This year, American history might look different in Iowa classrooms.

In early June, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed a bill that restricts what teachers can teach in K-12 schools and at public universities, particularly when it comes to sexism and racism. It bans 10 concepts that Republican legislators define as divisive, including the idea that one race or sex is superior to another, that members of a particular race are inherently inclined to oppress others, and that the U.S. and Iowa are fundamentally racist or sexist.

The law, which is already in effect, has sparked confusion and distress among educators, some of whom say it is so broad and the language so ambiguous, they fear they might face consequences for even broaching nuanced conversations about racism and sexism in the context of US history.

Teachers need to know what the legislation means for us, and they have been asking, Is the district going to support us and have our back? Monique Cottman, whos taught elementary school and middle school for 15 years in the state, told Vox.

Cottman is a teacher leader with the Iowa City Community School District, a role that requires her to regularly coach about 50 teachers on classroom instruction strategies, curriculums, and lesson plans. This year, it involves the added work of creating a comprehensive list of FAQs for teachers about the new Iowa law because there are a lot of questions.

Since at least 2014, when students went to the school board to demand an ethnic studies course, Cottman and other teachers in the district have worked to make anti-racism part of the curriculum, but with the new law, a lot of the momentum they have built has been undercut. Teachers who would have thought about me last year arent listening to teachers like me at all because of fear, she said.

Cottman isnt alone in her predicament. Educators across the country are figuring out how to navigate laws like Iowas that have turned anti-racist education often lumped together under the catchall term critical race theory, an academic framework scholars use to analyze how racism is endemic to US institutions into a boogeyman. While critical race theory opponents fear that the framework places blame for inequality on all white people, proponents argue that their goal is to use the lens to identify systemic oppression and eradicate it. Educators who want to teach with an eye toward anti-racism say that their lessons simply reflect an honest history of the countrys founding and development including the contributions of and the discrimination against marginalized people which has traditionally been glossed over in textbooks and curriculums.

But in the past six months, seven other states Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, New Hampshire, Arizona, and South Carolina have already passed legislation similar to Iowas, and 20 others have introduced or plan to introduce similar legislation, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. Meanwhile, in states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, state boards of education and local school boards have denounced, if not totally banned, teaching critical race theory and/or the 1619 Project, a collection of essays that examines the foundational contributions of enslaved Black people to the US.

Teachers are already facing consequences, too. While debates over critical race theory were going on in the Tennessee state legislature, a high school teacher was fired after teaching Ta-Nehisi Coatess essay The First White President and playing the video of the spoken-word poem White Privilege. A Black principal in Texas was recently suspended without explanation after a former school board candidate complained that he was implementing critical race theory, promoting extreme views on race and the conspiracy theory of systemic racism.

In higher education, entire courses that grapple with inequity were dropped from course rosters or made optional. And even in states where anti-critical race theory legislation hasnt been passed, education leaders are facing pressure.

The first Black superintendent in a Connecticut district resigned after parents and community members complained to the school board that he was trying to indoctrinate students with critical race theory. (According to reports, he had been championing diversity and inclusion training and spoke out against conspiracy theories surrounding the US Capitol insurrection.)

The country is only just beginning to see this culture war play out, educators and curriculum specialists told Vox. On one hand, there will be many teachers, particularly in states where the bills havent passed, who will continue to do justice work in their classrooms, said Justin Coles, a professor of social justice education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But others are going to resort to glossing over key issues in our history that are deeply intertwined with race and racism, overlooking nuance.

While teachers like Cottman will continue to teach with an anti-racist lens despite these laws, more teachers are expected to be silenced. Because of the current social climate, Coles said, it will be more acceptable to manipulate the truth and denounce folks who make deep conversations about oppression part of their classrooms.

Ultimately, the laws, and the discussions around them, have created chaos for teachers who dont know what they should and shouldnt be teaching. A lot of the anti-racist discussions that educators had brought into the classroom following the uprisings of 2020, and even prior, could be in danger of being removed. And the people who will feel the greatest impact are students.

With these bans, learning will be incomplete since [children are] only being taught half-truths, Coles said. The classroom will become unsafe spaces for marginalized students since they cant discuss their lived experiences. These bans make it harder for our country to change.

The pushback to anti-racist teachings began shortly after last summers social justice protests that swept the country, when many Americans started to grapple with the racism embedded in institutions like policing. In August 2020, conservative activist Christopher Rufo declared a one-man war against critical race theory, appearing on Fox News and claiming that federal diversity trainings (which he wrongly identified as critical race theory) were dividing workers and indoctrinating government employees.

It didnt take long for then-President Donald Trump to seize on Rufos narrative, going as far as issuing an executive order that banned racial sensitivity training in the federal government. When Trump lost the presidential election a few months later, Republicans in state legislatures picked up the cause, drafting and introducing bills that placed limits on government agencies, public higher education institutions, and K-12 schools teaching harmful sex- and race-based ideologies.

At the core of these state bills is the desire to prevent discourse about Americas racist past and present. Last year, amid a deadly pandemic and social justice protests, students had questions about the police shootings of Black and brown civilians and why the coronavirus was disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities, and teachers couldnt ignore talk about a president who threatened when the looting starts, the shooting starts. As Texas high school teacher Jania Hoover wrote for Vox this July, The reality is that kids are talking about race, systems of oppression, and our countrys ugly past anyway from media coverage to last summers protests to even this very controversy itself, my students are absorbing these conversations and want to know more.

The past year, and the social justice movements leading up to it, left a lot of teachers rethinking how they taught history, challenging the colonialist narratives long embedded in elementary and high school curriculums. For example, a third-grade textbook Cottman was required to use only tells a partial story of Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in Louisiana. Bridges was 6 years old when federal marshals escorted her and her mother into the school building as mobs of white people surrounded them, rioted, and yelled threats and racial slurs.

The textbook states that the marshals protected her from angry people who lined the streets and stood outside the school. It makes no mention of why those people were angry or who they were, leaving out the key context that white people fought for decades to keep Black children from schools because of the belief that Black people were inferior, a detail that Cottman needed to bring forward during classroom discussions.

Another story in a similar textbook tells about a girl who was kidnapped from Greece and sold into slavery in ancient Rome; according to the text, she chose to remain enslaved because her owners treated her well and they all felt like family. Students kept taking away that as long as slave owners are nice to their slaves, theres nothing wrong with slavery, Cottman said.

If teachers continue to do what theyve been doing, no one wins, Cottman added. They need to be interrogating why some of their lessons are problematic.

As bills opposing critical race theory made their way to state legislatures this spring, confusion over what the theory was and what the bills meant overshadowed Americans desire to have nuanced classroom discussions about race. A July Reuters/Ipsos poll found that fewer than half of Americans (43 percent) said they knew about critical race theory and the surrounding debates, with three in 10 saying they hadnt heard of it at all. Respondents were even less familiar with the New York Timess 1619 Project (24 percent). Yet a majority of Americans said they support teaching students about the impact of slavery (78 percent) and racism (73 percent) in the US. State laws banning critical race theory in public schools received less support (35 percent). On all fronts, there was a partisan divide, with Republicans more interested in banning talk about slavery, racism, and the teaching of critical race theory and the 1619 Project.

In Iowa, Cottman, also a co-founder of Black Lives Matter at School Iowa, says a handful of parents in support of the ban have already reached out to teachers about the 2021-22 curriculum, but they are not the majority. Parents in support of anti-racist education have also voiced their support at school board and community meetings.

But the vocal minority, coupled with the new law, weighs on teachers and administrators. Though Iowa City is known as the bluest part of the red state, Cottman says she has talked to a number of teachers who are fine with the curriculum as is; she has also spoken to those who are concerned about losing their jobs if they talk about race.

One group of high school teachers decided to stop teaching Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walkers short story The Flowers (a story about a young Black girl who comes across a dead body, presumably a Black man who had been lynched, while picking flowers in the woods) after parents were up in arms about it on social media, for fear of further controversy.

Last fall, Cottman says her school ordered 1,000 copies of Ibram X. Kendis book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You in an effort to improve their American history coursework. But once some parents got wind of the effort, the book became optional, most teachers chose to not use it, Cottman said.

Teachers in other states are also dialing it back. Joseph Frilot, a middle school humanities teacher, learned from his curriculum manager that all of the content he developed about Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement wont be part of his lessons this year in light of the Texas law that limits discourse on racism and sexism. A huge chunk of the curriculum that I created was about oppression and resistance, so all of that will be excluded from our curriculum, Frilot told EdWeek. Am I allowed to be the transparent and honest educator that Ive been over the years?

In Tennessee, where one of the first anti-critical race theory bills was passed, teachers have requested guidance on how they should reframe their lessons and leading class discussions. The guidance from the education department, released in August, clarifies that teachers can introduce topics like racism and sexism as part of discussion if they are described in textbooks or instructional material, but teachers remain concerned that the law limits them from teaching the true history of the state and country. The states guidance also lays out major consequences for schools and educators found in violation: Schools could stand to lose millions in annual state funds, and teachers could have their licenses denied, suspended, or revoked.

Some teachers, though, plan to keep anti-racist lessons alive despite these new laws. Cottman tells teachers that even under the new law they arent required to say anything to parents, nor are they obligated to solicit parents feedback before lessons, but she reminds them that it is vital to make sure that parents feel welcome and that two-way communication is established early in the school year. When teachers have expressed worry about their classroom libraries, Cottman said she tells them they do not need to remove any books from their classrooms. If theres an anti-racism book on the shelf, a student has the choice to read it.

Lakeisha Patterson, a teacher in Houston, said she plans to continue to talk about how African Americans were considered less than human, and the social justice caucus of the San Antonio teachers union is encouraging lessons that foster inclusion and nonwhite perspectives on history.

For many Black teachers, we arent even expressing financial concerns, Cottman said about the possibility of getting fired for incorporating race discussions in classrooms. Were just pissed off that were constantly being silenced.

States and districts without anti-critical race theory legislation have greater latitude to experiment with anti-racist teaching. For Jesse Hagopian, a high school history and ethnic studies teacher in Seattle, the moment is ripe and long overdue. Beginning in September, Hagopian will be co-teaching the schools two-year-old Black studies course, the result of organizing in the wake of the police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in 2016.

If anyone is asking, the answer is yes, we are teaching critical race theory, Hagopian said. Most educators didnt know what critical race theory was until Republicans made it their main reelection vehicle. But many of them are now looking it up and realizing how it is aligned with their principles, which I think is wonderful.

On Hagopians syllabus is a wide array of texts to help students center the contributions that Black people have made throughout history, including Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, A Different Mirror, excerpts from A Peoples History of the United States, Jazz and Justice, and the YA version of The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks. Each text will help bring nuance to the Black experience. Were going to learn about Black intersectional identity all Black people dont have the same experiences so its important to understand sexism, ableism, and all forms of oppression, Hagopian said.

He has also made clear what his class is not about. Im not teaching white kids to hate themselves. Im teaching them to understand how racism is systemic and that they can be part of a multiracial struggle to bring about change, Hagopian said. Thats empowering to white students, not shaming them.

Hagopian is not alone in his efforts. While some states are trying to repress anti-racist education, others are mandating that teachers expand on it: The California Board of Education approved a statewide ethnic studies curriculum for high school students this March, and Indian Education for All standards will go into effect in Wyoming schools next school year. Meanwhile, in July, Illinois became the first state to mandate Asian American history for elementary and high school students, and Connecticut required all high schools to offer African American studies and Latino studies by 2022, with Native American studies being required in all schools beginning in the 2023-24 school year.

While anti-racism education advocates see these initiatives as promising steps forward anti-critical race theory laws are also facing legal challenges teachers in less progressive districts still face an uphill battle if they want to include nuanced discussions of race in their classrooms. For many of these teachers caught in the culture war, what they want most is to give children an education that reflects Americas true, complicated history.

As a Black woman in Iowa public schools, this is my calling as a teacher and as an advocate, Cottman said. I believe fundamentally that students, and teachers, need to know the truth.

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Critical race theory bans in schools are making teaching harder - Vox.com

Alphabet Inc, which owns Google, partially confirmed Reuters information about the account ban. The company said in a statement that it is monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and taking steps to secure vital accounts.

A former government employee told Reuters that the Taliban tried to extract messages from their accounts. The informant said he did not agree to the transfer of access and is currently in hiding.

Access to accounts is synonymous with obtaining information about former administration employees, ministers, contractors, domestic supporters and foreign partners.

Publicly available data shows that there are more than 20 Google email accounts linked to the ousted government, includingin a. With Ministries of Financeindustry and higher education. The presidents office and local authorities also used Google accounts.

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As an information security expert evaluated in an interview with Reuters, even getting the list of employees into a Google Sheets file could mean serious problems regarding the oppression that former administration employees faced.

Government organizations have also used Microsoft accounts, incl. in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, it is not known if the company has taken any steps to secure Taliban access, and if so, what. Microsoft declined to comment.

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Afghanistan. Google blocked the accounts of the ousted government employees. The Taliban sought to reach them - MoviesOnline

Geopolitical interventions imposed on domestic ethnic rivalries in Afghanistan have created the tragedy unfolding in this region. It is critical to see Afghanistan holistically and not just as a geostrategic game for world powers. If a people-centred and holistic approach is not now taken by the international community, the blowback and spillover of conflicts will have deeper and far reaching consequences.

