Muslim countries to work on the enforcement of the deal affect its prospects for success?

Loewenstein: Well, the short answer is it has no impact. I mean, that’s the sad reality. There are many dozens of Muslim countries around the world, I know, but they have virtually no influence or impact on Israel or the US, and it’s important to know that a number of Muslim, Arab states are, in fact, looking to maybe make a deal with Israel. They may not accept the Trump peace plan, but they are increasingly close with Israel; they are very keen to isolate Iran; they are keen to share defense arrangements; they are keen to get Israeli weapons and surveillance technology.

That’s the reality of what’s happening in the Middle East. And of course, Israel is very happy about that. For decades, the Arab world was particularly united against Israel. That has radically changed in the last 10 years. On paper, yes, many leaders came out and they are opposed to the peace plan, but in practice, it actually is very different. It’s very conceivable that either some will accept the peace plan or a version of it because they’re so keen to become close to Israel because of their fear of Iran.

Ziabari: Again, on the peace plan, Jared Kushner, the main architect of the deal, has said Palestinians have repeatedly missed opportunities for peace, and that they should accept the deal if they want a viable state of their own. Do you think this plan is genuinely what will guarantee an independent Palestinian state and bring an end to the seven-decade-old conflict, or was Kushner simply trying to sell his deal by saying so?

Loewenstein: Jared Kushner was being a typical colonial master saying how his misbehaving subjects, the Palestinians, were not behaving nicely. I mean it’s basically the agenda of Kushner. He has spent his entire life around Israeli settlements. His family supports the settlements. Kushner is a right-wing fundamentalist and so the idea that someone like him and all the other people around him who drafted this plan — David Friedman and others — have any real intention or understanding or care about Palestinians, the answer is no because what’s suggested is not a viable Palestinian state.

If Palestinians have a choice between the status quo and the prospect of some kind of state, which is not really a state — with no independence, no army, no freedom of movement really, no ability to go in and out as you please — because Israel ultimately is the master of that state, it’s very reasonable that they will reject it, which is what they’ve done.

At the moment, there is no viable alternative on the table, but the challenge now is for Palestinians as a mass movement, both within Palestine and globally to devise a new strategy which could involve, for example, a “one-person, one-vote” campaign, to say that the two-state solution is dead, it’s been dead arguably for 20 years, and now we demand equal rights in the state — which is, to me, an international law requirement and also a very legitimate claim. And that’s something, I think, that growing numbers of Palestinians do support, are talking about it and that has to be emphasized with the leadership, namely the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

But let’s be clear: The leadership in Palestine is part of the problem as well. They are corrupt and they’ve been in power for far too long. They’ve not had free and fair elections for a very long time. Many Palestinians treat them with contempt because they mostly are very old men who don’t speak for Palestinian people, and that’s a problem. And, of course, that situation is what makes Israel and America very happy. They’re very content with that situation because the Palestinian Authority today is essentially the policemen for the occupation. They are armed and trained by Israel and international forces to essentially go around the West Bank, suppressing the opposition to their rule and keep calm. But keeping calm means keeping Israel happy, and a lot of Palestinians are very upset and angry about that [and] rightly so. So, to me, until the Palestinian Authority is either abolished or radically reformed, which I’m not convinced is actually possible, and we have free and fair elections, they are also part of the problem.

Ziabari: Benjamin Netanyahu recently said that Trump is the “the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” The Trump administration has strived to promote itself as the most pro-Israel in the country’s modern history. Why is Trump so persistent in appealing to the Israelis? Does he gain domestically?

Loewenstein: I think he thinks that it does. I think there are a few reasons: One, the Republican Party is very pro-Israel. He’s got a very strong evangelical Christian base who are also very fanatically pro-Israel. The majority of Jews in America have always voted Democrat, so they wouldn’t vote for Trump anyway. There are obviously some Jews who do vote for Republicans or Trump, but they are very few. So, he sees that his base is quite pro-Israel. He doesn’t see any downside because the Palestinians as a people and as a lobby group are very weak as opposed to the pro-Israel lobby in America, which is very strong and powerful.

So, he does see it as beneficial for him and, obviously, we will see this year in the US whether it helps him win reelection. I mean the Israel issue on its own will not win reelection, but we need to see whether this issue becomes a serious one during the campaign once we know who Donald Trump is facing, whether it’s Bernie Sanders or somebody else. So yes, I think Trump sees it as beneficial to his agenda and outlook.

Also, frankly, Trump and many people around him hate Muslims, hate Arabs, hate Palestinians. It very much fits into their worldview. There is contempt, open contempt to people who are not white, who are different to them, who are brown, who have different skin, who have a different religion and who have a different background, and the Palestinians are simply part of that, unfortunately.

Ziabari: Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal, according to the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2334. However, the US recently shifted its position on the settlements, no longer considering them a violation of international law. What will be the effects of the new US approach? Will it encourage Israel to construct more housing units in the West Bank while the UN Security Council still sticks to its stance?

Loewenstein: Well, one of the key problems with this conflict is that international law and the United Nations are toothless and often powerless. They’re choosing not to exercise their power because, ultimately, the settlements have been illegal since the beginning in 1967; virtually the entire world agrees with that except for Israel and the US. The United States did change its position recently, but to be honest, it had that position unofficially for decades.

Israel has been building settlements for 52-53 years, and there are now 750,000 Jewish settlers all living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. No one seriously thinks they’re going to be removed; they’re there permanently, the occupation is now permanent. That’s the reality which Israel has created.

So, one of the really disappointing aspects of this whole issue is that the International Criminal Court, which has been really weak on many global conflicts for many years including this one, just recently announced that, possibly, they’re going to move forward with an investigation into some of the issues around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But even if they do, and it’s not clear that they will, the ICC has shown on this issue, amongst other issues, that they’re very toothless and powerless and the United Nations is exactly the same. So, ultimately, the resolution of this issue will not come through the UN. With the Security Council, there are obviously various countries that have veto power. Then there is just not really any viable way to see the situation changing that way unless the global makeup shifts.

And with the international law, there have obviously been a number of attempts over the years to bring justice to the Palestinians, by trying to prosecute Israeli prime ministers or defense minsters or army generals. Virtually none of them ever succeeded in many countries, including in Europe, which may be more open to such things. I think that will change eventually, but I think we’re a long way away from that still, sadly.

Ziabari: By saying that international organizations such as the United Nations and the Security Council are powerless and unable to come up with a panacea for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are you implying that the settlement of the crisis is merely contingent upon the will and determination of any US government, or is it a matter of having a reliable broker in the White House?

Loewenstein: Well, ultimately, the US has never been that reliable broker because they’ve always been what I would call “Israel’s lawyer.” They’ve always been on Israel’s side. This has been pretty much the case in the last 50 years. So, there’s never really been an American government, Democrat or Republican, that has viewed Palestinians as having equal rights to Israeli Jews.

The only possible change to that view is if someone like Bernie Sanders wins the presidency. He has talked about seeing Palestinians as human beings, talking about a peace deal and trying to negotiate, which may or may not happen, because there’ll be a huge amount of pressure on him to either back down or to not make it the focus of his presidency. He will be so busy trying to undo years of damage done by Trump if he wins this year.

So, someone like him is a possibility but, ultimately, I think the US has placed itself at the center of global negotiations. What the United Nations should have done, and the European Union particularly should have done years ago but did not, was to make themselves a viable alternative power source to the US. And the European Union has failed in doing that, and now as Europe increasingly becomes politically fractured, there is no consensus; there are growing numbers of Eastern European states particularly that are very pro-Israel, including Hungary and Poland. There are some Western European nations that are more critical of Israel, like Belgium, France and others, but they’re quite weak and the EU works on consensus, but there’s simply no consensus there.

So, apart from the US and the EU, where is this alternative global broker going to come from? It’s not going to be the Arab states. I don’t know where that comes from right now. That’s the problem. And until there is a viable alternative, this situation will continue to be managed badly by the more powerful forces which are Israel and the US.

Ziabari: A 2019 by the Van Leer Institute found that 71% of Jews in Israel believes there is a moral problem with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Israel appears to be highly divided on the issue of occupation. Is there any chance these fissures might lead to a change of policy on the part of the Israeli government?

Loewenstein: I wish there was. But the truth is that most people I speak to here who are looking for change — I’m talking about on the Israeli Jewish side — have accepted many years ago that that change will not happen. In other words, it will not happen within the country. There are definitely people within Israeli Jewish society who are very opposed to what’s going on, and they are very outspoken and they are very brave, but there are very few of them. And even though many Israeli Jews, when they’re asked in studies, will say the occupation is not their ideal outcome, they continually vote for politicians that are making the settlements permanent.

It’s interesting that it’s definitely a minority of Israeli Jews who are very pro-settler. That is true, but that shows in some way the strategic brilliance of the settler movement that a minority population in Israel have spent 50+ years being able to be the key drivers of Israeli government policy where the majority of Israelis are either paralyzed, blind or deaf, including willfully blind to what’s going on.

And it’s amazing how you can have an occupation down the road from your house if you live inside Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem where a lot of Israeli Jews live. And they are never going to the West Bank; they never meet Palestinians; they often express incredibly racist views.

Obviously, I’m generalizing. There are many Israeli Jews who don’t think like this, but a lot of public opinion polls of Israeli Jews find racism very strong against Palestinians. They wouldn’t share an apartment block with a Palestinian; they wouldn’t want to send their child to the same school or kindergarten as a Palestinian Muslim or Christian child. There’s very deep racism here. And there’s racism on the Palestinian side, too, but most studies have shown that Israeli Jews are much more racist to Arabs than the other way around, despite decades and decades of conflict with the Palestinians who are the occupied people, not the other way around.

So, I think without outside international pressure, either from government or other places, it’s very hard to see the Israeli Jewish population rising up because, ultimately, people don’t give up power by choice. They don’t give up their privileges by choice. We saw that in South Africa during apartheid. White South Africans didn’t one day wake up and say: Gee! I really want to give blacks equal rights.

No. They realized it over years of international pressure and, obviously, a very strong black movement led by the ANC [African National Congress] and Nelson Mandela who showed them that South African whites had a choice: you either accept blacks as equals or you become an increasingly global pariah and outcast society. And at the moment, Israel is a long way away from that, but that’s the future potentially unless there’s growing international pressure against Israel to change its policies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What the “Deal of the Century” Means for Israel and Palestine appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Yet most reading lists released by major newspapers and journals are still disproportionately Western-centric, and African literature lacks enough media attention. Despite this, more avid readers across the globe are getting to know names such as Nuruddin Farah, Alain Mabanckou, Ben Okri, Aminatta Forna and Chigozie Obioma, marking the diversification of the literary taste of millennial bibliophiles.

Literature originating from Africa often delves into the legacy of colonialism, sheds light on the tyranny of capital over labor, recounts the identity crisis that many Africans battle with, and represents the unheard voices of ordinary people and unsung heroes.

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Chigozie Obioma is a 33-year-old Nigerian novelist and writer who has earned global recognition after publishing three books at such a young age. In 2015 and 2019, he was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Time magazine  his novel “An Orchestra of Minorities” as a “mystical epic” that confirms his “place among a raft of literary stars.” The Guardian  him as the “heir to Chinua Achebe” who is “a good writer whose work has a deeply felt authenticity, combined with old-fashioned storytelling.”

Obioma is currently an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Obioma about his career, novels and the representation of colonialism in African literature.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: In “An Orchestra of Minorities,” you depict the ordeal of an unassuming poultry farmer who falls in love with a pharmacy student hailing from a prosperous family. In order to impress the parents of his beloved woman, he sells his entire belongings to take up a position at a northern Cypriot university and fund his studies. Shortly after arriving in Cyprus, he realizes that the middlemen who had promised him a university placement had tricked him and that there was no position available for him at the college whatsoever. Is this suffering a situation that many young Nigerians go through? While crafting the novel, was it your intention to raise awareness of this challenge faced by Nigerians?

Chigozie Obioma:  Yes, I always say that fiction is a medium that takes lived experience and molds it into something that can become so new [that] those who have lived the experience may not even recognize it. Even more so, this novel covers how African migrants are treated in the West quite a bit, but people rarely talk about how we are treated in countries outside of the west.

It is, of course, a shame that the selfish culture of African politicians leaves their states in catastrophic states, but when these migrants go to places like India, Turkey, Cyprus, Mexico and other places, they face inhuman treatments. I myself lived in North Cyprus for five years and the travails of Chinonso, the protagonist of the novel, are similar to what I and others experienced. I wrote about my own ordeal in an essay earlier this year for the . 

Ziabari: In an interview, you said you wanted to chronicle the landmarks of Igbo history and civilization in the â€śOrchestra,” including the encounter with the Portuguese in the 15th century and the Nigerian Civil War. Do you think your readers have been able to absorb the historical messages you planned to share with them or is it that this pedagogic effort has been overshadowed by the supremacy of the storyline and the ups and downs of the life of Chinonso, his quest for excellence and his love journey?

Obioma: I think that this being a work of fiction rather than non-fiction — I could, for instance, have elected to simply write a historical book — I had to layer the historical portions around a particular story. So, both of them, I hope, go together. The historical portions of the novel are organic to the narrator, for it is the voice of a god. Thus, through its testimony about itself and its host, it also describes the world as it has experienced it over these many centuries. 

Ziabari: You consider yourself an ontologist interested in the metaphysics of being and existence. The themes of fate, destiny and sublimity are often missing in the majority of novels written today, but you explore these territories in your fiction extensively. Do you think this approach to existence is what is winning you popularity and helping your work stand out among hundreds of novels by major literary figures?

Obioma: I am not sure why my novels have received some recognition, but I agree that the themes I have focused on are mostly marginal and not often what many writers consider. One of the reasons why I have focused on fate and destiny is because my people, the West Africans, think mostly in these terms. I want to capture the essence of their common worldview.

It is also because Nigeria to me is a paradox. This is a country that could be rich but is poor. There are, of course, deep philosophical reasons why this is so. But on the surface, that paradox stings and stares at you in the face, and it haunts my mind. This makes one ponder things that are subterranean to the consciousness — things that seems to lie beneath the surface and have no easy answers. The meaning of life, the “metaphysics of being and existence” as I always put it, is one such quandary.

Ziabari: You’ve implied on a number of occasions that your relationship with your homeland of Nigeria is a capricious one. On the one hand, it is the home that sends you away because of its lack of provisions and opportunities. On the other, it is the home that embraces you when you return from the US. Is it realistic to say your novels are partly inspired by your own story and your special connection with “home”?

Obioma: Capricious indeed! But I am wedded to it. The truth is that I am a reluctant exile in America. I wish I could live in Nigeria, frankly. That is my home. That’s where I live untrammeled, without any fear of being an immigrant or a racial minority. It is where my ancestors lived and died, and the place whose food I love to eat. But yet, I feel I cannot live there.

There is a wall that has come between my home and me, and it is a wall I do not have the courage to scale. [In a recent interview, I talked of] how this shapes the tone of my fiction in that it often leads to a sort of “tragic vision” which comes about out of the sadness of writing about Nigeria. I there that such writing is a masochistic act because “Nigeria riles me, wounds me, and heals me at the same time. I love it entirely and loathe it at the same time, and in that kind of relationship, a certain form of despair often gets hold of the mind. My writing is sometimes an effort to rid myself of that despair through the joy of artistic creation. The witness borne then, if I might say, is a witness to my own surrendering to a light that emerges from my own darkness, and in that light, I am refreshed and made alive.”

Ziabari: Why do you think so few prominent writers have shed light on chi in Igbo cosmology and that old African cultural heritage is neglected by the youth? Do you consider the postcolonial influence of the West on Nigeria to be a negative one?

Obioma: I think many African writers and thinkers have tried to encourage an embrace of our heritage. There was Chinua Achebe, for instance, but also, to some extent, Wole Soyinka. The purpose for me is to reassure our identity as people who had some culture and civilization prior to the coming of the West. I think because of colonialism and slavery, followed by the underdevelopment of most African countries, there has set in this self-damaging inferiority complex — the idea that we are no good.

I was in Abuja around two years ago and some people were debating on national radio whether we should be recolonized. Now, this is a mistake. We only need to learn history, to look back at the sophisticated sociopolitical systems we had, the economic systems, the egalitarian political structures to see that precolonial Africa was not one night from which the West rescued us. I think without this reassurance, this strengthening of our identity, this solving of our identity crisis, we cannot recover.

Ziabari: Your debut novel, â€śThe Fishermen,” was acclaimed by critics and shortlisted for a 2015 Man Booker Prize. Why do you think the novel captured so much attention and elicited positive reactions globally, considering that it was your first novel? Many aspiring writers, who happen to write captivating novels, struggle for years to win publicity for their work. What was the key to the success of â€śThe Fishermen” as a debut?

Obioma: If I knew the reason why anyone enjoyed my work, I would be very glad. I think, humbly, it is simply to work hard and believe in the vision you have for a particular project and to be true to that vision. I have always wanted to write a novel about siblinghood and that celebrates family and consanguinity. I think that is what â€śThe Fishermen” does well above anything else.

In that sense, it has universal appeal and touches on aspects of humanity that are recognizable and relatable. I also often think that there is something profoundly human about the relationship between the four brothers and how, just by speaking words, a stranger could cause an irreparable fracture between them. I think this is what many readers — across the 30 or so countries where the book has been published — connect with. 

Ziabari: You once said that you wouldn’t have written â€śThe Fishermen” if you hadn’t moved to Cyprus to study. How did being based in Cyprus influence your understanding of Nigeria? Do you ascribe the creation of â€śThe Fishermen” to homesickness that possibly invigorated your sense of belonging to Nigeria?

Obioma: An Igbo proverb says that we hear the sound of the udu drum clearer from a distance rather than from being close by it. This is very true of writing. When I am in a place or close to a place, it is often difficult to imagine it fully. But when I am separated from a place and have distance from it, I am better able to see it, to fully conceive it imaginatively. Since fiction is all about creativity anyway — the invention of the nonexistent — trusting in hindsight.

If I sat across from you at a cafe and I was to describe that moment on the spot, I would write about the obvious things you did. But if I lie down in my bed later that night and the light was off and I closed my eyes, the fine-grain details will trickle in. I will remember the unobvious things, the person scratching their wrist, or hawking into a napkin — those fine details that enrich fiction. It is when the person is gone and the meeting has ended and the day is forgotten that things become closer, clearer.

Ziabari: Many critics have compared you to the legendary Chinua Achebe and called you his successor. Does it make you feel proud to be compared to Achebe in the eyes of noted literati and authors? Do you personally admire Achebe’s work?

Obioma: In some ways, â€śThe Fishermen” shares an affinity with“Things Fall Apart,” Achebe’s seminal work. Achebe wrote â€śThings Fall Apart” to document the fall of the Igbo civilization, the African civilization or culture. I am looking at a more specific fall of Nigeria — of our civilization, too, but in relation to Nigeria specifically. So, it’s a similar project. And in the ways in which Achebe tried to reveal the Igbo civilization to his readers, and â€śAn Orchestra of Minorities” does a similar job.

Ziabari: A final question. Where do you think African literature, in general, and the literature of Nigeria, in particular, are heading? Should we expect more Man Booker and Nobel nominations?

Obioma: Ah, I hope so of course. I think African literature is in good shape. There are wonderful writers popping up here and there, and I won’t be surprised if we have more nominations and wins.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Talking African Literature With Chigozie Obioma appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

An alumna of the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Indian School of Business (ISB), Sharma ventured into the dietary supplements space as an entrepreneur following a stint in distributing such products. India is a hub for herbs and Ayurveda — an alternative system of medicine based on plants — and Sharma’s vision is to bring India’s alternative medicinal culture to conscientious consumers.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Bhavna Anand Sharma about Cureveda, her journey as a female entrepreneur and what makes her business different from her competitors.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: Last year, Cureveda the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises’ Brand of India award in the health-care category. What does Cureveda do exactly?

Bhavna Anand Sharma: Cureveda produces plant-based products, which are natural remedies manufactured under the Ayurveda license. Cureveda doesn’t make use of any heavy metals, as we are completely herbal and natural. We use herbal extracts, and we go a step ahead by making use of standardized herbal extracts. For example, if you have sugarcane, and you take its juice out, then that’s the herbal extract. If we extract the component that makes the juice sweet, then that’s the standardized herbal extract. This analogy refers to the standardization of the main active ingredient that gives a herb its desired property and which eventually gives results.

We make use of premium herbs which are referred to in Indian markets as “export quality,” that is, they are mostly exported to foreign countries where people are more discerning and understand different qualities of the same herb. Our ingredient choice, along with our focus on research and innovation in formulations, makes Cureveda different from our competitors.

Mukhopadhyay: How did you build your understanding of Ayurveda and herbal supplements without an academic background in it?

Sharma: I started my first company, a dietary supplements firm, when I was 22. For four years, I handled the distribution rights of a portfolio of supplements of some of the leading brands in the world, such as Nature’s Bounty, Osteo Bi-Flex and Solgar. Some of the products from their range were also herbal. But I didn’t know that those herbs are also approved under Ayurveda. When I got married into the Baidyanath family that is a goliath giant in Ayurveda, and I started running a pharma company, then I realized that I was already promoting those herbs in Nature’s Bounty as well.

For a period of about four or five years, I did some more research on herbs that are globally relevant and part of the Indian system of medicine. I discovered that they can be clubbed with the knowledge we already have to create synergistic formulas which are superior to what we find in the market. That is when I decided to start Cureveda.

Mukhopadhyay: Is it safe to assume that you’re trying to revolutionize traditional health supplements and bring healthier versions of them to the market?

Sharma: We like to be seen as a supplements company. Our idea is to be an Indian brand which gives you the quality of product you expect from an international brand but don’t usually get from an Indian brand. We are selling to a discerning customer who is looking for safer alternatives and understands that the herbs we use are of the best quality available on the market. There is so much that we do to assure the customer that we are globally competitive and delivering on that promise, like CTRI-registered [Central Trial Registry of India] clinical trials, international standards of metal toxicity on every batch, meeting accurate dosages, working with the industry’s best for product formulations.

Mukhopadhyay: From where do you source your herbs?

Sharma: We mainly source from India, and we are extremely proud of it. A fact not known by many is that India and China are the of herbs in the world. That’s because the Chinese and Indian medicine systems are the oldest and most recognized herbal systems in the world. India has a great tropical climate to grow herbs. However, most of our top-quality herbs are exported abroad.

My aim is to utilize our home-grown herbs. I buy standardized herbs (for example Brahmi standardized for active ingredient Bacopa) from only a handful of suppliers with a certificate of analysis and . This process makes the herb even more expensive, but that also assures that the quality of the herb is delivered upon. This is why our products are higher priced than our competitors.

Mukhopadhyay: Very few entrepreneurs venture into health care, and some face challenges such as medical problems following the use of their products. How do you figure out the right ingredients to create a product?

Sharma: I am running a dietary supplements company, so I am not trying to transact with you one-on-one. I am not a doctor, and I am not writing a prescription. I have a panel of experts to assist me, such as product managers and a scientific team that collaborates extensively with clinical research organizations. My strategy for Cureveda is not to sell to customers something I won’t use myself. We make our products undergo clinical trials to make sure the efficacy is top-notch.

This year, we finished eight or nine clinical trials, even though our products fall under the AYUSH [Ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, , and homeopathy] category. Only drugs controlled by the Drug Controller General of India need to undergo trials. Drugs manufactured under the AYUSH tag in India don’t necessarily undergo CTRI-registered clinical trials.

The [Indian pharmaceutical giant specializing in Ayurvedic medicine] lineage also helps us, as it brings credibility — which is everything in the supplements industry. It would have been more difficult to get that credibility without the base of Baidyanath, with its 100 years of research background on herbs, as the synergistic action of herbs is the most difficult to tackle. Our products are manufactured at Baidyanath’s facilities under a loan license agreement.

In short, we follow a three-step process to reach the final product. The product is formulated by the product management team, then clinically validated through trials by internal and independent research agencies before it is finally commercialized.

Mukhopadhyay: Female entrepreneurs are particularly singled out and asked harsh questions when they try to enter a field that requires an understanding of technology or medicine. What challenges have you faced as a female entrepreneur?

Sharma: You’re right. Some challenges are specific to just women, and it’s very difficult for men to understand that. There’s a boys’ club that you have to break into. But, thankfully, there is no limitation to what knowledge and intellect can help achieve. Once you prove that you know your business, and the other person starts recognizing that, several opportunities open up. It is extremely important for women to know their subject more than men — and this is a sad reality. Often, my first challenge in meetings is to break stereotypes rather than get straight to business.

I also have to emulate what are known as “men traits” to be taken seriously, as I deal with people from the manufacturing side to the shop floor. I have to become one of the men, but that’s just how it is.

I find it less challenging in the business scenario, because in business there is a context to the conversation. You know I am running a company, and you know what I have done in the past. I find it more difficult to work in a social setting — that’s where the real problem is for women. We are not more accepting of women entrepreneurs at a dinner event or a social gathering, and we don’t give them the respect they deserve. When I meet someone, I won’t have my qualifications from ISB and LSE printed on my head. Because of social and cultural barriers or preexisting notions, I might never even be asked if I work, while that’s an obvious conversation that men are expected to have! 

