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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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DESIRE ARMED: Anarchy and the Creative Impulse

Creativity is essential to anarchist practice. This is a banality that should go without saying. But when an endless rehashing of old ideas and practices, repeated demands for models and, perhaps worst of all, a turn toward marxist and academic leftist ideas as sources for intellectual stimulation indicate a withering of practical imagination within anarchist circles at least in the US, perhaps it is time to explore the question of creativity more deeply. Certainly it would be a more pleasant task than going through all the failings of present-day anarchists in this regard. So I would like to share a few ideas about creativity, imagination and desire that I have been mulling over for years, exploring and experimenting with ways to apply them in my life and relationships, in the hope that those who want to get beyond this malaise my find them of interest.

I start from a basic premise: it isn’t possible to talk meaningfully about either creativity or desire without referring to both of them. The reason is quite simple. Desire, in its vital, healthy, fully living form is nothing more nor less than the creative impulse, which realizes itself through the practical application of imagination to one's life and one's world. But somewhere along the line, even anarchists seem to have lost track of this dynamic conception of desire, accepting instead the passive conception of desire as nothing more than a mere longing for some external object that one lacks, a conception that is quite useful to modern capitalism. This conception of desire is economic in its essence and like all economic conceptions is based on scarcity, which is to say, poverty. The object of this sort of desire exists before the desire arises, either as an idea or as a concrete thing, but is not immediately accessible to the individual who wants it. Since this sort of desire is nothing more than a sense of lack, it can be easily channeled toward these already existing objects in the interests of whatever powers have the strength to harness this lack. William Blake rightly understood that this sense of lack was not truly desire, but rather the mere ghost of desire, the weak afterimage left behind when desire is drained of its vitality, its capacity to act and create its own object.

It is only in relationship to this ghost of desire that the pathetic, poorly thought out theoretical assumption, “Society creates our desires” makes any sense at all, but even on these terms the statement remains a load of shit, a symptom of the marxian intrusion into anarchist circles with its implication that it is impossible to experience freedom now. The fallacy of the statement lies in its assumption that society acts and creates. In fact, society creates nothing. Society is nothing more than a shorthand we use to describe an interweaving set of activities and relationships between individuals that tend to reproduce themselves within a specific context. Capitalism is simply one of the terms used to describe the most recent, economy-dominated set of such activities and relationships. Thus neither society nor capitalism create anything at all. Rather, an unquestioning acceptance of the currently existing set of relationships and activities leads to an acceptance of devitalized desires, mere ghosts incapable of creating their own objects and thus satisfying themselves. And this leads people to continue to act and relate in habitual ways that reinforce this condition.

There are many factors that can drain an individual’s desire of its vital energy: desperate poverty, emotional trauma, repressive onslaughts from those with greater power (parents, teachers, cops, soldiers, priests, government and corporate institutions,…), but on the large scale, desire is drained of its creative essence when life is drained of its voluptuous generosity, its luxurious excess. To some extent, this begins to happen anywhere that authority and hierarchies of wealth and power exist. But most social orders have simply contained these effusive aspects of life in festivals and carnivals rather than fully suppressing them. Even Catholicism in the Middle Ages continued to leave room for such contained expressions of voluptuous excess. In the Western world, the puritanical morality of Protestantism managed to suppress this tendency in a timely manner (though not without quite a fight…) serving the needs of the rising bourgeois class. Condemning voluptuous pleasures, luxurious excess and the generous squandering of life, this morality instead gave value to work, thrift and measured moderation. Tellingly, the first two were also called industry and economy. And the last corresponds well with bookkeeping. By suppressing the values that gave desire its basis as a creative force, puritanical morality suppressed desire itself, ultimately driving it into unconsciousness. Here it no longer exists as a vital, living energy, but as an often monstrous and always sterile ghost. Without the generous, luxurious fullness of life as a basis, it is transformed into a lack, a longing, that seeks an object outside itself to fill its emptiness. Life becomes mere survival, the desperate hunt for such objects to sate an endless hunger. Only this utter degradation could allow desire to be harnessed to the machinery of industry and the economy.

There are several practical considerations that can be drawn from these ideas. First of all, there is the basic anarchist idea, which unfortunately seems to have been forgotten by many present-day anarchists, that society creates nothing, that rather everything is created through the activity of individuals relating to other individuals and to their environment. It follows from this that any genuinely anarchist practice begins with individuals taking possession of their activities and relationships, becoming the conscious creators of their own lives. This leaves no room for victimism and stands in utter contradiction to the marxian idea that no one can experience freedom as long as this society exists. This marxian concept reifies freedom, making it a thing external to us that will only be achieved in some distant future and on a global scale. But I prefer the dialectic of Heracleitus to that of Marx. For me, freedom is not a promise for the future, but a way to continuously confront the world where I exist now, taking possession of my life with all my might, in conflict with everything that stands in my way. This ongoing conflict (which will not end simply because we somehow manage to eradicate the entire institutional framework of authority) is what makes the essential destructive, negating aspects of anarchist practice one with the creative aspects. Consciously creating our lives as our own means destroying every chain that holds as back, smashing through every barrier that gets in our way. Thus, there is no use in waiting for some condition to hand us our freedom. We need to act now for our own sakes and on our own terms, not for any cause nor on terms set by those who want to maintain the ruling order.

In light of all this, the liberation of desire takes on a particular meaning: it is the revitalization of desire as a creative impulse, its liberation from its impoverished, sterile condition as a desperate longing for an external object. This project means creating our lives and practice in direct opposition to the social world that surrounds us and its values. In other words, rejecting the impoverishment that resides in the values of thrift, industry and measure, of lives and goods for sale, in favor of voluptuous pleasure, luxurious excess and the generous squandering of life, freeing life from the chains of survival. I think it should be obvious that this is another situation in which our anarchic end coincides with the means, in that creating our lives in a luxurious, voluptuous manner is already the freeing of desire as a creative force.

But those of us who want to take on this project need to, first of all, examine the ways this impoverishment has inserted itself into anarchist circles. I don't want to go into a detailed critique of identity politics (including the transformation of one's personal choices into moral identities) and political correctitude. Suffice it to say that these intrusions from the post-whatever, academic left into anarchist thought and practice have always been about creating rules, limits and boundaries, not about destroying them. They are the measured voice of impoverishment intended to put and keep each of us in our place. But there have been some other trends within anarchist circles in recent years that could have had a potential for enriching it, that did seem to do so briefly before falling into moralistic and mystical thinking. I am speaking of the critiques of certain broad areas of human activity like language, art, symbolic activity and the like. Where these critiques have been examinations of the limits of these activities, they have opened the door to interesting explorations of how we might expand beyond these limits, enriching our lives and our worlds. But expanding beyond the limits of these activities does not require their destruction (unlike the institutions of power, language, art and symbolic activity are not barriers, cages or chains, simply specific tools/toys with their limitations), but rather their enrichment. Unfortunately, the most strident voices proclaiming on these matters moved away from exploratory critique into mystical and moral condemnation. Rather than challenging the limits of these oh so human activities with the aim of enriching our lives, these prophets of despair declare that until we could be rid of these things, we cannot know freedom, because for them freedom consists of a return to a universal oneness that they claim once existed. As puritanical as any Calvinistic theology and as deterministic as the most vulgar marxism, this sort of theory (or rather ideology) offers nothing to any sort of practice. Like the ideologies it imitates, it drains desire of any life turning it to mere longing, and so we end up not with interesting critical explorations, but with primitivism. Those anarchists who want to live creatively, enriching their existences, making their lives expansive, voluptuous and rich, don't just need to refuse these pseudo-critiques, but also to attack them fiercely, using exploratory practical critique that provides a basis for an ongoing theoretical practice to expose the ideological nature of these sad sermons.

But perhaps the aspect that is most difficult in achieving the voluptuous, expansive life that is necessary to revitalizing desire as a creative impulse is getting beyond survival. I have tried to discuss this question with people many times on several levels, and always the conversation reverts back to how to survive better, with greater ease and comfort, and so the point is missed. But this is understandable. We all have to eat. We all want shelter at least in bad weather. We all find ourselves in a world where money seems to make the rules. Even if we abstractly realize that money is simply the physical (or more often now virtual) manifestation of a particular sort of social relationship in which we all take part -- in other words, a product of our activities --, making that realization meaningful in practice seems quite difficult. Yet I think that it comes back to starting from oneself here and now, what one wants to do, how one wants to go about one's life and projects immediately. First of all, survival is simply the postponement of life to the future. It centers around maintaining existence, not enjoying it. Stirner rightly pointed out that the enjoyment of life consists in consuming it, in using it up. And this is why life, which only exists in the present, and survival, which puts life off to the future, are at loggerheads. So the first step to revitalizing desire as creative impulse is to grasp life now, enjoying it immediately.

The centrality of immediacy in this endeavor fits with the idea that desire as creative impulse does not have any preexisting object. Rather it creates its object in the process of realizing itself. This means that its object cannot be identified, institutionalized or commodified. It cannot be made into a chain on liberated, vital desire. Desire, in this sense, is thus the enemy of the civilization in which we live, because this civilization exists only through identifying, institutionalizing and commodifying. And these processes are nothing less than the erection of prisons for desire. As a creative drive, desire attacks these attempts to prevent it from moving forcefully in the world. The objects that it creates for itself in its realization are not external things (though such things my come into being as a byproduct of the creative impulse) but rather active relationships, the only sort of wealth that enriches those who squander it freely. And this is why desire has to attack institutionalized relationships that freeze activity into routine, protocol, custom and habit--into things to be done to order.

Another aspect of the refusal of the domination of survival over life, of the future over the present, is the refusal to let utility and effectiveness dominate over enjoyment, playfulness, experimentation and poetic living. The very concepts of utility and effectiveness again give desire an external object, an end outside of itself. They start from the assumption that there is a lack that must be filled, and so again remove life to the future. Refusing utility and effectiveness does not mean that what one creates in the process of living her life will be useless or ineffective; it simply means that use and effectiveness will be secondary to pleasure, enjoyment and intensity. Let's consider one of the most basic human needs: food. We could very easily limit ourselves to getting a hold of just a few basic simple foods, preparing them in the blandest, simplest ways and thus sating our physical hunger. Instead, we enjoy exploring varieties of flavors, creating complicated concoctions to stimulate our pleasure, transforming eating (and all of the processes that lead up to into) into a voluptuous, sensual, even intoxicating experience... This food remains useful, but it has gone far beyond usefulness, because the pleasure principle has stimulated our creative impulse. Other creative endeavors operate in a similar manner. I may write a poem with a specific purpose behind it, something I am trying to say, but what makes it a poem is not this utilitarian aspect. What makes it a poem is the utterly useless play of words and images, the dance that gives a certain voluptuous humor and convulsive beauty to the words. In fact, in a poem, I always consider this aspect far more important than any intended message, because this is what expresses the attitude toward life that I endeavor to put into practice in revolt against this world.

So, as I see it, voluptuousness, excess, squandering generosity, immediacy, gratuitousness and playfulness are keys to rediscovering (or rather re-creating) creativity in an anarchist manner. There is no place here for renunciation or self-denial. Thus, the critique that grows from this attitude asks, "Can I make this activity, relationship, tool or toy my own or is it a barrier to my expansive creation and enjoyment of life?" If the former, I will grasp it as part of the expansive wealth of insurgent self-creative living, always seeking to push it beyond itself, as I push myself beyond myself. If the latter I will attack it with the aim of destroying it, recognizing it for the prison that it is. Having moved in this way beyond the cages of survival, utility, tactics, strategy and subjection to the future, it is possible for those anarchists willing to take this route to rediscover the creative spark and revive the practical imagination that will bring a dynamic of enjoyment and strength back to our fight against this world. But these thoughts are only the beginning of an ongoing exploration and experimentation. They are unfinished and never will be finished as long as there are those who insist upon living free and creative lives in and against this world.

#anarcho-nihilism #anarchy #anti civ #anti identity politics #anti essentialism #anti politics #attack #individualism #insurrectionary anarchism #social war #post left #communism #anarchism

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uk-news-talking-politics · 4 years

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Populist entrench power around the world in furnace of covid emergency

By Michael Peel

It has taken a global pandemic to lay bare how the rise to power of leaders who mislead us has become a matter of life or death.

As coronavirus spreads across continents, many autocrats and demagogues have responded with well-honed tactics of suppression, distortion and diversion. The consequences of their actions – or inaction – have at times been demonstrably deadly.

The international reactions to the spreading Covid-19 scourge illuminate many of the ideas of The Fabulists, a book I wrote last year about the authoritarians and myth-makers who now govern many countries as dictators, democrats or a hybrid of the two. My book, the product of years spent as a Financial Times foreign correspondent, covers a kaleidoscope of falsehoods and misdirection conjured by rulers in four regions of the world. I highlight the dangers they present, patterns in how they operate, and lessons on how to deal with them. A crucial one is that – in an age of economic, environmental and health crises - we cannot afford leaders who lie openly to us, suppress or play down problems that are inconvenient, or distract us from important truths with reckless optimism, jokes and pleasing turns of phrase.

Coronavirus has exposed fabulists almost from the start. Chinese police initially persecuted doctors who tried to warn about it. When one of the medics, Li Wenliang, died from Covid-19 weeks later, it sparked rare public outrage against the country's Communist rulers. Authorities imposed lockdowns across much of the country and then started to push aggressively a narrative about the effectiveness of China's countermeasures. At the same time, unevidenced claims about how the virus was a US bioweapon were allowed to flourish and even amplified by some official sources.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin's government was also caught out after it initially played down the impact of the pandemic at home, even as the virus ravaged western Europe. Moscow sent out high-profile aid to stricken countries such as Italy and also stuck with a planned April referendum on a constitutional change that could allow Putin to stay in office until 2036. A rising death toll eventually prompted a strict lockdown and postponement of the vote, though Russia's president continued to insist the situation was "totally under control" until switching to a more sober tone last week.

In Myanmar, the denialism was even more heavily cloaked in nationalist exceptionalism. De facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose rupture with her former western admirers I document in my book, claimed in mid-March that the country did not have a single case, even though it has a border of more than 2,000km with China. Government spokesperson Zaw Htay suggested citizens' "lifestyle and diet" had protected them from infection. Now the disease has officially begun to spread in a country still heavily controlled by a military that once formally ruled it.

The health emergency has also offered the world's growing band of elected autocrats a prime opportunity to grandstand and tighten their grip. Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro scorned worries about the pandemic as hysteria and fired his health minister. In Hungary, parliament gave prime minister Viktor Orban the power to rule indefinitely by decree and threatened up to five years in jail for people deemed to have intentionally spread false information about coronavirus. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte - whose bloody drugs war I cover in my book - warned that people deemed by police to have broken lockdown conditions could be shot.

Another truth clarified by the pandemic is that magical thinking is not solely a phenomenon of countries under full dictatorship or other forms of authoritarian rule. In the US, President Donald Trump also initially claimed that the virus was "totally under control". When a sharp rise in reported cases made this position unsustainable, he pivoted to false claims that the US food and drugs regulator had approved a drug based on the anti-malarial medicine chloroquine as a coronavirus treatment to be made available "almost immediately".

It showed the suppleness of modern political fabulism: Trump moved smoothly from denying the existence of a real threat to wrongly heralding a cure. It was a double gaslight – perhaps even a triple one, since he didn't acknowledge he had changed his position and instead insisted he had always taken the prospect of pandemic seriously.

In Britain, prime minister Boris Johnson seemed at first to struggle to shed his trademark levity and minimisation of potential problems that had helped him lead the successful 2016 referendum campaign to leave the EU. While many other European countries imposed lockdowns of varying severity, Johnson at first only advised people to avoid public gatherings – which meant many citizens continued to socialise as normal. As late as March 3rd, he was talking jovially about how he continued to shake people's hands and had done so with patients in a hospital where there were coronavirus sufferers. On March 7th, he went to the England-Wales rugby international. Less than three weeks later, Johnson announced he had the virus. On his return work to last week after a spell in intensive care, he drew criticism for his claim that "many people" would be looking at the "apparent success" of Britain’s approach to managing the pandemic.

The central idea here is not nostalgia for some fictitious golden age of political candour. It would be absurd to pretend that previous generations of public figures were paragons of integrity, or to excuse them for falsely-presented policies that have caused great suffering and fed the emergencies of our age. Indeed, that history is one of several reasons why high-level fabulism has become more widespread, more brazen and more dangerous today.

Another is that authority figures seem to pay a lower price for proven deceptions, misrepresentations and errors. Mistakes can often be left unacknowledged and uncorrected without great political penalty. Some actual and aspiring autocrats now minimise obvious censorship and instead use propaganda to sow sufficient confusion to make people feel the truth is unknowable. At the same time, leaders in democratic countries who might previously have expected to be punished at the ballot box for misleading the public have instead been rewarded. The message in all cases is: shamelessness pays.

A second – and even greater – moral hazard is that the gravity of the situation we find ourselves in as a species means the social costs of fabulism are higher than they ever were. Existential threats including disease, climate change and mass inequality need urgent attention and an unsparing focus. If we are to mitigate these problems, we need to recognise them for what they are rather than follow fake narratives about them broadcast by dissembling rulers.

This is why the coronavirus pandemic is such a significant moment and a potential chance to unmask the fabulists. A pandemic that cannot be held at bay with mere rhetoric ought to expose denialists and peddlers of false remedies. It is the theory of the 'Chernobyl moment', a reference to how the scale of the catastrophe at the Soviet-era nuclear power plant outstripped the regime's ability to cover it up.

The great danger in these times is that the opposite happens and the fabulists are able to turn the turmoil to their advantage. They can stoke nationalist grievance by blaming the crisis on outsiders, or domestic critics. They can make temporary restrictions on citizens permanent. They can profit from the fear that intensifies the perpetual lure of paternalistic strongman rule. They can disguise the causes and scale of threats with false reassurances and lightness of tone. Leaders that have been wrongfooted by the pandemic can regroup, as Beijing already has.

The Covid-19 outbreak is still intense and the reckoning has barely begun. Many people live in countries where to hold leaders publicly accountable is difficult or even dangerous. It is now more crucial than ever for those of us who have that privilege to do our bit.

#coronavirus

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thechasefiles · 5 years

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 2/1/2019

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Friday 1st February 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Weekend Nation Newspaper (WN).