The human and material consequences of this intervention are still being calculated. But figures from sources indicate: that the US spent a trillion dollars on this war, with less than 2% going to the Afghan people while 98% was for the military. The casualties exceed 72,000 civilians. There is an army of the wounded, 2.7 million refugees, 4 million internally displaced.

Add to this the indignity, impoverishment, disemployment, rape, trauma, corruption. Besides, the $88 billion spent on training the 300,000 Afghan soldiers who melted away, and the huge amount of military equipment left behind. Poppy cultivation and the illegal production of opium is calculated at 90,000 tonnes. This list can go on.

The international focus is primarily on geostrategic consequences, as states recalibrate their responses to the Taliban as state power. To understand this geopolitics and its impacts it is important to see that there is a constant and repeated pattern.

This pattern comes from a combination of (1) imperial projects and militarist interventions. (2) These interventions are backed by imperial and militarist knowledge constructions, and (3) both material and ideology are superimposed upon local power and ethnic conflicts, and combine to oppress the Afghan people, promote xenophobic nationalisms and global Islamophobia, and heighten human insecurity within and outside Afghanistan.

Imperialism and interventions

British colonialism used Afghanistan as a buffer between the Russian southward advance and British colonial possession of India in the 19th century as documented in the three Anglo-Afghan Wars and the British-Russian Boundary Commission of 1885.

Second, the Russians used intervention in Afghanistan to fortify their security positions during the Cold War, and to uphold a failing and faction-ridden pro-Soviet Afghan regime.

The perceived oppression of Islam by the government of Daud and their Communist backers led to the rise of political Islamic nationalism, the creation of the Taliban and Mujahideen backed by the US and Pakistan, the massive inflow of arms and mercenaries, and a rise in poppy cultivation and illegal opium trade controlled largely by the Taliban.

The Russian withdrawal in 1989 was seen as a geostrategic victory for the United States, its allies and Pakistan.

Third, the US quest for revenge for the September 11 terror attacks and thereby its direct intervention into Afghan civil strife to annihilate Al Qaeda did hit some of the bases of this terror group. But it was also advantageous to the USs geostrategic desire to reconstruct west Asia as shown by the simultaneous US war in Iraq.

Afghanistan provided the US with military bases for the various interventions in west Asia and to project US power to threaten Iran. The US withdrawal is now seen as a victory by Russia, China, Pakistan and forces of religious fundamentalisms.

Fourth, regional powers and their conflicts and militarisms have come into constant play in Afghanistan. If Pakistan was key to the nurturing of the Taliban, India supported the Northern Alliance. As for the US versus Iran and Iraq, here Irans long border with Afghanistan was a region for tensions. Saudi Arabia and Turkeys search for regional influence led to their links with both the US and the various Taliban groups, and the central Asian states all played a role.

For example, Kyrgyzstan provided a military air base to both Russia and the US in the early 2000. Uzbekistan has been wary of the Taliban providing support to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the main underground opposition to this autocratic regime.

Russia mans the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan with its 201st Motorised Division. China has an interest in advancing its investments in Afghanistan and linking it with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. India needs to safeguard its security and investments. So all have had a role in militarising the internal divisions in the Afghan civil war for their own ends.

It is evident that there is a repeat pattern where big powers from the US to Russia down to middle and regional powers have constantly used Afghanistan for their own interests. The countries may change, but the nature of intervention remains constant.

Knowledge constructions to support violent interventions

Knowledge construction is important for building hegemony and legitimacy for intervention. This too has had a repeat pattern for Afghanistan.

1) Imperial knowledge construction has constantly presented Afghan society and state as tribalist, violent, backward, without capacity for a modern state and therefore open for intervention.

Joe Biden used the old British analogy that Afghanistan is known in history as the graveyard of empires. This is ahistorical the British won one of the three Anglo-Afghan wars, it presents the past as present and unchanging, and it is racialised, showing Afghans as the keepers of graveyards. Wars produce graveyards everywhere and Afghanistan is no exception.

2) The securitised narrative of victory vs defeat. When the Russians left it was victory for the US and Pakistan. When the US withdraws it is seen as a victory for Russia, Iran, Pakistan and others. This narrative of victory versus defeat prepares for more wars.

When there has been no occupier, Afghanistan has been presented as a power vacuum.

All regional countries selectively protect only their own borders often at the cost of others. Each of these countries sees manoeuvres in the colonial paradigm of the Great Game, or now as the New Great Game. Economic assistance to Afghanistan has been framed as the revival of the Silk Routes, especially as precedent for the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

The current post-withdrawal already sees new types of interventions.

The US has carried out several bombings claimed against the Islamic State in Khorasan. Others from the Pakistan Army present themselves as advisors and well-wishers of the Taliban. Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran see an opportunity from the US defeat. Turkey, Iran, Israel, the Saudis want to use it to project their own power in the troubled west Asian region.

3) A threat perception approach from India and the EU sees Afghanistan as a threat and source of fear: of terror attacks, new refugee influx, and trafficking.

These tropes promote Islamophobia and approach Afghanistan through domestic agendas that have little to do with either the Afghan people and their problems. They ignore the severe issues of political economy, impoverishment, displacement, reversal for women, issues of education and health. These are real issues and ignoring them can turn Afghanistan into a failed state with terrible consequences for the entire region of Asia, Europe and beyond.

Local politics

In this geopolitics, the local Afghan regimes and power holders cannot be cast as progressive national liberation movements or anti-imperialists. The Taliban use religious extremist nationalism, violence, fear and threat to gain control. They supported external interventions when it suited them and turned against them too. More importantly:

1) Politics and governance is ethnic and majoritarian, with the political exclusion of different ethnic groups from political participation, power and government.

2) Afghan rulers have not developed agency for political expression and communications, like institutions, political parties etc. True, this is difficult in conditions of civil war, but even during comparative stability institutions remained weak.

3) Narrow elite economic control and benefits led to poppy cultivation and drug and other trafficking. A well run shadow economy prevails.

4) The Taliban will remain a ruthless, misogynist, anti-democratic, fundamentalist and cruel force that will use their own interpretation of Sharia law to oppress women and public culture.

These are the current continuities and specificities in the geopolitical patterns after the US withdrawal and Taliban takeover:

1) The US is looking for new military bases and quads: if Pakistan does not oblige they can look at India. Settling new waves of displaced, squeezing the Taliban economically, continuing policies of intervention in west Asia and the Indo-Pacific the US policies of curbing Russian and Chinese influence continue as its main aim in the region.

2) Russia is concerned with security and the influx of political Islam in central Asia. All these countries, from Russia and China to India will recognise and give foreign aid to the Taliban to transact security for their own countries.

3) Pakistan sees this as the victory of strategic depth and a victory against India, as new leverage with the USA and it will coordinate with the Saudis and the OIC on this.

4) India sees this as a victory of terrorism, and worries about Kashmir.

5) China wants to develop the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor for trade routes into Afghanistan and Central Asia.

For civil society and a humane approach

It is important to have collective security in this region and to:

1) Oppose a geostrategic approach where the Afghan people are barely mentioned. Afghanistan cannot be made a pawn into any more geostrategic adventures. No more interventions.

2) Ask all nations to support and give dignity to Afghan refugees.

3) Support humanitarian aid to Afghan people and the internally displaced.

4) Oppose unilateral sanctions as these impact people and not ruling regimes.

5) Support the gains made by Afghan women and look for ways to maintain freedoms for women in education, health, workplace, public spaces and for choice.

6) Oppose Islamophobia.

7) NGOs have been part of peace building, keeping and maintaining exercises in Afghanistan since the 1980s. These efforts have come from around the world, regardless of political differences. They need to be activated once more with security guarantees from the Afghan government.

8) Development assistance has been poured into Afghanistan. This should be conditional on the rights of people.

9) Institutional and operational analysis of various NGOs involved in peace building (including Norwegian Church Aid) shows that their strength lay in institutional commitment, developing local capacities, using local languages, and consideration of political, cultural sensitivities. This approach should be used in development assistance.

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The Repeat Patterns in the Afghanistan Conflicts - The Citizen

By Shari Narine

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

To vote or not to vote? That is the question Indigenous people face every federal and provincial election.

On Aug. 31, when the Assembly of First Nations released its five-priority platform for the federal election, National Chief RoseAnne Archibald weighed in. Like her predecessor Perry Bellegarde, Archibald encouraged people to vote.

RoseAnne Archibald Assembly of First Nations new National Chief

First Nations voters can and will make a large impact on the results on election night, said Archibald.

The Native Womens Association of Canada launched an aggressive campaign entitled Were done asking, were voting, which aims to activate Indigenous women from coast to coast to coast to get to the polls and have their voices heard, said the news release.

Both the Manitoba Metis Federation and the Metis Nation of Ontario are encouraging all of our citizens to vote.

Despite these pushes by Indigenous organizations to get people to mark their ballots, Courtney Skye, research fellow with the Indigenous think-tank the Yellowhead Institute, says voting is a contentious issue.

Courtney Skye, a former candidate for Six Nations elected chief in her home community says she wont vote in federal election.

Some Indigenous people believe that Canada has long had policies of assimilation and voting is another step along that way of assimilation and indoctrination, said Skye.

The issue is, do you vote for your own oppression? Because Canada is a state that is invested and continues to be invested in the oppression of Indigenous peoples, the suppression of Indigenous rights and the denial of those rights in every aspect of the country, said Niigaan Sinclair, an assistant professor in Native Studies at the University of Manitoba.

Niigaan Sinclair, an assistant professor in Native Studies at the University of Manitoba

We continue to have a country in which Indigenous peoples are seen as second tier, are seen as lesser than, are deemed as not as important or an option for political parties to decide to deal with at some point. In that environment the fact is that it is very difficult to justify voting because if all the parties suck, why would you participate in any of it? he said.

Skye also brings attention to the existence of pre-Confederation treaties with the British Crown, including those held by her Haudenosaunee people.

If we expect the Crown to respect our nationhood and our autonomy over our affairs then we have to extend that back out of mutual respect, and so, for a lot of Indigenous people who consider themselves treaty people and expect the Crown to honour these treaties, then they follow through with that in their own conduct and they dont vote in elections, she said.

For those who do choose to vote, Sinclair says its a matter of making a choice between lessen(ing) the damage of voting in the party that will do the least amount of damage or you choose the party that will be complicit in your own oppression.

Skye isnt as cynical as Sinclair. She says those who choose to vote are often driven by frustration of the status quo and not necessarily (by) being indoctrinated into another system and want to have Indigenous voices in the House of Commons.

Indigenous people make that choice for themselves, informed by their own history, their own treaty agreements, their own view, what riding theyre in, whether or not theres a (good) candidate in their riding, whether they view their riding as close or not.

Theres a lot of different things I think that go into Indigenous people making the choice of whether or not theyre going to vote in the upcoming election, said Skye.

She also points to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which entrenches the human rights of Indigenous peoples and collective groups to participate in elections of the state without losing any of their rights and entitlements of Indigenous peoples.

Skye says it makes sense that the AFN would encourage its members to vote as the AFN itself is a colonial construct ? Its a representative body of Indian Act band councils. They dont represent nations; they represent First Nations as creations of the federal government. They are people who are trying to affect change within the system. I get where theyre coming from.

Getting out the vote is a standard practise of all national chiefs, said Sinclair, adding he believes that push goes back as far as Phil Fontaine who served as national chief from 1997 to 2000 and again from 2003 to 2009.

The AFN has to deal with the federal government and so if theres a brown face in that government, naturally, they think that will evoke change, he said.

Skye observes that Inuit have a much different relationship with Canada than do the Haudenosaunee people. That difference became clear with the positive reaction from Inuit organizations when Inuk woman Mary Simon was appointed the new Governor General, the first Indigenous person to hold that position.

Aluki Kotierk, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc

In an earlier interview with Windspeaker.com, Aluki Kotierk, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., said that having an Indigenous person representing the Queen was not a conflict, especially an Inuk, as the experiences that we have had are quite different from First Nations and Metis.

As for the Metis, Sinclair says they are pleased with Trudeaus Liberal government. While the Metis do have longstanding issues ?

the fact is the Metis have been able to justify many of the policies that the Liberals addressed and theyve found a very willing dance partner.

While we believe that Justin Trudeaus government has developed the strongest relationship with the Indigenous community in Canadian history, we are willing to work with any party that wins the election, said Manitoba Metis Federation President David Chartrand in a news release. He also said the Red River Metis would be actively participating in the election.

Skye believes the number of Indigenous voters has slowly increased over the years, but she is not counted among those numbers. Skye has never voted nor will she be this time around.

For me I make the personal choice to invest in our own communities, participate in our own governance structures and revitalize our traditional systems over leveraging power from the state to affect change, said Skye.

Sinclair, who is Anishinaabe, has voted in the past although not often. Hes more inclined to vote in provincial elections, he says, because that can influence policies that pertain to his career as a teacher. He is uncertain whether hell be voting federally this month.

Often for me its a determination of will my vote matter?Frankly, my vote never matters in the area Ive lived, said Sinclair.