The challenges likely compound once you move from an urban to a suburban setting. Now I am more in the news, as my brand is becoming bigger, but I have been working insanely for the last 10 years — largely unnoticed! This must be true for so many women. They work hard for years, but people think they are not doing anything because no one’s bothered to have a relevant conversation! A fundamental shift is needed in people’s mindsets and conversations in the living room — not just at the workplace.

Mukhopadhyay: It’s more difficult for women entrepreneurs as their challenges are neither discussed nor tackled.

Sharma: Women entrepreneurship is a vast subject in itself, and, being given a platform, I should highlight [it] as much as I can to educate others. Women are outliers in entrepreneurship. So many other women can do better, but the environment is not encouraging enough. I am lucky, as I have supportive in-laws and spouse, and I am a type- A person. I can’t be told what to prioritize or not. I feel that it’s my birthright to do what I want, at the risk of sounding entitled!

I have a supportive ecosystem around me. This is not the case with many other women. So many women succumb to the pressures of daily life. For example, some women can’t travel for work that often. I can only wonder about the endless nature of the challenges women entrepreneurs need to overcome.

Another issue for female entrepreneurs is the lack of female representation. We don’t see many female faces as we should in entrepreneurship, so there are limited role models to emulate. In addition, certain industries have been singled out for women, such as fashion or cosmetics. If women do well there, then they will be saluted because that’s the industry they “belong” in. Many women gravitate toward certain industries owing to self-selection. In off-beat industries, you face difficulties as you often don’t meet many women in your journey, and the industry stakeholders have also not worked with or for women. Hopefully, the numbers of outliers will increase soon, and there will come a time when you won’t be an outlier anymore.

Mukhopadhyay: What’s your future plan for Cureveda?

Sharma: As of now, we are available digitally through our website and on Amazon, along with offline presence in Delhi and Mumbai. We launched in January and inked partnerships with companies and people I have worked with before. For example, we partnered with Apollo, Holland & Barrett, Noble Pharmacy. We are available at about 500 stores in Delhi and Bombay. Our focus is mainly on modern retail and category-A stores.

Our growth story is quite aggressive. We are one of the top 10,000 websites in the country. We currently process around 150 orders a day and we are growing at a rate of 25% month on month. We just launched our first beauty and wellness supplement, which falls in the category of want-based products. We have products in three categories: One is therapeutics, second is the beauty and wellness formulas, and the third is multivitamins. We will be expanding our range in these three categories over the coming year.

Mukhopadhyay: How do you differentiate your brand from others?

Sharma: There are not many premium brands in supplements offering herbal formulas which are well researched. However, customer preferences for safe alternatives are rapidly increasing, which has created opportunity in this market. We differentiate our product through its sample size and packaging.

Traditional herbal formulas are usually offered in a smaller pack size. Companies offer this trial pack size for seven days. But customers see little result, as herbal products have to be taken for a longer period of time to produce results because they go to the root cause of the problem. I don’t want to get into trial packs which don’t show results and create dissent in the mind of the customer. I give customers a pack size which will give results. Most of our products have a one-month pack size. We also highlight instructions clearly on the front label so that the person doesn’t self-prescribe. This allows compliance. You will be more compliant if the instructions are given on the pack, in large letters, rather than inside the pack or in a corner in a small box.

This model sets us apart from the competitor. Our packaging also complies with our point of view. If I tell you my product is herbal and it doesn’t use metals, but I sell it to you in a plastic or a PET bottle — which isn’t recyclable, which destroys the environment and is probably leaking into the product — that is half a promise. We offer our products in glass bottles, even though there is a logistics cost attached to this.

But then that’s where the commitment comes in. You have to walk the talk. Our intent is that every single product we launch isn’t just recyclable but, as far as possible, biodegradable as well. As a consumer, you wouldn’t have realized this if I hadn’t specified it to you this clearly. But as a conscientious customer, we enlighten you that our ingredient choice and packaging choice is a part of our commitment to environment and sustainability.

*[Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Cureveda doesn’t use any metals, whereas it doesn’t use any heavy metals. Updated on 2/19/2020 at 13:10 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post In India, Women Entrepreneurs Are Still Outliers appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In a country of 1.3 billion people, over internet users and more than 400 TV channels, a lack of reliable information is a serious problem. Not only do poor journalistic standards and ethics drive mass disinformation along political lines, but the increasingly widespread use of social media exacerbates the country’s social and sectarian divides. According to a , at least 24 people have been killed in 2018 alone by lynch mobs angered by fake social media stories. Analysis by the BBC has similarly a sharp increase in fatal mob attacks in 2018.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the number of WhatsApp users alone is predicted to reach a whopping 450 million this year — up from 200 million in 2017. According to , WhatsApp “dominates India’s digital channels of communication,” spanning e-commerce, entertainment, news and more, and has become a breeding pool for misinformation. While the company has started putting measures in place to curb the spread of fake news, launching radio campaigns to alert users to the potential consequences and shutting down 2 million accounts each month, but so far these efforts have not had any significant effect.

At a time when distinguishing news from misinformation is difficult or even impossible, and source data is under attack, projects like and aim to challenge the status quo through data-based journalism. Supported by the Google News Initiative, they address critical issues like gender, health care and education through data-based stories and videos.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Govindraj Ethiraj, the founder of IndiaSpend and DataBaaz, about how the two companies use data to tell stories that matter, and how Indians can learn to spot fake news.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: Can you tell us a bit about IndiaSpend and DataBaaz?

Govindraj Ethiraj: I launched IndiaSpend.com to tell stories through data, while DataBaaz is a video platform. Our focus is primarily gender, health, education and environment, as these issues underpin the economic and social development of any country. We believe that if there is a basic understanding of issues like health and gender, then we can make these issues our focus when we interact with our elected representatives and press for change where it’s necessary.

IndiaSpend has been around for seven years and is a business-to-business [B2B] service. Our content goes to publishing partners like newspapers, online dailies, wire services and television. It’s also read by people in academia and government, which is an influential audience, but not a large audience.

We want to reach out to more people, particularly young people. With young people, we face the challenge of making them data-aware. The is a device to tackle this challenge. The quiz, which creates a gamified environment, will reach out to more people and get them engaged. Young people also get an opportunity to win prizes.

Mukhopadhyay: What is the objective of the India Fact Quiz? Why is there a focus on individuals between the ages of 17 and 25?

Ethiraj: The India Fact Quiz aims to create awareness among India’s youth about data literacy. The quiz also aims to encourage fact-checking of information on India, against the backdrop of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The idea is to test and challenge the mental biases and myths around India, by providing correct data and facts to participants. We want to encourage our youngsters to have a more factful view of the world. The India Fact Quiz will identify India’s curious and most factful minds, who value the importance of data in public discourse and create a new wave of factful citizen-engagement.

India Fact Quiz will be a pan-India quiz and is designed in a digitally gamified quizzing format which connects with today’s youth. The digital quiz will run online for 30-45 days, followed by physical rounds, which will be held at five colleges at different parts of the country … and broadcast on television. Subsequently, there will also be weekly online quizzes on the India Fact Quiz website to continue encouraging the practice of learning and fact-checking.

Mukhopadhyay: Your primary focus over the last few years is to bring data-based insights and journalism to the Indian masses. Why did you make the shift from broadcast journalism to data-based storytelling?

Ethiraj: My last job was with Bloomberg. I have spent about 10 years in print, 10-11 years in television and then moved to digital. I have been a financial journalist all my life, analyzing companies and their performance. I always felt that there was an opportunity to apply my skills of analyzing data to issues of larger public interest.

That’s why I made the shift to data-based journalism. I was also partly influenced by the in 2011. The movement was counterintuitive to what people in my generation assumed about millennials — that they are not interested to be part of the active political process. The Anna Hazare movement showed us that young people are not dismissive of politics. The point was made. At that time, I thought, If there is emotion about change, then can we bring data into the equation? If you blend data with emotion, then people will hopefully ask the right questions and demand higher quality of governance and accountability.

Mukhopadhyay: A challenge students, journalists, companies and other enterprises in India face is both the lack of, and slow access to, information. How do you tackle this?

Ethiraj: Over the last five years, the data landscape has changed. There is an oversupply of data, but not much demand for the data. But a problem that’s arisen in the past few years is that government is revisiting data sets and pulling them back. This has happened with , which is going back and forth. It’s a new kind of problem which wasn’t there earlier. We are still figuring out how to respond.

At the end of the day, only a government can collate such a huge chunk of data. Private players can’t do it, so you depend on the government. But if the source data is being changed, what do we do? To respond to that, we first need to wrap [our heads] around data that exists, how to use it effectively to ask questions.

Mukhopadhyay: You mentioned that some of the data is being revisited. How do you tell the stories in this scenario?

Ethiraj: We don’t. We avoid writing on topics like consumption or unemployment. Our primary focus is health, environment and gender. We don’t write on issues like job creation. We touch on different aspects of the issue, like women dropping out of the workforce. We are not set up to court controversy or take on the government. Our mission is to tell stories through data. In circumstances where data is pulled out for political reasons, we avoid getting involved in those topics.

Mukhopadhyay: Indian journalism is currently undergoing a transition following the rise of digital media. How has the role of Indian media changed, particularly in disseminating information to the public?

Ethiraj: I don’t think the role of Indian media has changed, but it needs to change. I would frame the statement in that way. As a media executive, one constantly asks, What is my role? My role is to inform, educate and make people aware of what is happening around them in an objective way. I am not sure if a lot of journalistic organizations fulfil that basic tenet — and that’s because they operate like any other business. But if you operate media like a business, the product suffers.

When It Comes to Mental Health, India Remains Shockingly Misinformed

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Take television for instance. Owing to oversupply and competition, TV channels do essentially anything to orient their product so that it appeals to audiences. Such viewpoints are usually extreme or champion a certain viewpoint over others. The executive producer sitting in a TV room has a single objective — to beat last week’s ratings. Which is not philosophically wrong, but it is what you do to get that rating that makes everything a game. Most people lose sense of their moral compass.

Television is a soft power, but it causes far more damage than good in India. It’s a business-model failure because of oversupply. You have over 400 channels when there should be 40, which causes everyone to go berserk.

Mukhopadhyay: At a time when misinformation spreads rapidly, particularly on social media, how can Indians access the facts and distinguish between information and misinformation?

Ethiraj: This is a tough question. There is no way to say that the data you’re giving is more accurate than the data that I am giving. And it’s tougher to make that distinction, as most of us have our prejudices and therefore only trust some things because we like the look of it. The only thing people can do is be more vigilant and alert and careful about how they form opinions from the information they get. One should try to form specialist resources of their own.

For example, if you like to follow what’s happening in medicine, then follow the American Journal of Medicine, or Science Daily. At least you know that if there’s research that’s being talked about, then there are people who know what they are talking about. People have to be more vigilant, do their own research and not let emotion drive them. It’s a tough call, and it’s not easy.

I think we should create a culture of appreciation of data and where data comes from. For example, if I quote the second most populous state, that data will come from the census. Whichever side you’re on — left or right — when you use data, debates become rational.

Mukhopadhyay: In the past few years, public faith in data provided by news organizations has fallen. Media organizations also quote different figures for the same story. Why has this happened, and how can it be tackled?

Ethiraj: Until last year and the year before that, we had no problem with base data. We never faced a situation where basic data like the gross domestic product growth was questionable. For the first time, the source data is being discredited by the government itself. We are in a strange territory. If one organization says that India is doing well, another one is saying it is not — and both are using the source data. This puts the reliability of the source data into question. For example, India’s former chief economic adviser has said that our GDP growth is 2.5% lower than what is being reported in the media.

Other countries have also gone through such a situation, where their source data was considered unreliable. There was once a lot of suspicion on China’s data. The loss of trust in India’s core data sets is now a fundamental problem. To rectify this, one needs to use a multilateral approach. We have to collectively figure out the best way to create source data sets that people trust.

Mukhopadhyay: How can Indian citizens leverage data to hold politicians accountable for their work?

Ethiraj: If and when Indians imbibe a culture to use data to ask questions, they should hold politicians accountable at a more local level. Do I know the budget of my local member of parliament? What has that person achieved in the last five years? If there is a focus on work at the local level, then the outcome Indians can see from using data is considerably more and precise.

Mukhopadhyay: You mentioned earlier that one of the core topics of IndiaSpend is gender. How can one achieve political change for women through data, when the problems are more deep-rooted within the society and human psyche?

Ethiraj: Our focus is to generate awareness. And awareness leads to greater gender equality. For example, most of us are now aware that if girls are educated, then that fixes a lot of problems in society. Children of educated women are healthier and receive better education. Our objective is to report on issues that are related to gender to better gender outcomes because gender is a foundational thing.

Mukhopadhyay: You recently launched a Hindi version of your website, IndiaSpend.com. Why did you decide to venture into the vernacular medium? What benefit do you see from this diversification?

Ethiraj: We diversified into local languages as we wanted to cater to a larger audience. We also wanted to reach south India, so we started a Tamil version of our website recently. If we get more resources, we will launch another version in the south as well. The idea is that more and more people should read our stuff. I know our stuff in Hindi goes to news desks in Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar [top Hindi-language newspapers in India].

Mukhopadhyay: IndiaSpend has a business-to-business model. Do you plan to convert to a business-to-customer (B2C) model anytime soon?

Ethiraj: Our work is accessible by everyone on our website and social media. However, we haven’t come up with a B2C strategy, as IndiaSpend is not a B2C product by definition. You don’t come to read IndiaSpend unless you’re academically inclined or a public policy enthusiast. In addition, our stories are difficult to read as they use a lot of data and they are not about happy issues. B2C products have to be higher on emotion or entertainment. I have worked at the Times Group for five years, so I have some understanding of what works, and what doesn’t, for consumers. It makes sense if IndiaSpend’s work appears in the Times of India, rather than if it competes with the Times of India.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Can Telling Stories Through Data Help Fight Misinformation in India? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Immigration and race relations are expected to be major areas of focus in the 2020 election, once again highlighting a longstanding challenge the United States has been grappling with. In September 2019, the State Department that the US will only admit up to 18,000 refugees in the next fiscal year, marking a historic low after the 2019 cap of 30,000 refugees, which was itself the lowest level since 1980.

Although an anti-immigration stance has become a hallmark of the Trump administration, reflecting the president’s desires to appeal to his nationalist base, it is beyond doubt that the United States has historically benefited from immigration. by the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests, for example, that US counties that admitted more immigrants between 1850 and 1920 enjoy higher average incomes, less poverty and lower employment today. The findings show that the “long-run benefits of immigration can be large, and need not come at high social cost.”

According to the testimony by the to a congressional budget committee last year, in 2017 immigrants made up almost 30% of all new entrepreneurs despite representing just 13.7% percent of the US population, being the backbone of the small-business sector and propping up communities across the country. The testimony also cites the New American Economy fund showing that of the Fortune 500 companies in 2018, 44% were started by children of immigrants, which altogether added $5.5 trillion to the US economy in 2017.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a prominent British-Ghanaian intellectual, cultural theorist and professor of philosophy and law at New York University. In October 2018, the University of Edinburgh awarded an honorary doctorate to Professor Appiah in recognition of his global influence on philosophy and politics. His latest , “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity,” was released in 2018.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Kwame Anthony Appiah about immigration, race relations in 21^st-century America, the rise of white nationalism, and how we can build trust in a diverse society.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: After President Trump assumed power, an extensive debate emerged over the alleged harm immigrants bring to the United States and the exigency of tackling immigration. The president introduced his controversial Muslim ban, and Muslims, Mexicans and other minorities have been constantly vilified in the right-wing media and by the president himself. Do you think it is the immigrants who are undermining cohesion and security in the United States?

Kwame Anthony Appiah: Obviously not! Immigrants, wherever they come from, provide, on average, a net gain to the United States economy. And there surely wouldn’t be so many of us if we didn’t. Low-skill migrants often accept jobs that native-born Americans don’t really want to do at wages many natives wouldn’t accept. High-skilled migrants give us human capital that we haven’t been able to produce here. Both are more law-abiding than natives on average and make a positive social contribution in other ways, not just to the economy.

There are indeed some, especially low-skilled natives, who lose their jobs to immigrants, though it’s worth pointing out [that] low-skills migrants also create jobs because natives are better placed to help manage people unfamiliar with our customs. But many more are losing their jobs to robots and to the transfer of tasks to cheaper labor markets elsewhere. So, the fact that immigration is a net plus doesn’t mean that there aren’t native-born Americans who have been disadvantaged by it. Something can be a huge net plus and also have significant downsides for particular people.

This is a problem we should care about as their fellow citizens, of course. Well, I say “of course,” but the small-government types may not think this is as obvious as I do. But the net gains from migration to the US and the world would make it foolish to deal with this problem by stopping immigration rather than by helping those people get new training and new opportunities.

Lots of things in the US would be much more expensive if we slowed migration, or abandoned robots or global trade, for that matter. So, most of us benefit from immigrants as consumers as well as benefiting from the general increase in wealth created by a successful global economy. And that’s not to mention the obligation we have to do our fair share to look after legitimate asylum-seekers.

The largest domestic threats to security — if by that you mean acts of terrorism — at the moment come, as the FBI has recently insisted, from right-wing white nationalists. We have not been subjected to much terror by immigrants, Muslim or otherwise — 9/11 was not carried out by immigrants, and the largest threats to cohesion come from their non-violent sympathizers. Societies that are diverse face challenges, particularly in the realm of trust, but we can manage them, and, as I say, the benefits to the US of relatively large immigrant flows far outweigh these and other costs.

It’s perhaps worth saying, too, that the deepest divisions in the United States today seem to me to be partisan: between devoted Republicans and committed Democrats. While some of these divides are associated with different views about immigration, they are not caused by immigration.

Ziabari: Different US presidents in the past, including Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have referred to the United States as a “nation of immigrants.” In sharp contrast to his predecessors, President Trump has railed against immigrants, pejoratively calling them “rapists,” “killers” and “invaders.” Where does this animosity toward immigrants come from? Is this sort of discourse he is promoting something that appeals to his base?

Appiah: President Trump’s very evident racism and Islamophobia are representative, as we well know, of a part of the US population. And these attitudes are present all around the world. There are interesting psychological theories about what sort of personality traits conduce to bigotry, and some of them, I suppose, might help explain the president’s attitudes. But it’s a long-standing racist culture that provides the largest explanation, I think, not the individual traits of the specific people who turn out to be racists. And the president’s significant personal moral deficiencies wouldn’t matter much if his views didn’t receive an echoing reflection from a part — mostly a white part — of the population.

So, yes, the racist nonsense evidently appeals to some of those who voted for him. Still, let’s remember, it has alienated others, including both some — like Congressman [Joe] Walsh — who are on the right, and many moderate Republicans toward the center, like Governor [Bill] Weld.

This sort of rallying of the nation against foreigners and their domestic allies — the un-American Americans — is a feature of populism in many places: Hungary, Italy, Britain, India. It’s a cheap and irresponsible way to get support by appealing to sentiments that are always present below the surface and can easily be brought into the light by demagoguery. Responsible leaders — of whom we have a distressing dearth at the moment — don’t do it.

So, I think it’s more important to give a political account of the rewards of demagoguery than to speculate about the president’s psychology. We are just unfortunate that Mr. Trump’s pathological narcissism means we cannot appeal to his better nature: He doesn’t have one. He appears to care about almost nothing but short-term advantage for himself. But that doesn’t mean that’s true of all his followers, so I wouldn’t give up on all of them as I have on the president.

Ziabari: Critics of President Trump believe his rhetoric and policies have emboldened white nationalists and alt-right extremists, whose nefarious ideology has been manifested in incidents like the El Paso shooting, which claimed 20 lives. President Trump offered thoughts and prayers, and described the perpetrator as a person with a serious mental illness. I imagine his response would have been totally different if a Muslim American or an Arab immigrant was behind such an atrocity. What is your take on that?

Appiah: We don’t have to speculate about that. His response to both the San Bernardino and the Orlando nightclub murders, which were carried out by people who were Muslim, did not mention the evidence that the murderer in the latter case was mentally unbalanced. People have noticed — as part of the evidence that the president is a bigot — that he responds differently to acts of terror committed by people from groups he is hostile to. That’s not very surprising, of course.

Ziabari: You once said in an interview that all forms of nationalism, including American nationalism, tend to “blind people into willed ignorance about the dark side of the national story.” I assume nationalism goes against patriotism in this context. Do you agree with the argument that successive US administrations in the modern time have fomented blind nationalism, and this is what has made the many wars initiated by the United States across the world palatable and easy to sell to the American public?

Appiah: I don’t know that this is a helpful way of putting things. Because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with nationalism when it’s regulated by morality. My father was a Ghanaian nationalist and contributed to the struggle against British colonialism as such. Nothing wrong with that. True, he called himself a patriot, too, in the title of his autobiography, “The Autobiography of an African Patriot,” but the movement he joined was a nationalist one. You could keep the word “patriotism” for good nationalism, I suppose, but that will just defer the question of which forms of nationalism are good.

I don’t think you have to be a “blind” nationalist to support a war. I would have supported entering World War II, but I don’t think my American nationalism is blind. The thing that’s dangerous in the lead-up to war is the demonization of the potential enemy; it’s not the caring for your own country that does the damage. Our many wars in this 21^st century have largely been morally disastrous. They have wasted blood — American and even more foreign blood, and treasure — ours and other people’s, again, and they haven’t made us much safer — arguably less safe, while at the same time they’ve contributed to the ruined lives of millions of Iraqis, Libyans and Afghans, just to pick the worst cases.

Ziabari: Are the mainstream media in the United States deliberately stifling debate on race relations and the plague of racism in American society? Or do you see adequate coverage of these topics in the US media?

Appiah: There’s lots of coverage of racism in the mainstream media. The New York Times just ran a special issue in its 1619 Project, exploring the legacies of racial slavery. Depressingly, instead of recognizing the long shadow of racial slavery and granting that we need to do something about it, a bunch of conservatives declared this was left-wing propaganda. We shouldn’t measure American media by looking at Fox News.

Ziabari: How have US policies toward the Muslim world, particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, influenced the Muslim nations’ perceptions of the United States and their feelings about America? Do you think the US needs a thorough restructuring of its relations with the Muslim world?

Appiah: Well, since 9/11, the United States has gone out into the world with its allies and devastated a bunch of countries in the Muslim world. It’s not surprising that there’s a feeling in many Muslim quarters that Americans are indifferent to Muslim suffering. Of course, at the same time, we have had relatively good relations with the Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf area, and also with Indonesia and Malaysia in the east, and Morocco — our oldest ally — in the west. So, the picture is complex.

But the real problem is that when Muslims conclude that many Americans are Islamophobic, they’re not wrong. We need to get rid of a whole raft of false ideas about Muslims and to build a better understanding of the vastly diverse world of Islam. That’s the place to start and it will take a lot of hard work.

Ziabari: You have written about the moral obligations of individuals and communities, and the responsibilities we all have toward our fellow citizens in detail, particularly in your 2005 book, “The Ethics of Identity.” Do you agree that the difficulties societies experience nowadays — including poverty, illiteracy, food insecurity, conflict and racial discrimination — originate from the apathy of those in power who fail to understand and fulfill their moral obligations properly?

Appiah: Well, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Those leaders, in many countries, are voted in by the people. If ordinary citizens cared more about these things, at least in the democracies, their leaders might do more. Of course, it’s part of the responsibility of leaders to recognize these duties and persuade people to support action on them. But it’s a two-way street.

Ziabari: You talk about cosmopolitanism and conversation, and why meaningful, erudite dialogue between people with varied identities is needed and important. We live in a world where people with different religious, racial and national backgrounds are pitted against each other and divided across ideological and political lines. How is it possible to facilitate the dialogue that brings the divided populations together and helps them understand each other better?

Appiah: It’s hard. But it’s also intensely rewarding. I’ve learned so much in recent years about philosophy — my professional field — by opening up to Muslim and to Confucian traditions in ethics, for example. And it’s essential. We face so many global problems — climate, health, economic inequality — that can’t be solved without transnational collaborations and global agreements.

One starting point, I think, is with the great cross-national identities, like Islam and Christianity, which already draw people into interactions with people in other societies. But we have to begin at home, too, by recognizing how essential it is to get to know our fellow citizens, the people with whom we share the responsibility of running the republic. I tried, in my , “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,”to talk about some of the ways in which the arts can contribute to understanding across groups as well.

Sports is another place where we can spend time with people of diverse identities and build the kind of trust that can then be taken into political collaboration. We have to start by doing things together, getting used to one another. That’s the trick.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Last year, Wolf’s latest , “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” came under severe criticism after a BBC broadcaster two misinterpretations of a legal term. Since then, “Outrages” has received severe criticism from readers in the UK. Wolf has herself been targeted and of gross inaccuracies in all her previous works.