REFORM NEEDED – Prime Minister, Mia Mottley says gross under population is one of many major obstacles to the economic development of Barbados and the wider region which was in urgent need of reform. In her assessment of the region’s economy in San Juan, Puerto Rico during Wednesday’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) on the Caribbean Economy on Post-Disaster Recovery, Prime Minister Mottley charged that outdated development models, which need urgent reform, were stifling regional economies. “We need to reverse the investment by industrialization model of the 50s. The development model must change,” said Mottley, who highlighted a number of key areas where the region continues to fall behind. “The hidden secret of the Caribbean is that we are under-populated. When you look at Barbados, we are 430 squared kilometers. Singapore is about 670 and is 15 times our population. Guyana is the size of England, Scotland and Wales combined. They have 65 million people, Guyana has 780,000. Suriname is larger than the Netherlands, which has 17 million people, but Suriname has 580,000. I can go on and on and on. We have not changed the discussion; we have not changed the development model,” she charged. In addition to the need for a significant increase in the population, Prime Minister Mottley argued that Barbados and many of its regional neighbors still lacked a population armed with the skills necessary for development. “We were satisfied to educate 30 or 40 per cent of the population and let the others come along. That cannot be . . . we have a benefit that technology removes the hindrances of size and geography and we literally have to invest in the re-education of as many of our people as possible, such that each one matters.” Mottley also accused regional governments of failing to break away from colonial models of development. “We have not removed ourselves from being able to distinguish ourselves between Elizabeth [Queen of England] and Isabella [Former Queen of Spain]. And therefore that colonization of the region has put us on a development path that has not maximized our economic resources in the way in which it can,” she said, while adding that even after independence, the actions of more powerful countries have stifled development. “Part and parcel of our problem in the region, is that the region has been invited on numerous occasions to pursue paths and then when they get good at it, the developed world says ‘no, stop, change, we’re not allowing you to do that anymore as has happened with financial services. And part of the difficulty is that we continue to be unequally yoked in a global discussion. Leaders don’t talk to each other, so you’re unequally yoked in the conversation and therefore those matters that affect development cannot be pursued.” Mottley further identified a stifling lack of accessible financing from within the region as another hindrance to growth, again chiding local and regional financial institutions for attempting to take advantage of prospective borrowers. “There’s about US$47 billion in savings and right now if those savings are left in the commercial banks, they attract a savings rate of 0.1%, yet businesses are borrowing at seven, eight, nine and ten per cent throughout the region,” said Mottley, who added that in light of climate change, financing remained critical to the development of a thriving renewable energy sector. “We have a moral obligation to unlock renewable energy for the benefit of the Caribbean people and to unlock the investments that are possible, but we’ve got to create the instruments that can then be married with foreign capital to make this a real possibility. In my own country we have set a target of 2030 for a fossil fuel free economy at best or a carbon neutral economy at worst because we don’t have a choice. “We’ve seen our coral reefs die, yet our maritime space is 400 times our land space, but we’ve allowed over the decades our coral reefs to die, with consequential changes in our marine life and coastal erosion and yet tourism is our primary source of business. So we don’t have the luxury of time anymore in the region,” said the PM. (BT)

ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY FOR 2019 – Barbados is essentially “feeling its way in dark” for 2019. This is one leading economist’s take from the Barbados Central Bank’s report 2018 report released on Wednesday. According to Professor Michael Howard, the report essentially showed that the economy went into recession in 2018 and that its chances of recovery were dependent on the moon and stars aligning, in terms of the country’s economic outlook. Howard contended that Central Bank Governor Cleviston Haynes was hesitant to make predictions due to the absence of any concrete economic indicators. The economist argued that this state of uncertainty in the economy would result in potential investors remaining on the fence, adopting “a wait-and-see approach for any plans to invest in the country. “In terms of the challenges this year, he was uncomfortable and generally non-specific. For instance having cut expenditure, he is a bit uncertain, as I am, if the Government would be able to sustain the fall in current expenditure. To what extent can Government assure that expenditure is not going to increase rather than decrease,” asked Howard. The retired head of economics at the University of West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, lamented that the report had no serious analysis of the impact of Government’s decision to reduce domestic corporation tax to be compliant with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Dr Howard noted that Governor Haynes needed to elaborate on the cut in the corporate tax, which is not part of the IMF [International Monetary Fund] programme but is there now as a revenue adjustment issue. He is hoping that the corporate sector would invest in the economy but that is just a hope and we can’t say very much about that. Last December, Prime Minister Mia Mottley gave local businesses a bug tax break announcing a massive reduction in corporation tax from 25 per cent to between 1 to 5.5 per cent. At the time of the announcement she made it clear that she wants businesses to share the benefits with Barbadians. The development means that local businesses would benefit from the overhaul of the tax regime, putting them on a level playing field with their international counterparts with businesses in Barbados. However, Howard argued that with revenues below the target last year and a projection of zero growth this year, it was important to get serious analysis of the possible impact of the reduced tax. In addition, Howard contended that another unknown variable was the state of play with regard to negotiations with international creditors and the potential effect on the foreign reserves. “He is simply hoping that these negotiations will not have an impact on the foreign reserves and quite frankly that is my hope as well. He is hoping that these creditors will not go hard on Barbados. He also gave no view on the IMF programme and whether the requirement of a six per cent surplus over this year into next year was even possible. So the Governor was very good on what happened in 2018 but he, like myself, is very uncertain about what will happen this year. So we are really feeling our way in the dark,” said Howard, who told Barbados TODAY that Barbadians will have to wait until the second half of the year to get the answers to these questions. In his press conference on Wednesday, Haynes revealed that after contracting slightly in the final three months of last year due to a weak performance in the tourism sector for that period, Barbados’ economy is forecast to be flat in 2019. During his review last November, Haynes had said economic activity contracted by 0.5 per cent during the first nine months. However, the Governor said in the last quarter the country’s economy had contracted a further 0.1 per cent. (BT)

IMF PROGRAMME ON TRACK, SAYS BPSA – Head of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) Edward Clarke has given the Mia Mottley-led Government thumbs up for the manner in which the administration has handled the first five months of Barbados’ structural adjustment under the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Noting that the last Government, of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), had attempted home grown austerity, Clarke said that the difference this time around was stronger oversight and political will. “For the last three years we have been preaching this concept of oversight to the last Government, so it is nothing new to us coming into the programme this time around. Under the BSRP [Barbados Sustainable Recovery Plan] there was a sort of oversight committee but it was not very effective and it became too big and cumbersome,” Clarke explained. According to BPSA head, the independent nature of the monitoring committee for the IMF-approved Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme, is set up to hold Government to account. “This time around we decided that we wanted to be part of the process. The creditors group decided that they also needed to be part of it. So when we were re-negotiating the debt-restructuring programme with the Government, the creditors insisted that they must be part of the oversight, which became the monitoring committee. We have no member of Government on this committee. Obviously we have some non-disclosure agreements but we are going to be reporting to the public mid-February the latest,” he said. The BERT Monitoring Committee provides an avenue for the Barbados Creditors Group and the members of the Social Partnership to receive and review information from the Government on the progress of implementation and achievement of the targets under the (IMF) Extended Fund Facility of US$290 million and assists in ensuring that such targets were achieved,” the agreement stated. Under the MOU, Government is to provide the BERT Monitoring Committee with information on the progress and performance on its macro-fiscal targets, and to assist in ensuring that those targets are achieved. The committee will also be provided with the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) and will be required to advise the public of progress on the macro-fiscal targets in the programme and this would include relaying concerns to the public where appropriate. Clarke also heaped praise on Prime Minister Mottley, noting that she has demonstrated strong leadership throughout the process thus far. “We have strong leadership in the country at this time and I think that the Prime Minister has been a very good advocate of the programme,” the BPSA head, said, adding that IMF representative, Dr Kevin Greenidge has been very forthcoming with all of the data. “Dr Greenidge is the one who has the oversight to make sure that Government does the things it is supposed to do. He is making sure that data is provided to us on a timely basis so that we have access to the information that is needed,” Clarke added. However Clarke explained that while this is a good start, Government must now move towards the next step bringing back growth to the economy. “We now have to ensure that we get growth because cost reduction does not grow anything,” Clarke stressed. (BT)

UNEMPLOYMENT ON THE RISE – The rate of unemployment for the third quarter (July to September) of 2018 stood at 10.7 per cent, an increase of 2.5 percentage points from the rate of 8.2 per cent recorded for the second quarter of 2018. According to the data produced by the Barbados Statistical Service, statistics derived from the Continuous Household Labour Force Survey indicated that the unemployment rate among males stood at 10.7 per cent and 10.8 per cent among females. In the review period, the number of persons employed totalled 128,800. Of this number, there were 65,300 males and 63,500 females. The total number of unemployed persons stood at 15,500; comprising 7,800 males and 7,700 females. In total, the number of persons in the labour force stood at 144,300.The number of persons not actively looking for work, hence excluded from the labour force, was 75,300 persons. The Labour Force participation rate stood at 65.7 per cent, with participation among males at 69.8 per cent and 62.0 per cent among females. In the third quarter of 2018, the Wholesale & Retail Trade sector generated jobs for the largest number of persons, employing 19,900 persons, while the Accommodation & Food Services sector employed 17,300 persons. The Construction, Mining & Quarrying sector generated employment for 13,100 persons and the Manufacturing Sector generated employment for 9,200 persons. Employment in the Public Administration and Defence sector stood at 8,900 persons, while the category classified as the Other Groups, employed 8,800 persons. The Administrative and Support Service sector employed 7,200 persons. The Transportation and Storage sector employed 6,900 persons. Employment in the Education sector stood at 6,000 persons, while the Finance and Insurance sector employed 5,800 persons. Employment in the Human Health and Social Work sector stood at 5,400 persons, while the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services stood at 4,900 persons. Employment levels in the Other Services sector and Activities of Households as Employers both stood at 4,200 persons, while Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing sector stood at 3,700 persons. In the Electric, Gas, Steam, Water & Air Conditioning Supply sector, 3,200 persons were employed during the third quarter of 2018. Data provided is provisional. Due to rounding, some totals might not agree. (BT)

UNION OFFENDED – President of the Sugar Industries and Staff Association (SISA) Edwin O’Neal has lambasted the Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC) Limited for the management of its recent retrenchment exercise. In a fiery press conference this morning, O’Neal accused the BAMC of being disrespectful to the union during negotiations. The BAMC recently took a decision to send home 46 workers as part of the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme. However, O’Neal accused the BAMC’s general manager Leslie Parris of failing to meet with SISA, as well as failing to give the union the necessary information required to allow it to make informed decisions. He charged that SISA had also written to the BAMC on numerous occasions, but had gotten no responses. O’Neal, who is also president of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB), furthermore accused the BAMC of failing to follow the last-in first-out rule, and of ignoring the rule which spoke to not sending home two persons of the same household. He said as a result of the BAMC’s approach, SISA had written to the Chief Labour Officer declaring a dispute between the two entities. “It is clear that the BAMC is disrespectful to this union, disrespectful to customs and practice and we would even go to say disrespectful to the Prime Minister. “We are now satisfied that the BAMC has targeted and attempted to decapitate the leadership of this union and that cannot be allowed in Barbados in 2019…” the irate president said. “SISA was left with no option but to declare a dispute between itself and BAMC and invite the Chief Labour Officer to intervene in an attempt at conciliation.” O’Neal charged that even when the Chief Labour Officer intervened and set a January 30 date for the two parties to meet, the BAMC failed to show up. But the SISA president said despite the BAMC’s unacceptable behaviour, the union was still willing to have a sit down. He however, warned that once SISA had exhausted all of its efforts in reaching an amicable solution, further action would then be taken. “Even at this late stage I am not going to be guilty of what I have accused the other side of. I am still going to follow process. “I have alerted the Chief Labour Officer as to how we feel about the matter and I am going to exhaust all legal, lawful, time-honoured and accepted practices, but there comes a time when that process is exhausted,” Oneal stated. “I have to be responsible, not only as the leader of SISA, but also as the president of CTUSAB. It is regrettable that the BAMC in the person of the general manager Parris and his acolytes, do not bring that level of responsibility that ought to attend these levels of discussions and be aware of his status in the nation.” General Secretary of CTUSAB Dennis DePeiza was also on hand to support SISA, and accused the BAMC of “bad faith bargaining”. “As you are well aware CTUSAB has constantly placed in the public’s domain, the continued disrespect and disregard that we have had for the industrial relations process as cited in this case with the BAMC. “What is really of concern is the bad faith bargaining that has been reflected in this instance and whereas SISA has operated above board, have sought to do the correct things, we have found at the end of the day, the BAMC, though they may have started the process, violated the process with impunity,” Depeiza said. (BT)

PEACE RESTORED – Employees of the finance department of the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) have complained to their trade union of feeling unduly harassed by the authority’s leadership. This “reasonable” belief prompted the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) General Secretary Toni Moore to request an urgent meeting with BWA’s management. A letter, dated January 18, 2019, and addressed to BWA’s General Manager Keithroy Halliday, called for an urgent meeting to address the “existing disillusionment” felt by the staff in an effort to clear the way for the restoration of the trust and confidence that is [sic] very much needed at this time to assure the achievement of desired levels of efficiency at the authority. “Among the grievances cited, is the fact that the members of the department have been criticized for submitting inadequate information without being advised specifically where there are deficiencies and where the adjustments are therefore required. “Compounding this has been the ‘sledgehammer approach to crack a nut’, which is seemingly preferred by your management. The approach to have the chairman chide and reprimand your staff even before you, through your own efforts as General Manager, seek to determine why instructions from on high were not, or could not be executed, is unfortunate,” a copy of the letter which was acquired by Barbados TODAY read. “Not only is such an approach excessive, oppressive and intimidating, but the involvement of the Board, the minister and consultants of the Government of Barbados under the circumstances is also indicative of a serious management and communication deficiency,” the letter continued. The strongly-worded document also said that failing to properly communicate with staff to get to the bottom of issues but choosing instead to trivialize their illnesses and absences from work, might satisfy “your own misgivings”. “However, perhaps unwittingly, it has created a negative working environment which denies both you and your employees the benefits of a positive work environment, especially at a time where we should be desperate to accelerate recovery from the recent retrenchment exercise,” the letter continued. The letter also outlined that the BWU hoped that the authority’s management would consider the benefits of a meeting with the union to fully develop and address these and other concerns, instead of “your open contemplation to have the staff of this department meet with your Board in circumstances where, understandably, they regard themselves as being under threat”. “It is hoped that such basic labour management relations issues would not have to escalate beyond where already, quite unnecessarily, it has been taken by you,” it said. It was proposed that the meeting be held on Wednesday 23 January 2019, at 9:30 a.m. at BWU’s Solidarity House. When asked if he was aware of the letter which outlined the employees’ concerns, Minister of Energy and Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams told Barbados TODAY that he preferred not to make a comment on the matter. The minister however requested that Barbados TODAY communicate with BWA’s chairman Leodean Worrell, who could not be reached. Efforts to contact the authority’s General Manager Keithroy Halliday, and BWU’s General Secretary also proved futile. However, when reached president of the BWA division of the BWU, Carl Boyce, told Barbados TODAY that the meeting between the union and the authority’s management was indeed held and “all concerns” were resolved. “That meeting took place and everything was settled and everything went in the workers’ favour. Everything is normal. The workers and the union are satisfied that everything is all right now. We had a lengthy two-hour meeting and everything was resolved,” Boyce assured. (BT)

GREEN LIGHTS TO SAVE MILLIONS – Government has partnered with Caribbean LED lighting to replace most of the public street lights in Barbados. Yesterday in the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources, Country Road, St Michael, Minister Wilfred Abrahams and chief executive officer of Caribbean LED Gerard Borely signed the agreement to replace 28 000 high pressure sodium bulbs with LED bulbs, a move estimated to save more than $3.7 million annually as well as help Barbados achieve its goals of eliminating fossil fuel use by 2030 and becoming the first country to use 100 per cent green energy. The initiative forms the final component one of the public sector smart energy programme, funded jointly by the European Union and Inter-American Development Bank to the tune of almost US $25 million. The other components included an electric vehicle pilot project and ocean energy studies followed by capacity building, institutional strengthening, public education and awareness and project management. (WN)

QEH SUITS OUR NEEDS – A veteran architect believes that the present Queen Elizabeth Hospital once maintained is adequate for the needs of Barbados and there is no need for Government to build another state-owned hospital. According to Andy Voss the idea to build a new facility in Kingsland, Christ Church is not beneficial to the country. Speaking to the media at a ribbon cutting and opening of the Soroptimist Village’s laundry facility in Eden Lodge, St Michael on Thursday the architect and senior partner of Tomlin Voss Associates said, “What are we doing spending our money to build a new hospital up there? Upgrade what you’ve got and knock down some of the buildings around it so you can get a bit more sensible parking,” Voss said. The architect who has been working in Barbados for the past 60 years questioned why Government is so quick to move buildings from Bridgetown and its environs which has UNESCO heritage site status. “Why are we moving away from Bridgetown, just because it is fashionable? This is architecture. Architecture has changed with the fashion and if you think of it, buildings like that were fairly stark and then you went into a ‘pretty’ type of architecture with the cottage and gingerbread architecture,” he said, adding that the QEH needs to be given the tools to make it cutting edge in 21st century Barbados. “What matters is whether QEH serves its function properly. If it needs more money, more maintenance, more staff, more security that is the sort of thing and that needs to be backed with the procedure and equipment as it changes. But it has not done badly,” Voss said. He noted that he has heard the cries about knocking down the QEH but he believed that the structure built by the late Captain Tomlin has been properly maintained. “I would go against that. The hospital is in a good position generally especially now that it is easy to get to Bridgetown and you should leave it there because 60 per cent of it is in good order and up-to-date. The QEH is one area that has been maintained. Look at all the other government buildings, the old NIS building, the new law courts, the maintenance has not been kept up.” In 2012 former Minister of Health Donville Inniss announced that a general hospital would be constructed in Kingsland Christ Church to replace the QEH. (BT)