Shari Narine is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Windspeaker.Com . The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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Many eligible Indigenous voters struggle with whether or not they will go to the polls - Turtle Island News

Mayawatis BSP is likely to make oppression of Dalits and Brahmins its main election weapon. (File Photo)

With the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election 2022 approaching, political parties have started drawing up their battle plans.

Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is likely to make the oppression of Dalits and Brahmins its main election weapon, sources have said.

The party is working on its social engineering formula of 2007 which helped it win the state election, said a BSP leader.

READ: BJP to launch massive OBC outreach campaign ahead of UP polls

This agenda will be sharpened after the Prabuddha Sammelans, underway in the state under BSP national general secretary Satish Chandra Mishras leadership, sources said.

As part of the strategy, sources said, local BSP leaders will go to places where cases of oppression of Dalits and Brahmins have been reported and meet the families of victims to protest, show solidarity and seek justice.

In election meetings, the BSP will also talk about Dalits, Brahmins and Muslims being oppressed in the last five years and question the BJP government in the state on core issues.

Mayawati is busy preparing for the UP Assembly election from Lucknow. On her instructions, Satish Chandra Mishra is holding conventions or Prabuddha Sammelans to integrate Brahmins with the party.

As per party sources, Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims have suffered the most under the BJP rule and they are not being heard.

Mayawati will start the assembly election campaign by addressing a Brahmin Sammelan at the party office in Lucknow on September 7.

Satish Chandra Mishras conventions will end on September 4. Preparations are being made to start it from CM Yogi Adityanaths turf Gorakhpur.

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UP election 2022: Oppression of Dalits, Brahmins to be BSPs key poll plank - India Today

Critical race theory (CRT) is the latest target in the cultural clash of values, ethics and morality that characterizes the poisonous polarity between right and left-leaning Americans.

Conservatives have been pushing back against the recent reexaminations of the role that slavery and segregation have played in American history and the attempts to redress those historical offenses. Their shorthand for this unwanted review is an idea that has until now mostly lived in academia: critical race theory

Elizabeth Harris, in the Aug. 15 Sundays New York Times, wrote that Fox News and other right-wing media have aggressively taken aim at critical race theory, a scholarly framework that examines the role of law and other institutions in perpetuating racial inequality, rather than focusing on individual prejudice. Critics say it is a divisive system of beliefs that portrays whiteness as inherently bad and unfairly paints the country as irredeemably racist, but academics who embrace critical race theory say it has been intentionally misrepresented and widely misused. CRT is often compared by critics to actual racism.

The My Turn essay by two members of the Hawlemont Regional School Committee last Thursday echoes this view. Critical Race Theory is a poisonous, disruptive ideology meant to divide, not unite us they wrote.

In Adam Serwers book The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trumps America, he defends a backlash thesis in which Trumpism must be seen as the white supremacist reaction to societys cultural and political decline. Serwer therefore sees Trumpism as a cruel backlash to the election of Barack Obama and the possibility that Hillary Clinton might be his successor. Serwer writes, Trumps supporters look to him to use the power of the state to wage war against the people who threaten their white supremacist vision of America.

Then there is the 1619 Project, an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Its purpose is to reframe the countrys history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Twelve Civil War historians and political scientists who research the Civil War wrote to The New York Times Magazine concerning the 1619 Project. They were troubled that the Project was to become the basis of school curriculums with the imprimatur of the New York Times while lacking additional historical facts. That said, the letter began with It is not our purpose to question the significance of slavery in the American past. None of us have any disagreement with the need for Americans, as they consider their history, to understand that the past is populated by sinners as well as saints, by horrors as well as honors, and that is particularly true of the scarred legacy of slavery.

In another new book Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court, Orville Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner offer a learned and thoughtful portrayal of the history of race relations in America through the lens of the Supreme Court.

In his review of the book in The Nation, Randall Kennedy writes that Burton and Derfner state The Supreme Court has often been the most anti-progressive branch of the federal government. It has been and continues to be deeply implicated in the countrys history of racial oppression. It permitted the creation of a pigmentocracy that reached its fullest elaboration in the South, where states formally segregated people of color and excluded them from government. Recently, Kennedy notes, the court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act the high point of the civil rights activism of the 1950s and 60s ruling that Congresss continued imposition of special regulations on covered jurisdictions (mainly Southern states with histories of stubborn racial disenfranchisement) was unacceptable in light of positive changes in the demographics of voting. That decision, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), written by Chief Justice John Roberts for a 5-4 conservative majority, was an outrageous act of judicial delinquency. It minimized evidence of an ongoing effort to discriminate against Black voters individually and collectively. It failed to give appropriate deference to congressional policy-making.

Bottom line is that it has again eased the way for an increase in voter suppression and a roadblock to achieving true equality.

Trumps failed attempts to strip immigrants from the 2020 Census count was designed to benefit older, white voters. Racism remains embedded in our legal, political, financial, medical and real estate systems.

Connecting the Dots appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. John Bos is a contributing writer for Green Energy Times and the editor of a new childrens book After the Race available on Amazon.

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Connecting the Dots with columnist John Bos: Is racism systemic? - The Recorder

Until the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan was showered in U.S. and international assistance that amounted to nearly half of its GDP. Now, delivering a stern message to the triumphant militants, U.S. President Joe Biden and European leaders are shutting down most of it. The United States is freezing Afghan reserves, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have announced they will also suspend aid, as have major Western powers like Germany.

But Biden has a problem he doesnt face in other rogue countries squeezed by U.S. sanctions: The United States has spent an estimated $2 trillion over nearly 20 years trying to build up Afghanistan and help its desperately poor people. Moreover, given the swift U.S. withdrawal that left behind tens of thousands of Afghans who once supported the U.S.-led effort there, can Biden morally justify cutting them off? This is an especially pressing question as potentially new strains of COVID-19 proliferate among a poorly vaccinated population and Afghanistan heads into the colder months.

The Biden administration is trying to thread that needle by saying it will continue to deliver humanitarian aid to Afghanistan but the Taliban government wont get any of it.

Until the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan was showered in U.S. and international assistance that amounted to nearly half of its GDP. Now, delivering a stern message to the triumphant militants, U.S. President Joe Biden and European leaders are shutting down most of it. The United States is freezing Afghan reserves, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have announced they will also suspend aid, as have major Western powers like Germany.

But Biden has a problem he doesnt face in other rogue countries squeezed by U.S. sanctions: The United States has spent an estimated $2 trillion over nearly 20 years trying to build up Afghanistan and help its desperately poor people. Moreover, given the swift U.S. withdrawal that left behind tens of thousands of Afghans who once supported the U.S.-led effort there, can Biden morally justify cutting them off? This is an especially pressing question as potentially new strains of COVID-19 proliferate among a poorly vaccinated population and Afghanistan heads into the colder months.

The Biden administration is trying to thread that needle by saying it will continue to deliver humanitarian aid to Afghanistan but the Taliban government wont get any of it.

Consistent with our sanctions on the Taliban, the aid will not flow through the government but rather through independent organizations, such as U.N. agencies and NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Monday as U.S. forces completed their withdrawal. And we expect that those efforts will not be impeded by the Taliban or anyone else.

But bypassing the Taliban could be especially difficultif not impossiblesince the group can now officially oversee the operations of any agencies and NGOs in the country. In any case, its hard to make a distinction between the peoples welfare and the overall health of the Afghan economyparticularly if, as expected, it collapses in the coming months.

The leverage of the West is quite limited, said Adnan Mazarei, a former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund who oversaw Afghan programs from 2009 to 2015. In the end, leverage is a function of how much the United States and other countries care about the suffering of the Afghan people. The U.S. may decide it cares.

Nor are major institutions like the United Nations necessarily on board with Bidens pressure campaign. On the contrary, U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres said Tuesday that extra food, shelter, and health supplies must be urgently fast-tracked into the country because Afghanistan faces a humanitarian catastrophe amid a severe drought and with winter approaching. Guterres said he had grave concern about the threat of basic services collapsing completely, adding 1 in 3 Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from.

The Biden administration has not yet specified how its limited-aid approach will work. Speaking on condition of anonymity, several governmentofficials indicated the U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, the key agencies overseeing financial support, have barely begun discussing the details.

On Tuesday, a Treasury official indicated the Biden administration would maintain sanctions against Taliban leaders, including significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system, but could not be more specific. Other major donors, such as the World Bank, which had been overseeing nearly $800 million in programs in 2021 for Afghanistan, are also still figuring out how to navigate the new reality. We continue to follow events in Afghanistan, and once the situation becomes clearer, we will be able to make an assessment of next steps, a World Bank spokesperson said Tuesday.

The European Union, which mainly fears a giant influx of refugees, is now focused on giving aid to neighboring countries where Afghans might flee rather than to Afghanistan itself. In a statement Tuesday, the EU said its member states stand determined to act jointly to prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled large-scale illegal migration movements faced in the past.

The United States and major Western nations also have, over the last two decades, sponsored critical aid programs that many are loath to eliminate nowin particular, hundreds of millions of dollars in investments toward female education, with some 3 million girls and young women affected, said Daniel Runde, a development expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I would argue we would want to support those programs, and theres a lot of money in those pipelines, he said.

They need to distinguish between humanitarian needs and the broader development programs. Its going to be fuzzy, said Earl Anthony Wayne, a former U.S. deputy ambassador in Afghanistan. Theyre going to have to have a set of governance conditions and rights conditions. That will also get fuzzy.

The central issue going forward is whether the Taliban will uphold such conditions of fair governance and observance of human rightsat least adequately enough to keep some of the aid flowing. The Biden team credited the Taliban leadership with helping U.S. forces airlift more than 120,000 people, including thousands of Americans, out of the country. The Taliban have also said they want international recognition, and they appear to be forming a motley governing body that could include technocrats like Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister who has returned to Kabul, along with U.S.-designated terrorists such as Sirajuddin Haqqani.

But it is not yet entirely unclear what sort of government will emerge or whether the Taliban will ever moderate their past behaviorespecially their harsh treatment of women and girls.

What is problematic for the West is how to respond to what may soon be urgent humanitarian needs generated by an extensive drought and a large internal displaced population, the possibility of significant refugee flows, and the collapse of the money economyall of which will create pressures to find ways to help the Afghan people, said Peter Michael McKinley, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. That may require dealing with the Taliban more directly.

If Biden comes down too hard on the new Afghan government, he could also face political problems at home as stories of desperation and Taliban oppression continue to make headlines. On Tuesday, facing harsh bipartisan criticism, the president again defended his decision to withdraw by Aug. 31, even though some Americans were left behind along with thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. effort. Biden suggested the only mistake he might have made was to think the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown. And he insisted we have leverage to hold the Taliban to their promise of safe passage for Americans and Afghans holding special immigrant visa applications.

We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence, and humanitarian aid, Biden said. Well continue to speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution sponsored by the United States, Britain, and France that called on the Taliban to facilitate safe passage for people wanting to leave Afghanistan, allow humanitarian organizations to access the country, and uphold human rights, including for women and children. The resolution also called on the Taliban to let humanitarian aid flow and combat terrorism. In his speech, Biden said we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments. Notably, China and Russia abstained.

A key question in the months ahead will be whetherfaced with the threat of an international embargo on at least some financial aidthe Taliban will decide to preemptively moderate their worst past practices, which only in recent weeks have reportedly involved revenge killings and forcing girls and young women into marriage or sex slavery.

A half-dozen foreign aid experts interviewed for this article, all of them well versed in international programs that help Afghanistan, agreed the Taliban-led government will be unable to replace billions of dollars in Western aid with meager revenue from the opium trade or aid from China and neighboring Pakistan, which has supported the Taliban in the past. Given the cutoff in aid, they believe it is inevitable the country will sink further into poverty, opening the way for terrorist groups to exploit the peoples misery with illicit funds.

Its hard to envisage alternative streams of revenues that would provide the same sustenance for running a government and an economy, McKinley said. He said the Talibans narcotics revenues are not at a level that would compensate for the loss of international donor assistance and, in any case, would be grounds for holding off. Pakistan is not a country in a position to provide significant assistance. China is the real issue, but how much assistance does China actually deliver in many situations like this?

Aid specialists say China is probably not interested in large-scale development or humanitarian aid. Its not their forte, Runde said. What the Chinese offer is to say, hey, Ill lend you money to build a port or a road.

The withdrawal of international aid wont necessarily be felt immediately by ordinary Afghans, especially since the previous Afghan governments led by former Presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani were steeped in corruption and most U.S. assistance went to the military buildup of the now-collapsed Afghan National Security Forces.

But there is little doubt that millions of Afghans will suffer in the coming months and years. Mazarei, who is now with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, suggests if the Afghan economy collapses completely, U.S. leverage over the Taliban could increase somewhat. There is going to be pressure on the exchange rate and balance of payments and a rise in inflation and poverty levels, he said. The trick is going to be whether the Taliban decide that, at least for now, they will form a more inclusive government so as to get some of this foreign aid.