The issue that gets lost in these discussions is the reason Wolf wrote the book in the first place. “Outrages” seeks to highlight the historical marginalization of gay men, particularly the protagonist of the book, the poet John Addington Symonds. Even with its flaws, the book is a detailed historical representation of the life of gay people in Victorian England.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Naomi Wolf about “Outrages,” her reasons for writing the book, the life of John Addington Symonds, and how “The Beauty Myth” is still relevant today.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: Your latest book, “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” has been the target of immense criticism in the UK. Why do you think that this situation has been blown out of proportion? Lawyer Helena Kennedy — who also proofread your book — has said that the criticism the “legal and homophobic legacy of British colonialism.” Do you think this connection has affected the reception of your book?

Naomi Wolf: After the , I have had a chance to reflect on the criticism. Right before this incident, which eventually translated into a viral attack, I was talking to British audiences about Britain’s vulnerability if it ever faced a coup. I was also talking about building a searchable database for UK law. , my civic data company, has a searchable database for US law. On Daily Clout, anyone can look up any law and lobby. This project has been very effective.

The thing “Outrages” does — and this was my argument to the British public right before the incident happened — when you are vulnerable to a coup, you can see what laws underpin decisions such as Brexit, for instance. However, access to information complicates the lives of everyone in power. Daily Clout has complicated lives of legislators in the US who wanted to lie about law. The platform makes it much more difficult for people on either side of the spectrum to say things like, “This health bill covers cancer care.”

Daily Clout enables people from places as far off as Tennessee to tweet and say, “No, this bill doesn’t cover cancer care.” I can see why that’s problematic for anyone who wants to a country to move left or right.

You bring up the question of colonial law. I totally agree with you. But I am not going to say that A caused B. It may well be that this is a weirdly viral, unprecedently relentless attack on my reputation because people disagreed about a poet. However, following the incident with my book, there has been opposition research to take me off the chessboard. Despite agreeing to correct the two references in the book, I am now facing difficulty in even getting “Outrages” published in the US!

The reason I wrote “Outrages” is because I didn’t want people to just sit around and believe that the British government hasn’t made terrible mistakes. There’s a lot of good scholarship on postcolonial law, but it’s not usually written for a broad audience. If you want people to trust the British government to not make horrible mistakes, then “Outrages” is not a comfortable book.

One of the calling cards of the conservatives is the mythology of an unblemished past in relation to the rest of the world. For example, a lot of people in America don’t want to hear [Noam] Chomsky talk about the role of the American government in undermining popular leaders of the world.

The story of “Outrages” categorically confirms that homophobia was exported to several places in the world by the British government. It was exported to cultures that didn’t have homophobia built into their own traditions and practices. We feel the legacy of that today, particularly in the former colonies. In India, it took a Supreme Court ruling to undo that law that was created for purposes of social control. There are countries like Egypt, where men are still effectively by the police and agents of the state using the narratives that have been exported to rest of the world in the 19^th century.

The bigger picture is not just restricted to colonial law. I am seeing homophobia and transphobia being weaponized in current struggles for power in Britain. This is a narrative separate from former colonial countries. If you read “Outrages,” it’s harder to take in this whipping up of hysteria by the state and media on LGBTQ+ issues. My argument — and it’s a strong one — is that these “moral panics” around homophobia were used cynically in the past by governments to attain agendas that have nothing to do with the fear of gays, lesbians and transgenders.

Mukhopadhyay: I would like to know a little more about “Outrages,” since that discussion has got lost in the euphoria around the historical and legal inaccuracies. What is the book about, and what motivated your decision to focus on homosexuality? Why did you choose to tell your story through the character of John Addington Symonds, a rather unknown poet?

Wolf: I decided to write about because my thesis adviser at Oxford is an expert in that field. He knew that I was interested in Victorian sexuality. He gave me giant copies of Symonds’ letters and I was captivated when I read them. They start as the letters of a teenager, who was born at a time when laws in Britain criminalized speech and same-sex male intimacy in new ways. It’s this voice of a young man, who is only searching for true love.

He renounces his teenage love for a young man, as his father explains to him that there’s no future for the relationship. He has written a long love poem to his beloved but has to go back and write an apology, because when he renounces his love affair in 1862, one is awarded life imprisonment for performing sodomy.

All Symonds wants is to be a British poet, critic and cultural essayist, but over and over the institutions turn on him. Fellows of his college at Oxford call him in to examine him because a fellow student turned in some of his personal letters, and now he has to justify his character and moronic interests. He barely manages to save his fellowship and later, when he wants to be a professor of poetry at Oxford, which is a high honor, there’s public shaming for who he is, and he knows that has no chance of being a professor.

There are several scandals that he has to face in his lifetime. He compels himself to marry a woman because his dad dictates to him that he has to do it. The woman he marries respects him a lot and they form a bond, but he writes in his letters painful accounts of what it is like to be married to someone and have a honeymoon but have no desire. He was completely honest about documenting his earliest life and the organic nature of same-sex desire because at that time it was described as a vice. He observed himself to document his notes.

He argued that this was ennobling, and love shouldn’t be criminalized. He had four daughters who loved him. He was a beloved husband and father although he was a gay man. This was true of most gay men at that time.

Even if he was living his double life, he kept having love affairs with men. When he got older, he went to Venice to be with a community of gay men. Throughout his life, he just wanted to write the truth about love, but it was getting more and more dangerous as British law was inventing more and more laws on obscenity and free speech, for example, the Obscene Publication of 1857. Britain’s invention of obscenity got exported around the world to justify cracking down on colonial populations.

The Obscene Publication Act made it dangerous to publish anything that could be considered obscene. In addition to all this, Symonds’ friends were being arrested in France for soliciting sex. This act destroyed Symonds’ career in Britain. Symonds tried to tell the truth about love, but it was illegal. He wrote in ways so that he could escape the law. He wrote allegories, historical biographies of gay men in the past, he would publish love poems changing the pronouns of lovers. All this while, he was secretly keeping a secret memoir and sodomy poems locked away in a metal box.

There were these romantic poems where he imagines gay marriage 150 years before it actually happened. At the end of his life, he had a very beautiful and provocative relationship with the American poet Walt Whitman, which prodded him to be brave and address same-sex love. Toward the end of his life, he wrote a manifesto in English for gay rights — the first, at least as far as anything I have read. The manifesto had a sustained argument for the legal rights of gay men. After his death, it was published and handed secretly from hand to hand. It created a modern understanding in more developed countries of how one could see sexual variation as a spectrum of natural behavior rather than a moral failing or vice.

He won after his death, but in his lifetime, he didn’t know that he will win. Symonds never stopped believing in love and the love he experienced. In his work, he left instructions to the future generations on how to decode his secret memoirs so that a secret story would emerge that he couldn’t tell in his lifetime about his great love. That’s John Addington Symonds, and that’s why he’s such a great character. And his story brings forth so many important themes in the LGBTQ+ movement.

In my book, I point out that newspapers reported death sentences and arrests for sodomy during Symonds’ time, and in the case of two they weren’t carried out. People were being transported overseas for life sentence and hard labor.

Mukhopadhyay: Gay sex and sodomy were a political issue in Victorian England, and it continued to be an issue long after that.

Wolf: British historians contesting my argument in “Outrages” argue that laws against sodomy and same-sex relations did not get worse in and after 1835, but they don’t address colonial law in their argument. I just had an argument with a historian who said that there was no evidence of things worsening for men in Britain in the 19^th century. I pointed out to him his omission of colonies. Gay men were being transported to the colonies, and Britain’s was exported there as well.

As a former political consultant and someone who visited Guantanamo, I am interested in this consensus of British historians who are saying that nothing got worse for gay men in Britain. If you look at their data sets, they are only counting England and Wales, they are not counting Scotland, where there was a death sentence for sodomy for many years after it ended in Britain.

They are also not counting Ireland, all of the colonies and New South Wales, where men were transported for sodomy. It is very standard practice that if you want a political problem to go away, you just imprison them or transport them elsewhere. I find it notable that these data sets are not included when British historians say that the situation didn’t get worse.

Mukhopadhyay: Do you think there’s more retaliation against “Outrages” because it addresses a topic — discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community — people are generally uncomfortable with?

Wolf: This is an incredibly important history (of the LGBTQ+ community) to tell and it’s obviously suppressed. I studied literature for 25 years. In literary studies, the high point for persecution of gay men in Britain in the 19^th century was Oscar Wilde’s trial. I was shocked to discover this in my historical research.

In my research, I came across works by three scholars, namely H. G. Cox, Charles Upchurch and Graham Robb, that confirmed that 55 men were executed in Britain for sodomy. There were decade-long sentences or life sentences for gay men several years before the Wilde trials. In the 19^th century, people treated news of the arrest for sodomy with amusement.

There was also a concerted campaign by the Victorian state to present people cross dressing as a threat to the rest of society. It’s shocking that there’s a narrative about how transgender people are threatening to the rest of society. “Outrages” has a whole section on dressing femininely. What is too feminine? People need to question why the state regulates masculinity levels of an attire in order to really appear as a “man.” How did the state abrogate to itself the right to police people, not just in bed, but also how they present themselves? And these thoughts were exported across borders to the colonies.

The theory in “Outrages” is that these claims of the state to manage our intimate lives, to manage our speech and our self-presentation are clever ways to control large populations and suppress them in situations where they are otherwise clamoring for their rights. An absolutely perfect illustration of that is colonial history because you have a small number of people tasked to control large numbers of people. These laws were very effective in controlling and subduing populations and then they were brought home.

Mukhopadhyay: A thing many people miss out, particularly in history, is the state subjugation of women. How did Victorian England’s laws intrude on the female body?

Wolf: There’s actually wonderful scholarly work done on this. There was an effort by British colonial powers to control and examine sex workers or women accused of being sex workers. This was first tried out in a colonial context and then brought home to become the Contagious Diseases Act. There is some documentation of how laws intrude on the female body and how women colonial subjects were experiments.

Mukhopadhyay: This context ties in with my next question. A gynecologist recently for censoring her publisher’s usage of the word “vagina.” There is still a stigma around the word. Why is there so much backlash when a person talks about something that makes many people uncomfortable?

Wolf: The portrayal of female sexuality is all about agency. Showing a million pornographic images of some trafficked woman or someone who is struggling to feed her kids isn’t really about female sexual agency. It’s not. When women start claiming the right to own their bodies without shame, then agencies start to turn around, and people become uncomfortable.

It’s not vaginas that make people uncomfortable if they are properly packaged. It’s when the owners of the vaginas start talking about what happens to them — that is when they get censored. This doctor’s title was censored, my book, “Vagina,” was briefly censored by Amazon, although there was an outcry.

Why is it considered radical when women start naming what happens to them? The state uses intrusion on bodies to control populations the way that women as a gender are controlled, and sexual assault and domestic violence are a huge part of that control. The judiciary colludes in not doing anything about it. India is a perfect example of this. I am always blown away by news stories of India where there is a massive radical feminist awakening, women are mobilized, aware, talking, trying to legislate and creating networks. It’s unbelievably effective — more effective than America, I would say, kind of a very fast arising of women around feminist issues, especially around sexual assault.

At the same time, you see egregious, horrific public demonstrations of male power over women’s bodies. A perfect example is the backlash and struggle over who owns the vagina and how that struggle is demonstrated. It’s a vicious cycle to control women’s desires, and the demonstration against this takes different forms. Over and over, patriarchy demonstrates to women that they are not going to escape their subjugation through sexual violence and sexual assault — which is just a way to subjugate us in general. When women start naming their bodies and are not ashamed of saying “vagina,” and they take a stand over issues like genital mutilation and molestation, it sparks a revolution.

I was ashamed to talk about what my professor did to me when I was 19, and I was afraid of speaking out until I was in my 40s, even when I had two children, been married, had a lot of social validation. One reason I was afraid was because we are trained to not name what happens to us sexually because we are so afraid that we will be labeled a slut if we have ever had sexual agency in a context that maligned us. When women are able to say “vagina,” they can stand up in front of the court and say, “This is what he did — he raped me, he touched me here” — and they can do so articulately without being silenced. It’s really not a struggle of who owns the vagina, but who owns history, who will be believed.

Mukhopadhyay: It’s been more than 20 years since you wrote “The Beauty Myth.” Do you feel that issues around women’s bodies and their beauty have escalated because of social media?

Wolf: That’s a great question and I get asked this quite frequently. Many things have changed since I wrote “The Beauty Myth,” but many things have also not changed. I think women of your generation, all over the world, are much more empowered to ask the questions that you’re asking and even theorize, position yourselves as critics of social norms. The mere idea of criticizing beauty ideals or other social norms was scary and not encouraged among young women when I was writing “The Beauty Myth.” And that’s so powerful.

When I went to India on my last visit, I was blown away by the hundreds and hundreds of highly mobilized, organized, determined passionate feminists I met. Not just women from urban areas, but women from rural areas and first-generation women going to college, which was astonishingly inspiring. The willingness to critique has gotten better globally. However, other things are not so great.

Anorexia and bulimia statistics haven’t . I think that young women feel a lot of fears around Instagram and looking perfect on social media, which is causing anxiety. I also think that fears around beauty are extending to boys and young men. The increasing accessibility of plastic surgery is making some people feel more dissatisfied.

Mukhopadhyay: I can’t fail to notice that criticism around your work has increased in the past few years. Why do you think that this happened? What motivates you to keep writing?

Wolf: If I gave up that easily, I wouldn’t be much of a feminist! When I was writing about how hard it is for Western middle-class women to go on a diet, I was the darling of the media. The issues I talked about earlier are important and I am glad I talked about them, but they are not central to dismantling more serious forms of power. Since I became a democracy activist, the criticism has gotten more intense. I guess that’s because I stopped being a cultural critic and commentator and got interested in offering people actual tools to change laws. That generates a different level of antagonism.

But why do I keep writing? Being 56 years old helps because I have lived through a lot of these attacks. “The Beauty Myth” was attacked viciously. I remember calling my mom and saying, “Why do I keep going on these book tours, because people are so mad at me! Feminists are mad at me. I was attacked on national television!” My mom said, “Don’t you dare think about stopping.” And I knew I was right, and it was important that I keep going on. Now, “The Beauty Myth” is in college and high-school curricula.

In 2012, people attacked me on “Vagina.” Now there are half a dozen books that are clearly influenced by that book, and women are a lot more comfortable talking about their sexuality and sexual abuse. I like to think that I had a bit of role in that. I don’t think the book will be received as critically today.

Now my critics are so mad about “Outrages,” and yet I know that it’s accurate, and those two misinterpretations are corrected. I know it’s an important book, it says things that need to be said, and it’s about a lost and forgotten pioneer of LGBTQ+ history. I am not going to give up on bringing his voice to the people. It’s my business to take on board constructive criticism and factual errors and fix them, but I can’t make people smarter than they are. I can’t make people evolve faster than they are willing to.

I know that “Vagina” was an important book. I know that “Outrages” is an important book, and Symonds was an important figure who changed history. I have also received a lot of praise and support, which you will not see on Google, over the last couple of years. A women’s museum in Italy is dedicating a permanent space to me, and I got an invite from Trinity College to be awarded and honored for contributing to feminist philosophy — this was after the attacks. I am not treated specially on Twitter, but a lot of people appreciate my work.

Mukhopadhyay: Does the current political situation have anything to do with the rise in criticism?

Wolf: I can’t stop you from noticing a direct link. One can clearly see a geopolitical alignment of oligarchic states such as Russia, the United States, the UK, ancillary Brazil and Saudi Arabia. I would also put Israel in there. These countries have anti-democratic leadership now, and what I know as a former political consultant is that a lot of these countries are being advised by a lot of the same conservative and anti-democratic leaders/political consultants and think tanks.

What we are seeing is that the nation-state is becoming less and less important. What’s becoming important is that oligarch forming common cause. They don’t like democracy and they don’t like the nation-state because you need a strong nation-state to have a strong democracy. You see the same tactics in country after country to divide people, whip up hatred of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and Muslims. We are now seeing the rise of the paramilitary just like I predicted in one of my earlier , “The End of America.”

How does it play out in my criticism? I have no idea. I don’t know if there’s a direct connection, but I do know that a lot of people who are pro-democracy and environmental activists are being phoned. There are a lot of smear campaigns going on. People are having their employers called, people are being controlled on Twitter, journalists are being harassed and threatened. I am not drawing a conclusion of who is doing it any why, but I do know that there’s more bullying and harassment. I don’t have any other insight on why this is happening. Maybe I am just more annoying than usual!

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Naomi Wolf Talks Homophobia, Feminism and “Outrages” appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

After Deng Xiaoping started modernizing China’s economy in the 1980s, economic relations between Washington and Beijing deepened. After Deng’s 1992 “southern tour,” which reconfirmed China’s commitment to economic liberalization and free-market reform, the economy took off exponentially. It has now become the workshop of the world. In recent years, this has created unease in the US, where the working class suffered as manufacturing moved abroad. Under President Donald Trump, relations soured, leading to the imposition of US tariffs on more than $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, and more than $110 billion of US products by China in retaliation. Now, there is talk of a new Cold War.

The between the US and China presents major risks to the global economy. A study by the UN Conference on Trade and Development that the continuing trade war by the two biggest economies, “has resulted in a sharp decline in bilateral trade, higher prices for consumers and trade diversion effects.” The study revealed that US tariffs have caused a $35-billion loss to Chinese exports in the US market. The International Monetary Fund that the trade war will cause almost a percentage point loss in global growth this year.

The Coming Chinese World Order

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There is also the added question about which of the two economic models is likely to prevail. With its cheap gas, immigrants from around the world, top universities, spending on research and entrepreneurial energy, many take the view that the US will come back strongly. Others say that the Chinese have the social cohesion, long-term planning, determination and a work ethic to mount a decent, if not successful, challenge.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Naveed Ahsan talks to David Petraeus — a decorated general, former head of the CIA and the chairman of the — about the US economy, American strategic priorities and US-China relations.

Naveed Ahsan: With “America First,” is the US going back to the protectionist policies of the pre-World War I era? 

David Petraeus: Now let me qualify my answer a bit because there is a debate in the US — and in some other countries as well — about the benefits of international trade agreements, the value of alliances and the importance of the US continuing to lead the so-called rules-based international order. Those who believe in each of these — and I am among them — clearly have to make a more effective case than has been put forward in recent years that the benefits of each outweigh the downsides and costs that inevitably accompany trade agreements, alliance membership and global leadership. 

Additionally, there has to be an acknowledgment that there are losers, as well as winners, from trade and other agreements, and that there need to be policies and resources that take better care of those disadvantaged by new trade agreements than has often been the case in the past.

Ahsan: With low gas costs, cutting-edge research, smart manufacturing, etc., is the US economy poised for another growth spurt? 

Petraeus: That may be the case in some sectors, but is unlikely in aggregate. The US is, of course, in the later stages of the longest economic recovery in our history. But growth in the US has begun to slow; we have seen yield curve inversion; and growth in the eurozone and much of the developed world, as well as that in China, India and many emerging market countries, has slowed as well — in some cases approaching a technical recession. 

In response, central banks around the world, including in the US, are now reducing interest rates and pursuing monetary easing as well, and some governments are also engaged in fiscal stimulus policies. Each of those actions is intended to mitigate the risk of a recession. Continued consumer spending in the US, which accounts for the vast majority of US GDP, is sustaining growth in the US at present, and some fundamentals are encouraging — low inflation despite the lowest unemployment in some 50 years, low energy costs, recent modest increases in real wage rates and still reasonably solid earnings. 

But I would not anticipate a US growth spurt in aggregate, at least not until we weather the inevitable downturn that lies ahead — though no one can predict the timing or severity of the downturn, to be sure.

Certainly, some productivity enhancements being pursued will help the US economy. However, if the US wants to see a real boost to long-term growth, we will need to invest heavily in overdue infrastructure improvements that enhance productivity, achieve comprehensive immigration reform — providing, in particular, a legal pathway for unskilled workers for our agriculture, construction, and hospitality sectors; allowing more highly skilled workers for various tech sector needs; and resolving the status of the “Dreamers” and those immigrants here without adequate legal documentation.

[We need to] improve public education for the bottom 30% or so of our population, increase resources provided for research and development, and establish greater incentives and regulatory frameworks to encourage investment in new technologies, such as 5G infrastructure and communications, renewable energy sources, smart grid, etc. 

Ahsan: With the rebound of American manufacturing, is the Chinese economy headed for a Japan-style showdown? 

Petraeus: There are many challenges looming for manufacturing in China: displacement of some manufacturing to countries with lower labor costs and because of US tariffs; return from China of some manufacturing to the US (where more of the work is done by machines, robots and automation); loss of some manufacturing jobs inside China to robots and machines (no country will be affected more by the “rise of the robots” than will China, as its workforce in manufacturing is undoubtedly the largest in the world); and loss of some tech manufacturing because of growing concerns about supply chain risks associated with — and US restrictions on — some tech items built in China. 

Those challenges — and the inevitable reduction in growth rates in China, even as growth does continue, as well as a variety of other factors — will require very skillful responses by Chinese leaders. But Chinese leadership has guided the country to achieve more in the four decades since Deng Xiaoping welcomed the world to China than any country in history has achieved in 40 years. So, just as Warren Buffett observes from time to time that “It has never paid to bet against America,” perhaps we might offer something of the same about modern China.

Ahsan: What must Washington and Beijing do to avoid the Thucydides’ Trap?  

Petraeus: This is one of the central questions of the day — and likely will continue to be so for the decades ahead. From a US perspective, the US-China relationship has to be far and away the top priority of America’s foreign policy. And we need to develop a truly coherent and comprehensive approach that employs all possible American tools, together with those of our allies and partners around the world, and asks what the effect on the US-China relationship will be of every foreign policy initiative. 

Beyond that, it is very clear that the US and China need to engage in sustained strategic dialogue so that each side understands the national interests of the other and so that differences can be resolved diplomatically before they get out of hand — especially given that, unlike pre-World War II situations, we are now in the nuclear age. The goal obviously should be a mutually beneficial relationship, and the key will be determining which of China’s aspirations are sufficiently legitimate that they should be accommodated, and which are not, and thus warrant firm pushback by the US and its partners.

Ahsan: What are the top three strategic priorities for the US? 

Petraeus: Reflecting on the 2017 National Security Strategy, drafted under the direction of a long-time military colleague, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the four priorities identified for the US are: protection of the US homeland, including the American people and our way of life; promotion of American prosperity; preservation of peace (through strength); and the advance of American influence around the world.

Ahsan: What are the top three geopolitical threats to the global economy? 

Petraeus: There are numerous threats at present, but it seems to me that the top three are: first, the economic actions that have accompanied the resurgence of great power rivalries — especially, as previously highlighted, those associated with the extraordinary rise of China; second, increased challenges to the trading regimes and elements of the rules-based international order that, despite various shortcomings, has stood the world in reasonably good stead since the end of World War II; and third, populism, security issues, corruption, large-scale criminal activity and other dynamics that are undermining in many countries the elements of governance, rule of law and security that are generally required for substantial investment by foreign sources.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post David Petraeus: It Doesn’t Pay to Bet Against Modern China appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Trump’s critics believe he is barely cognizant of how diplomacy works and that his impulsive approach to foreign relations undermines US interests. Many prominent US academics and journalists have  Trump as a “,” lashing out at him for his imprudent decisions in unilaterally exiting international agreements and alienating US partners.

A recent Economist/YouGov  inspecting Trump’s job approval in foreign policy shows 51% of Americans disapprove of what he is doing in terms of his overseas agenda and managing US relations with other countries. The approval rate for Trump’s foreign policy is 44%.

Relying on a special brand of nationalism, Trump has been scaling back the international commitments of the United States and challenging America’s traditional foreign policy in order to bolster the national economy. However, the president’s economic gains seem to have come at the expense of America’s global clout. A  by the Center for American Progress and GBAO Strategies found that for 62% of Americans, the US is losing respect in the world.

Repealing the Iran nuclear deal, departing from the Paris climate agreement, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, entering a trade war with China and clashing with Venezuela are just some of the controversies that Trump has caused.

Cindy Sheehan is a prominent anti-war activist who lost her son, US Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, during the Iraq War. An outspoken critic of US foreign policy and its military expeditions, Sheehan was the 2012 vice-presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party. In 2006, she published her memoir entitled, “Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey Through Heartache to Activism.”

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Sheehan about Trump’s foreign policy, US relations with Iran, Venezuela and Russia, and the 2020 presidential elections.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: Many critics of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy say he has undermined America’s global leadership by abandoning democratization and human rights as priorities in US foreign policy. They say Trump has defined American global interests purely in economic terms, and that’s why he refused to censure Saudi Arabia over the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. What’s your take on that?

Cindy Sheehan: My criticism of Trump’s foreign policy is that, in many cases, it is just like Obama’s foreign policy and Bush’s foreign policy, and going back even further in the US empire’s quest for global hegemony. When has the US foreign policy been about “democratization” or “human rights”? These are just false justifications for spreading US imperialism to places that have oil or other exploitable resources. When Trump refused to censure Saudi Arabia, at least he was truthful about the reason: it’s all about profit.

Ziabari: Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership on several occasions and signaled his eagerness to forge friendly relations with Russia. US intelligence agencies believe Moscow tried to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump and this is what Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation was all about. Do you consider Trump’s overtures to Russia to be a bold and fundamental step in reframing US foreign policy, or is he looking for a strong ally because he is fragile?