CONCORDE TO BE ADDED TO SYMMONDS’ MINISTRY – Minister of Tourism and International Transport Kerrie Symmonds says his ministry will be responsible for the Barbados Concorde Experience which is to become the star attraction of an aeronautical museum. Speaking to Barbados TODAY from the Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Montego Bay Jamaica, Symmonds said “My ministry is going to take control of the attraction. It was originally under the Barbados Tourism Investment Inc (BTMI) but that is now in the Ministry of Investment. “We are prepared to take it over and have it as a part of the airport’s management structure and the airport will superintend the attraction and also the maintenance of the hanger and the Concorde experience as a whole,” he said, adding that the renovation of the Concorde will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Symmonds noted that there was no plan in place on how to market the aeronautical attraction which Barbados inherited in 2003. “The problem with the Concorde Experience is that I came into office and there was no marketing plan for the attraction and frankly there was no development plan. So I wanted it to be re-thought as an attraction and I wanted it to be something that we can bring up to date,” he said as he also alluded to plans for a museum. “If we are going to have an aeronautical experience that means we have to have things that will support it at the Concorde not just to go there and see the aircraft or to take a tour of the aircraft. So, it may be displays of information technology or more historical stuff. So that is a work in progress. It is a little too early to get a perspective on that,” he said. (BT)

PREMIUM BIM – With Barbados’ tourism product a little more expensive as a result of recent taxes, Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds is giving the assurance that careful and vigorous work is being undertaken so the destination could offer better value for money. Pointing to some measures that have already been put in place by the eight-month-old Mia Mottley-led administration to reinvigorate the tourism industry, Symmonds told Barbados TODAY he was aware that while tourist arrival numbers have been robust the spend is not where it should be. He said while it was critical that the offerings be refreshed, a holistic approach was needed. “So we are looking at a number of the existing attractions in Barbados, trying to identify areas where they can be strengthened or refreshed and then we are trying to build out green field attractions,” he said on Wednesday while attending the Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Montego Bay, Jamaica. “It has to be a value-for-money proposition in Barbados. When people are going to pay a premium fare to come to Barbados they want to get a premium experience. You can’t put a five-star stamp on something and then offer them a two or three-star product. “So there are a number of issues we have to get absolutely right in Barbados and those are not necessarily tourism industry issues but they are supportive issues – things like the little spike in crime that we had over the course of the last few weeks and the reluctance of people to ensure they properly dispose of garbage and have an efficient system of collection and so on. Those are the things I think can create a negative impression and hurt the product even more than the prices,” he explained. As part of $1.2 billion austerity package announced last year, Government imposed a number of new taxes on the tourism sector. Chief among them was a US$70 Airline Travel and Development fee for trips to extra-regional destinations and a US$35 fee for travel within the Caribbean. A range of hotel room taxes from US$2.50 to US$10 per night have also been implemented and a ten per cent tax on shared accommodation such as Airbnb. The latest Central Bank report indicated that despite a 2.8 per cent increase in long-stay visitor arrivals, tourism output fell by 1.6 per cent last year, from 2.2 per cent in 2017, due to a decline in the length of stay and less tourist spend. Symmonds’ comments came on Wednesday afternoon just as the Central Bank was giving its economic review for 2018. He said while people were generally prepared to spend premium dollars to come to Barbados because of the reputation it has for safety and friendliness, he insisted that Barbados must give value for money if the country is to earn more from the industry. “My position on the tourism industry is that I have wanted to have it re-thought for a while, and that process is in train,” he said, as he highlighted the establishment of the new National Cruise Development Commission and ongoing upgrades at the Grantley Adams International Airport. Symmonds said he was yet to do a review of the revenue intake from the taxes, which took effect October last year. However, he said his ministry has been observing the reaction from the various markets. The tourism minister said while there was a shockwave initially, with some believing that Barbados was pricing itself out the competition, that response did not match up with the record number of visitors this winter season so far and the future bookings. However, pointing out that it was not a clear-cut situation, Symmonds explained that while some markets including Canada, were performing well generally, there were some areas within the market where there was “increased price sensitivity”. “So that is something that I have sat down with the marketing team and discussed and we are looking at ways in which we can try to counteract that. All in all, I don’t think that we are having an exceptionally difficult time as a result of the tax imposition,” he said. Congratulating CEO of the Elegant Hotels Group Sunil Chatrani and others who received awards during the Caribbean Travel Marketplace this week, Symmonds said his wish was that the Elegant Hotels model would be replicated among the Intimate Hotels group. This group represents about 50 boutique hotel properties across the island. “They are going to be branded as a Barbadian product called Intimate Hotels, and certainly the intention is to have a variety of experiences under one brand in a similar way. Those discussions have begun and I think we are making some useful progress in that regard,” disclosed Symmonds, who was not in a position to give an update on the proposed Hyatt Centric project or Sam Lords Castle development. “Similarly, in so far as the hotel-related attractions are concerned, we are looking at areas for redevelopment and re-imagination of the concept so that entertainment areas like St Lawrence Gap and Second Street, Holetown are areas where I think we are going to be focusing on in 2019, with a view to trying to make them as cutting edge as possible in terms of the experience. So a lot of planning has gone into the latter part of 2018 and I think we are now at the stage where we are about to start the execution of some of those plans,” he said. (BT)

VIOLENCE, A DAMPER ON TOURISM – Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds is deeply disturbed by the number of violent deaths in Barbados during the first month of the year, warning that it had the potential to impact gravely on the island’s bread and butter tourism industry. Calling for an end to the violent crimes, most of which have been gun-related, Symmonds at the same time welcomed the announcement by Prime Minister Mia Mottley that a concerted effort would be made to curb the violence. “I am heartened and happy that from the highest level of government – the Prime Minister herself – through to the Attorney General, the Commissioner of Police, everybody is onboard in this matter because it is simply not to be tolerated. It has to be stomped out as ruthlessly as possible,” Symmonds told Barbados TODAY. Last Friday, Mottley announced that close to 100 soldiers would work alongside the Royal Barbados Police Force (RBPF) and the service of of former commissioner of police Darwin Dottin would be enlisted as Government embarked on a major fight against crime. With Barbados experiencing another bumper tourist winter season, Symmonds expressed shock at the number of violent incidents that were taking place. “Whenever we have a shooting incident we compromise the image of the country and do untold potential damage to what we could be achieving financially. It disturbed me deeply that those things were happening while we had 6, 500 English guests in the island,” said Symmonds. “It is a good thing that you can have that level of occupancy that we had, but the reality is that all of those people were here on the island at the time when that lawlessness was taking place in Barbados,” he said. Describing the crime situation as problematic, Symmonds said: “I want people to be a lot more conscious and aware of the consequences of that kind of activity and that the foolishness they do hurt innocent people who are working hard trying to get this country back on its feet again. We can’t tolerate that.” (BT)

GOVT NOT ADDRESSING ROOT CAUSES – The Mia Mottley-led Barbados Labor Party administration is failing miserably on the issue of crime and violence, according to President of the African Heritage Foundation, Paul Rock. In a statement, the foundation scoffed at fresh commitments by soldiers and police to arrest the situation, following a worrying spate of murders in January. Last Friday evening, Prime Minister Mottley assured Barbadians that police officers would be working on off days and soldiers would be placed on the street as part of efforts to arrest the unprecedented crime situation. However, Rock argued that the root causes of the problems were not being addressed. “Police giving up off days and soldiers on the street! What will this accomplish exactly? If you don’t address root causes of anything you are moving on a treadmill of ignorance. Can the Prime Minister tell us the root causes of gun violence in our streets? We really hope she does not say guns. A gun has no power unless fired. We should be looking at what is causing the people to fire!” he charged, before taking aim at the education system and the controversial common entrance exam,” charged Rock, who identified the structure of the country’s school system as a major factor. “To help curb the spread of violent crime we need to violently dismantle this high and low school thing we call an educational system and all that goes with it,” he said in reference to the controversial common entrance exam. “We need a totally revamped education system with a ministry that cares and is equipped physically and mentally to do the job,” he said. Prime Minister Mottley also recently removed the Royal Barbados Police Force from the portfolio of Home Affairs Minister Edmund Hinkson and placed it with Attorney General Dale Marshall. However head of the local pressure group is not convinced that such measures would suffice. Rock also condemned the country’s justice system for operating too slowly, a situation, which he believed, was encouraging citizens “to take matters into their own hand.” He also criticized government for clogging up the court system with unimportant issues like marijuana-related offences. “Legalize the cannabis,” demanded Rock. “Allow greater access to it by all. Cut out the high street prices and the need to rob those who have managed to get through the island’s borders with the plant. Research cannabis in poverty-stricken communities and understand how the plant already aids in the reduction of violent crime, and how its legalization for meditational/recreational use will impact violent crime.” The African Heritage Foundation president also appealed for more empowerment of community organizations, “who actually have plausible tangible solutions for social issues that plague our nation. Have consultations with these groupings and see what you can learn from them,” he urged, adding that politicians alone could not be trusted with the public’s safety. “To seriously tackle violent crime in our society we must also address what is played on our radio stations and public transportation aimed at the youth. How can we expect to be praising criminals on the radio, ‘bigging’ them up and expect the violence to ease up? This too must violently be addressed.” (BT)

MINISTER: TRANSFER ON HOLD – The transfer of the 14-year-old boy from Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School in St Joseph to Darryl Jordan Secondary School in St Lucy has been put on hold. Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw told the Weekend Nation yesterday that she had ordered an investigation into the matter. Speaking to this newspaper from Miami via telephone, Bradshaw said the decision to suspend the transfer was made following a briefing with the Chief Education Officer and other ministry officials. (WN)

FATHER: I TRIED MY BEST – “I feel like I fail my Ramario.” That was the heart-rending statement of Anthony Wiltshire, father of 18-year-old Ramario Antonio Roach who was charged for two of the nine murders recorded last month and one last December. Roach, of River Bay, St Lucy, yesterday appeared before Magistrate Wanda Blair in the Holetown Magistrates’ Court. He was not required to plead to three counts of murder, that he killed his mother Joann Roach, 38, of the same address, whose partially decomposed body was found in a watercourse in the area on Errol Barrow Day. (WN)

TEEN CHARGED WITH THREE COUNTS OF MURDER – Triple murder accused, eighteen-year-old Ramario Roach, of River Bay, St Lucy, has been charged with three counts of murder. The victims, one male and two females, were found in various stages of decomposition between December and January. The body of former Free Hill, Black Rock, St Michael resident, 68-year-old Tyrone Austin, was discovered in a bushy area in Wanstead Gardens, St James on December 18 last year. The partially decomposed body of Joann Roach, 38 years, formerly of River Bay, St Lucy, was discovered in a watercourse at River Bay on Monday, January 21. Roach is believed to be the mother of the accused. Just one day later on January 22, the mutilated body Dr. Sarah Sutrina, was discovered nearby in Ocean Estate, Northumberland, St Lucy. The former UWI lecturer of Wanstead Gardens, St James, was also 68 years old. The accused is to appear in the Holetown Magistrate’s Court before Magistrate Wanda Blair. (WN)

COPS DIGGING DEEPER – Police are probing a major car theft racket which has resulted in hundreds of vehicles disappearing. Initially when the popular brand was being stolen – seemingly without a trace – lawmen were operating on the premise that they were being secretly shipped out of the island. However, deeper probing revealed that many of the approximately 600 vehicles stolen between 2012 and last year were actually still on the island and being driven around as legitimately imported vehicles. (WN)

HEFTY FINE FOR RED LIGHT – Not stopping at a traffic light has cost a driver $1000. That was the fine handed down by Magistrate Graveney Bannister in the Traffic Court to Kenmore Clarke of Dash Road, Bank Hall, St Michael, who pleaded guilty to the offence of May 20, 2018. Clarke said he was going through the amber light, when the lights changed. The magistrate noted that such offences were too prevalent. Failing to pay the forthwith fine, Clarke will spend 100 days in prison. (BT)

CPL’S $US20.8 MILLION BOOST – Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) today announced that the tournament’s economic impact for Barbados last year was US$20,841,961. The tournament was staged between August 8 and 16 September 16. Organisers said that figure represented an increase on the 2017 figure of nearly 40 per cent. This figure has been calculated using organiser spend, visitor spend and media value and was collated for Hero CPL by world-renowned researchers, SMG Insight. In addition to that economic impact figure the Hero CPL employed 361 staff in Barbados and filled 4,579 hotel rooms during the 2018 event. The value of media exposure and mentions of Barbados from the coverage was US$10,438,503, almost double that achieved in 2017. This was due in part to the unique sponsorship of the Sky Sports CPL coverage in the United Kingdom by the Visit Barbados campaign. The Hero CPL spent US$2,644,411 in Barbados during the 2018 event with the tournament hosting five matches in the island. Speaking about the report from SMG Insight the Hero CPL Chief Operating Officer, Pete Russell said: “Barbados has been such a large part of CPL since the tournament started in 2013 and we are delighted to be providing tangible benefits to the economy of the country. We have already started our plans for the 2019 tournament, and we are certain we can improve on these figures.” First started in 2013, the Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) is a franchise-based T20 format cricket tournament that combines two of the most compelling aspects of Caribbean life – dramatic cricket and a vibrant Carnival atmosphere. Combining broadcast and digital viewership, over 200 million fans watched the 2018 season to make it one of the fastest growing leagues in world cricket. Trinbago Knight Riders are the current Hero CPL champions and the other competing teams are Barbados Tridents, Guyana Amazon Warriors, St. Kitts & Nevis Patriots, St Lucia Stars and Jamaica Tallawahs. (BT)

WINDIES FIRED UP – Another incisive display from West Indies’ seamers once again brutally exposed England’s suspect batting, as the visitors folded cheaply in their first innings to give the hosts command of the opening day of the second Test yesterday. Still brimming with confidence following their dominant first Test victory last weekend in Bridgetown, the Windies hardly put a foot wrong as they bundled England out for 187 before reaching the close on 30 without loss – 157 runs behind heading into today’s second at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium. Veteran seamer Kemar Roach bowled superbly to claim four for 30 while new-ball partner Shannon Gabriel worked up a fair turn of pace on the two-paced surface to finish with three for 45. (WN)

DOTTIN ON FIRE – Batting star Deandra Dottin narrowly missed out on a record-breaking third Twenty20 International hundred as West Indies launched their historic three-match tour here with a convincing 71-run win Thursday. Choosing to bat first at Southend Club, West Indies piled up 160 for six of their 20 overs, with the right-handed Dottin blasting an unbeaten 90 off 60 deliveries. Chedean Nation struck exactly 50 off 35 balls as West Indies recovered from an uncertain start to reach a competitive total. In reply, fast bowler Shamilia Connell snatched three for 29 while new-ball partner Shakera Selman (2-8) and off-spinner Anisa Mohammed (2-17) picked up two wickets apiece, as Pakistan folded for 80 with two overs left. Captain Bismah Maroof top-scored with 38 but was the only one to offer resistance, leaving Pakistan well short of their target. Playing their first series on Pakistan soil in 15 years, West Indies were propelled as Dottin dominated a 34-run opening stand with Kycia Knight (8). But both Knight and Shemaine Campbelle (4) fell in the space of 17 runs to leave the Windies on 51 for two in the ninth over before Dottin found a stable partner in Nation to repair the innings. All told, Player-of-the-Match Dottin struck eight fours and four sixes as she put on 109 in an unbroken third wicket stand. Nation counted four fours and a brace of sixes, providing the momentum as West Indies gathered 62 runs from the last five overs. Pakistan never quite found their footing, especially after Connell knocked over openers Sidra Ameen (2) and Javeria Khan (19) cheaply to catches at the wicket, leaving the score on 32 for two in the sixth over. Bismah tried to rally the innings, hitting five fours in a patient 37-ball knock but was ninth out as Pakistan lost their last six wickets for just 18 runs. The next T20I is set for Friday. (BT)

FROM CLASSIC TO PRO –This is going to be a historic year for Barbados in bodybuilding and fitness competitions. That’s because a pro qualifier and a pro contest will be held here for the first time. It is the Darcy Beckles Diamond Cup Barbados onJuly 6 at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Conference Centre. This means that some of this country’s top competitors such as Martinus Durrant, Shaquile Lavine, Shakira Doughlin and Hadley Hoyte, can seek pro cards at home. Former national men’s physique champion Ryan Haynes, who is now clear to compete after a two-year suspension ended last October, can launch his comeback at the pro qualifier which will have entrants from Europe, North American and the Caribbean. (WN)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 333 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

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ericfruits · 7 years

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What America might want from Russia, but is unlikely to get

FOR decades, Russian leaders insisted that America had no claim to moral superiority. For every Soviet and post-Soviet misdeed, from labour camps to invasions, they adduced an American counterpart. Such equivalence was anathema to American statesmen, who claimed to abide by higher standards.

Until now. In an interview with President Donald Trump broadcast on February 5th, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News described Vladimir Putin as a “killer”. A nod from Mr Trump seemed to allow that this might be the case, which would in itself have been an arresting evaluation of another head of state. The president then went on to say that there were “a lot of killers” and to question whether his own country was “so innocent”. His tough-talk tarnishing of America’s reputation was unprecedented. But the equivalence it posits sits easily with the way Mr Trump seems to see Mr Putin’s Russia: as a potential partner.

In 2016 Mr Trump was consistently effusive about Mr Putin—“very smart!”—contrasting his popularity among Russians favourably with Barack Obama’s standing in American polls. He poured scorn on evidence that the Kremlin was behind the hacking of Democratic bigwigs’ e-mails during the election campaign, preferring to denigrate America’s intelligence agencies. Kompromat or collusion have been suggested as possible explanations for this unshakable warmth. Official inquiries—if they are allowed to proceed—may shed light on claims that Mr Trump’s campaign team collaborated with Moscow.

Scattered comments by the president and his aides imply an alternative explanation: the administration envisages a grand diplomatic bargain with Russia that encompasses arms control, counter-terrorism, the status of Crimea, economic sanctions and relations with China, an arrangement in which the two leaders indomitably face down all comers like some maverick geopolitical wrestling team.

This stance does not just go against the views of those Republicans who, along with much of America’s foreign-policy establishment, regard Mr Putin as a gangster. It also contradicts Mr Trump’s two predecessors. Mr Obama blithely wrote Russia off as an irksome regional power, nuclear-armed and prone to harassing its neighbours but doomed to decline into irrelevance. George W. Bush, who on meeting Mr Putin professed to have looked into his soul and to have liked what he saw, later oscillated between symbolic protests against the Kremlin’s depredations and fitful efforts to ignore them.