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Biden Can't Pressure Taliban Without Hurting Thousands of Afghans Left Behind - Foreign Policy

George W. Bush addresses the nation aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, 2003. (Stephen Jaffe / AFP via Getty Images)

A republic that wages unending war beyond its frontiers sets itself up for decline and fall. Its intractable military skirmishing is like the drip-drip-drip of water slowly eroding the sturdy foundations of an edifice before it collapses. Buffoons soon take their turns as mob rulers, coarsening and dividing a once-free society, before a barbarian horde tries to topple it.1 Books in Review

Or so goes the Roman narrative, an old story of imperial decline that has instructed generations of politicians and political theorists seeking to stave off a similar fate. If you spend too much time fighting savagery, you become savage as well. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual2

warfare, warned James Madison in 1795. Added Barack Obama in 2013, in a statement that, in retrospect, seems prophetic: A perpetual warthrough drones or special forces or troop deploymentwill prove self-defeating and alter our country in troubling ways.3

But there has long been both a minor and a major problem with the Roman narrative. The minor one is that no one ever seems to agree on when the free society went wayward. For millennia, observers have emphasized different causes and dateswhich was easy to do since, as the 18th-century French political philosopher Montesquieu pointed out, from the beginning Rome was in an eternal and always violent war somewhere. Edward Gibbon, the most famous modern chronicler, opens his history with an admiring description of the Roman Empire as it embarked on its wars, with scenes from Augustus to the Antonines that read like a fanboys paean to military achievement. The pivot in his account comes only with the murder in 192 ce of Emperor Commodus, the narcissist who lacked every sentiment of virtue and humanity and was goaded into unspeakable acts of cruelty by a servile crowd that worshiped him. (He did not have red hair.)4

But the larger problem with the Roman narrative is its complacent nostalgia for a time before the decline itself. Historical bickering about what went wrong and when presupposes that a lotor enoughwent right. Taking the virtues of the free society for granted, its way of life glorious until the intrusion of wartime vice, the Roman narrative, whether credulously or ideologically, implies that the problem was adventitious and occurred late. It becomes a matter of saving the last best hope from its unwinding, to quote the titles of two of George Packers recent books. But what if the sources of the cruelty and violence and putrefaction were of long standing? What if the crimes and pathologies of empire abroad and subjugation at home, belatedly fingered as the causes of collapse, had always prevented a republic from actually coming into being? What if the supposedly free society was unconscionably violent to its own people, and its military adventures far away were extensions or reflections of its unfreedoms nearby? The problem wasnt a decline and fall, but a failure to rise in the first place.5

In Reign of Terror, Spencer Ackerman opens with Madisons warning and refuses to narrate the main events of the War on Terror in the years after 9/11 separately from their domestic ramifications. In Subtle Tools, Karen J. Greenberg studies how policies enacted to allow the pursuit of foreign terrorists 20 years ago, with their unexpected and unholy uses at home in recent years, ended up degrading our laws and liberty. For both, the whirlwind of the forever war of the past 20 years allowed Donald Trump to reap the opportunity for American devastation.6

Both books raise the question of whether the Roman tale of liberty spurned is the right one, while also suggesting the more disconcerting possibility that the pathologies were there all along. Ackerman at one point cites the observation of Aim Csaire that unfreedom oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack of an empire, including those found within its metropole: What happens abroad is only a manifestation of unfreedom at home. If this is true, then Ackermans and Greenbergs focus on how the War on Terror led to Trumps rise and reignthe Roman narrative applied to recent American historyis not necessarily wrong. But starting with the War on Terror and ending with Trump also isolates both from their genuine sources. It also distracts from how Joe Bidenwho called in illegal air strikes in February and promised amid the fiasco of the pullout from Afghanistan to sustain counterterrorist operationsis continuing our war, not ending it.7

Spencer Ackerman has been among the most important journalists to chronicle the War on Terror almost from its inception. Writing for, among other publications, The Guardian and, until recently, The Daily Beast, he has shown himself to be a gifted reporter, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his role in bringing Edward Snowdens revelations about NSA surveillance to the public. In Reign of Terror, Ackerman synthesizes two decades of his and others work to explore how the War on Terror was not simply something that happened on the battlefields. Rather, it happened in the United States and helped to create Trump and allow his profane works.8 Current Issue

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Karen Greenberg, a national security expert at Fordham Law School, has also been a precious resource, especially on the War on Terrors legal machinations. The author of an indispensable study on Americas Guantnamo Bay prison, she has become one of the countrys leading experts on the perverse legal changes brought about by counterterrorism policy and the surveillance state. Like Reign of Terror, her new book draws from this experience to show how the subtle tools forged out of the wreckage of 9/11the governments use of euphemism, flexibility, and secrecyworked for two decades to smother the good out of a democracy in turmoil and pave the way for some of the most infamous episodes of Trumps presidency.9

Ackerman and Greenberg hardly deny the excesses and ravages of our wars abroad. But their interest heresomething the last presidents term and the current anniversary marking two decades (so far) of counterterrorism make pressingis in what these excesses and ravages have done to America itself. And Trump, far from representing a deviation from the War on Terror, epitomized it. He brought aspects of the war home, Ackerman contends, even if fundamentally the war was always home. As Greenberg adds, Trump exploited existing tools, already destructive, and sharpened them into weapons. The boomerang of counterterrorism policy, invented to attack foreign enemies, ended up permanently disfiguring American life once it struck home.10

Both authors sweep across the past two decades before reaching the age of Trump, and in doing so they help periodize the entire experience of the War on Terror. For Ackerman and Greenberg, the two pivotal moments in the evolution of Americas counterterrorism age were the early months of George W. Bushs presidency and the early months of Barack Obamas.11 Related Article

As both authors tell it, the initial days and months after Al Qaeda struck Manhattan and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, were formative for everything that followedespecially Bushs proclamation of a war on terror and the supersession of limits that he and his neoconservative stewards demanded in consequence. Having abandoned the concept of a war against a specific terrorist organization, Ackerman observes, Americans would never be able to agree on when it could be won. From the start, therefore, the whole notion of a War on Terror was conceptually doomed, and yet it would remake the country in its wake. Chillingly, Greenberg cites Trump the celebrity businessman predicting this very thing himself: On September 13, two days after the attack, he noted that a whole different city and world would arise from the smoking ruins of ground zero.12

It wasnt just that Bush chose unending war; he also supercharged border and homeland policing, racializing it on the grounds thatas his attorney general, John Ashcroft, remarkedthe enemys platoons infiltrate our borders. Even as foundational decisions were made about how to movenotwithstanding the constraints of international lawagainst Afghanistan and Iraq, starting with Congresss near-unanimous 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, the government began to round up terrorism suspects at home, initiate domestic surveillance, and lift controls on detention and interrogation. Greenberg calls the AUMF the Ur document of the War on Terror, because its vagueness meant that it would authorize force against anyone. And as she shows in a separate chapter, Bush also moved immediately to set up the agency with the sinister name Department of Homeland Security, placing border control in a counterterrorism framework. Meanwhile, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in October 2001, which ended up imposing few limits on such surveillance practices.13

Ackerman stresses how near-universal the support for the War on Terror was across Americas partisan divide in this first pivotal period. The neoconservatives in the cockpit of Bushs foreign policy, however showily many of them would later become never-Trumpers, continued or even extended their dangerous game of indulging the nativist part of the Republican base, which has proved to be anything but an atavistic remnant of the distant past. At the same time, the neocons were not above lecturing paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and others about their insufficient patriotism when they advised caution. As for liberals, they were compliant and supinewhen they were not even more enthusiastic about the opportunity to slay monsters abroad than their neoconservative frenemies. Part of the reason was electoral fear. Anti-communist liberalism built the structures that confronted the Soviet Union, Ackerman comments, but that did not spare it the demagoguery of conservatives for whom liberalism was a stalking horse for communism. Yet the most important reason was that mainstream liberals, too, were grateful for a new enemy to replace the one that had long defined their aggressive posture.14

Minor pushback came only with the faltering of the Iraq War and the Abu Ghraib torture revelations in the spring of 2004. The legacy of this period was that the War on Terror was touched up, its torture and related prisoner abuses removed (with an assist from the Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and other cases). In the process, however, the earliest assumptions of the war framing and the licensing of force abroad were continued, even entrenched. Perversely, as I argue in my own new book on the period, the humanization of perpetual war adopted in the later Bush years ratified and even fortified his foundational choices to move the country to a war footing, even as the presidents own popularity tanked. Just as, in 2001, mainstream opinion across the political spectrum had given the government carte blanche to create a new national security state, between 2004 and 2006 a renewed public legitimacy for the War on Terror turned on making it moral.15

That evolution in the war is why its second pivotal moment came during Obamas first months in office. The new president had campaigned on a selective opposition to the Iraq War, presenting himself as a broader peace candidate, while implying to those in the know his acceptance of an infinity war under the new and unconstrained authorities that Bush had asserted and Congress had granted. Obamas anti-war speech as an Illinois state senator in 2002providentially rediscovered as he battled Hillary Clinton, who had even fewer scruples about Americas mightwas taken to be more significant than his votes to fund the Iraq War as a US senator or to expand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which increased government spying, the month after he clinched the Democratic Partys nomination for president.16

Although his rhetoric about the war on terror suggested both legal and operational restraint, Greenberg writes, Obama proved reluctant to surrender the flexibility that vague language provided for the presidential exercise of elastic powers. Neither expansive war powers nor limitless surveillance authority were reformed; their abuse continued, and in some instances they were even broadened. Nonetheless, liberals and the mainstream media lionized Obama for ending the War on Terror, while others nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize (which he won later that year). Never mind that he killed members of Faheem Qureshis family by armed drone on his third full day in office or that he used Congresss original AUMF against new enemies and in many more places.17

Although the haze of gratitude that Obama enjoyed for not being Bush took a long time to dissipateand then returned once the identity of his successor became knownboth Ackerman and Greenberg show that Obama chose forthrightly to make the War on Terror permanent. Indeed, he not only extended it in time and expanded it in space but, with his lawyerly bent, formalized its legal basis to provide extra legitimation.18

The expanded range and startling rise in the number of drone strikes, so associated with this second period of the War on Terror, should not obscure its other forms, such as the ramped-up use of Americas special forces. Drone strikes were more than just the centerpiece of Obamas counterterrorism strategy, Ackerman notes. They represented how he saw the War on Terror: not as something to end, but something to reorient. Obama understood that the War on Terror could not continue in its cruel earlier form, either in bloody ground campaigns or unspeakable prisoner abuse (which was easier to avoid if suspected terrorists were not captured but killed outright). Even when his other compromises were eventually challenged by a rising left indicting the rampant austerity and anti-Black violence of his era, Ackerman writes, the opposition to Obama was not fueled by antiwar activism. As a result of this transformative period during Obamas first few months as president, what Ackerman dubs the Sustainable War on Terror was launchedand continues to this day.19

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But how persuasive is it to insist, as Ackerman and Greenberg do, that the War on Terror, aside from its grievous effects abroad, transformed America beyond recognition as well? And how illuminating is it to search for proof of a decline and fall in the coming of Donald Trump and his presidencyespecially if Bushs and Obamas early months in office proved so decisive?20

To the extent that both writers focus on the War on Terror proper, they face serious difficulties. Trumps ascent marked what Ackerman calls the decadent or exhaustion phase of the War on Terror. In an excellent chapter, he shows that the American people and even some leading policy-makers had grown weary of endless war even before Trump was elected. Indeed, this fatigue helped give Trump an extraordinary opening, among the others he exploited in his astonishing 2016 breakthrough. Was his condemnation of the wars, then, genuine? Ackerman is contemptuous of any notion of Donald the Dove, and fair enough. Yet Trump pressed to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, even if it is also true, as Greenberg documents, that his aggressive and lawless attack on the Iranian general Qassim Soleimani embraced the War on Terrors legerdemain and the erosion of any limits on war powers.21

If there was no Donald the Dove, it is mainly because the Sustainable War on Terrorwith fewer deployed troops and more high-tech death from a distancewas something that Trump inherited more than invented. In reducing troops ever further in most theaters, even as he ramped up the use of drones and special forces against the Islamic State and others, Trump was simply following the policies of his predecessors to their logical conclusion (as would his eventual successor). Still, it is only fair to note that by running in 2016 on his own critique of US military policyand of Bush himself, for the Iraq WarTrump helped make possible the Afghan withdrawal that Joe Biden is putting center stage to mark the 20th anniversary of September 11 and to take credit for ending the forever war. Moreover, the anti-war cause saw no greater successes than during the Trump years, not just on the left but on the rightnotably among the US veterans who massively supported him.22

In other ways, though, Ackerman and Greenberg argue, Trumps tenure did not augur the end of the War of Terror so much as its return home. Ackerman notes how, from its start, the War on Terror helped reactivate a nativist current in American politics and thus shaped the constituency that supported Trump. Greenberg meticulously documents how Trumps Muslim travel ban was debated in the Supreme Court within a War on Terror frameworkand how the considerable deference the court showed to the president in its ultimate decision also presupposed the executive authority that had been granted over the past 20 years. The legal and policy tensions of 9/11 persisted into the Trump era, she writes, and were brought into the open by the Muslim ban. The same was true of border interdiction, with the Department of Homeland Security on the front lines of the administrations outrageous policies. But the most vivid example for their thesis is in the nationwide protests after George Floyds murder. In response to the uprisings, Trump openly referred to the protesters as terrorists, explicitly calling for a counterinsurgency on American soil by the military, if possible, and by militarized police if not. A wartime attitude took hold, Ackerman writes.23