Sheehan:  I am not a mind reader and I don’t know what Trump’s reasoning is, but I think it has been well-proven that Russia did not have undue influence in the 2016 election, and good relations with Russia should be considered a step in the right direction for world peace.

However, the Democrats and their supporters will use any excuse to attack Trump, even going so far as to push bad relations with Russia to the detriment of world peace. Face it, Hillary Clinton as president would have been a step in the wrong direction for world peace. There is much to criticize Trump over, but seeking more positive relations with Russia and North Korea is not one of those reasons.

Ziabari: What do you make of the crisis in Venezuela and the attempts by the Trump administration to topple the Maduro government? Does the United States feel threatened by Venezuela, or is it genuinely intent on installing a democratic government in the Latin American country?

Sheehan: The US has been trying to overthrow the democratically-elected president of Venezuela since 1998, whether it be Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro. The reasons for this are pretty clear: Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and the Bolivarian Revolution is a threat to complete domination of the world’s oil supplies by global capitalists, especially the US oil industry. How could the reasoning of the US be to “install a democratic government” in Venezuela when that country already has a democratic government? The elections in Venezuela have been certified by ex-US President Jimmy Carter as the most transparent in the world.

The threats and sanctions against Venezuela are not about democracy, but about the complete domination of oil profits by US capitalists.

Ziabari: Have Trump’s efforts to engage North Korea diplomatically failed? A vague plan of “denuclearization” was what the Trump-Kim summits in Singapore and Vietnam were supposed to achieve. Do you think North Korea is convinced enough to abandon its nuclear and missile programs following the much-hyped meetings between the leaders of the two countries?

Sheehan: If I were the leader of North Korea, I would not abandon a defensive nuclear program when the country that is urging them to do so has thousands of nuclear bombs. What I find more encouraging is the thawing of relations between the North and South Korean governments. I have been to Korea and I know the people don’t feel like they live in two separate countries and desire reunification with their families.

Ziabari: What’s your view on the Trump administration’s Iran policy? Will Trump get a better agreement than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the United States unilaterally abrogated in May 2018? Has he killed the chances of a peaceful settlement with Iran?

Sheehan: Trump’s [now-former] neocon, John Bolton, would love nothing better than to destroy Iran for the sake of Israel, mostly. So far, Iran has showed its willingness to engage the US directly and total war has so far been averted.

Iran has long been the jewel in the crown of US foreign policy and the crippling sanctions that have been imposed on it are considered acts of war, and these questions have been presuming that all of these things just started to happen when Trump was president. Since the time of George W. Bush, nuclear inspectors have agreed that Iran was not enriching uranium to make bombs. The JCPOA was a flawed agreement and many people in Iran were upset with Hassan Rouhani that he made a deal like that with the notorious abrogator of treaties, the USA. Just ask the indigenous tribes here in America how well the US adheres to treaties.

Ziabari: After more than two years in office, do you think President Trump has been able to score any significant foreign policy wins? Would you give the credit for eliminating the Islamic State group from Syria to the Trump administration?

Sheehan: I think the people of Syria, Russia and Bashar al-Assad have more to do with eliminating the rebels from Syria than anything the US did, like training and supporting the terrorists.

Ziabari: Will foreign policy be a determining factor in the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections? Will Trump’s major foreign policy decisions, which his detractors describe as failed, serve as his Achilles’ heel in next year’s polls?

Sheehan: Unfortunately, foreign policy hasn’t been a major issue in US elections since the 1960s and it won’t be this time with all major candidates being very hawkish. Of course, the belligerent Democrats will pretend that Trump is “soft” on terror, when it’s been shown that he is dropping even more bombs on a daily basis than Obama did. The US is a rogue state no matter who leads it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The US Empire’s Quest for Global Hegemony appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

One of the wealthiest nations in the world, Norway free education, public pensions and universal health care to its residents and has made exemplary accomplishments in tackling inequality, unemployment and illiteracy.

Norway is seen as a model in the developing world, including in Western Europe and North America, given the remarkable it has made in becoming an economically prosperous and socially thriving country. About three-quarters of people between 15 and 64 have a job, which is higher than the OECD employment average of 68%, and 82% of adults aged 25 to 64 have completed secondary education. Their life satisfaction score of 9.9 out of 10 — one of the highest in the world.

Norway’s stability, safety, prosperity and the welfare system make it a popular destination for migrants. At the , there were 746,700 immigrants as well as 170,000 Norwegians born to immigrant parents living in Norway. Poland, Lithuania, Somalia, Sweden and Pakistan are the top five main origin countries.

Yet despite being a happy, free and affluent country, Norway hasn’t been immune to right-wing extremism that has gained traction in different corners of the world. Corroborated by different investigations and studies, Islamophobia and racism are now serious challenges for the Norwegian society. According to the , 14% of the country’s Muslims experienced harassment in 2017. The same report found that 34% of the population “displays marked prejudices against Muslims.”

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Dr. Cora Alexa Doving, a research professor at the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, about race relations, immigration and Islamophobia in Norwegian society.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: As of January 2018, immigrants accounted for just over 14% of Norway’s population. How does Norwegian society perceive its relationship with immigrants? Are they seen as a burden and a liability, or are they considered to be the drivers of the economy?

Cora Alexa Doving: Attitudes toward immigrants are in general positive in Norway. According to population surveys, a majority sees immigrants as hard-working people making a contribution to the economy and believes that immigration has had some positive impact on Norwegian culture. But in Norway, as elsewhere, xenophobia, discrimination and racism have been the side effects of migration. The integration of migrants into Norwegian society has generally been successful, so it is quite surprising that 34% of the population has marked prejudices against Muslims. The rise of anti-Muslim attitudes in Norway is intimately linked to the rise of populist right-wing formations that mobilize on an anti-Muslim platform, and prejudice against Muslims in Norway is of a cognitive, discursive and ideological nature rather than of an experience-based nature.

Ziabari: In 2015, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published a report stating that Norway is doing too little to combat the threat of racism and far-right extremist violence. Is the situation better in 2019, or do you think Norway is failing when it comes to addressing racial discrimination and xenophobia?

Doving: In 2015, the Norwegian government was criticized by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance for not using the word “racism” in any political plans and programs. Warnings like this, in combination with the prevalent negative attitudes toward Muslims found in population surveys and broadly referred to in the media, and the increase in hate crime statistics for Muslims and darker-skinned citizens, have, however, led to a new concern for Islamophobia as a form of racism at the political level.

An illustrative example of this is that various political parties have initiated the development of a national action plan to combat racism toward ethnic and religious minorities. In the notes written in preparation for the plan, hostility toward Muslims is specifically addressed. Islamophobia is on the verge of being understood as a variant of racism existing in the midst of our society and not solely in the worldview of right-wing extremism.

Ziabari: The attacks of July 22, 2011, in which the far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, were a critical moment for the country and the West in general. How do you evaluate the Norwegian government’s response to this tragic episode? Have the efforts to combat racism and xenophobia intensified since then?

Doving: During the first weeks after the terrorist attacks, the depiction of the Norwegian people as one was repeated again and again by both politicians and ordinary people. Never before were the minorities in Norway featured in such a positive light as during the weeks after the attacks. Minority religions were not measured against Norwegian values, but described as part of the Norwegian public values. The multicultural aspect was simply not up for debate.

The newspapers mediated the “multicultural society” as the image of the nation. I will also state that July 22 was a turning point in the history of the public awareness of Islamophobia in Norway. Still, the efforts to combat racism and xenophobia through concrete politics did not really increase after the terror attack, and I think the increase in focus on radical right-wing movements, which are marginal in Norway, has in some way contributed to a certain blindness to everyday racism.

Ziabari: The findings of the European Islamophobia Report 2017, to which you also contributed, suggest 14% of Muslims experienced harassment in this year while 34.1% of the population displayed marked prejudices against Muslims. Do these figures, as well as the prevalent sense of non-belonging among the Muslims of Norway, point to a serious problem of Islamophobia in the country?

Doving: Yes they do. Negative stereotypes of Muslims are widespread in Norway, and 34% of the population displays marked prejudices against Muslims, while 28% also dislikes and shows hostility toward Muslims. The fact that these numbers are from a population survey and not from a survey conducted in established anti-Muslim milieus shows a disturbing degree of anti-Muslim attitudes among “ordinary Norwegians.”

But it is important to underpin that the total picture of attitudes toward Muslims is multi-faceted. There are some good results: 52% agrees with the statement “Muslims are good Norwegian citizens,” and annual population surveys show that a larger majority is positive to having a multicultural society and to immigrants having the same rights as the rest of the population. These results make an alarmist conclusion of a majority population that hates Muslims unconvincing.

Still, Islamophobia needs to be combatted and the phenomenon seems — slowly — to be becoming an issue for political parties and debaters independent of a right or left axis in politics. I think that maybe the recent years’ increase in populist and more extreme right-wing milieus has led to a more hegemonic public understanding of Islamophobia among the general public.

Ziabari: How are Muslims portrayed in the Norwegian media? Does the media function as a mouthpiece for nationalists and right-wing extremists, or does it give an equal opportunity to religious and ethnic minorities to voice their views and contribute to debate on social, political and cultural issues?

Doving: The media seems to possess an unlimited interest in the presence of Muslims, and Islam has for many years been generally negatively framed as an intolerant and violent religion. The history of so-called migration debates in Norway is similarly marked by depictions of Muslims as “a political problem that must be solved.” But the media is not a mouthpiece for the far right — several alternative news sites function as such, but not the established media.

Also, some positive changes have occurred in recent years: Norwegian newspapers today provide a more nuanced picture of Islam than they did just a few years ago, not least because of the increasing number of Muslims participating in public debates. Muslim voices are central to the increased recognition of Islamophobia as a societal problem in the arena of public debates. National newspapers also have journalists who have covered Islam-related issues for several years and who have actively sought knowledge of Islam and Muslims. Several of these journalists have contributed to an increased focus on discrimination and prejudice against Muslims in the press. There has also been an increase in minorities engaging in debates, not only related to issues of discrimination and so on, but being a natural part of public debates.

Ziabari: Are groups such as SIAN (Stop Islamization of Norway), that openly encourage anti-Islam views and attitudes, free to carry out their activities and denigrate the Muslim community, or is there any government restriction on them?

¶Ůø±ąľ±˛Ô˛µ: SIAN is free to carry on, but they are carefully followed by the intelligence service. Interestingly, they have just been reported for hate crime by the police in Oslo and will be taken to court for racist expressions against Muslims.

Ziabari: Is Norway on a path to becoming more tolerant and inclusive? Generally, is the situation getting better for the religious and ethnic minorities?

Doving: This is an impossible question to answer. The general acceptance for cultural diversity is increasing in Norway, but at the same time we have an increase in hate crimes against minorities. What I can say something about, however, is that popular culture in Norway — literature, music, TV series — is more tolerant and diverse than ever. It has, to a much larger extent than politics, contributed to anti-racism. It is through popular culture that right-wing populism and xenophobia are combatted, and it is popular culture that makes diversity a natural part of what is considered to be Norwegian.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post In Norway, Negative Attitudes Toward Muslims Are Still Widespread appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In his career spanning over 40 years, Mahbubani has dedicated his academic scholarship to the growing geopolitical and economic influence of Asia. His books are a break from the traditional Western narrative of Asian societies, where overarching political problems are a roadblock to economic and social development.

In “Has the West Lost It?” Mahbubani dispels myths around Asian countries such as Malaysia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which have achieved tremendous growth in the last 30 years. On the other hand, the Western world has failed to take care of its working class, which has been forced to the fringes. Mahbubani argues that the rise of countries like China and India mean that the West is no longer the most dominant force in world politics, and that it now has to learn to share, even abandon, its position and adapt to a world it can no longer dominate.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Mahbubani about his latest book, the need for the West to listen to the East, and the strategy the Western world should adopt to maintain its global relevance.

The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ankita Mukhopadhyay: In many of your recent speeches, interviews and books, you have focused on the West vs. East debate. Why do you choose to focus your work on this dynamic?

Kishore Mahbubani: The West has been dominant for 200 years in world history, which is a historical aberration. In the 19^th century, Europe dominated the world, in the 20^th century, the US dominated the world. Many in the US and Europe assume that this is the natural state of affairs and want their dominance to continue into the 21^st century. However, I refer to Western dominance as a major historical aberration, because from year 1 to 1820, the two largest economies of the world were China and India. The US and Europe only took off in the last 200 years.

All aberrations come to a natural end. The rise of Asia is natural and was bound to happen someday. Today, in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, the number one economy in the world is China, number two is US, number three is India, and number four is Japan. Out of the top four, the clear winner is Asia. Even though economic power is now shifting to Asia, the West is reluctant to accept this shift. The West continues to intervene in many unnecessary conflicts. These unnecessary interventions have drained spirits and resources and demoralized Western societies. To prevent the West from losing it, the West needs to adopt a 3M strategy: minimalist, multilateralist and Machiavellian.

Minimalism is a call to do less rather than more. The West has wasted a lot of resources fighting unnecessary wars, especially in the Middle East and the Islamic world. The Islamic world will be better off if the West doesn’t intervene. A key example of a region that benefited from minimalism is South East Asia. This region used to be called the “Balkans of Asia” owing to Western intervention. In fact, two of the biggest wars following World War II were fought in South East Asia — the Vietnam War and the Sino-Vietnamese War. Now the region is at peace because Western intervention is at its minimum.

Multilateralism means strengthening the global multilateral institutions that the West has created, particularly the UN family of institutions, which were a gift from the West to the world. My friend once said that the world is shrinking and becoming a small global village. But it is shocking to see that the West, particularly the US, is consistently undermining this. In my book, “Has the West Lost It,” I argue that it is against Western interests to undermine the world order. The West, at the end of the day, presents a in the global village, as 88% of the world’s population is outside the West. It is unwise for 12% of the world’s population to try and dominate the world on its own.

The third prong of a new Western strategy must be a Machiavellian approach. Former US President Bill Clinton gave a at Yale in 2003 in which he said that if the US has to be the world’s number one country, it can keep doing what it’s doing, and it can keep being unilateral. But if the US can conceive of a world where it’s no longer number one, and China is the number one economy, then it is surely in the US’ best interests to strengthen multilateral institutions than constrain the next big country, which is China. So, if [the West] wants to be Machiavellian and constrain China, it must strengthen multilateral institutions.

Mukhopadhyay: In your latest book, you argue that the lack of democracy in much of Asia will not hinder its rise. Asia’s economic growth and collective belief in efficient governance will enable the East to overtake the West. What about the risk of non-democratic and non-accountable institutions holding Asia back in the long run?

Mahbubani: In my view, in the long run, all countries will eventually become democratic. I don’t visualize a possibility that China will never become a democracy. The West is mistaken in wanting to make the world democratic overnight. The lesson of history is that countries have faced a disastrous situation when they tried to become democratic overnight. A good example is the former Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia became a democracy overnight. The Russian economy imploded, life expectancy in Russia went down, infant mortality went up. A lot of people suffered because of this sudden advent of democracy.

It’s always better to move to democracy slowly and gradually. China is doing the right thing in transforming society slowly. Even though China is not a democracy, the amount of personal freedom Chinese people enjoy has grown significantly. When I first went to China in 1980, Chinese people couldn’t choose what to wear, where to live, where to work, where to study, where to travel — the list of restrictions goes on. Today, the Chinese people can choose where to live, what to wear, where to work, and over a 100 million people freely travel overseas. There’s been an explosion of personal freedoms even under the Communist Party of China. China is transforming itself gradually and successfully — and China should be allowed to do so, instead of disrupting the process.

Mukhopadhyay: You spent many years working in the Singaporean government as a diplomat and were Singapore’s permanent representative to the United Nations. The UN is one of the West’s most powerful creations since World War II, but arguably it might also be its weakest link. What reforms must the West bring to institutions like the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to retain its pole position in the world order?

Mahbubani: I frequently speak about the East and West dynamic because the West has been trying to control the world for too long. I think this a strategic mistake. For example, you referred to the World Bank and the IMF in your question. Why is it that the World Bank, founded over 70 years ago, still insists that it must be , and why does the IMF insist that it should be led by a European — disqualifying 80% of the world’s population? Are they saying that there are no good Indians or Chinese who can run the World Bank? I think Raghuram Rajan, of India, will make a great head of the IMF. Ex-Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or Montek Singh Ahluwalia could run the World Bank.

It’s crazy that you have this condition, which is, in some ways, racist. Basically, it means that if you don’t belong to the Western nations, you can’t run these institutions. The time has come for the West to stop insisting that these institutions be controlled by the West. They should learn to be more democratic and offer the remaining 88% of the world an opportunity to manage these institutions. By the rest of the world, I don’t mean just China. China doesn’t make up the majority of Asia. Of the 3.5 to 3.6 billion Asians, China makes up only 1.4 billion. The rest of Asia can also have a say in managing these global institutions.

Mukhopadhyay: So, having Western powers dominate integral institutions like the UN Security Council (UNSC) really hinders world progress?

Mahbubani: Definitely, and it’s absurd! Singapore served for two years in the UNSC when I was an ambassador to the UN. I know the UNSC very well. In theory, it has 15 members — five permanent and 10 elected members. But this dynamic also shows you how distorted the UNSC has become. It is not controlled by the elected members, it is controlled by the five permanent members — the US, UK, China, Russia and France. And you can’t remove them because they can veto their own removal.

It is absurd that the only criteria for a permanent representation in the UNSC is that you must have won World War II in 1945. Over 74 years have gone by since 1945, so why do we still see the domination of these five countries in the UNSC? I don’t object to the veto. I believe that the UNSC should have the veto, but it should not belong to yesterday’s powers — it should belong to tomorrow’s powers.

For example, the United Kingdom, which is slowly becoming the disunited Kingdom, should give up its permanent membership to India, because India has a bigger claim to the seat given that its economy is bigger than that of UK’s. India’s population of 1.3 billion is about 20 times larger than that of the UK. It’s absurd that the UK has given up its colonial rights in many ways but it still wants to preserve its permanent seat in the UNSC. A change is necessary.

I proposed a 7-7-7 formula for reform of the UNSC in my book, “.” I also refer to this formula in “Has the West Lost It?” I have proposed that the new seven permanent members of the UNSC should be the US, Russia, China, India, Brazil and Nigeria (the latter three are the most populous states in the world), and one seat should be reserved for Europe, because it mainly operates as one economy. Therefore, the UNSC will not be dominated by the West anymore.

I have also proposed seven semi-permanent members, because when a country becomes a permanent member of the UNSC, its neighbor can object. For example, when Brazil wants to become a member, Argentina can object. If Nigeria wants to become a permanent member, South Africa can object. In the case of India, Pakistan blocks the claim. I propose a new scheme by which countries like Pakistan will become semi-permanent members of the Security Council, and they would have a permanent seat every eight years. Then there will be seven elected members from smaller states. This 7-7-7 formula will make the Security Council more representative of the 7.5 billion people of the world and not primarily the 12% who live in the West.

Mukhopadhyay: The Western media focus a lot on the political problems in Asian countries such as China, India and Pakistan. Recently, the UN Security Council the revocation of Article 370, which granted special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. What are the biggest political challenges for China and India in the long run?

Mahbubani: As I mentioned earlier, in PPP terms, the number one economy in the world is China, number three is India. By 2050, number one will be China, number two will be India, and number three will be the US. India is about to enter a geopolitical sweet spot. India will now be courted actively by both the US and China. In my book, I suggest that it’s time for India to be Machiavellian and to work out where its interests lie. Imagine a see-saw. On the see-saw, you have US and China sitting on opposite sides. The best place for India is to stand in the middle. If India puts its foot on the see-saw, it will affect the balance. For India to achieve this middle position, it needs to have equally good relations with both countries. India is capable of doing that, and if it does so, it will enhance its geopolitical usefulness, and its geopolitical weight will be far greater than that of Pakistan.

I love the Anglo-Saxon media and I think the Financial Times and The Economist are great newspapers. Nonetheless, they still reflect an Anglo-Saxon point of view. The Anglo-Saxon population of the world is confined to five countries: US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. If you add up the total numbers of Anglo-Saxon population in the world, it’s about 425 million. That’s just 5% of the world’s population. But this 5% dominates the global airwaves, and they usually give you all the bad news about India and Pakistan. They will never give you the good news.

In my new book, I talk about the success stories such as the startling fall in global poverty rates. A lot of the poverty reduction has taken place in Asia. Even countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have a bad image in the Western media, have improved their economies significantly. They have achieved over 5% growth in 20 years! It’s shocking to see how these countries have improved. In the case of Malaysia, the improvement is quite stunning: Its poverty rate went down to 1.7% in 2012 from 51.2% in 1958.

Mukhopadhyay: In June 2018, Joseph Nye criticized your book in the for making an “easy target” of the West, while giving China a “free ride.” You have repeatedly chosen to defend China and highlight the advantages of Xi Jinping’s “rational good governance.” Why did you call Xi Jinping an exemplar of good governance?

Mahbubani: Joseph Nye is an American social scientist and he believes in data. The data tells me that the only developed country where the average income of the bottom 50% has gone down over the last 30 years is the US. The country where the average income of the bottom 50% has gone up the fastest is China. You must judge good governance not in terms of good ideology, but in terms of results and its impact on the bottom 50%.

Clearly, I am not giving Xi Jinping a “free ride” — I am just providing the data. The data shows that the US has neglected its bottom 50%, and China has improved the well-being of its bottom 50% faster and more comprehensively than any other country. That’s what good governance is about. If you go by any indicator — poverty reduction, life expectancy, infant mortality — the data will show you that life expectancy is going down in the US. In China it’s the opposite. My next book, which I hope to produce next year, gives data on how the American elites have failed their working-class population. That’s why the US has elected an irrational leader, while China is lucky to have a rational leader like Xi Jinping.

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Trump is attacked very much in the West for everything he does. In this case, however, I think that Trump should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for talking to Kim Jong-un.

Amartya Sen once said that if you are going to have proper development, you need the invisible hand of the free market and the visible hand of free governance. What has gone wrong in the US is that you have the invisible hand, but not the visible hand. You can find a lot of data that will show you that the US today is no longer a democracy — it’s a plutocracy, where all the . By contrast, in both India and China, the government continues to play a significant role in the governing. That’s why the bottom 50% in India has experienced a significant improvement in the standard of living.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong suffers from the American problem where the bottom 50% of the population has not seen an improvement in their standard of living because it has become a plutocracy like the US. Good governance isn’t a fight about which country is a democracy and which isn’t. It is about which societies are taking care of the bottom 50% of the population.

Mukhopadhyay: Europe is undergoing a period of economic stagnation. Italy is on the brink of a major debt crisis, Greece has forced other European countries to question the existence of the eurozone. Post-Brexit, the , and even the German economy is teetering on the . How will the European slowdown affect the global economy? Will Asia suffer or will Europe’s loss be Asia’s gain?

Mahbubani: Both Europe and the US have to make strategic adjustments with the world to become more competitive. When India and China developed, they put in millions of workers into the global free-market system. Joseph Schumpeter calls this “creative destruction,” which is inevitable when you put new workers into the market, and other workers lose their jobs.

Europeans can still do well, but the European governments must help their people learn new skills, different from those China and India are strong in. European governments have failed to provide skills training, and this failure to take care of the working classes is the reason why the US now has a leader like Donald Trump, and in Europe populist parties are taking power. The Europeans can adjust and work with Asia, and that can be a great future for the world. I want the West to do well — I don’t want the West to fail. My book is intended to be a gift to the West and not a condemnation.

Mukhopadhyay: By imposing its version of democracy in places like Iraq, the West has caused much conflict. Does the West need to stop intervening, or should it make human rights, not geopolitics, the basis of its foreign policy?

Mahbubani: Before intervention, there’s one thing we need to address — bombing. The West needs to stop dropping bombs. China hasn’t fought a major war in 40 years, it has not fired a bullet across its border in 30 years. In contrast, even under the rule of Barack Obama, who was a peaceful American leader, in the last year of his presidency, the US over 26,000 bombs on seven countries. We have to stop dropping bombs. Look at Libya. France went into Libya, the US went into Libya, and now that the country is broken, they have left.

I would like to cite a quote in my book, by an Indian diplomat, Shyam Saran, on Western intervention: “In most cases, the post-intervention situation has been rendered worse, the violence more lethal, and the suffering of the people who were supposed to be protected much more severe than before. Iraq is an earlier instance, Libya and Syria are the more recent ones. A similar story is playing itself out in Ukraine. In each case, no careful thought was given to the possible consequences of the intervention.”

All I am saying is, Why waste money and resources to kill people and make countries worse off?

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Mukhopadhyay: However, US involvement in North Korea was a positive move to curb nuclear weaponry. How can the West continue to involve itself constructively in world affairs, particularly in countries like North Korea?

Mahbubani: Here I am going to say something surprising. Trump is attacked very much in the West for everything he does. In this case, however, I think that Trump should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for talking to Kim Jong-un. And he did the right thing in doing so, because he employed diplomacy. It’s a pity that Obama didn’t go to Iran, and Clinton didn’t go to Cuba to talk to Castro. I think Donald Trump is braver than his predecessors in talking to an enemy.