This all means that any bargain will face opposition in Congress and quite possibly even in Mr Trump’s cabinet. Still, public opinion provides an opening: polls suggest Mr Putin is viewed more favourably, and his country less warily, than before Mr Trump embraced him.In Russia state propaganda has burnished Mr Trump’s image and soothed anti-Americanism.

In terms of style, the putative tag team looks rather well matched. Neither is fond of the liberal, rules-based global order. Both can lie without blushing. It is easy to imagine Mr Trump sharing Mr Putin’s approach to diplomacy, too. Like the Russian, he seems sure to prefer bilateral deals to messy supranational bodies and is likely to define America’s national interest in narrowly military and commercial terms. Both men seem willing to link disparate issues and regions in a general barter. Neither is much exercised by human rights. Both regard the humiliation of adversaries as a salutary exercise of power.

Buttering up the butcher

Yet as a means to further Mr Trump’s avowed goals in the Middle East and elsewhere the idea has three deep flaws. One is the damage it would do to America’s existing alliances and international reputation. The second lies in the immutable realities of great-power relations, underpinned by history and geography that no deal-making can wholly negate. The last is that Mr Trump seems to be making a classic presidential beginner’s mistake in dealing with the Kremlin, one that Mr Bush committed when looking for a soul and that Mr Obama made when he attempted a “reset” in relations with Russia in 2009: wishful thinking.

The first thing Mr Trump seems to want is an ally against the so-called Islamic State (IS). His notion that Russian forces have been battling IS in Syria is mistaken: they have mostly bombed other opponents of Bashar al-Assad, Mr Putin’s client. But that could change—especially, observes Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, now that Mr Assad’s own position in Damascus looks more secure.

What, though, could Russia offer? Mr Putin’s way of war, in Aleppo as in Grozny, makes use of indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate targeting of civilians; Russian air power might thus be used against Raqqa and other IS strongholds in ways that American aircraft cannot. But even if that were acceptable, it would hardly be a solution. It is only by occupying territory that IS can be beaten; and Russia offers little by way of boots on the ground.

Russia has no need for ground troops in Syria because its forces are in de facto alliance with those of Hizbullah and Iran. This throws into sharp relief differences between America and Russia on who counts as a terrorist. Mindful of Russia’s 20m Muslims, Mr Putin has been as tactful as was Mr Obama in separating the concepts of Islam and terrorism. He has said the Orthodox church can be seen as having more in common with Islam than with Catholicism, and that “Islam is an outstanding element of Russia’s cultural make-up, an organic part of our history.” His grotesque satrap in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, enforces sharia (Islamic law) there.

Beyond Mr Putin’s awkward mix of brutality, cynicism and cultural pragmatism, there is the problem that a Syrian settlement palatable to the White House, let alone America’s Sunni Arab partners—whose support would be crucial for any forces actually taking territory from IS—would have to see Iran’s influence minimised. But Russia would be very hard put to acquiesce in such a plan. Its relationship with Iran, while testy, is more nuanced than the White House seems to realise.

Iran is Russia’s neighbour across the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. The two vie for influence there and in Central Asia. Because an Iranian nuclear bomb would threaten Russia’s primacy in the region, Russia was happy to take a role in the deal that constrained Iran’s nuclear programme. But proximity also makes Mr Putin wary about antagonising the Iranians. As Nikolay Kozhanov of the European University at St Petersburg says, the Russians have interests at stake that the Americans do not, including energy projects and pipelines in and around the Caspian. They want to sell Iran arms, including surface-to-air-missiles and civilian nuclear power plants; they need to co-operate with Iran to keep Mr Assad in power. They are very unlikely to want to tear up the nuclear deal, something Mr Trump has threatened.

On a bigger scale, the same factors—geography, security and commerce—would nobble any bid by Mr Trump to conscript Russia as a bulwark against China. The civility he has conspicuously extended to Mr Putin has not applied to Xi Jinping, whom Mr Trump angered over Taiwan even before he took office. As Dimitri Simes of the Centre for the National Interest, a think-tank, notes, American diplomats have worried about Sino-Russian cosiness for decades. Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump’s influential strategist, undoubtedly sees China as a major adversary. A bid to realign the three powers lies at the heart of Mr Trump’s grand bargain.

This may be even less realistic than the hope of turning Russia against Iran. China and Russia are hardly close allies. Among other reasons for mistrust, the old Russian anxiety over Chinese expansion in Siberia, a fear stoked by the lopsided populations on either side of the Amur river, has never gone away. But Mr Putin began a pivot towards Asia in the mid-2000s, well before Mr Obama undertook his own version of such a manoeuvre. Initially a feint as much as a strategy, one conceived as a response to what Mr Putin saw as Western hostility, it has since acquired substance. Alexander Lukin, of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, sees it as “largely irreversible”. When Western sanctions over Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in 2014 began to bite, China became a valuable source of credit. It has invested in Russian oil-and-gas firms; Russia sells it high-tech weapons.

Other benefits America might seek in a grand bargain include a reduction of Russia’s campaign of bullying and destabilisation in the Baltic states and movement on arms control. Here, again, the scope for progress is narrow. A deal on long-range nuclear weapons which limits both countries to 1,550 deployed warheads is set to expire in 2021. Mr Trump could extend it, or try to reduce that cap; he might also want to do something about Russia’s huge numerical advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. But America’s missile-defence capabilities—which Russia sees as a threat to its deterrence—would be dragged into any such negotiations, and the missile-defence facilities in Europe are there to deal with Iran. A deal which reduced their capability should—at least in a normal world, and assuming Congress is not wholly supine—be hard for Mr Trump to swallow, or sell.

The bear’s necessities

In much of this, Mr Trump seems to overestimate Russia’s clout as well as its alignment with his goals. He mistakes the strut of a bully for the swagger of a superpower. The “strength” he admires relies on strategic assets handed down from the Soviet past—its Security Council seat and nuclear weapons—and its hydrocarbon reserves, bolstered by Mr Putin’s knack for asymmetric thuggery. Unrestrained by allies, scruple or domestic opposition, he is a dab hand at disinformation and discrediting critics whom he does not dispose of in other ways. But his Russia is more of a prickly, meddling power than a global, transformative one. Diplomatic isolation and an economy throttled by corruption frustrate any grander ambitions.

Russia can, however, seize an opportunity; and Mr Trump presents it with one, whatever role Mr Putin had in his rise to power. (While Mr Trump did not take the intelligence regarding Russian hacking seriously, Mr Putin evidently did. Several officers of Russia’s federal security service have been arrested for treason in what may be a hunt for a cyber-mole. A senior Kremlin insider was found dead, supposedly of a heart attack.)

Relief on sanctions is the most obvious item on the Kremlin’s agenda for Mr Trump’s presidency, one that would have the double effect of helping Russia’s economy and dividing America’s allies. But other things may matter to Mr Putin more. Obligingly, Channel One, Russia’s main state television channel, provided a list of them a few days after Mr Trump’s inauguration—a list which sounded rather more achievable than Mr Trump’s objectives.

First was that anti-terror alliance, for “nothing brings [countries] together as much as a fight against a common enemy.” Second, Russia wants to stop any further expansion of NATO after the accession of Montenegro. Countries barred might well include Sweden or Finland, and would definitely include Ukraine. Mr Trump’s description of NATO as “obsolete” has been welcome. If Russia were to meddle in its Baltic neighbours, cabinet members who profess devotion to the alliance, such as Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and James Mattis, the secretary of defence, might struggle to persuade Mr Trump to honour the commitment to mutual defence at its core. If he did not, NATO would in effect be dead: the ultimate prize for Mr Putin.

Third on Channel One’s list was the recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, along with a de-facto veto over Ukraine’s future. The Kremlin wants to retain its grip on the country’s wretched east—where fighting has flared up again—and so secure a stranglehold on its policies (see article). Conversely, America and its partners have insisted on a withdrawal of Russian troops, the re-establishment of Ukraine’s control of its borders, and regional elections monitored by international observers.

Here, on the face of it, the signs are not encouraging for Mr Putin. Mr Tillerson affirmed in his confirmation hearing that the annexation of Crimea, and Russia’s push into eastern Ukraine, were illegal. But Mr Trump could resolve this contradiction by arguing that accepting Russia’s hold on Crimea would only be to acknowledge reality. Using the same rationale, he may urge Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, to tolerate Russia’s sway in the east. That, in turn, could trigger a collapse of the government in Kiev, which would suit Mr Putin. Because Mr Poroshenko’s government played a role in the ousting of Paul Manafort, at one time a senior figure in Mr Trump’s campaign, it might be welcome in Washington, too.

Remember the Decembrists

Fourth on Channel One’s list was an end to “global policing” by America, and a clear recognition of the two countries’ spheres of influence. That sounds extravagant. But it may be plausible. Apart from the odd hotel deal, Mr Trump has evinced little interest in the parts of the world—eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union—that Mr Putin would like to suborn. Mr Trump “has no intention of carrying the torch of democracy into every corner of the world”, observed Valery Fadeev, Channel One’s anchor. Not on the list, but worth bearing in mind, is that Mr Trump’s opposition to global action on climate may look helpful to a country that depends on oil and gas exports.

The Kremlin does not expect immediate concessions. According to Nikki Haley, America’s new ambassador to the UN, sanctions relief is not imminent. Contradictory reports about what Mr Trump has said to Mr Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, one of his political opponents, suggest that he is either undecided or confused about the next steps in Ukraine. Yet the ideological value of Mr Trump’s victory for Russia is already enormous. It removes one of the biggest threats to Mr Putin’s power: the attraction of America as an alternative system of governance to the authoritarian model he has constructed.

His is not a new worry. Soviet and Russian leaders have in the past venerated America as well as demonising it. (Stalin advocated a “combination of Russian revolutionary élan with American efficiency”.) They knew its example encouraged rebels and idealists. The Decembrist revolt of 1825, in which army officers rose against Tsar Nicholas I, took inspiration from the Declaration of Independence. In 1917 some pro-revolution Russians saw America as a guiding star: Russia was to be a new America, a better and fairer one. The Soviet authorities tried, largely in vain, to root out American books, music and clothes.

They were right to be concerned: America’s successes undermined Soviet rule. After communism collapsed, America became an ideal. That started to change after Russia’s financial meltdown in 1998 and the American-led intervention in Kosovo. With Russia unable to compete economically or support its clients, its public fell back on a simple conviction: we are stronger because we are morally superior.

Coming to power at the turn of the millennium, Mr Putin co-operated with America until 2003, the year that saw Mr Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Georgia’s Rose revolution. The next year Ukraine’s Orange revolution got under way. Mr Putin believed that America had toppled the leaders of the two former Soviet republics; he had a strong aversion to seeing anything similar in Moscow. In 2011 he blamed Hillary Clinton, then America’s secretary of state, for demonstrations against him, pushing relations to a new low.

For Mr Putin, the downside of Mr Trump’s win is that it prevents him from invoking America as an enemy. This could be only a temporary setback: despite his disdain for NATO and liberal interventionism, Mr Trump may well lash out militarily somewhere, at which point anti-American propaganda can, if necessary, be cranked back up. For now, Mr Putin will be content that an American leader is at last paying him the respect he feels he deserves.

The irony is that any Russian who grew up before 1989 can see in Mr Trump the perfect Soviet caricature of a hateful American imperialist. Now, though, this same image lets the Kremlin’s propagandists present him as an ally in the global fight between right-minded nationalists and decadent Western liberals, a battle that will continue in the upcoming elections in Germany and France. Russian television particularly relishes footage of demonstrations in America and Europe. They represent a thrilling new front in a civilisational struggle led by Mr Putin—and now joined by the president of the United States.

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newyorktheater · 4 years

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Paul Rudnick

You’re getting attention for “Coastal Elites,” which was supposed to be a play at the Public Theater, but launches as a film on HBO September 12th, starring Bette Midler, Kaitlyn Dever, Dan Levy, Sarah Paulson, and Issa Rae in five separate monologues about coping with the new abnormal. Less heralded is your role as Tweeter of Trump family foibles; some of these Tweets strike me as mini-plays, and others just draw blood. How did you come up with the two enterprises, and do you consider them connected in any way?

Paul Rudnick: As with everybody else, Twitter lets me talk back to the Trump administration. It’s like an anti-anxiety medication, and I’ve been trying to make my tweets mostly funny, instead of just constant howls of anguish. The Twitter community intrigued me, from every side of the political divide; it’s like a global town hall. It’s insane and filled with crackpots, but I like logging on to follow the world’s reactions to unfolding events in real time. Trump has galvanized Twitter and the weirdest part is, he pays attention to it. He’s furious when #TrumpMeltdown or #TrumpIsAnIdiot are trending.

I wanted to capture some of this rawness and frenzy in “Coastal Elites.” Right after the 2016 election I went to see my doctor for a check-up. He’s a very circumspect, ultra-professional guy, and he looked shell-shocked. He said that all of his patients didn’t want to talk about any medical problems – they couldn’t stop talking about the election. I wondered if this obsessiveness would subside, but it’s only expanded. And that’s where “Coastal Elites” came from. I started writing it about a year ago, and I was able to rewrite up until shooting, which ended a little over a month ago. We filmed the show remotely, with every possible Covid protection, and our director, Jay Roach and the amazing cast were incredibly helpful – everyone was hyper-informed about every nuance of politics.

The piece was always a collection of monologues, which also reflects Twitter, where people can pour out their frustrations without getting interrupted.

Neither of these projects are theater in any normal definition of theater, although it feels like there’s a theatrical sensibility at work (whatever that means.) I know you’ve had a varied career as a writer [e.g. films such as Addams Family Values and In & Out; essay collections such as I Shudder], but many people see you primarily as a playwright [The Collected Plays of Paul Rudnick] Or at least I certainly do, given that I’ve been attending your plays since “Poor Little Lambs.” Do you see yourself that way? Yet now playwrights are focusing online. Do you foresee any lasting effect on the theater of the current period, when “theater” and “online theater” are basically synonymous?

I very much think of myself as first and foremost a playwright. That’s how I started and that’s the world I love. When I started writing “Coastal Elites” it felt theatrical but I wasn’t sure where it would land; I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I’ve written monologues before and combined them into full evenings – this was the structure of my play “The New Century,” which was produced at Lincoln Center. I knew “Coastal Elites” wanted to be monologues, because I was dealing with characters at peaks of emotion and storytelling; they’re all in crisis. Monologues can be like songs in musicals – they’re outbursts.

We were originally going to stage “Coastal Elites” for a series of performances at the Public Theater in NYC, with a live audience, which Jay Roach would film for HBO. When the pandemic hit this became impossible, but then HBO and the show’s production team, which includes Jeffrey Seller, Scott Chaloff and Flody Suarez, all with extensive backgrounds in theater, wondered if there was another route. Once we knew that our cast and crew could be kept safe, Jay and I talked about how the show could be filmed remotely. Because the pieces are monologues, they lent themselves to the intense focus and intimacy of being filmed for TV. It’s like having a front row seat for performances by an incredible cast.

I never anticipated any of this, but the format ended up feeling like a great match for the material, and thanks to Jay, it doesn’t feel limited.

I’ve watched a lot of online theater, and much of it is amazing, especially because the times we’re living in give the shows such yearning. But with all that, I’m like everybody else: I’m desperate for the live event, to see actors onstage, to react as part of a packed theater, and to be in a rehearsal room. I have a new play called “Guilty Pleasure,” which was scheduled for this Fall at the LaJolla Playhouse, to be directed by my long-time collaborator, Chris Ashley. The production has understandably been postponed to next Fall.

I love how theater people are adapting creatively to the shutdown, and trying to stay economically afloat. And online theater will continue to be a world to explore, but nothing replaces, or will ever replace, live theater. It’s too essential and too joyous.

Ok, but do you think this moment of online theater experimentation will have any kind of effect on live theater itself when live theater returns?

The online experimentation during the pandemic will certainly affect subject matter, in terms of plays or musicals taking place during this period. It’s part of the internet’s and social media’s ongoing effect on theater; artists are inventing ways to include the online world in live events, with regard to everything from dating apps to TikTok. The world lives online, and theater had already begun to reflect that. Also, auditions and meetings were already taking place virtually, but this may become even more commonplace. Zoom readings will probably remain a useful tool for writers, actors and directors, as a shorthand during the development of theater projects. Maybe the pandemic has normalized a new form of rehearsal, especially for performers whose personal lives and schedules don’t always allow everyone to be in the same room.

Even more than the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement is already having a huge and welcome effect on theater. Artists have been using this downtime to examine how theater, at every level, can become truly inclusive. Whenever life returns to something resembling normal, theater may, in many necessary ways, be changed forever.

What was lost in “Coastal Elites” by having it become a film on HBO rather than a play at the Public Theater?

I’m not sure what was lost in transforming Coastal Elites from a theatrical experience to a filmed one. On one hand, comedy benefits enormously from audience response; but I watched our cast navigate this potential obstacle with incredible skill, and the script gained an intensity. Most of our cast has stage and film experience, so they drew on both. Also, on a sheerly practical level, it most likely would have been impossible to assemble this particular group of actors for a stage run, due to their schedule demands and other commitments. So while I miss having a live audience, and the thrill that can provide, I’m so grateful that these performances have been captured on film.

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In the monologue The Blonde Cloud in “Coastal Elites,” Issa Rae portrays a former schoolmate of Ivanka, who calls her “Dracula with a blowout!” In your writing (especially in your feed), you focus more attention — more venom and more wit — on Ivanka than Donald. Why? Is there a strategy in that?

Trump has become a hopelessly easy and infuriating target. We know he’s a horrific tyrant. I’ve tried to approach his ongoing damage from an angle. Ivanka, who claims to empower women, has denied all of her father’s sexual assaults, and when asked about his war on women’s reproductive freedom, she smiles brightly, and refuses to answer, claiming such matters aren’t in her “portfolio.” She, along with her family members, have wholeheartedly supported Trump’s bigotry, lies and his many other crimes.

Ivanka has tried to remain in an untouchable bubble, which is insulting to all Americans. She’s constantly retweeting praise for herself, along with hopelessly privileged and out-of-touch advice: in the early days of the pandemic, she posted photos of herself making pillow forts with her kids at her Washington estate, and flew private to her family’s resorts. None of this is okay and a lot of it is ripe for satire. In Coastal Elites, I examined this situation through a character who’s every bit as rich and powerful as Ivanka, but her moral opposite. The brilliant Issa Rae plays Callie, who attended boarding school with Ivanka, but who’s been raised with a sense of responsibility and service. Their reunion, at the White House, raises the stakes for everyone involved.