That the former intelligence and military stewards of the War on Terror now professed themselves shocked to find their tools perverted in a domestic struggle against their fellow citizens was ironic, as both Greenberg and Ackerman note. Meanwhile, some Trump supporters moved to protect his nativist racism from the very national security state they once demanded, as the neoconservatives and national security functionaries bolted from Trump and were seen to be using their deep state powers to hem in and undermine the president. This development was the War on Terror through a fun-house mirror, as Ackerman notes, with paranoid fantasies of Islamists in collaboration with the Security State. Now American hatred and racism required turning on the American government itselfin defense of its leader.24

Greenberg concludes her study with the prescription to control or eradicate the subtle tools, now that we can confirm their domestication and misuse. More darkly, Ackerman suggests that by the time Joe Biden providentially ousted Trump, a perpetual-motion machine of death powered by the worst of American history had made it increasingly difficult to see America as anything more than its War on Terror.25

But for all the power of a general argument that invalidates the War on Terror through Trump and his works, there are also limits to memorializing its first 20 years this way. As Ackerman sometimes implies, all of American history culminated in Trump. If so, then reducing Trump to the culmination of just one particular episode in that history risks making it too easy for us to pretend otherwise. The #Resistance, Ackerman notes, tended after 2016 to surgically separate their hatred of Trump from any examination of the America that produced him. But by the very same token, one cannot surgically separate ones hatred of the War on Terror from any examination of the country that produced it. American exclusion and nativism are hardly new, and the governmental euphemism, flexibility, and secrecy that Greenberg illuminates have been endemic features of Americas war-making for decades, if not centuries. Also, for all the appeal of the framework of counterterrorisms blowback and boomeranging, racialized oppressionespecially in the furious responses to bids for freedom and justice by the enslaved and their descendantshas been at home in the United States throughout its history.26

Finally, by locating the costs of the War on Terror in the climax of the Trump presidency, we allow the argument to be made that, now that the sane conservatives and liberals are back in charge, all we need is some modest reform of the War on Terrors blatant or subtle tools. That lesson is, indeed, precisely the dominant one among liberals today. Greenberg ends on an expectant note about Biden, even as she worries that the January 6 uprising has been widely analogized with 9/11 as a national trauma requiring the most emphatic kind of patriotic response. She knows, however, that Biden and his foreign policy stewards are old hands at the counterterrorism policy of the past two decades and have so far done littlethe withdrawal from Afghanistan asideto challenge its ways.27

The Roman narrative of civilized freedom undone through foreign wars is alluring. But it is also misleading. For a while, scholars have rejected the whole notion that Rome fella paradigm, as Glen Bowersock wrote some years ago, that mostly represented the fears of observers centuries later as they confronted the instability of the civilization to which they belonged. It still serves such a function today. And as scholars like Dirk Moses and Richard Waswo have argued, the Roman narrative is a founding legend that permits a measure of self-criticism in the name of honoring an otherwise supposedly great civilizationignoring what Mohandas Gandhi and other anti-colonialists have long noted: that civilization has mostly been a euphemism for its opposite all along.28

This is why we should not separate the War on Terror from what came before, nor so innocently fasten its conclusion to Trump, especially as a symbol and symptom of civilizations degradation, without a deeper reflection on what it means to be civilized in the first place. On the 20th anniversary of the War on Terror, it is easy to slip into the Roman narrative, mourning a distinctive or even decisive period of freedoms collapse. The darkerand truerstory to tell is one in which the War on Terror extended and ratified the cruelty and oppression that define our history more than many might care to admit.29

On the other hand, the Roman example could well instruct us that there are uplifting possibilities in disorder and decline. Much as the historian Peter Brown did so breathtakingly in junking all the accounts of Romes decline in the first centuries after Christ, people might someday see the current period as the birth of something creative and interesting. Not only may there be limited value in a narrative of imperial excess coming home, but the harsh transitions we are experiencing now might be the birth pangs of something better and new. Of course, it is up to us to make it so.30

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In the Shadow of 9/11 - The Nation

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was an unforgettable name in the socio-economic, cultural and political history of India whose influence was quite apparent in the fields of social and religious reformation, public administration, free journalism and educational development in British-ruled 19th century India. He was born in a prosperous family of the Brahman class but developed an unorthodox religious ideology at an early age.Ram Mohan (1772-1833) was a polyglot ~ he was proficient in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, English, Bengali and Hindi. He also knew Latin and Greek. He was totally against idolatry. He was exiled from home and went to Murshidabad in 1803. In 1805, Ram Mohan joined the East India Company and worked for John Digby in the Rangpur collectorate; it was Digby who introduced him to western culture and literature.The immobile structure of Indian society, beset with blind beliefs like the Sati system, caste excesses, untouchability and the oppression of women divided society. Ram Mohan began to protest against the Sati system and other social evils inside and outside his home. Not only that, being a strong advocate of equal rights for men and women he worked tirelessly for an end to practices like child marriage and Purdah system, dowry system and polygamy.Ram Mohan Roys ground-breaking reforms in various spheres of life laid the foundation upon which future Indias values and principles were laid. An erudite scholar, a champion of the press and freedom of expression, a great reformer and above all, a pioneer of the national movement in India, Ram Mohan Roy is known as the Father of Indian Renaissance. He dedicated himself to the task of modernising India.Sati was a historical Hindu practice in which a widow sacrificed herself by sitting atop her deceased husbands funeral pyre. In 1811 Roy witnessed his brothers widow being burned alive on her husbands funeral pyre. Ram Mohan was severely hurt by the cruelty of the custom. In fact, he was the first Indian to protest against this custom. In spite of vehement protests from orthodox Hindus, he carried out his propaganda against this custom. Finally, Raja Ram Mohans effort became successful when in 1829 Lord William Bentinck banned Sati by law.According to this law, the custom of sati became illegal and punishable as culpable homicide. Abolition of Sati was one of the significant turning points in the social development of modern India. While Ram Mohan is remembered by common people for the role he played in abolishing the evil of Sati, he was also a prominent name in educational reforms.He supported English as a medium of teaching in India for he believed it was superior to the traditional Indian education system. He regarded education as an effective vehicle to achieve social reform and was a strong advocate of introducing western learning in India. Keeping this great purpose in his mind he set up the Hindu College at Calcutta jointly with David Hare in 1817; it later went on to become one of the best educational institutions in the country producing some of the best minds in India.Before that, in 1816, he established Indias first English medium school. In 1822, he gave a big grant to start an English high school of the Unitarian Association that was led by the noted educationist David Hare and Reverend Adam. He established Vedanta college, City College and English schools where courses in both Indian learning and western social and physical sciences were offered.In 1830, he assisted Alexander Duff in establishing the General Assemblys Institution. Roy promoted and urged teaching of scientific subjects like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and even Botany. He promoted technology, western medicine and English to be taught at Indian schools. He was also a great scholar who translated many books, religious and philosophical works and scriptures into Bengali and also translated Vedic scriptures into English. Not only that, he was the first Indian to make a passionate plea for womens education and rights.To educate the common people, Raja published magazines in different languages including English, Hindi, Persian and Bengali. Notable magazines published by him were the Brahmanical Magazine, the Sambad Koumudi and Mirat-ul-Akbar. He started the first Bengali language weekly newspaper and the first newspaper in an Indian language, called Sambad Koumudi in 1821 and in 1822 he published the journal Mirat-ul-Akbar.Sambad Koumudi helped people to form an opinion about the issues affecting their daily life in British India and represented their grievances before the Government. He vehemently fought for the freedom of press. In 1823, when the British imposed censorship upon the then Calcutta press, Roy, as the founder and editor of two of Indias earliest weekly newspapers, organised a protest, arguing in favour of freedom of speech and religion as natural rights.Ram Mohans spiritual devotion was not confined to the sphere of spirituality alone as social and religious reforms were inseparable to him. True religion was to him an antidote of political tyranny and social oppression. Ram Mohans ideology of Brahmoism derived from the Upanishads condemned polytheistic practises, idolatry and encouraged practise of the unity of God ~ formless, universal and omnipresent.In 1815, he founded the short-lived Atmiya Sabha to propagate his doctrine of monotheistic Hinduism. From 1828, the Brahmo Sabha which was renamed as Brahmo Samaj in 1830, was formed for worship of the Single Divinity irrespective of caste, creed or sect and became one of the most important agents of religious and social change in 19th century India.Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in his book The Indian Struggle called him the apostle of a religious revival in India. Except it, his visions for a democratic, secular and rational society were carried forward by Brahmo Samaj. He also advocated larger association of Indians in the administration, the separation of the Judiciary from the Executive, disbandment of the Standing Army and the formation of militia composed of peasants.He believed in social equality of all human beings, and thus was a strong opposer of the caste system. It was Roy who condemned oppressive practices of Bengali zaminders and demanded fixation of minimum rents. He also demanded the abolition of taxes on tax-free lands. He called for a reduction of export duties on Indian goods abroad and the abolition of taxes on tax-free lands.He was perhaps the first feminist who wanted women to be educated and given the right to inherit property. Roy was the moving spirit behind empowering women and getting them a respectable position in society.Ram Mohan was also the first to give importance to the development of the mother tongue. His Gaudiya Byakaran in Bengali is the best of his prose works. He stood for cooperation of thought and activity and brotherhood among nations. His understanding of the international character of the principles of liberty, equality and justice indicate that he well understood the significance of the modern age. He was perhaps the first philosopher in the world to strengthen internationalism.In his address entitled Inaugurator of the Modern Age in India, Tagore referred to Ram Mohan as a luminous star in the firmament of Indian history. Ram Mohan is an outstanding personality who was not only the pioneer of modernity but also a visionary of liberal democracy not just of Bengal but of the whole world. He proved himself to be a religious, social, educational and cultural reformer who challenged traditional Hindu culture and indicated lines of progress for Indian society under British rule.There is no denying the fact that without Ram Mohans intellectual stimulation and indefatigable campaigns against social evils, it is not possible to conceive of contemporary India. He was the symbol of freedom, equality, fraternity, tolerance, kindness and rationality. He was given the title of Father of Modern India by Gopal Krishna Gokhale.At present we are suffering from religious intolerance. Our everyday life is beset with many severe social and moral problems. In this situation we are in dire need of following the ideologies of Raja Ram Mohan, the relentless crusader against all kinds of injustices as well as exploitative practices for making a modern India in the true sense of the term.

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Ahead of his times - The Statesman

So, the potential for abuse is high. The government needs to walk a tightrope; a misstep and the fall would be absolute.

Government seeking volunteers to report cyber content for certain violations could draw parallels with oppressive regimesthe Gestapo infamously relied on citizen informants as did the Soviet state. But the fact is that Twitter, Facebook et al ask the same of users: Report abuse or flag any post that violates policy. So, there is a benevolent, even beneficial, modern-day parallel of such civilian monitoring.

As per The Indian Express, MHA has notified a programme allowing people to register as cyber-volunteers, and report to the government illegal and unlawful content, including child pornography, rape threats, terrorism, radicalisation and anti-national activities. But, broad sweep, catch-all categories is where things could go terribly wrongand even lead to oppression (the state has substantive penal powers, a Facebook, at the worst,can impose a ban). If differing ideologies, lawful dissent action, and, as recent history shows, even sharp criticism, is to be termed as radicalisation or anti-national, the government will have no leg to stand on.

There are enough instances from the immediate and distant history of ruling political dispensation abusing the powers to shut up critics.

As far as prosecution is concerned, the government will have to exercise careful discretion, beyond just the face-value. The Justice Srikrishna committee report shows that despite an anti-abuse procedure governing phone-tapping, the review committee has to deal with 15,000-18,000 interception requests every meeting.

So, the potential for abuse is high. The government needs to walk a tightrope; a misstep and the fall would be absolute.

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Careless Whispers: Parallels of civilian informants in social media user-reporting policies, but govt must walk a tightrope on this - The Financial...

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: A day after three international celebrities kicked up a Twitter storm by supporting the ongoing farmers agitation on Delhi borders, the farmers at Tikri border, one of the epicentres of the protest, said the solidarity from abroad is a nail on the coffin for the government. The movement will only grow further, they claimed.

The issue has become an international embarrassment now. How does it reflect on a country when an American singer has to raise awareness on protests happening in India? Indian celebrities who did not post a comment in solidarity with the movement suddenly rushed to the governments aid to issue messages of unity on Twitter. They will oppose Rihannas statement but not condemn basic human rights violations like suspension of Internet and supplies being cut off for farmers.

The hypocrisy lies exposed now, said Varun Chouhan who hails from Madhya Pradeshs Shivpuri. On Wednesday, the Centre had put out a statement against the support lent to the movement by international personalities including American pop singer Rihanna, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and US Vice President Kamala Harris niece, Meena Harris.

Soon, several Union ministers and celebrity film stars retweeted the statement. Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, and legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar were among others who issued statements on how internal issues could be resolved amicably. Activist Sudesh Goyat said it was unfortunate for celebrities to let down youth who idolise them.