Even though Trump did the right thing, he was surrounded by advisers like John Bolton, who, instead of negotiating a deal with North Korea, wanted to strong-arm the country into acceding to all US demands, without offering anything in return. Now that Trump has sacked Bolton, I hope that he goes back to North Korea. I am convinced that the North Koreans are rational people. If you give them a win-win deal and reduce sanctions, they will begin to work with the rest of the world and begin to scale back on their nuclear weapons.

Mukhopadhyay: How can the West change its misunderstanding of the East?

Mahbubani: The West needs to stop being arrogant and start listening to the East. I have published seven books and realized that there is a great paradox about the US: It has the world’s most open society, but it has a closed mind. The Americans don’t like to listen to foreign voices. There’s a kind of a bubble that American intellectuals are caught in, in which they don’t listen to foreign voices. I write sharply to break through this bubble so that they listen to foreign voices.

If the US and Europe can learn to listen to the world and break through their bubble, they will learn to listen to foreign voices. I will give you an example. When Europe and India were negotiating a free trade agreement, Europe told India that you must respect the European human rights provisions. Shashi Tharoor, a member of Parliament in India, gave a brilliant and said: “I am convinced that if Europe were to insist on imposing conditionality of such a sort on the FTA, then India would refuse to cooperate. You can’t forget history, you can’t forget that for 200 years others have led India’s business and politics, and it is much more important for us to insist on our own rights than to strike an FTA. As simple as that.”

Therefore, it’s time for the West to stop being arrogant toward the East and start listening.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Western Dominance Is a Historical Aberration appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In the US, the situation is particularly worrying as a populist president appears to be damaging the country’s democracy through his divisive rhetoric, his contempt for the rule of law and his fiery attacks on the media and his critics. President Donald Trump’s incendiary language and his aggressive comments about immigrants, Muslims and Mexicans have emboldened white nationalists. Law enforcement authorities have  about the nationwide rise of crimes linked to white supremacy.

Some of Trump’s most outspoken critics, including the 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, have  the president a “racist” and blamed him for the uptick in violence across the country. A Quinnipiac University poll published in late July found that a majority of voters, 51%,  that President Trump is racist. The  of African American voters who agreed was far higher: 80%.

The president, however, considers himself to be the “least racist person” in the world. He recently  reporters, “What I’ve done for African Americans in two and a half years, no president has been able to do anything like it.”

Henry Giroux is a prominent American-Canadian cultural critic and public intellectual. He is one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the US. His latest book is called “.”

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Professor Giroux about the challenges faced by US democracy, President Trump’s immigration policies and his administration’s crackdown on education.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: In a tweet on June 16, President Donald Trump suggested that his supporters may want him to stay longer than two terms in the White House. It wasn’t the first time that he has raised the question of extending his presidential terms in violation of the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution. Do you think he will be successful in realizing this dream? What does this proposal tell us about Trump’s worldview?

Henry Giroux: The issue is not whether he will be successful, but what the statement suggests is about Trump’s embrace of anti-democratic and authoritarian principles. He has made it clear that he views the Constitution as an impediment to his mode of authoritarian governance and, at the same time, he is feeding bait to elements of his right-wing fascist base suggesting that he may resort to violence in order to impose martial law and refuse to step down if he loses the 2020 election. His comments about extending his term in violation of the 22nd Amendment is simply code for a trial run for his expanding fascist politics.

Ziabari: Many critics of Trump say he doesn’t have any respect for the rule of law, reflected in his efforts to obstruct the Mueller investigation, his attempts to prosecute his political opponents and critics, and his disdain for the US judicial system. Why is this president so hostile toward the concept of rule of law?

Giroux: All authoritarians are hostile to the rule of law because it is the one institution that they sometimes have trouble controlling and because it poses a threat to them by implementing judgments and laws that may function to hold power accountable. The rule of law suggests a division of power, a sharing of modes of governance, the rule of checks and balances — all of which Trump deplores because he disdains democracy and views its institutions as a threat to his narcissistic notions of loyalty and power.    

Ziabari: Trump made immigration reform a top priority of his administration. Do you consider his Muslim ban, his crackdown on Mexican immigrants and his child separation policy at the US border morally defensible and consistent with the obligations of the United States as a superpower?

Giroux: While there is a tradition in the United States of being hostile to immigrants, foreigners and those deemed [as the] “other” by virtue of their religions, politics, ethnicity, and race, Trump has elevated this toxic policy to a new level through both his words, actions and policies. He is an ultra-nationalist, supports the tenets of white supremacy, and mimics and embraces the logic of racial cleansing.

In this sense, he is reproducing racist and eliminationist policies that we saw in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the endpoint of which are policies of state violence, walls, detention centers and a politics of disappearance.

Ziabari: How would you describe the situation at the US-Mexico border? Building a wall on the border with Mexico was one of President Trump’s main campaign promises, and he secured $6.1 billion in funding by May this year to build 336 miles of a new border wall to impede the inflow of migrants. Does Trump’s wall contribute to protecting US security interests? Is it necessary?

Giroux: Trump’s wall has nothing to do with security. It is a symbol of nativism and racism that is designed to mobilize his fascist and racist base of support. This is not a security issue, it is an anti-immigration issue designed to reinforce the notion that citizenship is only for white people and that the public sphere is contaminated by the presence of those considered to have no rights to American citizenship.

Ziabari: In one of your recent articles, you noted that “authoritarianism and the expanding architecture of violence” are on the rise in the United States, which has long been proud of its democratic institutions. What do you think is the reason? Why is US democracy waning and losing its soul to ultra-nationalism and white supremacy?

Giroux: American society, especially since the 1970s and especially after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 has become militarized. First, as the welfare state has declined, it has been replaced by a punishing state, one that views violence as an organizing principle to best solve all social problems. Hence, one consequence is the largest prison system in the world. On the other hand, the model of the prison, with its emphasis on punishment, has become a model for schools and other public spheres.

Second, as American society is militarized, we have witnessed the growth of the militarization of the police and the surveillance, all of which reinforce a climate of fear, insecurity and violence. Third, violence is both a primary source of entertainment and profit for Hollywood, video culture, the gun industry and the international arms industry.

As these registers of violence bear down on American society, with its increasing culture of fear and a president that both [legitimizes] and enables violence against dissenters, journalists and others, he has produced a massive growth in violence by white supremacists who no longer feel that they have to hide in the shadows.

Ziabari: According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March this year, 82% of American adults believe Muslims are subjected to at least some discrimination in the US today. Religious liberty and tolerance are fundamental US values. Why do Muslims in the US face growing discrimination?

Giroux: Because Trump has made his racism against Muslims part of a national campaign to cater to the views of his hard-line anti-immigration, anti-Muslim supporters. Trump views Muslims in general as terrorists, and this attitude fuels the climate of fear he needs to gain support from various extremist groups in the US.

Ziabari: Cesar Sayoc, the man convicted for sending 16 packages containing pipe bombs to prominent critics of Trump, is said to have been inspired by the president’s ideology. It’s also understood that he was obsessed with Fox News. What role have Trump, his associates and his media patrons played in stoking right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism in the United States?

Giroux: The right-wing media, such as Fox News, have consistently reproduced, further legitimated and enabled Trump’s racist views to be endlessly circulated and distributed throughout the US. What is clear is that they share Trump’s racist views and have been instrumental in normalizing his discourse of fear and his inflammatory rhetoric of fear and hatred. They are, to put it bluntly, racist disimagination machines that trade in white supremacist ideologies and a hatred of those they consider a threat to white people.

Ziabari: Earlier this year, President Trump requested a $7.1 billion reduction in the Education Department’s budget for 2020 and has been courting the idea of dismantling it. Why is the president cracking down on the foundations of public higher education? Does he feel threatened by the teachings and skills offered by universities and academic institutions?

Giroux: Critical thinking, an oppositional media, dissent and informed citizens are dangerous to Trump because they pose a threat to demagogues such as him. Hence, Trump not only celebrates lies, ignorance and stupidity through his own actions and language, but he is also trying to destroy institutions such as public and higher education that contain the possibility of creating individuals who can think critically and act responsibly. For Trump, a critical and informed public pose a threat to his power, so he wants to destroy any institution that might produce informed citizens.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post White Supremacists Are No Longer Hiding in the Shadows appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

This negative view has discouraged many people — mostly in the West — from visiting the country. Yet there are travel connoisseurs who have explored Iran, a nation associated with names such as Persepolis and Avicenna.

Click here to view the photo essay.

Reinier van Oorsouw is a filmmaker and photographer from the Netherlands who has a keen interest in travel. He often visits places that are not common to the average person. In a five-episode documentary titled “Iran: Is It Really That Bad?” Reinier sheds light on the unseen aspects of life in the country. He tries to figure out if the mainstream media’s depiction of Iran is realistic and engages with Iranian people to understand what their ambitions, interests and worldview are.

In this edition of , 51łÔąĎ talks to van Oorsouw about his documentary and his observations of the country.

The transcript has been edited for clarity and the interview took place earlier this year.

Kourosh Ziabari: Where did the idea of making a documentary about your trip to Iran come from? How has the feedback been from both an international audience as well as Iranians?

Reinier van Oorsouw: Whenever Iran is in the news, it is about something negative. That made me skeptical — can a country be as bad as the media depicts it as? I wanted to investigate for myself if Iran is open to foreigners and if it is a safe place to visit, and also share my travel experiences with the world.

From Iran, the majority of feedback is positive. People are happy that a different light is being shone on their country, though some say I don’t show enough from real life. From international audiences, I had a mixed response: Some people are genuinely surprised, while others think I’ve been hired by the Iranian government.

Ziabari: You might have received warnings about traveling to Iran from friends and family members before boarding the plane. What were the reactions of your relatives and colleagues when you first raised the idea of traveling to Iran?

Van Oorsouw: Yes! The responses from my surroundings were quite negative. But their cautions were all based on what they had seen in the media, rather than their own experiences. And that was exactly what I wanted to find out. Then again, I had obviously done some research by reading other travel experiences, which all seemed to say more positive things than the general media, hence my expectations were quite mild.

Ziabari: How strong are the stereotypes about Iran in your community and country? What are some of the most notable misconceptions that you think are not representative of the reality of Iran?

Van Oorsouw: The general public thinks Iran is “unsafe,” a sandy country at war. But that’s just based on bias. The most notable misconception is that people think everyone is a religious fanatic. But I experienced that to be the other way around. Sure, there is a group of people who are very strict in their religion, but that happens in every country. The difference in Iran is that these people have a big say, compared to other countries.

I found people on the street to be warm, friendly and interested, rather than the “angry Western-hating” stereotype people might have in mind. We were invited into people’s houses on almost a daily basis. Overall, Iran was one of my best travel experiences.

Ziabari: Why do you think Iran is misunderstood internationally? Is it something that has to do with the Iranian government and needs to be fixed by the authorities?

Van Oorsouw: Well, the news coming out of Iran, which is reported in international media, is quite negative. If I look at the bigger picture, I feel this is how the West wants to showcase Iran in politics, and the media plays along. The Iranian government might be too strict for Western countries to understand. Generally, the divide between Christianity and Islam is misunderstood from both sides, and this is what politicians “play” with.

I feel that people — whether in Iran, Europe, the US or any other country on this planet — all want the same thing: a good life for themselves and their families and friends. Politics is just a game being played on all ends, but that doesn’t represent the general reality on the ground in a country. Most people have an association with a country — if they have ever heard that there has been a war, then this image sticks for a long time. That might also be imprinted in the memory of people.

Ziabari: What is the most remarkable characteristic of Iranian people in your view? Why do you think they’re so keen to paint a better picture of their country in the eyes of foreign observers?

Van Oorsouw: Whenever I said to people in Iran that I was on holiday, the response I got was a very surprised one. It’s a bit like people feel inferior due to the image that’s portrayed about the country. Some asked me, “Weren’t you afraid?” If you feel you are misunderstood, you try to correct the misconception. I feel that is what a lot of people want to do. The “most remarkable characteristic,” in my opinion, is hospitability — people tend to take that very seriously.

Ziabari: It was evident in your film that young Iranians are eager to have a free, comfortable and enjoyable life, have fun and make contact with the outside world. Can you talk more about your observation of Iranian youths and their desires?

Van Oorsouw: True! I feel that most young people are looking for more freedom. These were the people I came into contact with easiest. Of course, there might also be another side of people who have different desires, but I didn’t manage to really get in touch with those people, so that might be a bit unbalanced. However, the majority of young Iranians are modern, have an open look at life, are well-informed and have a good education. I feel there is a desire to make more out of life, especially culturally and in entertainment. Hence, a lot of things happen underground and people push the limits.

I met people fully covered in tattoos, with colored hair, etc. This might be a way of rebelling within the boundaries of the law. In my country, youngsters experiment as well, but mostly with other things. In my experience, this is a phase for most people. A guy who had a mohawk at my [high] school now works as an accountant and wears khaki trousers.

When I see the rich culture that Iran has in terms of old architecture, music and food, I feel there has been a lot of space for creativity in previous times, and what was culturally appropriate at the time but that is lacking now. If people get more [freedom] to express themselves in “modern” themes like sports, music or arts, I’m sure Iran could be a hotspot.

Ziabari: Iran is not the only Muslim-majority country in its region, and it is not the only conservative society in the world. Do you think religion and religiousness will prevent Iranian youths from fulfilling their desire for a better life and enjoying greater civil liberties?

Van Oorsouw: The boundaries set by a government and religion is never to everyone’s liking. I feel in every country, a [balance] is being tried to set. Maybe [some] people think it is too liberal [while others think] it might be too strict. Politicians have the job to keep their ears open and fight to maintain this balance. However, from my personal experience of people I met in Iran, this balance is a bit off. Then again, I mostly met people who would like more civil liberties. So, whether this balance is accurate might be better judged by inhabitants and political observers.

The people I met would love more liberties to express themselves. People who agree with everything the government does might live a very complete life. But as there is a movement to more liberties, I feel there is a growing number of unhappy people who feel restrained.

Ziabari: To what extent is Iran’s public image influenced by its blemished relations with the West? Do you think the portrayal of Iran in the mainstream media in the West will become rosier if it improves its foreign relations?

Van Oorsouw: I feel that the politicians in the West are sticking with the negative image of Iran as it favors them. This resonates in favor when the West put restrictions in place or does other things that might be felt as unfair if the public wouldn’t provide support.

The Iranian government could also play its part by showing how reality is on-the-ground and debunking myths or stereotypes. This is happening in small portions — like a Dutch reporter who has been living in Iran for about 17 years who’s done a documentary series about Iran — he’s called Thomas Erdbrink. A very good insight into the real daily life in Iran. More of these things would be good to shape a more accurate view of Iran.

Ziabari: What’s your advice to your fellow citizens who either plan to travel to Iran or have thought about doing so? Do you recommend Iran as a must-see tourist destination?

Van Oorsouw: Iran is a perfect destination to travel to. Travel is comfortable. Traveling between cities is well-organized and car rentals are also easy. Visas for a lot of European citizens can be arranged upon arrival, flight connections are plenty and the food is great. Iran is full of culture and history, nature comes in many shapes and sizes, and people are all very friendly and warm. There are plenty of reasons to visit.

*[Click here to view the photo essay.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Is It Safe to Travel to Iran? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

As reported by , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that extreme sea levels, often occurring once a century, will now strike annually on many coasts by 2050, despite efforts to curb carbon emissions. The IPCC that the international community urgently cuts fossil fuel emissions. Otherwise, an eventual sea-level rise by more than four meters would redraw geographical boundaries and affect billions of people. 

In this guest edition of The Interview, Vishal Manve talks to Harjeet Singh, the global lead on climate change at ActionAid, about the impact of the recent climate strikes and the urgency to phase out coal-fired power plants. 

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Vishal Manve: Climate strikes have occurred around the world in 150 countries. Can you explain the significance of such a youth-led movement in addressing the climate emergency?  

Harjeet Singh: After decades of ignoring climate warnings, the world is finally waking up to the reality of the climate crisis. Young people have played a key role in that awakening. After realizing that the world’s adults have not been taking the issue seriously enough, that they are likely to face a future of climate catastrophe, youth have taken to striking, organizing and marching to get the world to protect their future. In 2018, Greta Thunberg said: “You say that you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future.” Finally, the adults are listening. But the narrative that climate change will harm children’s future is still a perspective of the “privileged north.”&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;

In the “global south,” climate change is not something that is coming in the future. For many young people in the “global south,” the climate crisis is already here. Young people in rural communities see the struggles their parents face when growing food [amid a lack of] rainfall, floods and rising sea levels, and they see little future for themselves. Climate change is driving youth migration to urban areas, and urban youth unemployment is growing as a result. 

As the current generation of young people grows up, their future is frighteningly uncertain. Young people in the “global south” are already dealing with the impacts of climate change. But their energy, drive, innovation and solidarity are also the best chance we have to avert the climate crisis.

Manve: From Berlin to New York and New Delhi, hundreds of thousands of protesters were recently on the streets. Do you think politicians and governments will urgently act on the climate crisis, and do you expect policy-based action?  

Singh: Young people have taken the matter into their own hands. They will keep marching ahead, showing the way. At the UN Climate Summit, young people exposed the shameless lack of leadership from heads of state, who looked the other way for decades as the climate crisis escalated and the planet burned.

But the global climate strikes have raised awareness and expectations of what real climate action looks like. Leaders will find that the public will no longer be duped by tiny steps spun as huge milestones. If they want to stay on as leaders, they will need to be courageous and not cowardly. The global marches are creating the conditions for real and meaningful policy shifts. 

Manve: A warming planet is hurting millions and rising oceans are a grave threat. A recent UN report says over 40% of coastal regions will face the risk of flooding by 2100. What do you think communities and leaders should do to address these crucial issues?

Singh:  Rich countries must take a lead in dramatically reducing their emissions so that we don’t breach the crucial 1.5-degree threshold, after which the impacts would be devastating. Poor communities living in low-lying coastal areas and along riverbanks need urgent support in climate-proofing their homes, farms and livelihoods.

But the people whose homes and land are at the risk of being washed away or swallowed up will need to relocate to safer locations in a planned manner. Their governments must proactively enable this planned relocation in a participatory and just way, which will require financial and technological support from the international community.

Manve: India is a signatory to the climate accords but is investing in coal-fired plants and receiving investment in oil refineries. Do you think India needs to seriously phase out its coal dependency for energy sufficiency? 

Singh: India has an obligation to improve the quality of life for its citizens and scale up access to energy. But the country continues to rely on locally available coal, which brings huge environmental and human costs. We have reached a stage when the cost per unit of renewable energy is cheaper than energy sourced from coal. Rich countries should support India with the upfront costs of setting up renewable energy projects, as part of their international obligation. This will help India reject dirty fossil fuel-based energy and transition toward renewables at a much faster pace.

Manve: The big four, including China, India and the US, are responsible for major global emissions. While the US shut down its last coal-fired plant, India still is building them. How long before an emerging economy like India chooses renewable sources of energy?

Singh: India has made ambitious commitments to dramatically increase the share of non-fossil fuel-based energy, but it is yet to make a plan for phasing out its reliance on coal completely. On one hand, it needs to show courage, while on the other, the role of the international financial community to invest from a longer-term perspective in renewable energy projects is vital.

Manve: What key factors are stymying emerging economies from choosing sustainable methods of energy utility and switching to noncarbon sources of energy? 

Singh: What’s the solution? The emerging economies have a challenge of taking people out of poverty by creating jobs, alongside adopting greener sources of energy and helping people cope with climate impacts. They have limited resources that they cannot divert toward greener technologies, away from development needs such as education and health care.

The renewable energy infrastructure requires upfront investments that developing countries like India cannot mobilize on their own. The role of developed countries is crucial in providing finance and enabling the transition to faster adoption of greener technologies in developing countries like India. 

Manve: The global fund to fight climate change is still far off the mark. Do you think developed nations need to do more to help other countries catch up?  

Singh: The obligation of rich countries to provide climate finance to poorer countries suffering from climate impacts is a huge but poorly understood dimension of climate action. Vulnerable countries are already spending their scarce resources on recovering from the disaster that they have not caused or they are trying to improve preparedness for future climate events. They have little money left over for development, let alone transitioning to greener pathways.

It is, therefore, absolutely necessary for rich countries to step up and respond to the call for much more climate finance. Rich countries started the climate fire. It is their responsibility to put it out.

Manve: Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced banning single-use plastic in an advisory manner. Following this, a few conglomerates announced their own measures. Do you think this will have an impact on how India produces and disposes of off its waste as landfills pile up with mountains of trash?  

Singh: It’s definitely a step in the right direction. However, these measures will not be enough to change the conversation and be a springboard for the necessary policy action that is required to make a change at a larger scale. The government must come up with a clear policy framework and implementation architecture to enable the change. It should also clamp down on companies, particularly from the e-commerce sector, that are generating huge quantities of non-biodegradable packaging material that adds to the waste.  

Manve: How crucial is climate justice and reparations to the entire global movement of tackling or addressing climate change?  

Singh: Climate justice cannot be achieved without the transfer of resources from the “global north” to developing countries as the former are responsible for causing the climate crisis. Communities who are vulnerable and had no role in causing the problem are now being affected by rising seas and extreme weather events. Vulnerable communities need financial support to safeguard their livelihoods and climate-proof their farming and homes.

Developing countries are fighting for a reliable international system that can ensure the flow of finance that will let them rebuild their economies and help people recover from the impacts of climate change. We will not be able to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees without scaled-up mitigation action in developing countries. The transition to a green economy in developing countries cannot be achieved without adequate financial support from rich nations.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Financing Can Help Developing Countries Reject Fossil Fuels appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

President Trump is being censured by critics for not having a clear and robust Middle East strategy. He is said to only increase the likelihood of an unwanted, new military confrontation in an already volatile region, resulting from miscalculations that appear to be inevitable when tensions run high. In a recent op-ed, the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer that Trump and his team appear to have no idea what policy they should adopt, calling his Iran agenda a “lose-lose strategy.”

The successive US administrations’ Middle East policy in the recent decades has been often described as failed and unsuccessful. Perhaps the most notable example of US failure in the Middle East is the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens and laid the groundwork for the rise of the Islamic State. While it is difficult to calculate the exact human cost of the conflict, the Iraq Body Count project puts the number of between 183,774 and 206,403, while other analysis suggests an excess of since 2003, and possibly even .

As a region suffering from corruption, violence and authoritarianism, the Middle East needs solutions, diplomacy, investment and international assistance to be able to overcome its challenges. However, the Trump administration’s noticeable absence of strategy has only made the situation worse.

Scott Ritter, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, was the United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, becoming an outspoken critic of the US foreign policy in the Middle East. He argued that Saddam Hussein possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Ritter about the status quo in the Middle East, President Trump’s foreign policy, US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the experience of the Iraq War.

The transcript had been lightly edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is perceptibly based on avoiding military conflicts while being aggressive and assertive. Do you see similarities between Trump’s approach to international affairs and President George W. Bush’s foreign policy agenda?

Scott Ritter: There is an amateurishness that underpins Trump’s foreign policy that makes it difficult to seriously evaluate the extent to which he genuinely seeks to avoid military conflict. One can be assertive and aggressive without actively posturing for conflict. Trump’s blustering creates the conditions for conflict that are only avoided when others back down, such as was the case — initially — with North Korea. Iran is not backing down, and as a result Trump may soon find himself backed into a corner, compelled to fight a war no one wants. The main difference between Trump and Bush 45 is that Bush was serious about projecting US power through military force — Afghanistan and Iraq prove that. If Trump finds himself at war, it will be because of accidental incompetence, as opposed to premeditation.

Ziabari: Upon taking office, President Trump laid out his foreign policy doctrine under three major bullet points, one of which was “embracing diplomacy” aimed at making old enemies into new friends. Do you think Trump has been successful in fulfilling this promise? For example, in the case of Iran, has Trump given diplomacy any chance to work?

Ritter: Diplomacy is premised upon the art of listening, as well as speaking. It is accomplished in an atmosphere of compromise. There is nothing about Trump’s execution of his foreign policy objectives which hints at a willingness to either listen or compromise. If there was, we would still be a member of the JCPOA [Joint Cooperation Plan of Action] and attempting to negotiate our differences without the looming threat of war; we would have an interim denuclearization agreement with North Korea which saw the major facility at Yong Bon dismantled under US supervision while sanctions were eased, and discussions ongoing on how to complete the task; and the US would remain a part of the INF Treaty while negotiating deep and meaningful cuts in strategic nuclear weapons with Russia.

Trump is the antithesis of diplomacy: He does not exercise it, therefore it is irresponsible to assess the probability of Trump-based diplomacy having a chance of succeeding.

Ziabari: President Trump’s view on the Iraq War was that it destabilized the Middle East. The outcome of the war was that it toppled a dictator and, at the same time, caused a massive loss of life. You’ve been engaged with Iraq closely. Was the Iraq War a mistake? Was President Trump talking about the human cost of the war when he said it was a “big fat mistake”?