The five monologues of “Coastal Elites” each seem to represent different aspects of the new abnormal. Which are you most hopeful about?

I can be as anxious and pessimistic as anyone, but this can be self-defeating. I’ve been inspired by the millions of people, all over the world, who are figuring out work, family, love and basic survival right now. One of the Coastal Elite characters is a young nurse from Wyoming, superbly played by Kaitlyn Dever, who comes to New York to volunteer as a frontline worker, The courage of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers remains astonishing. Even in the early days, without any protective equipment, they worked around the clock, providing care and whenever possible, saving lives. This degree of sacrifice is both staggering and hopeful; these workers are an inspiration to all of us.

In addition, I wanted Coastal Elites to be a tribute to the sense of humor that’s helping everyone cope. Bette Midler plays Miriam, a public school teacher and hardcore New York liberal who’s very much a tribute to my Mom and her sisters. Their passion and wisecracks always gave me hope, and I see their spirit in so many people. Bette Midler herself gives me hope: she’s a legendary performer whose tweets are hilarious and outrageously committed to changing the world for the better. Theater artists always give me hope. No one pursues theater to make a fortune or have an easy life. People work in the theater because they can’t imagine doing anything else. The pandemic has made theater almost impossible, but the theater community has stayed in constant touch, Theater people don’t give up, and that’s hope itself.

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Paul Rudnick On Coastal Elites, Trash-Tweeting Ivanka, and How Bette Midler and Theater Give Him Hope You're getting attention for "Coastal Elites," which was supposed to be a play at the Public Theater, but launches as a film on HBO September 12th, starring Bette Midler, Kaitlyn Dever, Dan Levy, Sarah Paulson, and Issa Rae in five separate monologues about coping with the new abnormal.

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gizedcom · 4 years

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The clash of capitalisms? | openDemocracy

This article is part of ourEconomy’s ‘Decolonising the economy’ series.

State capitalism is back. At least that is what we are told. An avalanche of books and articles have recently argued that the more visible role of the state across the world capitalist economy signals the resurgence of state capitalism. Consider the mass bailouts following the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-2019 pandemic, the expansion of state-owned enterprises, sovereign wealth funds, national and regional development banks, the renewal of industrial policy and various forms of economic nationalism in the advanced capitalist economies, and the consolidation of state-led development in China and elsewhere. For many commentators and policymakers, these developments suggest that state capitalism is once again taking center stage in the global political economy.

These narratives of resurgent state capitalism are far from innocent. Consider the front cover of a 2012 special report of The Economist, figuring a picture of Lenin smoking a cigar. In another issue, published two years earlier and dedicated to state-backed Chinese takeovers, the front cover featured a picture of Mao handing over a wad of banknotes (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Two front-covers of The Economist (January 21, 2012 and November 11, 2010)

These imaginaries and representations comprise a myriad of value-laden symbols, which mobilize familiar histories and narratives. For instance, the red background color as well as the pictures of the two charismatic leaders elicit the histories of ‘really existing socialism’ in the ex-Soviet Union, China and elsewhere, but also that of the Cold War. Those representations link the contemporary ‘return’ of the state to the past by reactivating vivid memories of the Cold War and communism, while depicting imaginaries that echo with suspicion and duplicity. The covers suggest that in state capitalism, what lies behind the veil of capitalist money and markets – symbolized by the US dollar, both on Lenin’s cigar and Mao’s banknotes – is the concentration of economic power in the hands of strong, illiberal states. There is something inauspicious, if not threatening, about the fact that money is not allocated by the invisible hand of the market, but by the very visible hand of Mao.

Those imaginaries are not confined to the business press. In one of the most cited articles on the topic, then turned into a best-selling book, political pundit and president of Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer argues that the rise of state capitalism in the developing world is antithetical to Western liberal capitalism and seriously risks impairing the functioning of the free market. In another influential book, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Joshua Kurlantzick argues that the return of state capitalism ‘presents a real potential alternative to the free-market model, and as an alternative it presents serious threats to political and economic stability around the world’. For Harvard economist and Cato Institute research fellow Jeffrey Miron, ‘[China] has state capitalism, not true capitalism’.

We see the recent resurgence of these narratives and discourses as not coincidental. For us, it must be considered against the backdrop of a series of interrelated geopolitical and geo-economic transformations, including a shift in the center of gravity of the global economy from the North Atlantic to the Pacific rim, power dispersal in the global economy away from the traditional Western centers of power, and the multiplication of forms of reassertion of state authority in the economy and society.

Partly as result of these transformations, some of the older signifiers used to make sense of world politics, such as the geopolitical division of the world into ‘Third’, ‘Second’, and ‘First’, or between global North and global South, but also some of the post-Cold War narratives framed in the context of ‘globalization’ and the ‘end of history’, have lost traction and credibility. This is compounded by the highly inefficient responses to the Covid-19 crisis by a number of advanced capitalist states.

We submit that the re-emergence and redefinition of discourses of state capitalism participates in the search for new discursive frames and geopolitical lines of reasoning by strategic analysts, political leaders, foreign policy professionals, corporate pundits and academics, in order to render intelligible these messy epochal transformations. Put differently, state capitalism is rapidly emerging as ‘a new global drama’, that is, a simple and straightforward grand geopolitical narrative which acts as a frame of reference for political discourse and practice. Let us take a closer look at how it operates.

First, imaginaries of state capitalism reduce the complexity and diversity of the current political-economic transformations previously mentioned to a clear-cut binary opposition between free-market capitalism vs. state capitalism. The state capitalism narrative is a familiar story of heroes and villains which, through discourses of competition, hostility, and expanding influence, constructs a sense of ‘ideological directness’. The two main protagonists are easily identifiable, two radically different and incompatible models of capitalism.

Second, the geo-category establishes this sense of simplicity, directness, and familiarity by reactivating older grand geopolitical narratives, such as the ones that were central to the repertoire of Cold War geopolitics (cf. the covers above), but also the racialized rhetoric of empire. Indeed, these imaginaries suggest that state capitalism is located in spaces outside of the Western core of the world economy, and simultaneously construct the abnormality and alterity of state capitalism in reference to a presumed universal template of capitalist political organization which dominates in the West. This is evident in Bremmer’s account, which explicitly pits state capitalism against (Western-dominated) democratic liberal free-market capitalism, and in Miron’s characterization of Chinese state capitalism as some kind of impure form of capitalism.

Constructing the non-West as characterized by impurity and deviance (clientelism, corruption, dysfunctional political interference) is typical of racialized imperial discourses, and allows denying that those attributes are potential facets of Western capitalism too, which is simultaneously represented as a fundamentally democratic, rational, efficient, pure version of capitalism. Hence, this Western capitalism is constituted not only as morally superior, but also as the ideal norm.

Now, scrutinizing these narratives, the values that underpin them, and the context of their production is no mere intellectual exercise. They have real, material effects, and are implicated in the ‘ongoing social reproduction of power and political economy’. Imaginaries of state capitalism participate in the discursive construction of a threatened identity (Western state and business actors) and of a threatening object (Chinese state capitalism) that must be controlled. For instance, as the category state capitalism is rapidly entering the main political lexicon, highly complex political matters are refocused as an oversimplified question of competition with a rogue and expansionist state capitalism, which requires an appropriate policy response. The image of the nefarious state capitalist competitor is used to give meaning, political justification, and rally support for increasingly protectionist policies in trade, technology, and investment regulation in the United States and other advanced capitalist economies.

Consider for instance the US 2018 National Defense Strategy and the 2017 National Security Strategy. The portrayal of China as a state capitalist power with global ambitions in the context of a new Cold War, allows providing justification for the current toughening in US diplomacy and foreign policy. As such, hardline policy readjustments are presented as a well-intended and rational reaction to a global ideological threat, and not as an attempt from a declining hegemon to contain the rise of an increasingly capable competitor.

Another telling example is that of Germany’s new National Industrial Strategy 2030, as well as its recently announced economic plan for a post-coronavirus world. These plans feature unprecedented calls for state subsidies, direct state participation in companies, and a reform of EU competition policy, all justified by concerns that distressed firms and under-valued strategic assets in Germany and Europe may be targeted by ‘predatory’ state capitalist investors from beyond Europe.

The irony of these narratives won’t escape the reader: the imagined threat of ‘state capitalism’ in the East begets state capitalism in the West. Casting doubt on the legitimacy of state capitalist competitors, namely China, justifies state intervention and protectionism at home. As we have suggested elsewhere, we may very well all be state capitalists now.

This essay is based upon a research article recently published in Political Geography, freely available here.

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networkingdefinition · 4 years

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Europe Quotes

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• A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood… A day will come when we shall see… the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas. – Victor Hugo • A relatively small and eternally quarrelsome country in Western Europe, fountainhead of rationalist political manias, militarily impotent, historically inglorious during the past century, democratically bankrupt, Communist-infiltrated from top to bottom. – William F. Buckley, Jr. • Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away. – Lafcadio Hearn • Africa north of the Sahara, from a zoological point of view, is now, and has been since early Tertiary times, a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man. – Madison Grant • After being boxed in by man and his constructions in Europe and the East, the release into space is exhilarating. The horizon is a huge remote circle, and no hills intervene. – Jacques Barzun • All black people who are even minimally conscious, black people who have ever experienced Europe’s technological power crusading in the vanguard of a civilizing mission, have profound feelings of inferiority and bitterly regret the fact that the Industrial Revolution did not agreeably commence in Dahomey or Dakar. Nothing is achieved by concealing this fact. – Lewis Nkosi • And everything stopped quite rapidly because I knew that nobody in Europe was able to go to space. It was the privilege of being either American or Russian. – Philippe Perrin • Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units. – Margaret Chan • Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people. – Eleanor Roosevelt • As an observer of markets – whenever everyone focuses on one thing – like Greece and Europe – maybe they miss issues that are far more important – such as a meaningful slowdown in India and China. – Marc Faber • Asia’s crowded and Europe’s too old, Africa is far too hot and Canada’s too cold. And South America stole our name, let’s drop the big one. – Randy Newman • Aside from rabid Islamists, no one who wishes to be taken seriously can publicly say anything bad about the old Jews of Europe without sounding like reactionary troglodytes. – Jacob T. Schwartz • Asking Europe to disarm is like asking a man in Chicago to give up his life insurance. – Will Rogers