Jasbir Kaur Nat, state committee member of Punjab Kisan Union, said the reaction of international celebrities in support of the farmers was a nail in the coffin for the Indian government. The government stepping up oppression against farmers at the protest sites is attracting more international attention. They thought suspending Internet would help them twist the narrative. However, it turned out to be a move of political suicide for them, he said.

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Oppression against us attracting international attention: Farmers - The New Indian Express

AS ANTI-GOVERNMENTprotests continue to grow,revolutionary forces in Turkey warned today of the states attemptsto break the backbone of their resistance.

Sixty-five people were detained in Istanbul last week after a press conferenceannouncing the launch of a new opposition alliance, theUnited Fighting Forces (BMG).

Many of those hauled into custodywill appear in court tomorrow.There have been allegations of torture during their fourdays ofinterrogation by security services.

The new alliance, which includes the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP), Partizan, the Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), has been hailed as a major step in uniting Turkeys revolutionary forces against state oppression.

The government routinely accuses its opponents of terrorism, but ina statementthe BMG said that the only terrorist organisation in this country is the ruling alliance between the ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP) headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the neofascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), its junior partnerin government.

Your attacks will not be able to stop us. We are coming to destroy your terrorist gang, BMG promised.

ESP, founded in 2010 by jailed former Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Figen Yuksekdag, has bornethe brunt of the latest wave of government oppressionwith 48 of its leading members detained earlier this month.

After the latest wave of arrests at least 24 ESP members remain in custody, including co-chair Sahin Tumuklu;another eightare under house arrest.

Ozgur Gelecek reporter Taylan Oztas, Revolutionary Party President Elif Torun and HDP Istanbul co-chair Elif Bulutarealso being held.

But Mr Tumuklu insisted: We will overthrow fascism and gain political freedom.

And Revolutionary Party deputy leader MuratPircan Yaratantold the Morning Star that the state fears unity between Turks and Kurds and wants to break a movement that takes its power from the streets.

There is a pressure on the organisations that speak out, he said, explaining that Turkey is faced with a severe political and economic crisis.

But, he added,Mr Erdogan is afraid of thehuge protests that continue across Turkey, triggered by the appointment of a pro-Erdogan rector, Melih Bulu, at Istanbuls prestigious Bogazici University in January.

Students and other protesters have been targeted by snipers and subjected to sexual assault at the hands of security services with more than 500 detained over the course of last week alone.

We will not bow, we will not look down has become the slogan of a movement the government has vowed to put down at all costs, fearing it will become a new Gezi, the 2013 wave ofprotests that nearly brought down the government.

Mr Erdogan insists the students areterrorists taking instructions from those in the mountains.

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Turkish authorities arrest 65 revolutionaries in a bid to break the backbone of the growing anti-government resistance - Morning Star Online

Tue, Feb 9, 2021

MENASourcebyKeith Jones

A female young protester raises a placard that reads in Arabic, 'there is an armoured vehicle between the representative of the people and the People', as another raises a placard that reads, 'No justice, no peace, fall of the police state' as they stand in front of security forces members forming a wall to prevent their comrades (not shown) from demonstrating in front of the building of the Tunisian Parliament in Bardo. Dozens of young people from the tough neighborhood of Hay Ettadhamen took to the streets in an anti-government protest march that started from their neighborhood and headed towards Bardo city in Tunis. The demonstrators have demanded the release of youths arrested by the police during the latest nightly protests, and denounced the police violence and the repression of the social protest movements. Tunisia, January 26, 2021.

On Habib Bourguiba Boulevard, demonstrations call for the fall of the regime. At night, police clash with protesters in clouds of tear gas. Hundreds of demonstratorsmany who have yet to celebrate their eighteenth birthdayare arrested and thrown in jail. This isnt Tunisia in January 2011. This is Tunisia in January 2021.

The tenth anniversary of Tunisias revolution should have been a time for celebration. Instead, it has been a period of increasing alarm as near-daily protests spread across the country from mid to late January, and some demonstrations continuing in February. A twisted dj vu in which Tunisias youth have returned to the streets to make known their discontent with a government they helped establish a decade ago by overthrowing a dictator.

These protests are important, not just because of what they tell us about Tunisias current political climate, but because they serve as a litmus test for Tunisias approach to democracy building. The Tunisian approach has prioritized political consensus, reasoning that it would maintain stability while still creating the requisite political and economic change to improve citizens socio-economic conditions. However, as these protests make clear, there are serious questions about whether that deference has gone too far, creating too little change and, now, undermining stability.

Delivering democracy without change

As an ever-increasing number of newspaper articles, blogs, and reports have noted, the last decade successfully delivered Tunisian democracy, but it is increasingly apparent that democracy has not delivered for many Tunisians. The rallying cry in late 2010 and early 2011 was work, freedom, and national dignitythe push for democracy was a means towards those ends, not for democracy as an end in-and-of-itself. Ten years after the revolution, nearly nine in ten Tunisians think the country is headed in the wrong direction and the majority of the country is unconvinced that democracy is the best form of government. Those numbers are worrisome, but somewhat expected; Tunisias economy now grows at about half the rate it did before the revolution, inflation has roughly doubled over the same period, and unemployment has gone up.

The ramifications of not delivering on the revolutions rallying cry has been felt throughout Tunisias political system for some time. This is most obvious in the recent prevalence of populist politicians: the rise in profile of a counterrevolutionary politician Abir Moussi in 2020; the 2019 presidential election of Kais Saied; and Saieds electoral opponent, media mogul Nabil Karoui. But it is also apparent in the uptick of Tunisians leaving for Italy and the large protests in response to tax hikes in 2018.

As a recent Institute for Security Studies report notes, The goals and promise of the Freedom and Dignity Revolution remain unfulfilled for Tunisians. It is increasingly clear that regular elections will not translate into better opportunities without deep and structural economic reforms. The coronavirus downturn has exacerbated an already precarious situation.

Taking a cue from the Institute for Security Studies, it is important to position the action in the streets of Tunisia within the broader context of reforms. Doing so illuminates tendencies within the countrys approach to democracy building and raises questions about its stability moving forward. Specifically, these protests create a dichotomy between the state and the citizenry, in the form of police and protestor, which helps illustrate the complexity of Tunisias current political situation.

Security forces havent changed their ways

Police brutality was a very compelling mobilizer during Tunisias revolution. Mohamed Bouazizis act of self-immolation, which launched Tunisias revolution, came after police harassed him about being a street vendor. Bouazizis martyrdom resonated powerfully across the country because his story coalesced Tunisias broader issues of state oppression and economic disparity into a simple narrative. The hopelessness and frustration that Bouazizi clearly felt were deeply familiar to other Tunisians.

In the protests that occurred after Bouazizis immolation, clashes between protests and internal security forces were common. As protests spread across the country and intensified in January 2011, police reform became an important revolution objective. However, while some important initial steps were taken in the first months following the revolution to overhaul security forces, true reform never happened.

Tunisian politicians avoided reforming the security sector in large part because of the myriad of security threats that Tunisia has faced over the past decade: the 2012 attack on the United States Embassy in Tunisia, the civil war in neighboring Libya, multiple largescale terror attacks in 2015, the high number of Tunisian citizens who left to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and the continued existence of Islamic extremists in the mountains bordering Algeria.

But the lack of reformative action also indicates the importance Tunisias elected officials have given to maintaining stability through consensus at the expense of pursuing the revolutions mandate. This logic is the defining characteristic of Tunisias post-revolutionary politics and its mettle is currently being tested in the streets.

With each story of arbitrary detention, arrest of minors by police barging into their homes, or harassment of journalists for filming an arrest, it seems obvious that the security forces are operating much as they did under ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Close observers of Tunisia are not surprised that the police have kept up a number of their pre-revolution tactics, including arbitrary restrictions on movement and torture.

What direction does Tunisia go?

This casts a shadow over Tunisias entire project in democracy building. The institutions that were oppressive instruments of the old regime need to change for Tunisia to achieve work, freedom, and national dignity. Like the timid approach to security sector reformation, deep economic reforms and transitional justice mechanisms have been avoided or defanged throughout the past ten years, as politicians sought to avoid political confrontation that could upset consensus across major political parties.

The argument for this approach is that gradual change produces a more stable long-term trend of democratic consolidation. It has been a decade since Tunisian security forces were in the streets limiting Tunisians freedom and violating their dignity in the name of an autocrat. If the political system is the independent variableswitched from autocracy to democracythen the structure and membership of security forces are the control variable and police repression is the dependent variable. This means that the presence of a democratic election alone has not made much of a difference.

Tunisias politics of consensus has spent most of the past ten years being laudeda grand political coalition that has delivered dialogue instead of destruction. Broadly speaking, that is true. Tunisias was the only Arab Spring revolution to produce a democracy. The country also has avoided a major counterrevolution and there have been repeated peaceful transitions of power over the last decade. However, a growing contingency of experts wonder if the obeisance to consensus has gone too far, creating fissures in the foundation of Tunisias democracy. As a recent report from Sharan Grewal and Shadi Hamid at the Brookings Institute posit, the extended pursuit of consensus in Tunisia, from 2015-19, has also had a dark side, constraining its democratic transition.

The past few weeks make this argument seem prescient. It will likely continue to seem that way throughout the remainder of the year. Even if the demonstrations cease in the short term, the underlying political and economic issues will not, nor will the added socioeconomic stress of the COVID-19 pandemic in the medium term. These broader trends are being compounded by the resemblance between the tableaus of early 2021 and January 2011. That does not mean that Tunisia is on the verge of collapserevolutions are rare and hard to predictbut it is a worrying step in the wrong direction.

Keith Jones is assistant director of corporate relations at the Atlantic Council. He previously conducted research in Tunisia on youth organizations, active citizenship, and democratic consolidation.

Mon, Mar 30, 2020

It is important to monitor the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic, its effects on each North Africa system, and the debate between government elites and masses to better understand the situation in these countries and the long-term implications of the health crisis.

MENASourcebyKarim Mezran, Alessia Melcangi, Emily Burchfield, and Zineb Riboua

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Protests in Tunisia conjure images of the past and questions about the future - Atlantic Council

Tirupathur: Invoking late AIADMK stalwarts M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa, expelled AIADMK leader V.K. Sasikala on Monday called for unity to jointly defeat the common foe and announced her intention to engage in active politics, four years after she completed a prison term in a corruption case in Bengaluru.

Whenever the party faced challenges, it has risen like a phoenix, she said alluding to the mythical bird, even as she kept up the suspense on going to the AIADMK headquarters at Chennai, the building of the ruling dispensation she once controlled.

Both Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa are former chief ministers of the state.

In her first comments days after being discharged from a hospital in Bengaluru where she was treated for COVID-19 post her release from the prison, Sasikala asserted she will not be cowed down by oppression.

I have overcome COVID-19 due to divine intervention and the blessings of my akka (elder sister) puratchi thalaivi idaya deivam (God) Amma who lives in the hearts of the people, she said addressing supporters here en route to Chennai from Bengaluru.

Jayalalithaa is also addressed as puratchi thalaivi, meaning revolutionary leader and Amma.

Sasikala said she would dedicate the rest of her life to ensure Jayalalithaas oft-repeated statement that AIADMK will exist for a 100 years even after her and would follow the principle of family is the party, party is the family.

Puratchi thalaivis children are forever mine too. The party has faced so many challenges and had risen like a phoenix. In lines with the golden words of Puratchi Thalaivar (Ramachandran), we should stand united

My desire is that we must jointly work to ensure our common foe does not come to the ruling saddle again in Tamil Nadu, she said without naming anyone.

It was the duty of all to ensure there should be no place for divide and rule by political opponents and the grand movement which was walking the path laid down by Ramachandran, the founder, should not collapse due to the whims and fancies of a few, she added.

She said she will strive for the AIADMKs welfare till her last breath and said workers should remain united and ensure victory in the coming polls.

Any challenges will be faced with the blessings of Jayalalithaa, Sasikala added.

Quoting late Ramachandran, she told her loyalists, I am bound by love, to the Tamil ethos and the principles I have embarked upon as well as the people of Tamil Nadu. But I can never be enslaved by oppression.

Later, answering reporters query if she would visit the AIADMK headquarters in Chennai, she said please wait and see.

Sure, for party workers was her response when scribes asked if she would engage in active politics, months ahead of the scheduled Assembly polls in the state.

Earlier, Sasikala returned to Tamil Nadu to a grand reception, days after completing her jail term in Bengaluru in the Rs 66.6 crore disproportionate assets case, amid indications of a confrontation with the ruling party.

She underwent her sentence at the Parapana Agrahara central prison in Bengaluru since February 2017 and was set free on January 27.

However, she remained at the Government Victoria Hospital, where she had been admitted after testing positive for COVID-19 while under judicial custody.

She was discharged from the hospital on January 31 after which she stayed at a resort, about 35 km from Bengaluru.

On Monday morning, she left for Chennai.

On AIADMK ministers filing police complaint against her use of the ruling party flag on her car, she said, I think it shows their apprehension.

Responding to Jayalalithaas memorial in Chennai being closed for maintenance, she said, The people of Tamil Nadu know very well what all this means.

Asked about supporters demand to wrest control of the AIADMK, she said, I will meet you all soon. Will speak in detail then.