Ritter: The US decision to invade and subsequently occupy Iraq in 2003 will go down in history as one of the worst foreign policy mistakes since the end of World War II. It paved the way for decades of instability and conflict in the Middle East, Southwest Asia and North Africa. It hastened the decline of the US as a global power. However, giving Trump credit for being “right” on Iraq is misplaced. He cannot articulate the complexity of the issues involved in the decision to go to war with Iraq, or detail the real costs, human or otherwise, brought on by the decision to go to war. He surrounds himself with advisers who believe the US was justified in invading Iraq, and pushes policies which continue or expand on the policy posture of US exceptionalism [and] domination that drove US-Iraqi relations since the 1980s.

Ziabari: Does President Trump’s confrontational approach toward Iran and his uncompromising rhetoric bear similarities to the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq?

Ritter: In so far as Trump’s posture vis-à-vis Iran is predicated on flawed intelligence about Iran’s nuclear ambition, and the US decision to invade Iraq justified by flawed intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMD capability, one could draw such a conclusion. One must keep in mind, however, that President George W. Bush had inherited a policy of regime change in Iraq that dated back to his father’s administration, and was influenced by the policies of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — there was continuity of purpose over three successive administrations.

Bush’s decision to invade was simply the logical conclusion of nearly two decades of flawed policy. Trump, on the other hand, has broken decisively with the policies of President Obama, and in doing so reembraced policy objectives and postures that had been proven to be fundamentally flawed. There is no history backing up Trump’s pronouncements, simply the overheated rhetoric of a dilletante.

Ziabari: In an interview with CNN in 1999, you said you believed the United States seeks stability in the Middle East, which is a noble objective. Do you think this is still the case and that the Trump administration is in favor of stability and peace in the Middle East? Do you think successive administrations after Bill Clinton had a thorough understanding of the realities of the Middle East?

Ritter: One can make the case that the US has always sought stability in the Middle East. The problem is how one defines “stability.” For the Clinton administration, stability hinged on an Israeli-Palestinian peace process and containing the ambitions of Iraq and Iran, while strengthening the hand of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab nations. George W. Bush based his concept of stability on destroying al-Qaeda and removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Barack Obama recognized the limits of US power and influence, and sought to pull back militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan while reengaging on an Israel-Palestine peace plan. Trump seeks regime change in Iran, and an unrealistic “deal of the century” that resolves in one fell swoop the Arab-Israeli conflict. All plans are predicated on the notion that the US not only knows best but is uniquely empowered to impose its will on the region. All failed or will fail. The sad truth is when the US articulates a desire for peace and stability in the Middle East, the end result is war and regional instability.

Ziabari: The US government invested heavily, both politically and militarily, and also financially, in removing Saddam Hussein from power and rebuilding Iraq. But do you think the investment has paid off, and that Iraq today is the stable democracy the US authorities wanted it to be?

Ritter: The US decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power has resulted in the furtherance of regional instability, the empowerment of Iran, the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of the US, the degradation of US military power and the rise of anti-American Islamic fundamentalist terrorism globally. Iraq is a shell of its former self. There is simply no way anyone can realistically and responsibly articulate a case for Iraq being called a US success story. If anything, the case is that Iraq is an Iranian success story.

Ziabari: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was a major non-proliferation accord, and it was working as testified by the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA. However, President Trump pulled out of the deal, stating that it was a weak agreement. Won’t the collapse of the JCPOA make the world a less safe place?

Ritter: The JCPOA was a stop-gap measure designed to halt a dangerous slide toward war. It was premised on a formula designed to keep Iran above a so-called “one-year breakout window,” that being the time needed for an unconstrained Iran to manufacture enough fissile material to produce a single nuclear weapon. It had, and has, two fatal flaws. The first is that the US never disavowed its intelligence assessments that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. As such, the myth of Iranian nuclear intent continues to be fostered by Israel and US hardliners. Second, the “sunset” clauses of the JCPOA position Iran to be in a position to violate the “one year” breakout red line at the conclusion of the JCPOA, creating the situation where Iran can produce unlimited amounts of enriched uranium in an unconstrained fashion while the US continues to assess that Iran maintains an undeclared nuclear weapons program.

The JCPOA simply pushed the Iranian nuclear issue down the road. All Trump did in withdrawing from the JCPOA was act on this reality. The only way the JCPOA can make the world a safe place is for the international community, including the US and Israel, to change their collective intelligence assessments to reflect the reality that Iran never had, and does not have, a nuclear weapons program. When this is done, then Iran can operate as permitted under Article IV of the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons] without fear of military reprisals. Then and only then will the world be a safer place.

Ziabari: What are the most pressing challenges the United States faces in the Middle East today? Do you think the White House is on the right path to addressing them?

Ritter: The most challenging issue is self-policing US behavior in the Middle East. The region is capable of achieving a self-policing equilibrium without US interference. Iran and Saudi Arabia are capable of diplomatic engagement that could produce common objectives that lead to peaceful coexistence; it is the US presence that makes this impossible. Iran has reached the extent of its post-9/11 Iraq invasion regional realignment; this cannot be undone, and must be accepted as reality by the US and the Gulf Arab states.

The biggest problem is Israel. The US must stop coddling the Israeli government when it comes to the issue of Palestinian statehood and empowering Israel to believe that unilateral acts of military aggression against its neighbors is acceptable behavior. The notion that the US can negotiate a “deal of the century” is derived from the hubris of US exceptionalism that drives US policy. The US has a role to play in global affairs. But the day of the US being able to dictate an outcome based upon unilateral input is long past. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is heading down the wrong way on the path it would need to take to rectify the errors of the past and put the US on course to have a meaningful impact of regional peace and security.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Trump Might Find Himself Accidentally at War appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

In Britain, show that 31% of the population believes Islam poses a threat to the British way of life, with 18% holding extremely negative views of Muslims. A 2017 undertaken in 27 European nations illustrates how Islamophobia has become one of the most “commonplace expressions of racist prejudice,” with countries like Germany experiencing a threefold increase in attacks on Muslims from 2015-16, following the arrival of over 1 million migrants at the height of the refugee crisis. This year alone, there have been over , with assaults estimated to have post-9/11 levels back in 2017.  

Islamophobia has become a prevalent talking point for political leaders, used to garner public support, distract from other pressing issues and perpetuate an us-versus-them narrative for political gain. Conservative political leaders have played a major role in inciting anti-Muslim sentiment by exaggerating threats of homegrown terrorism and often painting Islam as incompatible with Western values. Even when political leaders do not appear to be deliberately targeting Muslims, they often fail to represent minorities’ interests or respond to their needs. This apathy can further entrench structural barriers that minorities, including Muslims, face, not to mention impacts on their access to equal opportunities.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Tahir Abbas, assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at the University of Leiden and a visiting senior fellow at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Abbas has written widely on Islamophobia, including most recently on how Britain’s Conservative Party from exploiting it. His , “Islamophobia and Radicalisation: A Vicious Cycle,” released on September 23, explores how Islamophobia and radicalization intersect and reinforce each other.

The text has been edited for clarity.

Dina Yazdani: Please set the stage for us: How would you define Islamophobia?

Tahir Abbas: In very simple terms, it’s the idea of the fear or dread of Islam and Muslims. It’s a broad definition that was largely put forward by the Runnymede Trust in 1996, which attempted to try and capture the meaning and the impact of Islamophobia at a time when the Bosnian crisis was going on, at a time when geopolitics was shifting away from the old East-West problematics. I think it’s that, and there are interrelated concepts within that space. We have issues of direct observable problems of structural racism and discrimination — violence toward women who wear the headscarf, mosque attacks — to issues around cultural distancing — stereotyping, orientalism — which has a much wider societal impact, not just in terms of outcomes on institutions, like when it comes to hiring practices, which suggests Islamophobia in structural terms, but we also see casual racism toward Muslims as a whole, which is much more of a cultural phenomenon.

Yazdani: Where has its front stage been?

Abbas: Well, a lot of it is coming out of the “global north” experience, predominantly, starting out in Western Europe with the experience of postwar migration acting as a backdrop to that reality. And then, more recently, across the pond from North Africa, where we see Muslim groups who were relatively integrated and assimilated into American society pre-9/11 finding themselves facing similar issues around discrimination and victimization — disproportionately in terms of the criminal justice system, vilification of the press, demonization in the press by groups presenting a them-versus-us dichotomy.

Yazdani: In a 2018 for the Middle East Eye, you described there was “mounting evidence” of “organized Islamophobia” in both Europe and the US, and that “the lived realities of brown and black people in some of the poorest parts of the country is ongoing evidence of policies that have not only excluded minorities but also demonised them.” What policies are fueling this anti-Muslim sentiment and reinforcing these divisions across the Western world?

Abbas: These policies are an implication rather than a direct result, in the sense that when we think about housing policies, we think about it as social policies allocation. So, for example, migrant groups coming into the UK in the 1990s to the 2000s from Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently from Somalia, Syria, etc., are located into areas that are experiencing downward pressures, areas that face decline and that have an existing majority population that is feeling left behind and alienated. So when they see these Muslim groups moving into their areas, seemingly protected by the state, they feel resentful and sometimes mobilized around this.

When we see some of these activities across Britain and Europe, we see that it’s often these poor parts with Muslim groups where there are more profound patterns of resistance around that. So at one level it’s a question of social housing allocation, and on another level it has to do with housing and markets, and the inability of Muslim groups to find themselves in the position to move out of poorer areas due to various gatekeeping issues within the private housing sector.

There is also exclusionary behavior at the level of the state, and even the [market] — this notion of “white flight,” which is crude. But it tells us something about when certain areas have minorities, Muslims moving into them has a knock-on effect of reducing average household prices and increasing the rate of concentration of those new groups. Often, people who come to those areas wanting to share a particular lived experience has resulted in existing issues of isolation and alienation, such as Muslim groups who grew up in poorer areas, whose children qualify for universities and get professional qualifications, who don’t immediately move into purely affluent, white neighborhoods even if they could because they want to retain certain links with their communities of origin — including, places of worship, etc. So there is often a tradeoff. It’s also a result of fear and a result of discrimination, because upwardly mobilizing Muslims going into affluent white areas faces hostility and racism of a different kind.

Yazdani: Building on that knock-on effect, what effect have policies promoting multiculturalism or, on the other hand, integration, had on Islamophobia?

Abbas: Integration is the idea of the state providing certain opportunities, spaces for minorities because they have signed a contract of sorts that acknowledges their citizenship and status in society legally, but also culturally, socially, politically. It’s the idea of a social contract. In exchange, the minorities provide a sense of engagement, participation — they pay taxes, they turn up to vote. In return, the state says it recognizes that they may want places of worship, mosques, Islamic centers — and that we are tolerant and open-minded enough to provide that, because it’s only right, and also because we afforded the same kind of privileges to other minority groups over the years.

Although, for example, when it comes to Muslim education, Muslim education [in Britain] didn’t kick into place until 1997, although there have been Jewish schools with state school funding since 1944, although it’s a much smaller community. Integration requires a sense of acceptance — and a sense of acceptance on the part of minority communities that they have a role and a sense of responsibility as citizens. There has been increasing pressures on the idea of differences, which might be seen as acceptable in a diverse society; the idea that diversity itself has been placed under pressure because there’s been a real resistance to multiculturalism, particularly in light of events like 9/11 and 7/7 [London bombings], where it was felt that some of these differences are spaces in which extremism flourishes and where there is a menace for national security to think about.

It’s a misunderstanding. It’s extremism, and also a lack of enthusiasm about the idea of diversity among particular institutions and individuals in elite society.

Yazdani: What are the most egregious examples of organized Islamophobia over the past few years? Where has it been manifested?

Abbas: A lot of it has been online, and it has quite a degree of mobilization online, in terms of pushing out Islamophobia sentiments — including notions of fake news, exaggerated news, distorted news — which perpetuate the almost daily view that Muslims are a problem or a threat, a fifth column. The tropes of Islamophobia are that [Muslims] are disproportionately feeding off the welfare state, and all of these concerns around extremism and terrorism which never really go away and keep bubbling up. So the online space is a major space in which the sentiments of Islamophobia are generated, repackaged, reformulated and recommunicated.

Some of that is orchestrated, well-organized and well-funded, as has been reported by many in terms of the far right. The role of various groups, which exist to fund anti-Muslim sentiment online, is to push Islamophobic sentiment for their own political means, some of which leans into far-right thinking.

Yazdani: Following that far-right thinking, what role have policymakers, lawmakers and politicians played in fueling this anti-Muslim sentiment?

Abbas: We have this area of populism, authoritarianism and elitism that sort of characterizes a lot of the “global north.” We’ve got the global economic crash of 2008 as a recent backdrop here, huge wealth, inequalities as a result of the disproportionate impact of austerity on poorer groups — we’ve seen all of these effects on Britain, [] in the UN special rapporteur report, etc. This has been an ideological program, not one derived from sound economic thinking even.

Economic inequalities, in these times, have resulted in political polarization. The center is hollowed out, and it’s the peripheral voices of the far right and far left, Islamists and all the other extremist groups that have an amplified voice in this political space, while the center ground — in this extreme sort of attempt to capture the center — has been diffused to such an extent that there’s nothing that holds it together anymore. That’s why we’ve got these extreme voices coming into the center, via these figures that provoke these populist sentiment, like [Donald] Trump, [Viktor] Orbán, [Narednra] Modi, [Recep Tayyip] Erdoǧan — and to an extent also Brexit — that are symptoms of this hollowing out of this political center.

Yazdani: In 2005, France experienced widespread riots by French Muslims, mostly living in the banlieus, on the outskirts of major cities. This was an eruption of injustice perceived by these French Muslims who felt, despite identifying as French and being French citizens, disenfranchised and marginalized in France. Looking back at this example, and similar moments of backlash by the Muslim communities witnessed in more recent history but perhaps on a smaller scale, how do second generation Muslims experience Islamophobia and experience their ethnic and cultural identity differently when compared to more recent immigrants?

Islamophobia has a way of destabilizing all sorts of social relations. We have to try and stick our necks out a little bit, knowing that even in doing so, we’re going to face potential blocks along the way.

Abbas: The second generation have got a foot in both camps. They were born in a new country, often to parents born in another country. Being born in a new country, they learn the language of the new country, and go through the education in the new country. They are expected to go through these hoops in a way that everybody else is under the same conditions and under the same expectations. For example, in a meritocratic liberal society, if you work hard and achieve quality education, you will be rewarded with returns to your human capital investments.

However, patterns of discrimination do not abate when we think of the impact of change from the first to the second generation. The first generation were heavily discriminated against, from the jobs they got from the outset, in terms of their mobility or lack thereof, that led to them being trapped in those poor areas. The second generation are born in a new country, and they have the expectations of the people in their peer groups more generally, but they are not getting the chances. They’re feeling the same kind of frustrations [as the first generation], and often it’s a lot worse. So those pressures are doubly felt — they feel that they carry the discrimination and racism of their parents before them.

These huge patterns of discrimination felt from the second generation meant that men and women go through the educational system, but do not experience the kind of relative performance you would expect them to. There are some studies done on this [suggesting] that maybe you can put this down to the lag of experience from the first generation. So there are going to be language gaps, there are going to be certain social capital gaps, like who you know rather than what you know that helps in certain professions, like law and media. This lack of capital explains a great deal of the lag. These are non-discriminatory factors. But that’s a real ruse, because we have to understand that there are various stages of discrimination that are accumulative.

What starts as not being able to get the job you want having done the degree you achieved, having gone through the local school systems, means that there are patterns of discrimination that stay with you from the very beginning. We know from recent studies and observations around who has power, status in society, that it’s the self-selected, privately educated and, in the case of England, folks from a narrow set of schools and universities — two in the case of the UK. And while minorities do feed into that process, there are disproportionate effects that need to be taken into consideration.

Yes, there are people who move up the social ladder and achieve a certain level of success beyond expectations to be had at the start, but there is a great deal of people who lag behind and have all the talent, all the skills and all the capacities which aren’t realized because of system patterns and institutional dynamics around discrimination and racism that affect all groups of color. In today’s world, there’s a layer of Muslims within all groups who are also a feature in that.

Yazdani: Earlier you mentioned radicalization. On that topic, many believe that what drives Islamophibia is the fear that Islam promotes violence and makes Muslims more prone to being radicalized than adherents of other religions. They point to the rise of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their offshoots, and attacks by Muslim terrorists around the world. What are the driving factors behind radicalization among Muslims, especially Muslim youth, and how do anti-Muslim sentiments feed into that?

Abbas: There are lots of schools of thought on what drives radicalization. We have essentially a spectrum of push and pull factors. The push factors are structural problems: unemployment, disadvantages, poverty, alienation, marginalization, inequality — and the pull factor is ideology. It takes an angry young man to reach out to online forums or literature to find arguments that somehow support their grievances, sense of injustice, perceptions on racism and the reality of racism in their society, whether it’s to their friends, parents, or to themselves or local communities.

In wanting to redress all of that, they find it a totalizing, unique, all-capturing closed set in violence and extremism, combined with a sense of adventure, thrill and masculinity, a sense of belongingness. This “groupdom” that comes with those movements, especially in the Middle East and with the rise, and now fall, of the Islamic State, which acts as a pull.

Depending on whom you listen to and what their arguments are, many would say that it’s all about ideology, because there are poor, marginalized, alienated, unemployed Muslim men who don’t become terrorists. In fact, the mass majority don’t, and there are middle class, upward mobile and privately educated Muslim men who commit terrorism. This isn’t the norm. Far more research is pointing out to a combination of structural conditions and ideological factors.

From my research into this field over the last 10 to 15 years, of talking to people who have been radicalized and have gone off to carry out missions abroad, locked away for crimes — or locked away in Guantanamo on crimes that were unfounded — there is a sense of grievance, a sense of anger. A sense of “You’re not recognizing my potential as a human being, as a man and as a woman. I’m angry, and bereaved, and have no real way of really addressing this unless I do something about it myself. I cannot look to even my own existence or my local faith community setup. The imams don’t understand where I’m coming from, and their narrow interpretations do not support my worldview or aspirations.”

So they take an even narrower perspective on Islam and the lure of adventure, thrill and totalizing solutions become the routes through which they enter into violence extremism. So this is the broad playing field around the radicalization process — and it can be a process. People can move from one end to the other, can move back, in an out of different stages throughout all of this.

There’s not a linearity in the process as a whole. A linearity in this field can lead to all sorts of accusations that it takes a moment for a Muslim to become an extremist, because of the potential that is always within. There’s a lot of discourse within the counterterrorism field that conservative Muslims are steps away from becoming violent extremists. And so deradicalization and preventing violent extremism has inadvertently, or deliberately, traversed into the wider field of what it is to be a Muslim in the “global north” and in the “global south,” where in fact Muslims are killing other Muslims in far greater numbers than we would imagine elsewhere.

So, there are these push factors and pull factors, depending on how you see it — because, again, ideology feeds into the research process. The think tank and policy world, everyone has an agenda here. Academics are supposed to cut through all of this, but the work that we do in academia on this is quite diverse. But it’s difficult to talk to former terrorists, talk to family members, difficult to access police records, court cases and files, so we have to do a sentimental, sectional analysis after the event — surveys, things like that.

Yazdani: You’ve argued that, contrary to public perception, Islamism is not just a term to describe fundamentalism, but that it can also be a progressive idea. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Abbas: Yes. So when you’ve got Islamism branded about as somehow a given concept in relation to the idea that it’s naturally tending toward violence, then you’ve got an ideological problem that contaminates the study of Muslims and extremism. Islamism in broad and simple terms means the idea of using Islam, engaging with Islam through a political lens.

Now, if you’re a citizen in Europe and you see Islam as a force for justice, charity, community development, sharing with others in local area settings — but also in terms of building ideas and working together toward [resolving] the issues; and if you see that role as one of being a good Muslim, then your ideals are not shaped by violence or extremism, but by the idea of being a good Muslim through the lens of thinking about focusing on humanity and the needs of humans who are different, are unequal, have existing problems; when your religious principles teach you that it’s an aspiration to want to better a lot of humanity by working together and knowing each other through this process.

These kinds of spiritual, political, cultural outlooks can also be defined under the rubric Islamism might use, but they’re wholesale neglected. In a recent book of ours, we talk about how Muslims are actively engaging with their societies and citizens in their new countries, using a Muslim framing and Islamic intellectual awareness they have often determined themselves through their own individual interpretations and are acting as good citizens in every sense of the word, and as good Muslims in every sense of the word. That, for me, is progressive Islamism.

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Yazdani: As Muslims, whether we wear the hijab or not, pray or not, whether we’re black or white, or anything in between, I think it’d be hard to find one of us who had not experienced some level of Islamophobia. Taking your professorial hat off, what advice would you give to Muslims experiencing Islamophobia?

Abbas: I would say that it is a tough time in the world today. We have to recognize that for what it is. It’s not some kind of simplistic light vs. dark, good vs. evil end of times, Venetian view on the world — there are a lot of complexities and subtleties, and we have to understand it as well as we can. We have to understand that things are going to be tough, and we have to fix things. But we also have to realize that there’s a great deal of mobilization around resistance, not just among Muslims, but among the left-leaning individuals, institutions, all over the world. And I think it’s important to build those alliances, bridge those alliances and forge movements that traverse immediate differences, because we’re all in this together in many ways.

Islamophobia has a way of destabilizing all sorts of social relations. We have to try and stick our necks out a little bit, knowing that even in doing so, we’re going to face potential blocks along the way.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Talking Islamophobia With Tahir Abbas appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Ambreen Butt is a Pakistani-American miniaturist and painter born in 1969 in the historic city of Lahore. She has been  a “leader in revitalizing the centuries-old form of” miniature. Butt received her bachelor’s in traditional Indian and Persian miniature painting from the National College of Arts in Lahore before moving to the United States in 1993 to attend the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Click here to view the photo essay.

Butt is the recipient of several national awards, including the Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, the Maud Morgan Prize from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a James and Audrey Foster Prize by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Much of her labor-intensive work contains autobiographical elements that represent her childhood in Pakistan and her attachment to the US as an American citizen. She also touches upon social and political issues in her paintings.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Ambreen Butt about her artistic journey, her reflections on Indian and Persian miniature painting, and the national and international reception to her work.

The transcript has been edited for clarity and the interview took place earlier this year.

Kourosh Ziabari: You were born in Pakistan and studied Indian and Persian miniature painting. India, Iran and Pakistan have historically had close cultural ties and share many roots. What have you observed while practicing Indian and Persian miniature painting about the anthropological and cultural similarities of these countries?

Ambreen Butt: My earlier work during my National College of Arts years was greatly influenced by both the Mughal and Safavid style paintings. The color palette I use now has been evolved by looking at these two different styles.

As much as there is a presence of both Indian and Persian influence in my work, I don’t see much similarities among the two cultures in present-day life. Although I have never had a chance to visit either India or Iran, my understanding of both cultures is purely based on my observation and interaction with the art and the artists, some of whom I have been friends with for a long time.

India and Pakistan share pretty much the same cultural roots, despite the religious difference; many rituals are shared because of their long history of togetherness. But Iran is different. I don’t think there are that many similarities between Iranian and Pakistani culture. From food to clothing to art and architecture, there is a distinct difference. Although the two countries have similar religious roots, the manifestation of religious culture is quite different.

The only thing I would like to point out which I see as a common binding is its women: they are resilient. From Shirin Ebadi to Asma Jahangir to Malala Yousafzai, women in these countries have come out as a force of strength and change even in the most oppressive times. And it is very inspiring for me.

Ziabari: I’ve seen many of your works, and my understanding is that you combine traditional and modern sketches and that your paintings cross the boundaries of time and location so that audiences can relate to them regardless of their backgrounds. What would you tell us about this aspect of your work? 

Butt: The existence of my work is often a result of strong emotions triggered by the social and political milieu around me. I try to find multiple ways to decode or unravel that personal language. In order to fulfill that ultimate need, I use both figuration and abstraction in a platform that is purely my own.

So, as you said, it is true that I have used icons or scenes from the traditional Indo-Persian miniature paintings, along with the images from the mass media and/or my own stylized drawings to create new imagery — imagery that is complex and can be reinterpreted or seen in multiple ways after it has departed from my personal space.

Regardless of how I relate with my work in its entirety, I cannot control how others relate with it. I can only give a certain direction to my viewers with my symbolic imagery or mark-making, and then I leave it up to them as to how much they want to take from it. Some viewers connect with my work purely at an aesthetic level, some try to place it in an art historical context, and some relate it with their own personal or political situations. I am fine with all of that as long as there is some connection. My intention is to let the work build its own connection.

Ziabari: I read that in your undergraduate years, you blended your passion for social issues with stories from Khawateen magazines in your works of art. How was this mixture reflected in your paintings? How is it possible for miniature paintings to carry social messages?

Butt: After having gone through an intense training of learning the techniques of old masters of miniature painting in my undergrad, I had the freedom to choose a topic to create my own project as part of my thesis show. I had developed an interest in internalizing cultural norms of everyday life and thought it would be interesting to bring them into my work. It was challenging as there had not been any examples of issue-based works produced in miniature painting before that.