• Be advised that there is no parking in Europe. – Dave Barry • Being and working in America, it’s very important to work hard, work smart and work in a certain way. France and Europe has, with the tradition and culture, it’s slow-moving and it’s not always good. – Mireille Guiliano • Being away from home gave me the chance to look at myself with a jaundiced eye. I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge, something I had always tried to hide, and I came home glad to start in here again with a love for Europe that I am afraid will never leave me. – Jackie Kennedy • But Maastricht was not the end of history. It was a first step towards a Europe of growth, of employment, a social Europe. That was the vision of Francois Mitterrand. We are far from that now. – Laurent Fabius • But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. – Edmund Burke • But, I’ve made films in Japan, in Yugoslavia, all over Europe, all over the United States, Mexico, but not Hollywood. – Sydney Pollack • Certainly the existence of these huge nuclear force was important for the ultimate confrontation, let’s say, over western Europe. You just can’t use them to deal with a situation like Afghanistan. – Lloyd Cutler • Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance … It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis on which it rests … Christianity … is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries. – Evelyn Waugh • Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea. – Guy Kawasaki • Croatia did not want Europe to be divided as to the start of Croatia’s EU entry talks. – Stjepan Mesic • Does this boat go to Europe, France? – Anita Loos • Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe. – Jackie Mason • Europe and the U.K. are yesterday’s world. Tomorrow is in the United States. – Tiny Rowland • Europe cannot confine itself to the cultivation of its own garden. – Juan Carlos I of Spain • Europe cannot survive another world war. – Christian Lous Lange • Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Europe has a long and tragic history of mostly domestic terrorism. – Gijs de Vries • Europe has to address people’s needs directly and reflect their priorities, not our own preoccupations. – Peter Mandelson • Europe has united, China is growing speedily and Russia possesses immense power in terms of fuel resources. The US administration cannot do anything about it. – Vladimir Zhirinovsky • Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life’s possibilities. – James A. Baldwin • Europe is a collection of free countries. – Douglas J. Feith • Europe is and will be a Union of States. – Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero • Europe is good at many things, which is why we are the largest exporter in the world. Thirty million people in Europe are employed in making our exports of goods and services. Just under 900 thousand of them are in Sweden. – Cecilia Malmstrom • Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it’s like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars. – Mark Gatiss • Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity. – Ulrich Beck • Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between States would have become easier: the United States of Europe would become a possibility. – Napoleon Bonaparte • Europe to me is young people trying to appear middle-aged and middle-aged people trying to appear young. – Mike Myers • Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. – Margaret Thatcher • Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith – even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. – Karen Armstrong • Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American Eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich. – H. G. Wells • Fascism is the result of the collapse of Europe’s spiritual and social order… catastrophes broke through the everyday routine which makes men accept existing forms, institutions and tenets as unalterable natural laws. They suddenly exposed the vacuum behind the facade of society. – Peter Drucker • For years, European leaders have pointed out that Europe is an economic giant, but a military pygmy. – George Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen • For years, we’ve grown dependant on American consumers as the world’s spenders of last resort. They’ve kept Europe out of recession, allowed China to industrialise, and prevented global deflation. But at the same time, they’ve not been looking after their own futures. – Evan Davis • France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing, though, is that people there know how to live! In America they’ve forgotten all about it. I’m afraid that the American culture is a disaster. – Johnny Depp • From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe. – Mark Twain • Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence. – Benjamin Franklin • Germany is probably the richest country in Western Europe. Yet they wouldn’t take any television with Duke and Ella, their reaction being that people weren’t interested in it. – Norman Granz • Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy. – Derek Bok • Guy Peellaert was to Europe what Andy Warhol was to America – except Guy had more talent! – Jim Steranko • He is not someone who went off to play in Europe and only a few Americans follow. He has the potential to be on magazine covers and more newspaper coverage. – Lamar Hunt • Hot, dry katabatic winds, like the south foehn in Europe, the sharav in the Middle East, and the Santa Ana of Southern California, are all believed to have a decided effect on human behavior and are associated with such health problems as migraines, depression, lethargy, and moodiness. Some scientists say that this is a myth. – Tim Cahill • I am a committed European; a united Europe is Romania’s future. – Victor Ponta • I am busy touring all over Europe, Japan, and Australia. – Suzi Quatro • I am not 100% English, I am actually part Italian and even part Hungarian. Therefore I feel very much part of Europe both in my upbringing and outlook. – Bruce Bennett • I am proud of the fact that women have been recognised as being as capable, as able to do the senior jobs in Europe as any man. – Catherine Ashton • I am very proud to be a part of the Livestrong Foundation. I am maybe only a member but I give everything I can to be sure that people understand that cancer is a disease for everybody – not only in France, in Europe, in Asia, it is all over the world. We must fight together, we must make something to fight the cancer, we must Livestrong. – Gregoire Akcelrod • I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself ‘culture’ a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture. – Friedrich Nietzsche • I believe that Europe without Britain at the heart will be less reform-driven, less open, less international Europe. – Jose Manuel Barroso • I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque India belongs only to me. – Amrita Sher-Gil • I come from a small town and I come from a background where we didn’t have money to travel. I thought I’d have to join the military to get to Europe. So I’m thrilled to travel. – Chris Isaak • I defy anyone – and I have said this to the Germans – to build a solid, articulated, and viable Europe without France’s consent. – Pierre Laval • I enjoyed the two years I was with Clannad. I enjoyed touring. We toured a lot in Europe. – Enya • I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect them to have read books – there are a lot of people like that! That’s my audience. – Alan Furst • I feel fully decided that we should all go to Europe together and to work as if an established Partnership for Life consisting of Husband Wife and Children. – John James Audubon • I got the travel bug when I was quite young. My parents took me and my sisters out of school and we travelled all over Europe. It was an eye-opening experience and, although I love Norway, I also enjoy visiting new countries. I don’t get homesick. – Magnus Carlsen • I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from. – Eddie Izzard • I had always been fascinated by the whole idea that Australia was this different ecology and that when rabbits and prickly pears and other things from Europe were introduced into Australia, they ran amok. – David Gerrold • I have to come to terms with the paternalism of American business. Companies are expected to take on so many social responsibilities which are the province of the state in Europe. – Nick Denton • I have visited some places where the differences between black and white are not as profound as they used to be, but I think there is a new form of racism growing in Europe and that is focused on people who are Middle Eastern. I see it. – Montel Williams • I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list. – Susan Sontag • I haven’t travelled that much before so this is the first time I get to see the big cities of Europe. I’ve never even been to US. – Ville Valo • I just went off for two months traveling around Europe on a motorcycle and pretty much turned my phone off. I did 5,000 miles with my dad. We went through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Italy… and then I did Spain and France by myself. – Michael Fassbender • I learned that you can make a sci-fi film that is satisfying overseas. European people have everything in check. I’d make every sci-fi film in Europe. They only work 14 hours a day. After that, it’s overtime. – Michelle Rodriguez • I might have played a little bit more in Europe than I have in Japan. – Billy Higgins • I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. – Henry David Thoreau • I notice that teams are now more interested in Japanese players than when I first went to Europe. – Hidetoshi Nakata • I said, yet again, for Germany, Europe is not only indispensable, it is part and parcel of our identity. We’ve always said German unity, European unity and integration, that’s two parts of one and the same coin. But we want, obviously, to boost our competitiveness. – Angela Merkel • I saw what Purple meant to people and I still hear it now when I’m in Europe. I’m always shocked that I’m still asked about Purple because it was such a long time ago. – David Coverdale • I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe. – Francois Gautier • I still get invitations from all over Europe to speak at dinners, and it’s an honour that promoters and charities can use me to create income. – Frank Bruno • I think it does work. The fact that the law is there and injustices can be rectified, I think has a lot to do with the fact that the people in this country aren’t as frustrated as they are in some of these places in Eastern Europe and don’t resort to violent revolution. – Harold H. Greene • I think it is important for Europe to understand that even though I am president and George Bush is not president, Al Qaeda is still a threat. – Barack Obama • I think that after Church got his Ph.D. he studied in Europe, maybe in the Netherlands, for a year or two. – Stephen Cole Kleene • I think the race went as well as it could and I drove well to finish sixth. The chassis is working better and through the corners we are more or less there; we’ll move onto Europe and see if we can get further up the grid and keep improving. The weekend went pretty smooth for me until the end of the race, I don’t know what happened, but the team will have a look at it. – Daniel Ricciardo • I turn my eyes to the schools & universities of Europe And there behold the loom of Locke whose woof rages dire, Washed by the water-wheels of Newton. Black the cloth In heavy wreaths folds over every nation; cruel works Of many wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden, which Wheel within wheel in freedom revolve, in harmony & peace. – William Blake • I want the whole of Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier. – Napoleon Bonaparte • I was in Europe and it was at this stage that I fell in love with Americans in uniform. And I continue to have that love affair. – Madeleine Albright • I was with a folk trio back in ’63 and ’64, and we traveled all across North Africa, Israel, and Europe. – Creed Bratton • If Berlin fell, the US would lose Europe, and if Europe fell into the hands of the Soviet Union and thus added its great industrial plant to the USSR’s already great industrial plant, the United States would be reduced to the character of a garrison state if it were to survive at all. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European. – James Joyce • If it was Europe that gave us on the coast some idea of our history, it was Europe, I feel, that also introduced us to the lie. – V. S. Naipaul • If Russia shuts off central Asia and the Caspian Sea from Europe, the European allies of the United States will be totally dependent on Russian gas and energy. – Mikhail Saakashvili • If there is one thing Britain should learn from the last 50 years, it is this: Europe can only get more important for us. – Tony Blair • If you look at most of the Royal Houses in Europe, the inbreeding was pretty outstanding. – Nikolaj Coster-Waldau • I’m not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is. Europe isn’t owned by any of them, Europe is owned by all of us. – Tony Blair • Important as economic unification is for the recovery of Germany and of Europe, the German people must recognize that the basic cause of their suffering and distress is the war which the Nazi dictatorship brought upon the world. – James F. Byrnes • In 1990 we ran across Europe through 13 countries and covering 7,130 miles. – Dennis Banks • In 2012, the far-right Golden Dawn won 21 seats in Greece’s parliamentary election, the right-wing Jobbik gained ground in my native Hungary, and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen received strong backing in France’s presidential election. Growing support for similar forces across Europe points to an inescapable conclusion: the continent’s prolonged financial crisis is creating a crisis of values that is now threatening the European Union itself. – George Soros • In a few hundred years you have achieved in America what it took thousands of years to achieve in Europe. – David McCallum • In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don’t shoot films any more. There’s more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent. – Paul Bettany • In Europe and Australia, there is something called the Tall Poppy Syndrome: People like to cut the tall poppies. They don’t want you to succeed, and they cut you down – especially people from your own social class. – Mark Burnett • In Europe you learn not to fail, and in America you fail to learn. You need failure. – Hartmut Esslinger • In Europe, where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one’s got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit. – Sybille Bedford • In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that’s not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep. – Jeffrey Tate • In London it had seemed impossible to travel without the proper evening clothes. One could see an invitation arriving for an Embassy ball or something. But on the other side of Europe with the first faint tinges of faraway places becoming apparent and exciting, to say nothing of vanishing roads and extra weight, Embassy balls held less significance. – Robert Edison Fulton, Jr. • In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making. – Carol P. Christ • In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945. – Queen Elizabeth II • In the beginning, New York and I had kind of a love-hate relationship. It seemed so abrasive compared to Europe. But the transformation here in recent years is really something. I don’t think I would have seen as much change if I’d lived in any other city in the world. – Shalom Harlow • In the last quarter of the eighteenth century bourgeois Europe needed to emancipate itself from that combination of feudalism and commercial capitalism which we know as mercantilism. – C. L. R. James • In the villages in Europe, there are still healers who tell stories. – Yannick Noah • In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world – in America first but also in Europe – has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance. – Wim Wenders • In this country, the health concerns and the environmental concerns are as deep as in Europe. All the surveys show that. But here, we didn’t have the cultural dimension. This is a fast-food culture. – Jeremy Rifkin • Information and inspiration are everywhere… history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture. – John Howe • Internal protectionism in Europe would be deadly, really a disaster for European economies. – Jose Manuel Barroso • It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along the shore. – Margaret Fuller • It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S & P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery. – Mohamed El-Erian • It is in order that France may find her place in the new Europe that you will respond to my appeal. – Pierre Laval • It is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia … It is for a revolution of our own. … If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution. – Leon Degrelle • It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is ill. – Julien Benda • It’s been President Clinton’s dream that we’ll have finally a fully integrated Europe. – Warren Christopher • It’s hard to explain why I like Europe so much. – Broderick Crawford • It’s like night and day… to do business, in Europe, there is no bull, they are pretty straightforward. – Caprice Bourret • It’s monstrous that Europe, which is fighting for human rights, refused seriously sick Slobodan Milosevic treatment. – Vladimir Zhirinovsky • I’ve always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany’s taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too. – Paul Keating • I’ve always liked traveling around Europe and seeing the architecture. The buildings in capital cities have been there for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Some look better than the new ones. – Joe Elliott • I’ve never really taken more than four days off, so it was a lot for me to go away for three-and-a-half months. I went all over Europe. I walked on a whole bunch of beaches and I did a lot of thinking. – Puff Daddy • I’ve worked behind counters serving food, and I’ve lived on the circus train, and I’ve led bicycle tours in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and Russia. I’ve been a key liner for a newspaper, I’ve done typesetting. Oh, all sorts of things. – Bonnie Jo Campbell • Japanese architecture is very much copied in this country and in Europe. – Minoru Yamasaki • Jesus was not a white man; He was not a black man. He came from that part of the world that touches Africa and Asia and Europe. Christianity is not a white man’s religion and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s white or black. Christ belongs to all people; He belongs to the whole world. – Billy Graham • Kosovo today is closer to Europe than other countries in the region of South Eastern Europe. – Ibrahim Rugova • Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. – Mary McCarthy • Maimed but still magnificent… Europe’s mightiest medieval cathedral. – R. W. Apple • Many upscale American parents somehow think jobs like their own are part of the nation’s natural order. They are not. In Europe, they have already discovered that, and many there have accepted the new small-growth, small-jobs reality. Will we? – Daniel Henninger • Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe. – Douglas Hurd • Maybe this will be the beginning of a trend? Flat taxes, cutting foreign aid, a referendum on Europe, grammar schools. Who knows? – Nigel Farage • Modern Existentialism… is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe. – William Barrett • Morality in Europe today is herd-morality – Friedrich Nietzsche • More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England’s back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international. – Agnes Smedley • More than 95 percent of both legal and illegal immigration into the United States is non-white. Because of the way immigration law is structured, the highest-skilled nations on earth – those of Europe – are allowed only a tiny percentage of immigrants, while the third world nations such as Mexico are dumping their chaff onto American shores at the highest rate in history. – David Duke • More than any other in Western Europe, Britain remains a country where a traveler has to think twice before indulging in the ordinary food of ordinary people. – Joseph Lelyveld • Most Americans will be horrified that President Obama is compromising our deterrent to chemical and biological attacks on this country. Our allies will also be troubled by his aspiration to eliminate U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. – Frank Gaffney • Mother’s taste was eclectic and ranged from the ancient world to the contemporary from Europe to the U.S. – David Rockefeller • Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! – Ronald Reagan • Much of America is now in need of an equivalent of Mrs. Thatcher’s privatization program in 1980s Britain, or post-Soviet Eastern Europe’s economic liberalization in the early Nineties. It’s hard to close down government bodies, but it should be possible to sell them off. And a side benefit to outsourcing the Bureau of Government Agencies and the Agency of Government Bureaus is that you’d also be privatizing public-sector unions, which are the biggest and most direct assault on freedom, civic integrity, and fiscal solvency. – Mark Steyn • Obviously, there is diversity, but Europe is a union of diversity. – Jean-Pierre Raffarin • Of course, the simple explanation of the fact is that marriage is the most important act of man’s life in Europe or America, and that everything depends upon it. – Lafcadio Hearn • Only recently, during the nineteenth century, and then only in Europe, do we meet forms of the state which have been created by a deliberate national feeling. – Christian Lous Lange • Playing Chelsea is as tough a test as you’ll get in Europe these days. – Michael Carrick • Political union means transferring the prerogatives of national legislatures to the European parliament, which would then decide how to structure Europe’s fiscal, banking, and monetary union. – Barry Eichengreen • Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels. – H. A. L. Fisher • Recalling some of the most spectacular horrors of history – the burning of heretics and witches at the stake, the wholesale massacre of heathens, and other no less repulsive manifestations of Christian civilization in Europe and elsewhere – modern man is filled with pride in the progress accomplished, in one line at least, since the end of the dark ages of religious fanaticism. – Savitri Devi • Remember one thing – that Sweden is performing better than the rest of Europe. – Goran Persson • Romania will always defend the Roma’s right to move freely in Europe. They are European citizens and as long as there is no evidence they broke the law they should enjoy the same rights of any European citizen. – Traian Basescu • Russia will occupy most of the good food lands of central Europe while we have the industrial portions. We must find some way of persuading Russia to play ball. – Henry L. Stimson • Since creation of the E.U. a half century ago, Europe has enjoyed the longest period of peace in its history. – John Bruton • Since Europe is dependent on imports of energy and most of its raw materials, it can be subdued, if not quite conquered, without all those nuclear weapons the Soviets have aimed at it simply through the shipping routes and raw materials they control. – Barbara Amiel • Since the web is totally worldwide, we need a set of behavioural rules, laws they are commonly called, that are accepted worldwide. There is a big difference as to how things are treated in the U.S. and Europe and Asia. – Robert Cailliau • Smart, sustainable, inclusive growth is the key to job-creation and the future prosperity of Europe. – Jose Manuel Barroso • So Europe’s a big driver. And at one point, if the euro hadn’t devalued, they would have been making as much money as the US with half the stores. Returns were higher. – Jim Cantalupo • So perhaps the most worrying single remark made by a responsible banking official during the current crisis came from Jochen Sanio, the head of Germany’s banking regulator BaFin. He warned on Aug. 1 that his country could be facing the worst banking crisis since 1931 – a reference to the collapse of Austria’s Kredit Anstalt, which provoked a wave of bank failures across Europe. – Martin Walker • Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe. – Steven Chu • Southern Europe has not done enough to enhance its competitiveness, while northern Europe has not done enough to boost demand. Debt burdens remain crushing, and Europe’s economy remains unable to grow. – Barry Eichengreen • Spain and southern Italy, in which Catholicism has most deeply implanted its roots, are even now, probably beyond all other countries in Europe, those in which inhumanity to animals is most wanton and unrebuked. – William Edward Hartpole Lecky • Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe. – Edmund Burke • Systems of religious error have been adopted in times of ignorance. It has been the interest of tyrannical kings, popes, and prelates to maintain these errors. When the clouds of ignorance began to vanish and the people grew more enlightened, there was no other way to keep them in error but to prohibit their altering their religious opinions by severe persecuting laws. In this way persecution became general throughout Europe. – Oliver Ellsworth • Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America. – Elliott Carter • Taming the financial markets and winning back democratic control over them is the central condition for creating a new social balance in Germany and Europe. – Sigmar Gabriel • Terrorism is an evil that threatens all the countries in Europe. Vigorous cooperation in the European Union and worldwide is crucial in order to meet this evil head on. – Jan Peter Balkenende • That in order to achieve the triumph of liberty, justice and peace in the international relations of Europe, and to render civil war impossible among the various peoples which make up the European family, only a single course lies open: to constitute the United States of Europe – Mikhail Bakunin • The 1992 crisis proved that the existing system was unstable. Not moving forward to the euro would have set up Europe for even more disruptive crises. – Barry Eichengreen • The best performers in Europe are those who use their welfare states to help people adjust to change. – John Monks • The British have been more up for it than the Americans were, particularly with respect to nudity in the show. In Europe there are adverts that show the breasts, so people are less frightened of that aspect of the show. Americans can withstand incredible violence on TV shows – which, as I come from England and Canada, I find difficult to stomach – but they are more puritanical when it comes to nudity on screen. – Kim Cattrall • The children are taught more of the meanest state in Europe than of the country they are born and bred in, despite the singularity of its characteristics, the interest of its history, the rapidity of its advance, and the stupendous promise of its future. – Henry Lawson • The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. – Carl Jung • The construction of Europe is an art. It is the art of the possible. – Jacques Chirac • The Drafters of the Constitution were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe. – John M Swomley • The driving force behind the liberal counter-offensive in Europe has been a reaction against irresponsibility. – Jacques Delors • The electronic media introduced this idea to the larger audience very, very quickly. We spent years and years and years meeting with activists all over Europe to lay the groundwork for a political response, as we did here. – Jeremy Rifkin • The EU Constitution is something new in human history. Though it is not as eloquent as the French and U.S. constitutions, it is the first governing document of its kind to expand the human franchise to the level of global consciousness. The language throughout the draft constitution speaks of universalism, making it clear that its focus is not a people, or a territory, or a nation, but rather the human race and the planet we inhabit. – Jeremy Rifkin • The European Borders Agency in Warsaw has been created to help border forces in Europe cooperate more. – Gijs de Vries • The European Union, which is not directly responsible to voters, provides an irresistible opportunity for European elites to seize power in order to impose their own vision on a newly socially regimented Europe. – Maggie Gallagher • The first time I ever saw people of any color was when D-Day left from my hometown in England, to go and free Europe from the war. And there was every color you could imagine, and I’d not seen that in England. – Richard Dawson • The fortress of Europe with its frontiers must be held and will be held too, as long as is necessary. – Heinrich Himmler • The great mistake about Europe is taking the countries seriously and letting them quarrel and drop bombs on one another. – Edmund Wilson • The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof – Mary McCarthy • The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion. – Bertrand Russell • The more you travel, the better you get at it. It sounds silly, but with experience you learn how to pack the right way. I remember one of my first trips abroad, travelling around Europe by rail, fresh out of high school. I brought all these books with me and a paint set. I really had too much stuff, so I’ve learnt to be more economical. – Roman Coppola • The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe. – Arthur Erickson • The new century demands new partnerships for peace and security. The United Nations plays a crucial role, with allies sharing burdens America might otherwise bear alone. America needs a strong and effective U.N. I want to work with this new Congress to pay our dues and our debts. We must continue to support security and stability in Europe and Asia – expanding NATO and defining its new missions, maintaining our alliance with Japan, with Korea, with our other Asian allies, and engaging China. – William J. Clinton • The poor are the blacks of Europe. – Nicolas Chamfort • The primary goal of collectivism – of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America – is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives. This is done in the name of equality. People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. – George Will • The principle of evil in Europe is the enervating spirit of Russian absolutism. – Lajos Kossuth • The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe. – Dave Barry • The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. – Alfred North Whitehead • The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation. . . . To change these traditions . . . would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions. – Eleanor Roosevelt • The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf. – Lewis Mumford • The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. – Freeman Dyson • The territorial state is such an ancient form of society – here in Europe it dates back thousands of years – that it is now protected by the sanctity of age and the glory of tradition. A strong religious feeling mingles with the respect and the devotion to the fatherland. – Christian Lous Lange • The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history – the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. – Josiah Strong • The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake. – Douglas Hurd • There are 20 million unemployed and what does the Constitution offer us in the Europe of 25, 27 and soon to be 30: policies of unrestricted competition to the detriment of production, wages, research and innovation. – Laurent Fabius • There are some great divers in Europe and I’m really excited about going to Eindhoven. – Tom Daley • There are the countries of the north of Europe taking decisions and the countries of the south of Europe that are living under intervention. This division exists. – Jose Maria Aznar • There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe. – Charles Olson • There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear somethingyes, there it was quite clear. Dont you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the paradegrounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italiansgoing on maneuversyes, only on maneuvers! – Winston Churchill • There is an enormous difference between Russia and Western Europe. – Herman Gorter • There is no better protection against the euro crisis than successful structural reforms in southern Europe. – Mario Draghi • There is no desire from the new British players. They say their coach doesn’t travel with them so it’s hard, but I played hundreds of players from Eastern Europe and Russia who had no facilities at all. – Tim Henman • There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House. – Herman Melville • They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they’re not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it’s not causing the mayhem we see in our streets routinely here. – Michael D. Barnes • This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It’s not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young. It’s not an intellectual cinema in America. – Jacqueline Bisset • This revision of the Constitution will not be perfect. But at least the Constitution will not be inflexible. It will be a step towards the Social Europe which we wish. – Laurent Fabius • To be in Florence is to reflect on Europe’s intricate diversity – and its lost creativity. – Timothy Garton Ash • To enter Europe, you must have a valid passport with a photograph of yourself in which you look like you are being booked on charges of soliciting sheep. – Dave Barry • To persuade thinking persons in Eastern Europe that Central American Marxists – the Sandinistas, the guerillas in El Salvador – are in absurd and tragic error is not difficult. Poles and Czechs and Hungarians can hardly believe, after what they experienced under socialism, that other human beings would fall for the same bundle of lies, half-truths, and distortions. Sadly, however, illusion is often sweeter to human taste than reality. The last marxist in the world will probably be an American nun. – Michael Novak • To the chefs who pioneered the nouvelle cuisine in France, the ancienne cuisine they were rebelling against looked timeless, primordial, old as the hills. But the cookbook record proves that the haute cuisine codified early in this century by Escoffier barely goes back to Napoleon’s time. Before that, French food is not recognizable as French to modern eyes. Europe’s menu before 1700 was completely different from its menu after 1800, when national cuisines arose along with modern nations and national cultures. – Raymond Sokolov • To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French. – Madeleine Albright • Today, Germany is on the borders of Europe everywhere. – Heinrich Himmler • We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed, to forget the feuds of a thousand years and work for the larger harmonies on which the future depends. – Winston Churchill • We are the country that has attracted the biggest volume of foreign investment in southeastern Europe in the past few years. Romania doesn’t need to beat itself, believing that it is a second-class citizen. – Traian Basescu • We cannot calculate the numbers of people who left, fled or were fished out of Europe just ahead of the Holocaust. – Gene Tierney • We don’t mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans. – Robert Mugabe • We go to Europe to be Americanized. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe. – Dan Quayle • We must rid this nation of the United Nations, which provides the communist conspiracy with a headquarters here on our own shores, and which actually makes it impossible for the United States to form its own decisions about its conduct and policies in Europe and Asia. – John T. Flynn • We stayed in some pretty shabby places in Europe. – Phil Collins • We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the Last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind – the Jew has got to be exterminated! – Robert Ley • Well, I have concerns about the effectiveness of Europe to compete. – John Major • Well, what there ought to be is an international labor organization, a confederation of the trade unions of all the countries speaking for the workers who are competing with one another, and talking about the difference in wage levels between, say, Europe and Indonesia. – Richard Rorty • What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy. – Margaret Thatcher • Whatever else may divide us, Europe is our common home; a common fate has linked us through the centuries, and it continues to link us today. – Leonid Brezhnev • When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time. – Michael Tilson Thomas • When I go to farms or little towns, I am always surprised at the discontent I find. And New York, too often, has looked across the sea toward Europe. And all of us who turn our eyes away from what we have are missing life. – Norman Rockwell • When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don’t like it you can change it. – Tony Benn • When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders. – Frantz Fanon • When I’ve seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can’t tell you what that phenomenon is. – Carlisle Floyd • When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons. – Caleb Cushing • Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos. – Adolf Hitler • Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression. – Otto von Bismarck • With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe. – Peter Drucker • With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient. – Lee Kuan Yew • With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right – it does look like that. – David McCullough • Without Britain, Europe would remain only a torso. – Ludwig Erhard • Yes, it is Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, it is Europe, it is the whole of Europe, that will decide the fate of the world. – Charles de Gaulle • You either believe in Europe at any price: in other words we have to be in Europe at any price because you can’t survive without it, or you don’t. If you don’t it tends to suggest there is a price which you are not willing to pay. – Liam Fox • You, the Spirit of the Settlement! … Not understand that America is God’s crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. – Israel Zangwill • Your map of Africa is really quite nice. But my map of Africa lies in Europe. Here is Russia, and here… is France, and we’re in the middle – that’s my map of Africa. – Otto von Bismarck

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equitiesstocks · 4 years

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Europe Quotes

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samuelcarveraccidentman · 5 years

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America Must Prepare for the Coming Chinese Empire

The last thing American policymakers or strategists should assume is that somehow Americans are superior to the Chinese.