(PTI)

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Will Not be Cowed Down by 'Oppression', Says VK Sasikala; To Engage in Active Politics - The Wire

New Delhi: On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi coined a new term andolanjivi to describe people who apparently cannot live without protests. Replying to the motion of thanks on the presidents address in the Rajya Sabha, he also described them as parasites.

The Modi governments second term has faced pan-India protests opposing controversial policy decisions such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the three farm laws. While these protests grew organically into a movement, the government has tried to project them as a ploy fuelled by the opposition parties or the so-called anti-nationals.

He was perhaps referring to these groups, when he said, This community [of andolanjivis] can be spotted wherever there is a protest, be it agitation by lawyers, students or labourers, sometimes at the forefront and sometimes from behind. They cannot live without protests. We have to identify such people and protect the nation from them.

These comments maligning largely peaceful protests and protesters are in stark contrast to the prime ministers exhortation in 1974, when as a youngster in his 20s, Modi took part in Gujarats Navnirman Andolan.

As Raghu Karnad pointed out in his piece for The Wire, Modis personal website dedicates a page to the movement, which is described as Modis first encounter with mass protest and led to a significant broadening of his worldview on social issues. The page adds:

It also propelled Narendra to the first post of his political career, General Secretary of the Lok Sangharsh Samiti in Gujarat in 1975.

The movement began in December 1973, when students at the LD Engineering College in Ahmedabad protested against grievances such as canteen charges. When the police used force against them, protests spread to other campuses by early 1974, leading to state-wide strikes, arson and looting, all targeting the state government.

A scene from the Navnirman protests. Photo: narendramodi.in

According to the Ahmedabad Mirror, the Navnirman Andolan led to the dismissal of the Gujarat government and triggered a national movement against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

A message to the youth written by Modi at the time was later published in a book titled Sangharsh ma Gujarat (Gujarat in a period of trial). In that message, Modi urges the youth to take to the streets and not let democracy die.

The message, translated into English by Ahmedabad Mirror, provides valuable advice to the protesters of today, but also represents the drastic swing in the prime ministers opinion of protests.

Children of Bharat Mata, think in what direction the country is being pushed into today. If you dont act today, take a moment to ponder the consequences you will have to face tomorrow. You are the harbinger of Indias future. Because todays young are tomorrows leaders. Who will take up the responsibility making this nation rise and shine? The answer is clear. The responsibility is yours, Modis message begins.

He says the country has been rendered silent by cheaters and fraudsters and says poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, immorality, corruption, and oppression will be a cross for the youth to bear in future.

The way Democracy is being destroyed in the country today to pave the way for dictatorship, you will be the herd of sheep that will be walked, heads down, he says, in what could well be a reference to the clampdown on dissent and freedom of expression that the Centre has embarked upon since 2014.

If you dont make adequate sacrifices today in this second movement of Independence, who will the history judge harshly? You. Whose names will appear in the list of cowards that historians will compile? Yours How should the history of this country be written? With ink and pen? Or with the blood pouring out from the hearts of the youth? You will decide, he adds.

The Navnirman Andolan was developing around the same time when the ABVP was planning a more-broad based uprising in Bihar. As Karnad explained in another piece for The Wire:

Once [this movement] had taken hold in Bihar, it was joined by a new leader the freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narayan, or JP, whom students invited back to the public stage to lead them.

This was the beginning of a movement against the Indira Gandhi movement. As the movement became increasingly popular, the then-prime minister imposed Emergency on June 25, 1975.

Karnads piece, written in June 2018, also argues that while the BJP and right-wing groups push the narrative that Modi has encountered more protest, provocations and subversion that the Congress ever did, the truth is the opposite.

He says:

Just try to imagine students rioting in the streets, for months at a stretch, to bring down BJP governments, a Union minister being assassinated, and then a judge dismissing Modi from parliament, and banning him from the following election. Those were the provocations that brought about the Emergency. They may not have justified it. But the fact is, in the past four years, no protests outside of Kashmir have come close to the scale of disruption that Indira confronted for years prior to Emergency. The activism in JNU or at Jantar Mantar is a musical flash-mob in comparison.

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When Narendra Modi Exhorted 'Andolanjivis' to Rise Up Against the Government in 1974 - The Wire

The White Tiger movie debuted this January after long-delayed plans for movie production, and is one of the largest international releases of an Indian movie in recent years. Its not hard to guess why: Despite its source material being over a decade old, it presents a story of class warfare, global inequality and crises of democracy that have become even more relevant today.

Based on the book of the same name, The White Tiger is a somewhat eclectic story of class struggle in a neoliberal world, a witty critique of the oppressive social hierarchies and government institutions in India, as well as a psychological study of the origins of crime and violence and its complicated morality.

At the center of these threads is protagonist Balram Halwai (played by Adarsh Gourav), who rises from his poor, lower caste, rural background destined to servitude to become his own master and own his own company. He does this all through the murder of the man he worked for: the upper caste, upper class, Americanized Mr. Ashok (Rajkummar Rao). Through Balrams own narration, we see how he grows from a precocious, talented boy into a young man who is constantly dehumanized, controlled and ignored. He is mistreated by his bosses, his family and his government, causing him to lash out in what he believes to be the only way to escape the jungle violence.

Several American reviews have noted that the movie is almost the opposing force to the last great international movie about India Slumdog Millionaire a grittier, more realistic vision of how the Indian poor live. As Balram himself says, no game-show prize awaits him (the crux of Slumdog Millionaire). He only has a life of running from his crimes and struggling to never fall back into poverty. While its true that The White Tiger is certainly darker, rawer and angrier, its not necessarily more real.

What really makes the story so cogent and interesting was that it takes the perspective of the murderer without us knowing that to be the case. All the violence and oppression he faces is filtered to us through him. We come to realize how close he was to his father, who died an early, preventable death due to manual labor and the lack of healthcare in his village. We see how Balram loved and worked for Ashok and his wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) like his parents, only to be let down when they allowed him to be the fall man for the death of a homeless girl that was the fault of Pinky, not Balram.

This, coupled with all the daily humiliations his accent being mocked, being treated as uneducated, the rundown and segregated living quarters he had to live in as a servant means that you cannot help but sympathize when he lashes out, freeing himself from oppression through revolution.

Yet the perspective leaves us purposefully fooled. Much as The Joker (2019) was not a justification for violent revolution against the rich, The White Tiger simply lays out a story of violence against the rich through the prism of a flawed person who faced and understood his oppression in very specific ways. Think, for example, about Kusum, Balrams grandmother and the matriarch of his family, who is considered one of the primary antagonists of the movie constantly pushing Balram to send nearly all of his money home to support the family, to marry, and to leave Delhi and come back to the village.

Balram, of course, resents these demands and wants to preserve his individualism and freedom to break out of the rooster coop of family and its related obligations, which he considers to be the main reason for the lack of lower-class revolt or resistance. Yet from Kusums perspective, a person who is undoubtedly facing the same oppression as Balram, the solution to break out is through the building of family wealth of gradual, stable improvement through the pooling of resources. At the end of the movie, its strongly suggested that Balrams murder of Ashok was met with the retributive murders of Kusum and the rest of his family in the village. I dont think Balram is to blame for those murders, but to Kusum, it wouldve undoubtedly seemed so.

Thus, the strongest point of the movie is that it is able to carry these same moral quandaries to the big screen, aided greatly by Gouravs performance as Balram. He really succeeds in bringing the character to life. His mannerisms, speech and expressions evolve throughout the movie from meek responsiveness to smoldering anger.

Yet by sticking so sincerely to the book, I think the movie does itself a disservice. Nearly all of the lines from the movie and all of the plot points are the same in the book itself, and a substantial amount of the movie just ends up being a narration chock full of Balrams sociological critique and dry humor. This works far better in the book than in the movie, where it has more space to be digested. Yet even with the voiceover, the movie still has a fast-paced, pulpy feel to it. For viewers who have not read the book, it should not be a significant issue.

Overall, The White Tiger provides a compelling and at times difficult watch. It forces you to consider the impact of global capitalism on the nuanced (and often unravelling) social hierarchies of third-world countries reacting to the forces of a changing economy and makes you deal with the moral weight of understanding and empathizing with a killer. While its brevity and overuse of the overbearing narration of Balram may weigh on its exploration of these ideas, its close to as good a recreation as you can get.

The rest is here:

The White Tiger tackles class struggle in the era of globalization - Johns Hopkins News-Letter

Jessica A. Johnson| Columnist

Ive been giving quite a bit of thought to an opinion piece that noted Chicago Tribune columnist Cal Thomas wrote last year regarding evangelical Christians disappointment with the 2020 election results.Evangelicals were, and many still are, some of former President Donald Trumps most steadfast supporters.

In his column, Thomas referenced an essay thatDr. Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, wrote for the Fox News website before the election results were confirmed.Jeffress, a fervent backer of Trump, called for evangelicals to continue trusting in God, stating that Our faith and our salvation lie not in any human ruler, but in the ruler of rulers, the King of kings.

Thomas further elaborated on these points by maintaining that although evangelicals are strongly at odds with the policies of the Biden and Harris administration, this disagreement should not prevent them from carrying out their ministry efforts to those in need in their communities.

Given where we are now during the aftermath of the election, American churches are in, to quote the book of Esther, a critical for such a time as this moment, as the country is still reeling from extreme political discord and racial strife while battling through the coronavirus pandemic. Many evangelical congregations were heavily into politics during Trumps term in the White House and were devastated and angry when he lost to Joe Biden.They thought, as Jeffress wrote, that the God of the evangelicals should be on the side of Republicans and conservatives.I believe that God wanted the church to acknowledge two significant issues in the wake of Trumps defeat.First, racial division needs to be addressed, and second, Christians need to refocus on the primary mission in ministry: to share the Gospel and draw souls into the kingdom of God.

When it comes to political headlines in the media regarding evangelicals, race is hardly an elephant in the room of discussion.White evangelicals have been called purveyors of white supremacy and hypocrites regarding their faith.Recent Fact Tank reports from the Pew Research Center list white in many titles in analysis of evangelical approval of Trumps stances on issues such as immigration and travel bans while he was in office.An NPR podcast last year titled Multiracial Congregations May Not Bridge Racial Divide did not offer an overly optimistic view of churches becoming more diverse.

The historical racial divide in American churches is deeply rooted in the South, with racist ideology infiltrating congregations since the days of slavery.The Black Church, also historically known as the Negro Church, formed out of necessity for blacks to have a haven of worship as early as the 1780s.A pertinent question we must ask ourselves today is how can the church be a true witness of the teachings of Christ when stark segregation remains?The ugliness of our politics in the past four years greatly exposed the longstanding racial rifts within the church, placing evangelicals at the forefront, and it is something that both white and Black pastors can no longer ignore.

During this time when so many people are suffering and on the brink of despair, it is imperative that ministers not let ongoing political disputes take their attention away from the work of the Gospel.In fact, when studying the Gospels, it is evident that Jesus really did not get completely immersed in the political debates of His day.For example, Mark 12:13-17 records the devious intention of the Pharisees and Herodians to bait Jesus into speaking against paying taxes to Caesar.Instead of getting into an argument about the oppression of the Roman government, Jesus simply said to render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are Gods.

Now, Im by no means implying that churches should idly stand by in the face of injustice and not participate in civic discourse, but when we do take a public stand, Christ must remain in the center of our message.When we minister to those who are marginalized in our society, those in prison, sick, and poor, Jesus said we have ministered unto Him.

This is the ministry the church should be focusing on in this tumultuous political moment, our Esther moment, but we cannot effectively carry it out with the current division within the body of Christ.

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Opinion: Politics should not distract the church from its mission - Online Athens

Amid its ever-deepening foreign policy mess that has alienated the entire political establishment in Washington D.C, raised the tension in Eastern Mediterranean, and sanctions against it across the Atlantic, Turkeys troubled government seems to have found a useful ally for its continuity: Spain.

If the process of this rapprochement - which is a visible counter-dynamic to what the main bulk of the E.U members regard Erdoans Turkey as - continues according to the wishes of Ankara, it will not only weaken further the influence of European institutions (including the European Court of Human Rights), but also must be seen as a harbinger for an apparent conflict of interests with NATO and the U.S.A.

While Ankara is preparing for arm wrestling and a possible thorny cold war with the Biden administration, as well as an E.U sanctions regime looming in March, leaders of Turkey and Spain were busy in the past weeks, engaging in a diplomacy flourished with terms like positive agenda, constructive stance and - even - strategic partnership. No wonder why eyebrows are raised in various circles that realistically and critically observe the harmful demise of the Erdoan government.

Indeed, Spains deviant attitude, distanced from Brussels utterly cautious stance vis a vis Ankara, is striking. On January 18, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared that he wants to enhance ties with Turkey, which he called a strategic partner of the European Union and a NATO ally. An intergovernmental summit will also be held this year, he added.

The fact of the matter is, that there is not much of a strategic partnership between Turkey and the E.U left to speak of. Given what many observers see as an acrimonious display of expansionist agenda, the Erdoan governments deployment of a militarized foreign policy against Greece and Cyprus (both E.U members like Spain), makes such heavyweight terms utterly redundant. It was not a surprise that when Turkey engaged in naval seismic reasearch activities in Greek and Cypriot territorial waters, it quickly turned into a crisis between Turkey and the E.U.