I chose to highlight a story from one of the popular weekly or bi-weekly Khawateen magazines that were widely read by the middle-class Pakistani ladies. I noticed a pattern in these stories: They were said to have been true stories written by different women, but original names and places were changed with false names; the stories always revolved around women, their tabooed romance and heartbreaks, their dilemmas, rebellion and misfortunes; and the stories also moved between the fine lines of reality and fiction, almost like a sensational news item but catered only to women.

I was at a stage in my artistic life where I had started to question my role in society as an artist. Although I had not picked any banner to protest the ills of the society through my art, I had begun to realize that there was a tool in my hand that could be useful in bringing attention to something that existed in our surroundings to a different kind of audience. That realization was very empowering.

I created a series of paintings called “Cognition,” inspired by a story of a female house-maid who was sexually exploited by a male member of an elite family. Unlike the Persian or Indian miniature paintings, my “Cognition” paintings had a very peculiar pictorial space and even strange stylization of the female figures. A rendered blue background was divided horizontally into three sections where a large male figure with his crown and an orange garb is seen surrounded by a sea of small sperm-like female figures, almost a reminiscent of “Krishna and his disciple gopis.” The imagery comprising one dominant male figure and small sperm-like female figures change scenes in each painting, almost like the characters from a written story. I also reinvented the traditional mark making called “pardakhat” in these paintings by using the handmade brush from its tip to make small dot-like marks. Overall, the work has a very different look from that of a traditional miniature painting, and yet everything about it came from my knowledge of all the techniques I had learned during my four-year degree program.

As for the last part of your question: How is it possible for a miniature painting to carry a social message? I don’t know, but I have done it using plenty of symbolism, wrapping the broken pieces of society in a foil of beauty and aesthetics.

Ziabari: How much time do you usually dedicate to finishing each piece of artwork? I imagine the miniature paintings are very time and energy-consuming.

Butt: My work is meticulous and time-consuming just like the traditional miniature painting. It goes through several layers of making, one mark at a time strategy. I call it a labor of love, the bearer of the clarity of my mind.

I work in a series, multiple pieces at a time. I don’t generally know at what point my work begins, as the process starts with research, making notes and sketches. Sometimes it doesn’t even go past that stage for a year or two. Then, all of a sudden, I find myself planning what materials to use for a certain series. Sometimes the work is site-specific, and for that, I go and visit the site, take pictures and lay out a plan. And sometimes it’s just an everyday ritual to go to the studio and start making something really small.

There is both conceptual and aesthetic underpinning in my work so, yes, it takes a while for the first piece of one particular series to be finished, but the rest doesn’t take as long. Generally, I finish one to two small drawings a month or if it’s a big drawing, as long as six to seven feet, it takes several months to finish. My emphasis has always been on quality rather than quantity.

Ziabari: What are some of the most notable innovations you’ve introduced in your works when it comes to content, the use of materials and style?

Butt: I have always been, and still am, very interested in exploring different materials through my work. This is one of the reasons I deviated from making traditional miniature paintings. Although sometimes I visit back and work in a traditional mode if my subject matter requires, my art practice generally varies from miniature pencil drawings to large-scale works on paper with mylar, text and collage to gigantic sculptures and installations.

One of my biggest contributions in the tradition of miniature painting was redefining a female figure through the gaze of a female artist. My female protagonist is beautiful and seductive like the old “Nayika” from Kangra-style miniature paintings, but she is also a warrior who is often seen engaged in fighting the demons with a sword in her hands, like a “bride” from “Kill Bill,” reminiscing about the old heroes from the Persian manuscripts and yet asserting her role as a woman of contemporary times.

Looking back at my own practice, I would say one of my other innovations is redefining the mark-making. Starting from “pardakht,” the traditional mark making for miniature painting, my marks are also redundant and systematic. They have experienced several mediums and surfaces, from a small pencil or brush mark on paper to the mark of ripped pieces of writing or small resin casted digits on the wall.

I was also the first one to have started addressing social and political issues through the medium of traditional miniature painting by creating the series “Cognition” as part of my thesis project in my undergraduate years.

Ziabari: How much does the Western world know about the contemporary miniature from South Asia? Is it still an alien concept in the United States and Europe?

Butt: When I moved to the United States in the early 90s, there was a lack of knowledge about contemporary miniature painting practice among the general art practitioners. And since ours was the earlier batch to have graduated from National College of Arts with the degree in miniature painting, it was through us that miniature painting was reintroduced as a contemporary art practice in America.

I still remember that when I was interviewed for admission into a graduate program, I was asked about miniature painting. In my innocence, I told them that we used to copy the old masters paintings in order to learn the techniques in our first and second year of the degree program. They had a hard time figuring out how to fit me in the MFA program.

Also during graduate school when I worked on paper and made small paintings, I was often asked this question during my critiques: “Is this a traditional miniature painting or a contemporary painting?” I find it quite amusing now when I look back, but it was rather annoying at the time when it happened. I had to work twice as much to develop a vocabulary to break the barrier between my work and their understanding. But I must say, as much as it was hard, I also felt welcomed by the art world after I graduated from Massachusetts College of Arts. I have been continuously showing my work within the United States since then.

Ziabari: How is your relationship with the viewers and audience of your paintings and sculptures? What are the most inspiring things they’ve told you about your artistic creations?

Butt: Just two days after the US went to war in Iraq in 2003, my show, “I must utter what comes to my lips,” opened at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. Most works in that show were created after the September 11, 2001, incident and it addressed the effects of the events that occurred as a result on individual lives.

While we were all watching parts of Iraq being bombed live on television, some people made an effort to turn off their TVs and radios and went to the museum to see my work. Many of them wrote back to me saying how they felt that a narrative of war was forced into their brain through the media, but going to the museum and seeing the artwork that was still related to what was happening around them gave them the space to make up their own mind about it altogether.

This is one of the examples of how people respond to my work. It is rewarding to hear your art can make the viewer think. I believe this is the purpose that my art has to serve if it is to survive in the world beyond my studio — to make the viewer think just a little differently than the rest of the world.

Ziabari: When you are commissioned projects by organizations such as embassies or government offices, what do you take into account to create the projects? Do you prioritize your artistic insight and intuition to draw a painting or create a sculpture, or do you put the emphasis on the commercial viability and reception of the work?

Butt: Commissioned projects are very different and challenging, especially when you are used to working in your own terms and without compromise. But I love challenges. It helps me in pushing the boundaries of my creativity.

The first thing I like to do with the commissioned projects is to see the site in person and observe the cultural environment around that space. Then I get a list of things from the organization that cannot be done and use it as a guideline to build my project around it. For example, in my commission for the US Embassy in Islamabad, I was told that the work couldn’t be done directly on the walls. It was a bit disappointing in the beginning, but later it pushed me to come up with a plan that coordinated well with the conceptual aspect of the work, so I created the work first in my studio and then we installed it in the space. It is important that the people who are locally engaged with the work on a regular basis get to relate with it in different ways. I have not done anything purely for commercial reasons. That idea has never attracted me.

Ziabari: Do you think your artistic creations, especially those that carry feminist ideas, are easy to understand for an ordinary audience, or does it take sophisticated knowledge of academic concepts to be able to relate to your work? 

Butt: My art is not exclusive to the art world. I have worked hard to develop an aesthetic that can accommodate the complexities of my personal identity, my social-political ideas and history of my own art-making. I use figurative and abstract symbolism, visual reference from the art history as well as contemporary images from the mass media for my viewer to connect with my work at multiple levels. I am not sure if my work is easy or difficult to understand for an ordinary viewer as I do not demand from my viewer the same understanding and intensity as I have for my own work. I give them the freedom to connect with it based on their own history of seeing.

Ziabari: We are living in a world marred by conflict, war and hostility. How can art, especially painting, contribute to alleviating animosity and making the world a better and more peaceful place?

Butt: Art can make people see things differently than, let’s say, science or politics. In my opinion, it cannot change the world we live in, but it can certainly contribute to changing the world by pointing out the right direction of the change.

*[Click here to view the photo essay.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can Art Change the World? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Since the beginning of time, humankind has resorted to a metaphysical power in which they can find refuge and look for answers to their questions. Worshipping a deity is seen as a way of expressing their desire for truth and peace when the world appears incapable of responding to their needs.

Yet, at the same time, modern world history has been marred by wars and conflicts, some of which religious violence has played a role in. In 1975, only 2% of conflicts in the world were linked to religion, according to the . By 2013, that number rose to over 50%. In his , â€śThe Great Big Book of Horrible Things,” historian Matthew White named religion as the cause of 13 of the world’s 100 deadliest conflicts. A case in point is Syria and Iraq, where the Islamic State group has used religion to justify its brutality and bloodshed.

This has led to debate over the role of religion in conflicts. For some, religion is seen as the cause of violence, often citing the actions of groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. For others, religion has been manipulated by extremists for their own agenda.

Religious intolerance and violence have become more widespread — from anti-Semitism or Islamophobia to the actions of , and extremists as well as . At such a time, the importance of interfaith dialogue has never been greater as a way to respond to hatred and bigotry.

Burton L. Visotzky is an American rabbi and scholar of Midrash. He currently serves as the Appleman professor of Midrash and interreligious studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Rabbi Visotzky about the rise of religious intolerance, the importance of preserving religious diversity, and the role of interfaith dialogue in bridging the gap between communities.

Kourosh Ziabari: Religious intolerance is on the rise globally. Do you think there is anything inherent in religions such as Judaism and Islam endorsing bigotry and discrimination? Does the growth of divisions between people of different faiths have religious roots or political motivations?

Burton Visotzky: Religions are made up of human beings, each of us with our own positive and negative virtues. Further, the Abrahamic religions, particularly Judaism and Islam, are originally tribal — and we still have tribal tendencies. Thus, I should love you if you are from my tribe and be wary of you if you are not. Yet the same religions command: love your neighbor, love the stranger.

I think journalists who are trained to focus on conflict tend to overlook the fact that even as there is a rise in xenophobia and hate crimes, there is a concomitant rise in interreligious dialogue and interfaith opposition to incitements.

Politics certainly exacerbates divisions, but it can be used as a force for unity, not division. Unfortunately, current politicians such as [Donald] Trump and [Benjamin] Netanyahu have chosen hate and division as their path to power. In neither instance are these religious instincts, even though they may marshal certain right-wing religious forces who shortsightedly see political advantage in their alliance with these would-be despots.

Ziabari: Several countries have constitutional provisions forbidding acts of intolerance and discrimination on religious grounds. However, violence inspired by religious intolerance and sectarianism is growing across the world. As reported by the Pew Research Center, more than a quarter of countries in the world experienced a high incidence of hostilities motivated by religious hatred in 2018. Do you think governments are doing enough to counter religious violence and discrimination against people of faith?

Visotzky: In the US, there should be a high wall of separation between “church” and “state.” Freedoms of speech and religion are enshrined in the US Constitution and, indeed, the very fabric of our nation and its history.

That said, the government can do more to counter religious violence and discrimination. To start, it would help to have leaders who decry violence and incitement instead of using it as a political tool.

Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand is a good example of a political leader who embraces diversity and unity while eschewing violence and bigotry.

Ziabari: Divine religions are supposed to promote peace, harmony and love. Why is it that they are so universally connected with aggression and conflict? If religion is the trigger of so many conflicts, what is the point of subscribing to it?

Visotzky: To say that “divine religions” are “universally connected with aggression and conflict” is to wholly misconstrue current and past reality, in favor of a misguided conflict model. It is unfair to religions and aggressively provocative journalism.

Why not focus on the enormous amount of good that religions do to heal the sick, clothe the naked, house the homeless, feed the poor [and] educate the disenfranchised? Further, you could focus on how the various religions are doing this cooperatively with one another and even working hand in hand with the UN and World Bank to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and oppose the kinds of conflict your question wrongly presupposes.

Ziabari: Media reports and academic studies suggest anti-Semitic incidents are increasing in Europe and the United States, highlighting an ancient prejudice surging in the 21st century. What do you think is the root cause of anti-Semitic hate crimes and hostility toward Jews emerging across the world?

Visotzky: I accept that there is a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism, along with a concurrent rise in Islamophobia and more general xenophobia. There is no one answer to your question, as there are political causes, economic causes, the troubling tone of discourse across social media, failures in governmental leadership, etc. In general, the rise in anti-Semitic incidents seems traceable to right-wing activities and incitements.

Ziabari: Do you see any relationship between the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the spike of anti-Semitism? Does Israel’s approach toward Palestine play a role in how the Jewish people are perceived and treated?

Visotzky: I think there is some possibility that the protracted nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the intractability of leadership — using that term loosely — on both sides correlates with the rise in anti-Semitism.

As I said above, it is but one of many, many complex factors. A phenomenon as complicated and pernicious as anti-Semitism cannot, sadly, be traced to only one cause. That said, I think a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians would be a welcome contribution to peace in the region and the world.

Ziabari: Peter Gottschalk, the noted author of “American Heretics,” sees connections between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism as Muslims and Jews have similarly been viewed as being antithetical to certain ideas of Americanness. Do you see the same association between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism? Do they have similar roots?

Visotzky: I do not know Mr. Gottschalk’s work and so cannot comment on it. As for “ideas of Americanness,” Islam and Judaism have been part of America since its inception as a nation, indeed, even before American independence in 1776.

Ziabari: What are the most notable obstacles to successful interfaith dialogue on the global level? Are the leaders of religious communities, politicians and international organizations doing a good job in promoting interreligious dialogue? Is the capacity of religion to contribute to peacebuilding and conflict resolution utilized properly?

Visotzky: We could always use more dialogue, more sharing, more coordinated work to alleviate the world’s ills. There is a deep capacity in religious communities to solve problems rather than stoke tensions. I have spent the past four decades building bridges among religious leadership around the world and opposing bigotry and bias. There is notable leadership among Jews, Christians and Muslims who are promoting interreligious cooperation. They should be applauded. God willing, my colleagues and I will continue our work of loving our neighbors, as God demands of us.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can Religious Communities Help Solve World Problems? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Over 90,000 people in the landlocked African country with HIV/AIDS, which accounts for one in 10 adults. HIV/AIDS is one of the main reasons why Malawian children become vulnerable or orphaned. The country is in dire of advanced medical services and facilities and trained physicians, and there is only for every 50,000 individuals.

Climate change and global warming represent serious challenges for Malawians. According to the , the unbridled cutting down of trees — to be used for charcoal as a replacement for electricity — is contributing to climate change significantly. It is reported that most Malawian households suffer from frequent power blackouts lasting between three and six hours a day. Rapid deforestation and widespread soil erosion have made Malawi’s agriculture-based economy defenseless against the impacts of climate change.

Discrimination against women is rampant in Malawi. Young girls and women often do not have equal opportunities in education and employment as their male counterparts. However, this is not the only difficulty that the women of Malawi face. Gender-based violence and sexual harassment have plagued Malawian society. In May 2019, the government, the UN and the European Union a new multiyear program called the Spotlight Initiative, focused on “eliminating violence against women and girls, including sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and harmful practices.”

Despite all the challenges Malawi is grappling with, the country in southeastern Africa is of a better future. This is thanks to the promising decline of its inflation rate; the gradual growth of GDP; reserves of uranium, tea, coffee and tobacco that constitute the backbone of its economy; and the resumption of support by financial donors.

Joyce Banda served as Malawi’s fourth president — and its first female leader — from 2012 to 2014. Prior to this, she was vice president and the minister of foreign affairs. Banda is the founder and leader of the People’s Party and a member of Club de Madrid. She is an entrepreneur, philanthropist and motivational speaker who was named Africa’s most powerful woman by Forbes in 2013 and 2014.

In this edition of , 51łÔąĎ talks to former President Banda about the challenges and opportunities ahead for Malawi and the African nation’s prospects for development. 

Kourosh Ziabari: Violence against women is rampant in Africa. Female genital mutilation is prevalent in 28 African countries, according to , ranging from 5% in Uganda to over 90% in Somalia. Another form of violence against women in the continent is rape, especially as a “weapon of war” in countries with unstable political climates. African societies tend to treat families with sons more favorably than families with daughters. Can you give us a picture of the situation in Malawi? As a female leader, how do you think violence and discrimination against African women can be tackled?

Joyce Banda: Indeed, female genital mutilation is happening in 26 countries. While FGM doesn’t exist in Malawi, we have our forms of harmful traditions that promote violence against girls. One was highly publicized on the BBC when Eric Niva was caught having sex with girls, convincing the community that he was recruiting them to “cleanse” them. In reality, he was a rapist who was infecting girls with disease.

To tackle violence against African women, we should focus on and promote the efforts African women are making to get rid of harmful traditions across the continent. There are many champions pushing to fix our problems and getting a lot done.

As a female leader, my view is that we need to mobilize African women leaders and champions, as well as our male allies, who will fight for the protection of women and girls. The African Women Leaders Network, an initiative of the African Union and UN Women, of which I serve as a founding member and steering committee member, is one example of an initiative working to mobilize leaders.

Ziabari: In 2017, from Malawi’s Ministry of Gender revealed that 53% of married women face domestic violence at the hands of their husbands. The national police spokesman also confirmed that cases of domestic violence are reported to law enforcement across the country on a daily basis. Is there any legislation against domestic violence in Malawi? Do you see any improvement in the situation for women in your country?

Banda: In terms of legislation in Malawi, there is a law that protects women against property grabbing and allows them rights to the land they own, which often happens when their husband dies and family members try to claim the land for themselves. When I was the gender minister in 2006, I championed the passing of the domestic violence bill through our parliament. Through that bill, the women of Malawi have a tool at their disposal to fight domestic violence, even allowing them to evict their abusive husbands. Furthermore, two years ago, Malawi passed a law that prohibits girls from getting married before age 18.

However, even though we have legislation, the challenge we have as a nation is the political will to help Malawian women to take advantage of the tools at their disposal. Yes, there are laws to protect girls from early marriage, but if the family cannot afford to send her to secondary schools, marriage is one of the only options for her as the family may have difficulty affording to house and feed her. Culture, tradition and poverty play a large role, thus it is critical to not only pass laws but also to domesticate them, police their implementation and focus on poverty reduction.

Ziabari: USAID data from 2016 that 16.7% percent of children under 18 in Malawi are orphans and vulnerable children, or OVC. Why are there so many unprotected children in Malawi? Do you think the government has been successful in offering educational, social and moral support to these children?

Banda: In Malawi, one of the main causes of children becoming orphaned or vulnerable is AIDS. But even before AIDS, the challenge is that there were so many kids without access to early childhood education. That being the case, when they lost parents, their situation got worse.

What research shows is the kids who get access to early childhood development [ECD] do better later on. I am a patron of Think Equal, a UK-based organization that seeks to fight against violence against women by tackling the root issues, such as ensuring respect between boys and girls. They recruit schools across the world to provide ECD and rights education to boys and girls from age 3. When countries can’t provide adequate ECD, they can’t benefit from this. It will take political will from government to invest in ECD.

Civil society plays a big role in bringing solutions for the orphans and vulnerable children problem. In my case, the Joyce Banda Foundation International [JBFI], founded in 1997, runs 30 orphan care centers across Malawi for 50,000 orphans, providing early childhood education using the Montessori method. Furthermore, 47% of Malawians are stunted, so we know that ECD must be coupled with a focus on nutrition. At JBFI, we are able to provide a nutritious meal at our centers every day thanks to a partnership we have built with Nu Skin.

Ziabari: As minister for gender and community services, you worked hard to design the National Platform for Action on Orphans and Vulnerable Children and also the Zero Tolerance Campaign Against Child Abuse. What have the outcomes and achievements of your initiatives been?

Banda: These initiatives were active almost 15 years ago, and at that point, Malawi was on the tier two watchlist for human trafficking. When I was alerted of this, I decided to analyze the whole sector of vulnerable girls and children and take steps to fight abuses to children in my country. Child trafficking takes many forms, and to address them, we sat down and drew the plan of action.

As part of the campaign, I set up children’s corners at grassroots with UNICEF, deploying two trained child protection agents equipped with bicycles in 193 constituencies. They reported abusers to police and brought children together. Awareness that was created by this campaign truly paved the way to passing the 2006 Domestic Violence bill, as we had already done our due diligence on OVCs and were then able to focus on the entire household.

Ziabari: Let’s move away from women and children issues. Data from the shows that Malawi is in the top 10 countries with the highest rate of HIV/AIDS. How has the government been dealing with this issue? Is the population sufficiently educated about HIV treatment and prevention? 

Banda: The Global AIDS Commission invested a lot in civic education in Malawi and we had made a tremendous improvement. We made tremendous improvement through PEPFAR — about half a million Malawians got on treatment. Additionally, the Option B initiative was successful, where for the first time we tested pregnant women and started treatment right away so their babies weren’t born infected.

Ziabari: Malawi is one of the top 10 major exporters of in the world and, arguably, the most tobacco-dependent nation. There are credible reports that the international demand for tobacco is declining. Does the country have plans to diversify its economy at a time where agriculture accounts for about one-third of GDP and tobacco accounts for half of its export revenues?

Banda: Crop diversification program started when I was head of state, identifying legumes as an area to focus on for export potential. The first crop was 2012-13. Malawi is certainly looking to diversify crops but also looking at mining as another alternative to growing tobacco.

Malawi has the fourth largest deposits of rare earth to make TV screens, gas, 2 billion barrels of oil, rubies, gold, titanium, bauxite and more. As a result of the discovery of all these resources, there is illegal mining, so political will is needed to protect Malawi’s wealth.

Ziabari: Poverty in Malawi has been at critical levels for many years. There are about Malawians who live below the international poverty line. While in office, were you able to work toward improving the situation? What’s your take on the performance of your successors in addressing poverty in the country? 

Banda: My strategy during office was four-pronged for poverty reduction: food production, education, health and family planning for the rural poor. One of the biggest tragedies in African politics is that the one who takes over rarely takes over the old projects and initiatives, preferring to start over again. In my case, I was focusing on rural people, paying attention to households at the grassroots because 85% of Malawians are rural-based, and in that group is where they are living in abject poverty. The good news is we know why these people are poor and we know what to do, so all we need is good leadership to focus on communities and uplift our people.

I discovered that by using local and traditional leadership, the custodians of tradition and culture, government can be more effective in reducing poverty, improving health outcomes and eliminating harmful traditions. By working alongside chiefs, I was able to reduce maternal deaths from 675 to 400 out of 100,000 births, a reduction of 30%. Using that philosophy, we were able to build model villages to demonstrate that with their own hands and using builders from their communities, they can build better homes. When people get opportunities to grow enough food to eat, sell and export, when they are assisted with better health and education, and when families can generate income through the woman, countries become economically empowered.

Furthermore, to reduce poverty, we must also look at population growth and the alarming rate in Malawi. Because our population growth is at 3.3% annually, there is no way our poverty will be reduced significantly because of the number of children. Chicken and egg- poor families view children as wealth, so until that changes, children will continue to be born.

Ziabari: High population growth, rapid deforestation and widespread soil erosion have made Malawi and its agriculture-oriented economy highly vulnerable to climate change and its negative consequences. Earlier this year, in Malawi killed dozens, displaced some 200,000 people and half of the country’s 28 districts were affected. What has the government done to combat climate change? Did you particularly deal with this issue in your administration?

Banda: The more people we have, the more our land is cleared for living, including cutting down trees for firewood to produce energy. Solutions to that is for rural electrification with solar power, so that when people begin to use it they will reduce cutting trees. In my administration, I launched the energy-saving stove with Mary Robinson from Ireland, amongst other works to promote safe population growth and good governance.

But the population growth is also significant and poverty exacerbates climate change. Government must look at all these challenges: population growth, good governance and providing alternative energy to stop the population from cutting down trees and polluting the environment.

Ziabari: There have been significant democratic movements and transformations across Africa in the recent decade. Despotic rulers in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and, most recently, Sudan were removed from power. What do these developments indicate? Why is Africa undergoing these rapid shifts?

Banda: If I have to be candid, most of these governments that changed during the Arab Spring are being influenced by the West. So, I don’t want to pretend they are homegrown. Half the time, the interference is done by the West, and we end up with cases like Libya. While the West portrayed Muammar Gaddafi as a villain, Africans are still mourning him. People all over the world need to let Africa come up with its own model of democracy — that is what will work. Outside forces pushing for change leave us with conflict and catastrophic results that we are then forced to fix ourselves.

Ziabari: What is your vision for the future of Malawi? Do you think the country will reduce its dependence on foreign assistance and be able to overcome the economic, social, political and developmental challenges it currently faces?

Banda: Malawi must stop being dependent on aid, and this can be easily done. In 2006, the director of public prosecution, Fahd Assan, who later served as minister of justice in my administration, informed me that 30% of Malawi’s resources are wasted through theft and corruption. What I said when I became president was that it is a shame and cannot be accepted, especially since Malawi depends on foreign aid for 40% of its budgetary requirements. If we saved the 30% wasted through corruption, Malawi would only need to look for 10%.