Robert D. Kaplan

BEFORE ONE can outline a grand strategy for the United States, one has to be able to understand the world in which America operates. That may sound simple, but a bane of Washington is the assumption of knowledge where little actually exists. Big ideas and schemes are worthless unless one is aware of the ground-level reality of several continents, and is able to fit them into a pattern, based not on America’s own historical experience, but also on the historical experience of others. Therefore, I seek to approach grand strategy not from the viewpoint of Washington, but of the world; and not as a political scientist or academic, but as a journalist with more than three decades of experience as a reporter around the globe.

After covering the Third World during the Cold War and its aftershocks which continue to the present, I have concluded that, despite the claims of post-colonial studies courses prevalent on university campuses, we still inhabit (in functional terms, that is) an imperial world. Empire in some form or another is eternal, even if European colonies of the early-modern and modern eras are gone. Thus, the issue becomes: what are the contours of the current imperial age that affect grand strategy for the United States? And once those contours are delineated, what should be America’s grand strategy in response? I will endeavor to answer both questions.

Empire, or its great power equivalent, requires the impression of permanence: the idea, embedded in the minds of local inhabitants, that the imperial authorities will always be there, compelling acquiescence to their rule and influence. Wherever I traveled in Africa, the Middle East and Asia during the Cold War, American and Soviet influence was seen as permanent; unquestioned for all time, however arrogant and overbearing it might have been. Whatever the facts, that was the perception. And after the Soviet Union collapsed, American influence continued to be seen for a time as equally permanent. Make no mistake: America, since the end of World War II, and continuing into the second decade of the twenty-first century, was an empire in all but name.

That is no longer the case. European and Asian allies are now, with good reason, questioning America’s constancy. New generations of American leaders, to judge from university liberal arts curriculums, are no longer being educated to take pride in their country’s past and traditions. Free trade or some equivalent, upon which liberal maritime empires have often rested, is being abandoned. The decline of the State Department, ongoing since the end of the Cold War, is hollowing out a primary tool of American power. Power is not only economic and military: it is moral. And I don’t mean humanitarian, as necessary as humanitarianism is for the American brand. But in this case, I mean something harder: the fidelity of our word in the minds of allies. And that predictability is gone.

Meanwhile, as one imperium-of-sorts declines, another takes its place.

China is not the challenge we face: rather, the challenge is the new Chinese empire. It is an empire that stretches from the arable cradle of the ethnic Han core westward across Muslim China and Central Asia to Iran; and from the South China Sea, across the Indian Ocean, up the Suez Canal, to the eastern Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea. It is an empire based on roads, railways, energy pipelines and container ports whose pathways by land echo those of the Tang and Yuan dynasties of the Middle Ages, and by sea echo the Ming dynasty of the late Middle Ages and early-modern period. Because China is in the process of building the greatest land-based navy in history, the heart of this new empire will be the Indian Ocean, which is the global energy interstate, connecting the hydrocarbon fields of the Middle East with the middle-class conurbations of East Asia.

This new Indian Ocean empire has to be seen to be believed. A decade ago, I spent several years visiting these Chinese ports in the making, at a time when few in the West were paying attention. I traveled to Gwadar in the bleak desert of Baluchistan, technically part of Pakistan but close to the Persian Gulf. There, I saw a state-of-the-art port complex rising sheer above a traditional village. (The Chinese are now contemplating a naval base in nearby Jawani, which would allow them to overwatch the Strait of Hormuz.) In Hambantota, in Sri Lanka, I witnessed hundreds of Chinese laborers literally moving the coast itself further inland, as armies of dump trucks carried soil away. While America’s bridges and railways languish, it is a great moment in history to be a Chinese civil engineer. China has gone from building these ports, to having others manage them, and then finally to managing them themselves. It has all been part of a process that recalls the early days of the British and Dutch East India companies in the same waters.

Newspaper reports talk of some of these projects being stalled or mired in debt. That is a traditionally capitalist way to look at it. From a mercantile and imperialist point of view, these projects make perfect sense. In a way, the money never really leaves China: a Chinese state bank lends the money for a port project in a foreign country, which then employs Chinese state workers, which utilize a Chinese logistics company, and so on.

Geography is still paramount. And because the Indian Ocean is connected to the South China Sea through the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok straits, Chinese domination of the South China Sea is crucial to Beijing. China is not a rogue state, and China’s naval activities in the South China Sea make perfect sense given its geopolitical and, yes, its imperial imperatives. The South China Sea not only further unlocks the Indian Ocean for China, but it further softens up Taiwan and grants the Chinese navy greater access to the wider Pacific.

The South China Sea represents one geographical frontier of the Greater Indian Ocean world; the Middle East and the Horn of Africa represent the other. The late Zbigniew Brzezinski once wisely said in conversation that hundreds of millions of Muslims do not yearn for democracy as much as they yearn for dignity and justice, things which are not necessarily synonymous with elections. The Arab Spring was not about democracy: rather, it was simply a crisis in central authority. The fact that sterile and corrupt authoritarian systems were being rejected did not at all mean these societies were institutionally ready for parliamentary systems: witness Libya, Yemen and Syria. As for Iraq, it proved that beneath the carapace of tyranny lay not the capacity for democracy but an anarchic void. The regimes of Morocco, Jordan and Oman provide stability, legitimacy, and a measure of the justice and dignity that Brzezinski spoke of, precisely because they are traditional monarchies, with only the threadbare trappings of democracy. Tunisia’s democracy is still fragile, and the further one travels away from the capital into the western and southern reaches of the country, close to the Libyan and Algerian borders, the more fragile it becomes.

This is a world tailor-made for the Chinese, who do not deliver moral lectures about the type of government a state should have but do provide an engine for economic development. To wit, globalization is much about container shipping: an economic activity that the Chinese have mastered. The Chinese military base in Djibouti is the security hub in a wheel of ports extending eastward to Gwadar in Pakistan, southward to Bagamoyo in Tanzania, and northwestward to Piraeus in Greece, all of which, in turn, help anchor Chinese trade and investments throughout the Middle East, East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Djibouti is a virtual dictatorship, Pakistan is in reality an army-run state, Tanzania is increasingly authoritarian and Greece is a badly institutionalized democracy that is increasingly opening up to China. In significant measure, between Europe and the Far East, this is the world as it really exists in Afro-Eurasia. The Chinese empire, unburdened by the missionary impulse long prevalent in American foreign policy, is well suited for it.

MORE TO the point, when it comes to China, we are dealing with a unique and very formidable cultural organism. The American foreign policy elite does not like to talk about culture since culture cannot be quantified, and in this age of extreme personal sensitivity, what cannot be quantified or substantiated by a footnote is potentially radioactive. But without a discussion of culture and geography, there is simply no hope of understanding foreign affairs. Indeed, culture is nothing less than the sum total of a large group of people’s experience inhabiting the same geographical landscape for hundreds or thousands of years.

Anyone who travels in China, or even observes it closely, realizes something that the business community intuitively grasps better than the policy community: the reason there is little or no separation between the public and private domains in China is not only because the country is a dictatorship, but because there is a greater cohesion of values and goals among Chinese compared to those among Americans. In China, you are inside a traditional mental value system. In that system, all areas of national activity—commercial, cyber, military, political, technological, educational—work fluently toward the same ends, so that computer hacking, espionage, port building and expansion, the movement of navy and fishing fleets, and so on all appear coordinated. And within that system, Confucianism still lends a respect for hierarchy and authority among individual Chinese, whereas American culture is increasingly about the dismantling of authority in favor of devotion to the individual. Confucian societies worship old people; Western societies worship young people. One should never forget these lines from Solzhenitsyn: “Idolized children despise their parents, and when they get a bit older they bully their countrymen. Tribes with an ancestor cult have endured for centuries. No tribe would survive long with a youth cult.”

Chinese are educated in national pride; increasingly the opposite of what goes on in our own schools and universities. And Chinese are extraordinarily efficient, with a manic attention to detail. Individuals are certainly more concrete than the mass. But that does not mean national traits simply do not exist. I have flown around China on domestic airlines with greater ease and comfort than I could ever imagine flying around America at its airports. And that is to say nothing about China’s bullet trains.

Of course, there are all sorts of political and social tensions inside China. And the unrest among the middle classes we see today in Brazil and the rest of Latin America could well be a forerunner to what we will see in China in the 2020s, undermining Belt and Road and the whole Chinese imperial system altogether. China’s over-leveraged economy may well be headed for a hard, rather than a soft, landing, with all the attendant domestic upheaval which that entails. I have real doubts about the sustainability of the Chinese political and economic model. But the last thing American policymakers or strategists should assume is that somehow we are superior to the Chinese, or worse: that somehow we have a destiny that they do not.

WE HAVE entered a protracted struggle with China, which hopefully will not be violent at certain junctures. And it may become more dangerous precisely because China could weaken internally due to economic upheavals, causing its leaders to dial up nationalism as a default option. It will be a struggle (or war) of integration rather than of separation. Throughout the human past, wars have seen an army from one place and an army from another place meet somewhere in the middle to give battle. However, in the cyber age, we are all operating inside the same operating environment, so that computer networks can attack each other without armies ever meeting or even blood being shed. The Russian attempt to influence our politics is an example of war by integration, which could not have existed even two decades ago. The information age has added to the possibilities for warfare rather than subtracted from it. The enemy is only a click away, rather than hundreds of miles away. And because weapons systems require guidance from satellites, outer space is now a domain for warfare, just as the seas became once the Portuguese and Spanish had begun the Age of Exploration. Every age of warfare has its own characteristics. Increasingly, warfare has become less physical and more mental: the more obsessively driven the culture, the better suited it will be for mid-twenty-first-century cyber warfare. If that seems offensive to the reader, remember that the future lies inside the silences—inside the things we are most uncomfortable talking about.

In functional and historical terms, this will be an imperial struggle, though our elites both inside and outside government will forbid use of the term. The Chinese will have an advantage in this type of competition as they have a greater tradition in empire building than we do, and they are not ashamed of it as we have become. They openly hark back to their former dynasties and empires to justify what they are doing; whereas our elites can hark back less and less to our own past. Westward expansion, rather than the heroic saga portrayed by mid-twentieth-century American historians, is now often taught as a tale of genocide against the indigenous population and nothing more—even though without conquering the West, we never would have had the geopolitical and economic capacity to win World War I, World War II and the Cold War.

Moreover, the Chinese have demonstrated an ability to quickly adapt, which is the key to Darwinian evolution: the continual changes that they are making to their Belt and Road model are an example of this.

The Chinese also have more capable leadership than we do.

Undeniably, our post-Cold War presidents have been dramatically inferior to our Cold War presidents in terms of thinking strategically about foreign affairs. Bill Clinton was not altogether serious about foreign policy, especially at the beginning of his presidency; George W. Bush was in significant measure a failure at it; Barack Obama too often seemed to apologize for American power; and Donald Trump is frankly unsuited for high office in the first place. Compare them to Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan and the elder Bush. Compare, too, our post-Cold War presidents to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi is disciplined, strategically minded, unashamed of projecting power, an engineer by training, with living experience in the provinces, and perhaps, most importantly, someone with a deep sense of the tragic, as his family was a victim of Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This is a man of virtu, in the classical Machiavellian sense. One could go further and say that there is not only a crisis in American leadership but in Western leadership in general. The truly formidable, dynamic leaders, whatever their moral values, are more likely to be found outside the United States and Europe. Witness, in addition to Xi, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. They have all grasped the art of power; they are constantly willing to take risks, and they are in office not only out of personal ambition but because they actually want to get certain things done.

Thus, the competition between the United States and China will coincide with a political-cultural crisis of the West against a resurgent East.

We have truly entered an American-Chinese bipolar struggle. But it is a bipolar struggle with an asterisk: the asterisk being Russia, which can always inflict consequential damage on the United States. Yet, whereas the Russians appear to our media as classic bad guys, the Chinese are more opaque and business-like, so the gravity of our competition with Beijing is still insufficiently appreciated by our media.

TRULY, THE sense of invulnerability the United States felt at the end of the Cold War and the onset of globalization is gone. Initially, post-Cold War globalization meant a Westernization of the world to go along with the adoption of Western-style management practices and America’s so-called unipolar moment. Now that this moment has passed, and with middle classes enlarging throughout the developing world—while different shades of authoritarianism compete with democracy—globalization is becoming more multicultural, with the East assuming an equal position, helped also by demographic trends. In this competition, the United States is wrong to promote democracy per se. Instead, it should promote civil society whether democratic or of the enlightened authoritarian mode. (Witness the liberalizing yet authoritarian monarchies of Morocco, Jordan and Oman. And I could give examples beyond the Middle East.) Hybrid regimes of an enlightened authoritarian mode have been more of a norm throughout history than democracy has been. Moreover, it has been my clear experience that people in Africa and the Middle East care first about basic order and physical and economic protection before they care about political freedoms. As the late liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin writes: “Men who live in conditions where there is not sufficient food, warmth, shelter, and the minimum degree of security can scarcely be expected to concern themselves with freedom of contract or of the press.”

Obviously there exists a hierarchy of needs, and meaningful improvement in people’s lives as a first priority should demand flexibility on our part—or else it will be harder to compete with the Chinese. The expansion of middle classes worldwide will by itself lead to greater calls for democracy: for as people’s material lives improve they will increasingly demand more political freedoms anyway. We do not need to force the process. If we do, it will be we who are the ones being ideological; not the Chinese, who have the civilizational confidence and serenity to accept political systems as they already are.

Yet, even at our worst, our political system is open and capable of change in the way that China, and that other great autocratic power, Russia, are not. A world in which the United States is the dominant power will be a more humane world of more personal freedoms than a world led by China.

I concentrate on China in this essay because China constitutes a much stronger economy, a much more institutionalized political system, and a more formidable twenty-first-century cultural genius than Russia. Therefore, China should be the yardstick or pacing power by which our diplomatic, security and defense establishments measures themselves: merely by competing with China we will make our own institutions stronger. Such competition is all that might be left to jolt our bureaucracies out of their ongoing decrepitude and decline. Indeed, the profusion of travel orders, security clearance paperwork, unnecessary receipts, and so forth, even as the hacking of our systems continues, are all ways in which we deliberately deceive and defeat ourselves. Paperwork arises out of the lack of trust. The more paperwork, the less trust that exists within a bureaucracy. The Pentagon is a prime example of this. We should always remember that there is no regulation or procedure to instill basic common sense.

One priority should be to effectively get out of the Middle East. Every extra day that the United States is diverted and bogged down in the Middle East with significant numbers of ground troops helps China in the Indo-Pacific and Europe even, where China is working to establish powerful commercial shipping footholds in places like Trieste on Italy’s Adriatic shore and Duisburg in riverine Germany; to say nothing about promoting its 5G digital network. I don’t mean to say that we should pull all our forces out of the Middle East tomorrow. I mean that our goal should be to reduce our military footprint as quickly as practically possible, whenever and wherever possible.

For example, the United States has had combat troops in Afghanistan for almost two decades with no demonstrable result. The future of Afghanistan will be decided by competing ethnic alliances within that country, and Indians and Iranians squaring off against Chinese and Pakistanis. The Indians and Iranians will build an energy and transport corridor from Chah Bahar in southeastern Iran north through western Afghanistan into former Soviet Central Asia. The Chinese and Pakistanis will try to build another such corridor from Gwadar in southwestern Pakistan north, parallel with the Afghan border, to Kashgar in western China. In particular, Pakistan, which will always require Afghanistan as a rear base against India, must, therefore, struggle against India in Afghanistan. India, whose own imperial past encompasses the eastern half of Afghanistan, will do everything possible to thwart Pakistan there. Russia, which lies just to the north of Afghanistan, will also play a role because of its interest in smothering radical Islam. A great game is about to ensue in Afghanistan in which the United States will play absolutely no part, regardless of how much blood it has shed there, because it lacks a geographical basis for it, and therefore has little or no national interest at stake.