Strategic partnership under normal circumstances requires a full package of agreements, and a common understanding, between the parts - on the entire spectrum of relations. A part which questions and challenges the territorial integrity of the other is not a strategic partner, but at best, only a transactional one. If anything, Turkey exists as such for the E.U, especially on the issues such as refugees and a battle against the COVID-19.

So one must speak of a mutual tactical approach rather than strategy, and similar ornate rhetoric between Madrid and Ankara.

It was clear that what defined Spains dissenting attitude from many other members, when the sanctions against Erdoans government was debated at the E.U Summit last December, was mainly due to its deep financial concerns - Madrid has high stakes (and risks) through its investments in Turkey. A possible collapse the of the Turkish economy -as a result of Erdoans erratic policies - is, understandably sending chills down the spines of some E.U member countries.

Erdoan, in a constant existential battle to cling to power, knows this aspect very well. Resolutely engaged in what the European Council President Charles Michel recently called a cat-and-mouse-game with the E.U, the Turkish president thrives on pinching the vulnerable nerve endings of the bloc- such as the fear of a refugee influx or an economic meltdown.

Like an X-ray device, he has seen through the weaknesses within the E.U which gives him possibilities to drive wedges between its members. Up to now, it can be said that his divide and rule policies has worked in favour of his power. He has taken every gesture of appeasement as a concession to be abused, and enjoyed its results, which only extended his oppressive rule. The remarkable delay of the E.U in responding to the case of Erdoans appointment of a lackey as the president of Bosporus University, prompting a massive unrest among students and their unlawful arrests, was utterly striking in this case.

Erdoan and his partner, Devlet Baheli, not only openly criminalize the students, and incite violence against them, but also demonize the entire LGTBQ+ community in Turkey. Despite the sensitivity on both issues, Brussels remained silent for days. Also, when a court extended the detention of Osman Kavala, one of the most ardent supporters of Turkeys E.U accession process as a civil society activist, the reactions remained nothing more than a blip.

That Erdoans top diplomat, Mevlut avuolu, recently sang full praises for the Sanchez government should be seen in this wide context. Ankara is constantly busy seeking and successfully finding new accomplices.

Recently, in an article for La Razon, titled Spain and Turkey: Mediterranean allies and partners, avuolu said Turkey-Spain relations have now reached an ideal level. Regarding economic relations, he pointed out that the two countries aim to increase their bilateral trade to 20 billion euros (about $24.5 billion) from its current level of 13 billion euros. Further on, on January 20, he met with Spain's Ambassador Francisco Javier Hergueta and a top official from a state-owned Spanish engineering firm, Navantia.

"We discussed our cooperation in the defense industry with Spain's Ambassador Hergueta and Pablo Menendez, the Eastern Mediterranean General Manager of Navantia Company, which provides design support to TCG Anadolu," Cavusoglu said on Twitter, referring to a new Turkish naval ship.

Navantia is responsible for designing and constructing the multi-purpose amphibious assault ship. It will be able to transport a force the size of a minimum battalion without needing home base support, according to Turkey's Presidency of Defense Industries. It can carry four mechanized, two air-cushioned and two personnel landing vehicles as well as aircraft, helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The ship, spanning 231 meters (758 feet) long and 32 m (105 ft.) wide, will have a full load displacement of about 27,000 tons, according to Anadolu Agency.

Will the ship be engaged in combat against the E.U members, if things eventually turn sour in the Aegean? We can only ask such questions, and perhaps receive only mumblings as responses. But the issue must certainly be seen in much broader context.

First, it is apparent that in the satisfaction expressed by the Erdoan government, something is not right.

Why avuolu is enthusiastic about the Spanish approach is telling enough: The longer the E.U remains divided about his government, the longer it may continue to rule. Turkeys foreign minister also knows very well that Erdoans proposal to Brussels of assembling a Mediterranean Conference - which the E.U seems to have in principle accepted - will be a non-starter. How will it go ahead with Turkey which does not officially recognize Cyprus? So, in a nutshell, each and every move, if backed by any E.U member, is regarded as a successful tactical move, by Ankara.

Seen from a higher altitude, what casts a dark shadow over the recent Spanish warming up to Erdoans government has to do with the principles and values of the E.U, moral pillars of any democracy vis-a-vis autocracy and, it should not come as a suprise, with the memory of Spain.

Ever since the attempted coup and the following state of emergency, Erdoan failed to fulfill his ancient pledge to establishing democracy; on the contrary, the country is a de-jure super-presidency or in other words, one man rule, following the referendum in 2017. Since then the separation of powers and the rule of law collapsed entirely. Media, academia and the judiciary have been seized almost entirely by the government. In the past five years, the country has turned practically into a slaughterhouse of justice.

In his latest report by Carnegie Europe, Marc Pierini, a former ambassador of the E.U to Turkey, reminds us of what he calls the dimensions of a massive and seemingly endless purge.

Around 150,000 civil servants have been fired, while some 70,000 others remain detained, many without any indictment. Among thousands of others, the baseless detentions of the journalists and authors Ahmet and Mehmet Altan, the Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirta, the journalist Nazl Ilcak, and the businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala illustrate the fundamental rift between Turkey and its Western partners. These cases are clear violations of Ankaras obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to a fresh report by Sezgin Tanrkulu, an MP of the main opposition party Peoples Republican Party (CHP), 1,855 citizens were tortured in police custody and the prisons in 2020, bringing the total of the since the beginning of AKPs tenure in 2002 to 27,493 citizens.

The most recent Bosporus University seizure case, accompanied by an open declaration of war against the LGBTQ+ community, should be a reminder that ever since the attempted coup, nearly 9 thousand academicians were fired from their jobs, with hundreds of them having to leave Turkey to seek jobs elsewhere.

These findings per se are telling enough of how problematic, ethically and morally, the official Spanish warming up to an oppressive regime is. That it is driven by a government of the Socialist Party, raises eyebrows. It only adds salt to the wound felt by large chunks of Turkish society, Turks and Kurds alike, who dissent and despise Erdoans massive abuse of power, which has left Turkey in solitude internationally and in systemic crisis domestically.

I cant help but remember how the Spanish socialists raised the flag of democracy in late 1970s and 80s, which I as a young journalist had followed closely, in envy. Sanchez can take it for granted, that I as an exiled journalist give voice to many in Turkey, when I see through the ethical questions current Spanish-Turkish relations raise.

On the other hand, we shall see the tide turning soon when the Biden administration will unleash new dynamics to promote human rights and democracy, especially in Turkey - a change of attitude that will require a tougher stance within the EU against all forms of oppression and injustice. We are already seeing strong signs of a sea change in terms of not tolerating such a massive oppression. Biden will find many strong allies within the EU to change the language into deeds.

I wonder if Sanchez government is prepared for the change thats a coming. To be on the rights side of history is a duty for any democracy, based on principles.

Spain, out of its painful past that ended not so long ago, should never deceive its memory. It has to choose to be on the side of the people of Turkey or the clique that rules over it. Democrats in Turkey, I am rather sure, want to remain hopeful that, the ever-dynamic segments of the Spanish society - Left, Women and the LGBTQ+ community - may be willing to say a word or two to their government.

Read more:

Spains enhancing ties with Turkey can only serve to strengthen Erdoans oppressive rule - Ahval

The Proud Boys are a far-right white nationalist organization based in Canada that was recently designated a terrorist entity by the Canadian government. This designation, however, will not stop violent extremists from attacking Canadian values.

This is a moment in time where extremism now pervades social media. This change has been so gradual that we have not noticed our tacit involvement each time we post or pass on softly violent memes and slogans wrapped in humour.

The criminal justice system will be unable to weather this storm unless it adjusts its approach to understanding the true nature of social movements and determining whether terrorist designations are the most appropriate means of dealing with social movements that express soft violence.

Soft violence describes harmful activities that stop short of actual physical violence. It takes the form of culturally nuanced, inexplicit cues that reinforce perceived power disparities. Specific clothing, memes and symbols are all types of recorded social violence activity associated with right-wing extremists.

While groups like the Proud Boys are undoubtedly violent in intention, they are softly violent in their expression. This soft violence demonstrates the creeping normalization of extremist sentiment in our communities.

To receive a terrorist designation, an oganization must meet three criteria: it must intend or have committed physical harm; it must intend to impact decision-making by policy-makers and or intimidate citizens; and it must be driven by ideological beliefs. The danger of physical harm to citizens must be clearly demonstrated with reasonable grounds that it has carried out, attempted to carry out, participated in or facilitated terrorist activity.

Groups that plan, conduct and execute physical harm driven by ideological beliefs are just the tip of the iceberg. Neo-Nazi groups like the Atomwaffen Division and The Base also designated terrorist organizations by the Canadian government fit this designation: they sell guns and train militias for race wars, and utter and disseminate hate speech.

These organized right-wing extremist groups are the violent visible minority, and a small part of the much larger movement of sympathizers and supporters.

Extremists thrive in environments where they can easily cultivate an identity that is fixated on maintaining the dominance, authority, legitimacy and superiority of the white race. Misogyny and ultra-nationalism are extensions of these constructs of what white well-being and white welfare should look like.

Groups like the Proud Boys recruit and spread their messages through non-offensive affiliations where grievances align. These destructive, inward-looking, nationalistic, race-dominant, regressive beliefs can lead to oppression, community strife and dehumanization.

This is especially true in an uncertain pandemic, where lockdowns lead to an increase in time spent online and conspiracy theories and anger at restrictions prevail.

My research studies a dataset of more than 94 million extremist transactions to examine how online activity may be a confident predictor of the escalation to violence, based on the degree of usage of softly violent mass identity manipulators, like memes and visual cues.

In particular, I look at how these mass identity manipulators strengthen the bonds of violent transnational social movements. My research lab is currently tracking 16 Canadian Facebook groups with over a quarter million followers who engage with extremist rhetoric.

When other platforms are considered, Canadian support for these groups might number in the millions. These followers make up a range of segments within extremism violent transnational social movements are often elements within broader social movements.

Many of the groups we are examining are actually derivatives, splinters or rebrands of known extremist groups. Elements of the Proud Boys have already refashioned into a new incarnation called Canada First, effectively sidestepping their terrorist designation.

The Three Percenters, a far-right militia movement, have created a group called Canadian Sheepdogs, which has more than 400 followers. The Aryan Guard became Blood and Honour, but three of its members who were charged in racially motivated assaults in Vancouver allegedly joined the Asatruu Folk Assembly. The Qubec Soldiers of Odin splintered into the Northern Guard. The Wolves of Odin, Canadian Infidels and The Clann all emerged from the Edmonton Soldiers of Odin.

Alleged neo-Nazis like Gabriel Sohier Chaput have shown that Canadians are highly influential on message boards and forums. The activity of right-wing extremist groups in Canada is a real and present danger.

It is a positive sign that the Canadian government has asserted that violent extremists will be held accountable for their activities, but the punitive measures are incidental at best. The Proud Boys as an organization will not be able to hold property or be named as a charitable foundation.

The members of the group, however, are free to join other groups because they have not been named individually, and expressing nuanced hate is not a crime or a terrorist offence. These groups, like other extremist violent transnational social movements, raise money through crowdfunding being designated a terrorist organization will limit their ability to do so.

This is possibly the single positive tangible benefit of this action.

A consideration for the justice system may be to focus on more appropriate penalties and legislation for criminalizing individuals who incite violence both on and offline. Stopping the normalization of extremism is the direction we need to move. But without addressing the environment, there will always be an endless supply of groups waiting to take the Proud Boys place.

The rest is here:

Designating the Proud Boys a terrorist organization won't stop hate-fuelled violence - The Conversation CA

Joe Biden's presidency is well underway, and he has already taken to his new position by pulling back on many of the policies made during the Trump administration while continuing to appoint new members to his cabinet and other leading positions. One decision he doesn't seem to be budging on is the ban on companies like Huawei that have been placed on the Entity List for allegations of threats to U.S. security. Biden's nominee for Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, has stated (via Bloomberg) that she sees "no reason" to remove the company from the list, strongly suggesting the unlikely nature of the scenario.

I understand that parties are placed on the Entity List and the Military End-User List generally because they pose a risk to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. I currently have no reason to believe that entities on those lists should not be there. If confirmed, I look forward to a briefing on these entities and others of concern.

That's not good news for Huawei, which has been dealing with U.S. sanctions for quite some time. After largely losing access to its high-end Kirin chips, the company has been struggling to produce flagship smartphones like the P40 Pro, which is one of the best Huawei phones you can't get. Recently Huawei had to give up ownership of its sub-brand, Honor, in order to keep it from facing the same fate as its parent company, a move that sees Honor free to challenge companies like Apple.

Huawei had hoped that the Biden administration would be more lenient than Trump, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has previously referred to the decision by the U.S. government to restrict Chinese companies as "oppressive," a sentiment that still stands today. "We urge you to stop this wanton oppression against Chinese companies."

Other Chinese companies that had faced government sanctions include ZTE as well as Xiaomi, the latter of which recently placed a lawsuit against the U.S. government for placing it on an investment block.

Originally posted here:

Huawei's situation won't get any better with the Biden administration - Android Central