In a country where natural resources are intact, all we need is to get organized and carefully implement the mining code, which was done by my government. If we start responsibly extracting our mineral resources, controlling population growth, empowering communities to transform their own lives and making sure all that tamper with our resources are stopped, Malawi can be aid independent in 10 years.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Malawi Can Be Aid Independent If Communities Are Empowered appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Modi has shown a penchant for personal engagement with the leaders of major world powers. While critics have warned against the dangers of personalizing diplomatic encounters, many view Modi’s proactive interactions as beneficial for India. Even as the country has substantively moved away from being a mere , there are glaring regional and global realities that will require its attention. Its immediate neighborhood will continue to be a priority for India even as it strives to increase its global footprint.

In this guest edition of The Interview, Nilanjana Sen and Joy Mitra talk to Harsh V. Pant, the head of the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and professor of international relations at King’s College London, about the foreign policy priorities of the Modi government, the changing international and regional challenges, and the future of India’s global engagements.

The transcript has been edited for clarity. The interview took place before recent developments in Jammu and Kashmir.

Nilanjana Sen: Your , “Indian Foreign Policy: The Modi Era,” in which you call Narendra Modi the “foreign policy prime minister,” was released earlier this year. What do you find most remarkable about Modi’s performance in his first term, especially on the foreign and security policy front?

Harsh V. Pant: As someone who was a former chief minister of a state, a lot of people were concerned about the impact Modi’s arrival as the prime minister may have on the trajectory of Indian foreign policy — and it was, in fact, dramatic. State chief ministers in India usually focus on foreign policy with a view to secure foreign direct investment for their own states, so the focus is largely on economic diplomacy rather than viewing foreign policy as something that would serve a broader strategic purpose. So the concerns were valid, but Modi began his term with an invitation to regional heads for his swearing-in ceremony in 2014, signaling that foreign policy will be a priority area for him.

Second, he has publicly linked India’s domestic transformation to Indian foreign policy priorities, taking foreign policy discourse beyond the confines of a small elite.

Third, Modi has made foreign policy a whole of government enterprise, rather than it being solely the domain of the Ministry of External Affairs [MEA]. He has been instrumental in moving toward integrating military force more clearly and substantively into diplomacy, whereas in the past the two operated in silos. This is ironic because, in the realm of foreign policy, the shadow of military force always looms in the backdrop, and how one calculates moves and countermoves depends on the military balance of power.

Modi has recalibrated this a bit. His government has probed how far India could climb the escalation ladder — whether it was during the surgical strikes in 2016 [against suspected militant bases in Pakistan-administered Kashmir], or the Balakot airstrikes in 2019, or even in the case of Doklam in 2017. So, there has been a calculated move to do this and, more importantly, defense forces today are becoming more integral in India’s outreach and defense diplomacy.

In the past, with respect to our outreach to the US, there were ideological constraints that prevented signing of agreements like the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement [LEMOA], the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement [COMCASA], etc., but today those constraints are gone, and we are comfortable with a military engagement. And this brings me to the last point here, which is recognizing that issue-based alignments are a necessity for India in this day and age.

Joy Mitra: In the aftermath of the Pulwama attack in February 2019 and the retaliatory airstrikes conducted in Balakot, do you think India has developed a sustained policy toward Pakistan to deal with the security threats that emanate from across the border? 

Pant: When Modi started his first term, everyone asked what is different about his engagement with Pakistan. But by the end of the first term, everyone seemed to suggest that it was dramatically different, perhaps even problematic. However, any rational assessment of his approach toward Pakistan has to be balanced. Given the mandate he received, he began his term first with outreach efforts toward Pakistan. But after the Pathankot and Uri attacks, Modi realized that this approach was not paying dividends. 

In fact, Modi’s predecessors have also grappled with the question of how to deal with Pakistan under a nuclear overhang. Pakistan is a geographical constraint, so everyone has tried to deal with it. During his term as prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh felt escalation wasn’t a good choice for India, and there was a time that strategy was useful since it gave India the strategic space to convince the world that India is not the loony one. 

Modi realized that this traditional framework was not working, so when terror struck again, the idea that he had to try another option, which was the military option, settled in. He probed how far India could climb the escalation ladder, and I think the first attempt was the surgical strike in 2016. India saw the impact it had and assessed what was right and what went wrong with the approach, and by the time it reached Pulwama-Balakot crisis, there was an assessment that India can climb the escalation ladder. Unlike cross-border land operations where there is the choice of plausible deniability, the use of airpower is certainly riskier because one really doesn’t know how it will end. Modi decided to use airpower not in the Kashmir theater but in mainland Pakistan, so in that sense, he changed the dynamic, especially in terms of how the international community reacted to the use of force. 

Perhaps, India now feels that the use of force will not be met with a negative reaction by the international community, which does empathize with India’s efforts at grappling with terror. For almost four years, every international platform was used by India to make a case for isolating Pakistan, and it yielded dividends when Balakot airstrikes happened, and I think there was method in what was being done by India. Even after the Balakot episode when Masood Azhar’s case for his designation as a global terrorist came up, all major powers rallied toward India. There was a sense within the international community that if this is not done then India will be forced to escalate. So the onus of de-escalation is now on Pakistan and not on India. It seems then that Modi has managed to change the calculus. 

Whether or not this is a permanent situation remains to be seen, but my sense is that the message has been delivered. Modi is unwilling to yield. He could have invited [Pakistani Prime Minister] Imran Khan for his swearing-in ceremony, but he chose not to. He is also consciously engaging with BIMSTEC and other platforms to not be held hostage to Pakistan’s ways. However, with a skewed civil-military balance, the nature of problems within Pakistan is structural. Whether the current policy of airstrikes will remain the way it is also depends on Pakistan’s choices. 

Sen: India’s immediate periphery in South Asia is characterized by a variety of security, economic and developmental challenges. How has India responded to these challenges under Modi’s leadership, and what foreign policy trajectory should India follow?  

Pant: South Asia’s regional politics can be located in two geographies. One is toward the west, where India can link itself to the West Asian landscape, and the other is toward the east, wherein it draws on the economic viability and economic systems of East and Southeast Asia.

Largely, it is the problem of state capacity in South Asia that hinders economic development, social harmony, even regional integration. The periphery remains problematic partly because of the inherent weaknesses in the state capacities of these countries. This will continue to be a problem, and it will have externalities for India which we will have to deal with. The best that India can do is provide indirect capacity building support to the countries. The challenge for India is that the moment it tries to do too much, it is blamed for interfering in the internal affairs of neighboring countries.

The other issue is that regional states now see China as an alternative and a great benefactor. China is looked at as a country that can deliver. As far as India is concerned, it is still very poor in terms of delivery on projects. There are time delays that lead to an escalation of costs, and sometimes projects never get completed. One of the good things Modi did when he came to office was his decision to not sign new MoUs [memoranda of understanding] with the neighbors. His focus was the completion of existing projects that were in the pipeline. If India can’t deliver in its neighborhood, then there will be doubts about it establishing a global footprint. The recognition that unless India delivers, it is all pointless is now there.

Hopefully, this will also continue at the level of foreign policy during Modi’s second term. The aspirations in regional states are rising, and they often look to China because of the belief that it will deliver. I feel constantly using the China card and the more overt positioning vis-à-vis China might be counterproductive for India. What India can do is to alert the neighbors about certain developments such as what happened in Hambantota, under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative [BRI] in Sri Lanka. India, with its limited resources, can actually focus on the building capacity of these countries in terms of, say, improved project assessments. Say if China puts forth a project proposal to a particular state, India could help with feasibility and cost assessments. It is better at such work because of a more participatory approach. Our approach to aid is more bottom-up.

In terms of articulation, what Modi has done is sensible. The traditional idea of what constitutes South Asia is increasingly redundant. India’s periphery is not simply the countries that are part of SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation]. South Asia as a geographical region is evolving. Until a few decades back, Afghanistan was not considered part of South Asia, but now it is; similarly Myanmar and Thailand, which are now part of BIMSTEC [Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation]. It doesn’t make sense for India to not consider these countries as part of India’s immediate neighborhood.

Such a consideration shifts the focus away from the West, which is complicated because of the relationship with Pakistan, and it also links India to the Southeast Asian growth story. It situates the Bay of Bengal in the larger Indo-Pacific paradigm. So, you have that sense that if the world is looking at Indo-Pacific as one geography, then the Bay of Bengal is important. India can now reimagine its geography and its strategic periphery by breaking away from the constraints of the past. This is something India has been trying to do, and it is helpful domestically because it allows the northeast of India to develop. If the northeast is connected to Myanmar, Thailand, Southeast Asia, then it is helpful.

But the larger issue of transitions within the countries on the periphery will continue. In the last few years, very explicit pro-China and pro-India constituencies have developed in the neighboring countries, and this will continue. Going forward, it is important for India to acknowledge that it has not done enough as a provider of economic security, in terms of economic integration, infrastructure development and connectivity.

Sen: In the Indo-Pacific region, India is trying to leverage its relationship with other powers to counter China’s strategic assertiveness. To that effect, India is part of the so-called Quad that includes the United States, Japan and Australia. India, however, is often viewed as the “weakest link” in the group. How would you explain India’s approach toward the Quad: hesitant or pragmatic?

Pant: India’s approach was hesitant when the Quad first came into existence in 2007. A lot has changed since then, and India’s approach is more pragmatic now. My sense is that if there was any other administration in Washington, India would have been comfortable taking a more overt position. After all, Modi did go ahead and sign LEMOA, COMCASA, etc. He made America such a big part of his global outreach.

But [US President Donald] Trump, as a leader, is very complicated. Trump’s approach to global economic order is very problematic for India and this means that India will have to find ways of working with other countries, including China. When you see India and China together, you see them talking about the economic order. This is because these two countries have a lot at stake in what Trump is doing. While strategically India still pivots toward America, there are issues on which the Trump administration has made it very difficult for India to not engage with Chinese.

This does impact India’s ability to participate in the Quad. Yes, New Delhi wants certain things to go forward, but it also doesn’t want to raise red flags in Beijing — although I feel that Beijing works on the assumption that India is in the other camp. They recognize that they can work with India on certain issues, but if you look at their narrative, you will see that for them India has become part of this larger containment game that the US is playing.

India officially still wants to hedge. If you see Quad 2.0, it is about connectivity, infrastructure and whether the Quad members can have an alternative plan to China’s BRI.  If you look at the military exercises, for example, there are no Quad military exercises happening. The Quad evokes a slight unease for India, and I feel even Australia shares that concern about making it a strategic pillar for everything that is happening in the region.

There is also this question of differing definitions of the Indo-Pacific, whether the term is geographic or political. Australia and the US have a definition of Indo-Pacific that ends at the Indian subcontinent, while India’s definition extends all the way to the coast of Africa. Unless there is some agreement on the geographical and political parameters of the engagement, it is very difficult to concur on the remit of this security engagement. The Australians, for example, want to be part of the Malabar exercises, but India continues to be ambivalent. Perhaps India does not want to give China the message that all is over.

If we consider the Wuhan summit, which happened post-Doklam crisis, it was an effort at this recalibration. This recalibration was driven partly because India wanted to bring down tensions after the Doklam crisis, but also in part because of economic tensions with the US. It also happened because China is concerned about what the US is doing, the trade war and so forth. No nation seems willing to make hard choices.

If tomorrow there is a deal between the US and China, both of them might come to a modus vivendi, and then the US could decide that it would not go with the Quad or the idea of Indo-Pacific. India needs to be aware of that probability. This is also something that one observes in Australia’s engagement with China or Japan’s engagement with China. This effort to recalibrate is in large part due to the inability to gauge what the Trump administration wants, and it is this uncertainty which is pushing countries like India toward a hedging position rather than a more categorical assertion on approach to China.

Mitra: As far as the Indo-US relationship is concerned, what can we expect in Modi’s second term? Is there a common strategic purpose between the two countries or is there an increasing incoherence in terms of their strategic priorities, and how much of this coherence or incoherence is driven at the level of individual leadership?

Pant: While there is nothing wrong with politicians taking decisions driven by domestic compulsions, it is not clear what exactly is driving the decisions taken by President Donald Trump. This lack of clarity is extremely difficult to manage. With every other president of the US, you could identify a few broad parameters around which their foreign policy revolved. I don’t imply that during the tenure of former presidents like Barack Obama that India did not have issues with the US, but with Trump it is particularly difficult to formulate a policy response to issues. Modi tried and he did succeed when he visited Trump in Washington, DC, in June 2017.

One of the key strands of India’s policy has been to convince the US to consider the rise of India in its long-term interest and, therefore, the strategic picture should not be lost sight of. The two countries may continue having differences over their respective stand on individual issues like Iran or Russia and they may have problems on trade issues, but India would not want to lose sight of the big picture and would have the same expectation from the US.

If we look at it rationally, Trump has not been bad for India. His Pakistan and China policies have been tough, and this suits India. However, the problem we have is two-fold. Consider the South Asia strategy the US came up with during Trump’s first term. It was very positive about India’s role in Afghanistan, but then suddenly the route to negotiation was taken to India’s exclusion. On trade, there is a constituency in America that believes that the trade imbalance is a consequence of what China and India are doing.

In such a situation, what should India do? The question is whether you can convince the US that there is a long-term future of India’s relationship with the US and that this has been India’s strategy throughout. But this is a difficult proposition with Trump because he is a transactionalist. He is not looking at the long-term strategic picture and is only interested in the immediate benefits at the cost of long-term deliverables.

Sen: Key powers like the US, China and Russia have become very assertive toward shaping the global order. In your assessment, how does Modi manage bilateral relationships between these three competing powers?

Pant: I think one of Modi’s successes in his last term was how India managed major powers. But I believe some of this balance is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. In particular, it is hard to tell how the US-China relationship would evolve. The trade and technology conflict that is happening will impinge on countries like India because India has assumed that these major powers, especially on the economic side of the equation, are more or less on the same page, but it does not look that way now. Even the issue of technology has become contentious. There was a time when trade and technology were seen as public goods — not discounting the fact that the US would be the dominant factor, but, by and large, the US was benign enough to let everyone use it and take its advantage.

But it does not look that way now. India today has to shape its own policy priorities because it has articulated that it wants to be a leading power. It is not simply about balancing, it is also about the desire to shape the global order. And if India wants to shape global order, it is inevitable that India eventually would have to make some difficult choices.

How India manages its relations with Russia is also becoming challenging because Russia’s traditional role is being questioned today. Many in India question whether it is the same Russia of the past, given the changing priorities of the country. Considering Russia’s close engagement with China, how far can India actually go with the Russians?

The challenges are manifold in terms of India’s engagement with major powers, but the question is whether India can be transactional enough to get some advantages from the bilateral engagements. One of the ways in which India solved the Russia challenge was by rewarding them with big defense orders. Such actions are not sustainable because it can happen maybe only once in three or four years. But that does seem to be becoming the norm, even if only for a declaratory purpose where every year we have these bilateral summits with the Russians and we at least announce a deal.

Part of the problem is also that there is so little else to show in this relationship — economically, there is nothing much happening, and politically and diplomatically we are increasingly thinking differently. Russians, for example, question the whole idea of the Indo-Pacific, whereas for India it is central to the way of looking at the world now. Russia’s engagement with Pakistan is deepening and Russia’s engagement in Afghanistan is very different from what it was in the past. Russia’s interest in the Middle East is also problematic because it is more or less in confrontation with the US. The diverging interests between India and Russia will be something to watch out for.

I feel what Modi did effectively in his first term is that he understood that diplomacy with major powers sometimes has to be done at the leadership level because we have very strong personalities running these powers. I feel this trend will continue and it makes sense to do this. But whether it will yield dividends in terms of resolving the larger policy problems that India faces is hard to tell. Perhaps India will simply have to manage such trends till another equilibrium is reached.

Mitra: What do you make of Modi’s outreach to China at the Wuhan Summit? Do you think summits of this nature where dialogue is initiated at the highest level of the leadership could offer a template to manage or de-escalate Doklam-style crises going forward?

Pant: If it happens again, not only would there be a question mark over the informal summitry, but it would also mean that Modi will have to face some challenges at the personal level. If he has staked his reputation on stabilizing the relationship with China, then a repeated mishap would mean he would have to respond. The onus will be on him. If diplomacy is so personalized, that is the risk you face.

The border issue is a big-ticket issue in some ways for India, and in this term, China is going to be a priority for Modi. One of the ways in which he has tried to anchor this problem is by going back to something India harped on back in the 1990s. So, the narrative now is that China and India will have to work together on global issues. Since the global economic order is currently under stress, they will explore the possibility of working together to stabilize the order and become the guarantors of globalization. This effort at working together will have an impact on the relationship, but whether it will resolve long-standing bilateral problems is hard to tell.

Sen: What impedes India’s defense modernization? Are we only limited by financial resources, and will this be a high priority for Modi in his second term?

Pant: The problem is largely institutional. I feel defense modernization should be a priority for India. The country is bringing the military more sensibly into diplomacy as part of its strategy to attain foreign policy objectives. Whether it is for projecting power or humanitarian aid — consider the use of naval forces — or for deterrence and compellence purposes that we do with China and Pakistan.

The question is also whether India is effectively utilizing its military instrument. India’s institutional structures are not capable of meeting the kind of threats that it faces today. India found it difficult to add just 36 Rafale fighter air crafts to its inventory. Think about the scale of what we are talking about. India is short by at least seven or eight squadrons in terms of what it needs to manage its main challenges. There has to be some way of thinking in a manner that enables India to handle this situation smartly and swiftly. But, clearly, that has not happened given the financial, political and process-related constraints. The lack of transparency in India’s defense procurement system means that almost every procurement is marred in corruption allegations.

India needs to start thinking more strategically about national security and force posture. Every serious country does that. It needs to make better projections about the future and, unfortunately, that kind of work has not happened in India yet. India is always found firefighting and is mostly making ad-hoc decisions. As India looks to modernize its forces looking at the changing balance of power with China, it is also trying to focus on “Make in India.”

This compounds the problem because “Make in India” is not going to happen in five years. If you want to develop manufacturing capacity in India, it will take at least another decade in terms of getting the infrastructure in place and then operationalizing the policy. Immediate threat landscape does not allow that kind of time. The government is right that India needs domestic manufacturing capacity, but there are immediate threats that have to be dealt with. Unless India brings its ends, ways and means into balance, it will be found wanting in managing national security.

Mitra: Would you agree that Modi is rewiring India’s engagement with the world and this will continue as a consequence of his re-election in 2019?

Pant: It has been debated whether Modi’s foreign policy is more style than substance, whether the change is more superficial in terms of his own personal engagements, rather than any fundamental level shift in foreign policy.

My assessment is that there has been a shift in both the style of how we conduct our foreign policy under Modi as well as the substance of India’s engagement with the world. It’s more outgoing and proactive, it’s focused on outcomes and, more importantly, it is aimed at mobilizing global public opinion to achieve concrete outcomes for India. Five years, however, is a short time period to assess any substantive shift in terms of foreign policy. But my sense is that at the end of Modi’s 10 years in office, we will see a very different kind of Indian engagement with the international system.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Defense Is Becoming More Integral to India’s Diplomacy appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Yet many independent journalists and writers have traveled to the country to see the daily lives of Iranians firsthand. As they’ve discovered, life is dramatically different from what Hollywood and Fox News tell us.

One of these journalists is , a German author who wrote “,” based on real-life encounters inside the country. The book, which was published in 2018, details his 62-day journey in Iran.

Orth is an award-winning journalist and author who, for nine years, was the online travel editor for Der Spiegel in Germany. In the 304-page book, Orth narrates his interaction with Iranians, the intersection of religion and secularism, and the ways that people try to expand their civil liberties. He notes that Iran is a misunderstood country with a young population that is at odds with the state’s interpretation of religion.

In this edition of The Interview, 51łÔąĎ talks to Orth about his adventures in Iran. The transcript has been edited for clarity and the interview took place at the end of 2018.

Kourosh Ziabari: You spent 62 days on the road in Iran to experience the different aspects of life in the country. I know it was your second trip to Iran. How did your preconceptions change after visiting the country? Were there certain stereotypes attached to Iran in your eyes that were debunked after your encounter with the country?

Stephan Orth: In general, a trip to Iran is the perfect antidote against prejudices and wrong stereotypes. For example, I expected to meet more people who are strictly religious. I expected to see more men in long robes and turbans on the streets, and more women in traditional black dresses. The chador is less common than I expected — many women have very colorful outfits. And also in conversations at home, people revealed very critical opinions about the state religion to me.

© Mina Esfandiari

Ziabari: Were you discouraged by friends and family when you first revealed your plans to travel to Iran? How did you assuage their concerns and convince them that traveling to Iran would be safe and not a tragic idea?

Orth: One friend warned me against looking women in the eyes, another suspected I would meet terrorists on every corner. So, yes, many people have a picture of Iran that is far from everyday reality. After my first trip, I knew already that traveling around Iran is far less dangerous than most people think, so when I did my second trip, I could tell people that I knew what I was doing. The critical situations I had were connected to my job as a journalist and writer. I was afraid the authorities would find out that I’m working on a book, and that could really have gotten me into trouble.

Ziabari: In your book, “Couchsurfing in Iran: Revealing a Hidden World,” you write about Iranian politics and leaders who appear to be oppressive and uncompromising. What about the people of Iran? How is their universe different from that of their leaders?

Orth: First, I should mention that I met a special group of people because I used the Couchsurfing website. Members there are normally more open-minded than average people, and most of them [in Iran] are educated, speak decent English and are interested in the Western world. Many of them told me how much they hate this government, how much they despise being forced into a religion they didn’t choose for themselves. More than two-thirds of Iranians are younger than 35. I got the impression that most of them want more freedom than they currently have.

Ziabari: One of the notable discoveries of your book is that there are “two Irans” that coexist side by side: the “theocracy” and the “hide-and-seekocracy.” What do you think has created this dichotomy in the daily life of Iranians?

Orth: In every autocratic society, people find their secret ways to be more freer than the government wants them to be and to break the rules when nobody is watching. Everything that is forbidden outside happens in Iranian apartments, as soon as the door is closed. People drink alcohol, celebrate parties, go on dates. They dance and sing and discuss very openly about the political issues. I think it’s just human nature: you can’t take away basic freedoms from people — they will not accept it and will find ways to get around those laws.

Ziabari: What do you think about the portrayal of Iran in the mass media? The entire coverage of Iran in the mainstream media revolves around reports about sanctions, Iran’s nuclear program and its tensions with the United States. The human face of Iran, its rich culture and arts are almost absent in the stories run by major newspapers and TV stations. Do you agree?

Orth: I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, the rich cultural heritage or the hospitality of people don’t make a sensational news story. Still, it’s important and right to report on sanctions and tensions. News reporting focuses on catastrophes, disasters and scandals, therefore Iran is not the only country about which people don’t get a full picture from the big media outlets.

We live in a time of information overload, where every kind of information seems to be available online. That’s an illusion — you still don’t get a clear picture of this world unless you travel to places with an open mind. I actually see this as my mission as a writer: to tell about the 90% of a country’s reality that doesn’t get much news coverage, and to do this in such an entertaining way that readers realize how interesting it is.

Ziabari: You’ve traveled to different countries. What is the most special and unique thing about Iran and its people that you might want to talk about? Is there anything that makes the country stand out among the different places you’ve been to?

Orth: I’ve been to more than 70 countries, and Iran is the most hospitable of them. Meeting the people was a very touching experience. At some points, it made me even feel ashamed how we sometimes treat foreigners and guests in Western culture.

Ziabari: You talked to many random people on the streets, in cafés, on buses and trains and elsewhere in Iran while traveling across the country. What was the most moving and inspiring story that Iranians told you about themselves or their aspirations?

Orth: A very sad story was a young guy who said that all he wants is to take his girlfriend to a nice bar and treat her to a fancy cocktail. How can such a small thing be illegal, he was asking, and he had tears in his eyes?

A very inspiring person was a host in Tehran who organizes three or four meetings per week where people recite poetry and discuss about the arts. Iran has such an amazing heritage with poets like Hafiz, Sa’adi or Omar Khayyam, and it’s a wonderful thing to keep this heritage alive with events like this.

Ziabari: Iran is not the only Muslim country, or the only country with an official religion. However, it’s referred to as one of the world’s most closed societies and, for some, the reason is down to how religion is interpreted to influence the daily life of people. What do you think?

Orth: In public life, you have to play along the masquerade that this Islamic Republic has become, even if you don’t believe. Criticism of Islam in public or in the workplace can get you into serious trouble. But besides that, people find their ways to have more freedoms at home, and Christians or Jews are more respected in Iran than most people think. My travel experience was that, in everyday contact with people, it doesn’t feel like such a closed society.

Ziabari: Do you recommend traveling to Iran to your friends, family and colleagues? Will you come again?

Orth: I recommend it to anyone who likes to travel and anyone who wants to have some stereotypes in his head rearranged. My father, who is a university professor for ancient history, went one year after me with my mother on a group tour and absolutely loved the ancient sites and architecture. Unfortunately, for North Americans it’s not so easy to get a visa, but they will be surprised at how many new friends they will make on the trip, even if the Iranian government is totally anti-American.

I would love to fly to Tehran tomorrow. I have so many good friends in this country. But after publishing a book that talks about many illegal experiences, a book that led to some controversial discussions in Iran, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to apply for a visa soon.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Traveling to Discover the Real Iran appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.