All we can do is help stabilize Afghanistan so that the Chinese and others can more safely continue to establish mining and other operations in the country. In any case, building a strong central government in Afghanistan may prove chimerical since none has ever existed in Kabul. The city has traditionally functioned as a central point of arbitration for the various warlords and tribal leaders that have exercised effective control in southern Central Asia. Covering the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, I saw vividly how the Soviets lost because the mujahidin enemy, a diverse collection of tribal-based groups which viciously distrusted each other, provided the Soviets with no useful point of attack. Afghanistan’s very disorganization defeated the Soviets, just as it has been defeating us.

Iran, of course, so populous and well-educated, and fronting not one but two hydrocarbon-rich zones (the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea), is the demographic, economic and cultural organizing principle of both the Middle East and Central Asia. But what happens inside Iran will be internally driven. Iranians have a civilizational sense of themselves equal to that of the Indians, Chinese and Japanese. Even dramatic American diplomatic actions, like signing a nuclear deal with it, and later abrogating that same deal, can have only a marginal effect on Iran’s confoundedly-complex domestic politics in a country of over eighty million people. Despite periodic street demonstrations which will continue, the very institutionalized strength of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and other regime organizations make Iran perhaps the most stable big state in the Muslim Middle East.

As for Iraq, the inching forward of political stability there, however messy and fragile, has had relatively little to do with what the United States has done; or has not done. In fact, improvement in the Iraqi political situation has, for the most part, occurred despite American actions; not because of them. One American president destabilized Iraq by toppling its totalitarian ruler. The next American president further destabilized it by suddenly withdrawing American troops. Thus, from the anarchy of Iraq after Saddam Hussein came for a time the tyranny of the Islamic State. It was the experience of living under the Islamic State that convinced many Sunnis that they were better off allying with Shiites than with radicals of their own sect. It is this fact that has given Iraq some measure of hope and stability. True, American special operations forces helped a moderate Shiite leader defeat the Islamic State. But this moderate Shiite leader was subsequently defeated at the polls. In short, Iraq will determine its own destiny, influenced by Iran, the great power next door. American influence will remain marginal, whether or not we have any troops there. I say this as someone who initially supported the invasion of Iraq, which I have come to bitterly regret.

As for Syria, Bashar al-Assad has reconsolidated power in the only part of Syria that ultimately counts: its main population centers. Israel, buttressed by massive American military and economic aid, will be able to deal with the Iranian presence in Syria on its own. If the Russians want to get bogged down in Syria for the sake of their decadeslong investment in the Assad family regime, good luck to them. And by the way, Israel, unlike the United States, has a workmanlike, albeit problematic, relationship with Russia which it can employ as a go-between with Iran. The United States benefits very little by diverting time and resources to Syria.

The United States needs to end its adventures in the Middle East begun immediately after 9/11. Of course, the Chinese hope we never leave the Middle East. For if we deliberately defeat ourselves by remaining militarily engaged in the Middle East, it will only ease China’s path to global supremacy. Indeed, China would like nothing better than a war between the United States and Iran. China is already Iran’s largest trading partner and is pouring tens of billions of dollars into port, canal, and other development projects in Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, proving how America’s military involvements in the region have gotten it virtually nowhere.

NO PLACE in the Muslim Middle East can serve as a litmus test of how we are doing vis-à-vis China the way that India and Taiwan can. They are the pivots that will go a long way to determining the strength of the American position in the Indo-Pacific: the first-among-equals when it comes to global strategic geography.

India is not a formal American ally and should not become one. India is too proud and too geographically close to China for that to be in its interest. But India, merely on account of its growing demographic, economic and military heft, along with its location dominating the Indian Ocean, acts as a natural balancer to China. Therefore, we should do everything we can to enable the growth of Indian power, without ever even mentioning a formal alliance with it. An increasingly strong India that gets along with China while never moving into China’s orbit—and is informally aligned with the United States—will be a sign that China is contained.

Taiwan has been a model ally, a stable and vibrant democracy, and one of the world’s most prosperous, efficient economies. It is a successful poster child for the liberal world order that the United States has built and guaranteed in Asia and Europe since World War II. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger opened relations with China, but did so without endangering Taiwan. Therefore, if it ever became clear that the United States was both unable and unwilling to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese military attack on the island—or that an authoritarian China had consolidated its grip on Taiwan without the need of such an attack—then it would signal the end of American strategic dominance in East Asia. Countries from Japan in the north to Australia in the south would have no choice but to seek compromising security assurances from China in the event of such an eclipse of American power. This would be an insidious process often outside the strictures of the news headlines, but one day we would all wake up and realize that Asia has been partly Finlandized and the world had changed. Chinese domination of Taiwan would also, by the way, virtually confirm China’s effective domination of the South China Sea, which, together, with its port building activities to the east and west of India, would help give the Chinese navy unimpeded access to two oceans.

Grand strategy is about recognizing what is important and what is not important. I am arguing that, given our goals, India and Taiwan are ultimately more significant than places like Syria and Afghanistan. (Regarding Russia, because it is not almost at war with China as it was when the Nixon administration played the two communist regimes off against each other, moving closer to Russia now achieves little, though stabilizing our bilateral relationship is in our interest.)

WHEREAS INDIA and Taiwan are greatly affected by American sea power, the desert immensities of the Middle East are much less so. This is not an accident, but indicates something crucial. In a century when we will try to stay out of debilitating land conflicts that require large armies, we are better off relying on our navy which can project power without dragging us into bloody wars nearly as much. It is the U.S. Navy that will counter Chinese power along the semi-circle of the navigable Eurasian rimland, from the eastern Mediterranean to the Sea of Japan. And with less of a chance of drifting into costly military conflicts, we will have a better possibility of healing and invigorating our democracy at home. This is what grand strategy is fundamentally about.

Grand strategy is not about what we should do abroad. It is about what we should do abroad consistent with our economic and social condition at home.

Now, keep in mind my own, three-year rule. No matter how necessary and inspiring a military conflict, the American public will only give policymakers three years to settle it. America’s involvement in World War I lasted little more than eighteen months. In World War II, United States troops did not arrive in the Eastern Hemisphere until 1942, and by the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 there was public clamoring to end the Pacific war (as the war in Europe had already ended). The Korean War began in 1950 and by 1952 was unpopular, with Eisenhower forced to end it in 1953. American troops landed in large numbers in Vietnam in 1965 and the public turned against that war in 1968. The Iraq War was launched in 2003 and the public turned against it in 2006. We should aim never to test this three-year rule again. (In Afghanistan, we were able to break the rule only because we brought casualties down dramatically.) That means keeping a prolonged rivalry with China nonviolent in terms of blood-cost. We should engage on a number of fronts: cyber, economic, naval, diplomatic and so on, without open warfare. This can be achieved by not making a fetish out of the South China Sea. The U.S.-China relationship is too wide-ranging and organic to be reduced to a military dispute about one region. Military, trade and other areas of contention should not be kept in silos, since they can indeed interact.

To repeat, grand strategy for the United States in the twenty-first century is, in the end, about restraining from violence in order to concentrate on the home front, and yet compete with China at the same time: which, in turn, means recognizing certain geographical imperatives. (Of course, there is also the realm of ideas: so that it is tragic that President Trump abrogated the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which as a free-trading alliance would have given us a big idea to compete with Belt and Road.)

For some states and empires, which are victims of geography rather than blessed by it—Byzantium, Habsburg Austria—grand strategy is a necessity for survival. Contrarily, America’s geographical blessings have meant it can incur one disaster after another without paying a commensurate price. But as technology shrinks distance, enmeshing our continental half-island deeper into an unstable world, the United States finally becomes truly vulnerable: meaning it can no longer afford heroic delusions.

Consider: during the Cold War we didn’t need to worry about grand strategy because we already had one. It was called containment. George Kennan eschewed the hot-headed approach of those in the late-1940s and early-1950s who believed that it was possible to defeat the Soviet Union by subversion, special operations forces and other such desperate measures. Kennan understood that since Soviet Communism was fundamentally flawed as a system of governance, it would eventually falter and all we had to do was outlast it (just as we are likely to outlast Communist China if only we are patient). Thus, blessed by geography for so long, and blessed by a wise and temperate grand strategy for over four decades, we lost the art of thinking critically about ourselves, which, once again, is also what grand strategy is ultimately about.

Unable to look ourselves in the mirror and see our flaws and limitations, we concentrated too much on our military, and invaded or intervened in one Muslim country after another in the 2000s and achieved nothing as a result. Intervening in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s was successful in stopping a war, but the creation of ethnic cantons that followed did not lay a groundwork for the future, and even if it had done so, that would not have risen to the level of grand strategy given Yugoslavia’s secondary importance. So we are starting from scratch.

Starting from scratch means realizing that however inspiring the dreams of our elite are, those dreams will be stillborn if not grounded in both granular, local realities around the world and widespread public support at home that spans party lines—and that must be sustained over the long-term. We must be respectful of local realities, whether in Wyoming or Afghanistan.

Robert D. Kaplan is a managing director for global macro at Eurasia Group. His most recent book is The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century.

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w3coins-blog · 7 years

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The Origin of Money

Digital

A word whose roots lie at the latin digitalis, from digitus ("finger, toe"); today it's usage is interchangeable with televisions and computers, cameras, audio players, watches, etc, etc, etc.. However, what of digital money or even digital democracy?

The printing press caused a revolution in its own time, hailed as a democratic force for good by many. Books available to the masses has been indeed a revolution ; and now we also have e-books and technological instruments to read them with. The simple fact that the original words are encoded into a numerical form and decoded back to words doesn't mean we hope less the words we're reading, but we may still prefer the joys of a physical book than a bit of high-tech plastic that needs to get its own battery billed to keep working. Can electronic currencies such as bitcoin really provide a contribution to positive social change in as spectacular a manner?

To answer this we must ask what of money, how are we to understand it, use it and incorporate it into a sustainable model of a 'better world for everybody?' Money, unlike any other sort of property, is exceptional as it may be used for anything before an event even happening. It implies nothing, nevertheless may be used for great good or great evil, and yet it is only that which it is despite its many manifestations and consequences. It is a one of a kind but much misunderstood and misused commodity. Money has the simplicity of easing buying and selling, and a mathematical sophistication as shown by the financial markets; and it doesn't have any notion of egalitarianism, moral or ethical decision making.

It serves as an autonomous entity, yet it's both endogenous and exogenous to the global community. It has no personality and is easily replaceable, yet it is treated as a small resource in the world context, its own growth governed by a set of complicated rules which determine the manner in which it may behave. Yet despite this the outcomes are not entirely predictable and, furthermore; a commitment to social justice and an aversion to moral turpitude is not a requirement of its use.

In order for a money to effectively perform the financial functions required of this, the intrinsic-value of money has become a commonly held belief by those who use it. In November 2013 the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs acknowledged that virtual monies are a legitimate way of payment, an instance of such is Bitcoin. Due to the very low transaction fees charged by the 'Bitcoin network' it offers a very real approach to permit the transfer of capital out of migrant workers sending money back to their own families without having to pay large transfer fees currently charged by companies.

A European Commission calculated that if the global average remittance of 10 percent were decreased to 5 percent (the '5x5' initiative endorsed by the G20 at 2011), that this could lead to an additional US$ 17 billion flowing into developing countries; the use of the blockchain would lessen these charges near to zero. These money transfer companies who extract riches from the system may become dis-intermediated through the usage of such an infrastructure.

Probably the most important point to notice about cryptocurrencies is the distributed and decentralised character of their networks. With the development of the Internet, we are perhaps just viewing the 'tip of the iceberg' in respect of future inventions which may exploit undiscovered potential for allowing decentralisation but at a hitherto unseen or unimaginable scale. Thus, Whereas in the past, if there was a demand for a large network it was only attainable with a hierarchical structure; with the consequence of the necessity of surrendering the 'power' of that community to a few individuals with a controlling interest. It may be said that Bitcoin represents the decentralisation of money and the move to a simple system approach. Bitcoin signifies as significant an advancement as peer-to-peer file sharing and internet telephony (Skype for example).

There's hardly any explicitly produced legal regulation for digital or virtual monies, nevertheless there are a vast variety of existing laws which may apply depending on the nation's legal fiscal framework for: Taxation, Banking and Money Transmitting Regulation, Securities Regulation, Criminal or civil regulation, Consumer Rights/Protection, Pensions Regulation, Commodities and stocks regulation, and others. So the two key problems facing bitcoin are whether it can be considered as legal tender, and if as a advantage then it's classed as land.

It is common practice for nation-states to explicitly define money as legal tender of another nation-state (e.g. US$), preventing them from recognising other 'currencies' formally as money. A notable exception to this is Germany which allows for the concept of a 'unit of account' which can consequently be used as a kind of 'private money' and can be used in 'multilateral clearing circles.

At the other circumstance of being considered real estate that the obvious discrepancy here is that, unlike land, electronic currencies possess the capacity of divisibility into much smaller amounts. Developed, open economies are generally permissive to electronic currencies. The USA has issued the maximum guidance and is highly represented on the map below. Capital controlled economies are effectively by definition contentious or hostile. As for many African and a few other countries the subject has not yet been addressed.

Starting from the fundamentals of democratic involvement it is immediately evident that bitcoin doesn't fulfill the positive social impact component of such an aim in so far as its value is not one it can exert influence over but is subject to market-forces. However any 'fresh' crypto-currency may provide democratic participation once the digital currency has distinct principles of government and issuance based upon more socially based democratic principles.

So what if a "electronic" currency could offer a legitimate alternative to existing types of money in doing the role of contributing positively to: the aims of promoting a socially inclusive culture, the equality of opportunity and the promotion of mutualism; that as their own name suggests are complementary or alternative to a formal or national sovereign money? Virtual cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are a brand new and emerging dynamic in the system; however in their infancy, the speed of innovation within the field of cryptocurrencies had been striking.

There are many factors that determine the 'potency' of cash to bring about positive social and environmental change; pervading political ideology, economic surroundings, and the desire of local communities and people to pursue other social outcomes whilst seeking to maximise economic opportunity, construction of social funds, and many more. If a regional digital money could be made to biggest digital currency build additional resilience into a local market and enhance economic outcomes then launch on a more widespread basis merits investigation. When the current financial system fails to provide it's manifested in such manner as: increased social isolation, higher unemployment rates, physical dereliction, poor health, a lack of a sense of community, among other undesirable social impacts.

Everything is at fast-paced due to the invention due to technology. It really helps in a lot of Industries, particularly on the company side. One of the tendencies that technology has led is Digital Currency.

It's an internet based type of currency or medium of exchange. It can be associated with traditional currency, Forex market and remittances, because of the similarity of the functions that is mostly on buying physical products and on paying solutions.

There are times when it's mistaken with Virtual Money. The latter, which can be defined by the European Central Bank as "a type of unregulated, electronic money, which is issued and usually controlled by its programmers, and used and accepted among the members of a specific digital community", is different from Digital Currency since it doesn't have all the attributes of real currency. Virtual monies cannot be used to purchase physical products and cannot be converted to traditional or fiat currencies.

This may also be employed with in-person payment in physical establishments and may also be converted into fiat money, with minimal fees to no fees. In accordance with investopedia.com, Fiat Money is declared by the authorities to be a legal tender and is not backed by a concrete commodity. Its value may also be derived from the relationship between demand and supply. Moreover, it helps the instantaneous transaction and borderless transfer-of-ownership, which is much better compared with Fiat money.

Fiat currencies are limited by their geographical regions. This issue is solved by digital monies because these are international currencies with no borders, and is just possible online. Consumers will no longer need to pay increased price in international payments and cash transfers because they can directly transfer funds, pay bills, and buy goods through digital currency. Also, traders cannot charge extra fees on the user without their knowledge.

Digital money transfers are also faster compared to conventional wire transfers that may have a very long time to process. Digital transactions can take only about a couple of minutes to complete, depending on the transaction procedure for the platform. In addition, it's more convenient compared to over-the-counter bank transactions which have limited time and requires a lot of processes to consider before it can be completed.

Security can be better with electronic currency. It utilizes a certain system that let the user take hold of the accounts, which makes them autonomous and self-regulatory. Information can be backed up and encrypted to guarantee the safety of your money. Unlike fiat currencies which are controlled by the government, some digital platforms do not have central authority regulating them. Some digital currencies, like Ripple and Radar, are still monitored and checked with specific individuals and/or businesses. These are also attractive to those who prefer private financial dealings because the majority of the digital money systems are untraceable to individuals and companies.

In addition, it reduces the possibility of credit card fraud. Private customer information and credit card numbers could be stolen and be used to create possible unauthorized purchases. Since it is a purely digital trade, the recipient of the payment doesn't have any access on the private information of the sender, and data fraud can be avoided.

Would we be better off without paper money and money? Some say yes, and some say the debate rages on. Government tax collectors might favor only digital or electronic currency - it is a lot easier to control and simpler to maintain taxpayers fair - but are these gains worth the downsides? I mean what is wrong with cash - you can invest it everywhere, you can pay your own roommate, go to a garage sale, or stop at a lemonade stand - all of which are part of our underground market By definition and harmless uses of transferring money.

Then there are the illegal items, nobody uses digital money because it leaves a hint, and that means that you cannot use it to buy things you are not allowed to buy or that somebody else is not allowed to sell. Does it thus, make sense to get rid of the cash which enables illegal transactions, shut down the whole underground economy and if we do, will our culture and civilization be better or worse off for this alternative? Let's talk this shall we?

Yes, a digital money could be like regular currency and really we are nearly there already anyhow. If we proceed to "electronic units" and change the paradigm to pay for the needs of people who contribute who are not rewarded rather now, then we will get more of what we reward, as is the famous axiom. A technocrat would delight in this dialog as well as the thought of micro-managing the exact worth of each job, but technocrats aren't so very good at considering their own created unforeseen consequences as they pave the path to hell.

The reason humans utilize money now is only because choices and things are more complicated than they were in the past when our species were just hunters, gatherers and traders. Allow me to clarify; you notice, if I create hammers and you need you, but you only have cows, then you can't cut off the tail of your bunny to buy my hammer, so instead you give me $11 and you can sell your cow in the future for $1100 and give me the one-percent of it so that you can build a new barn.

Money and money is nothing more than components of commerce thus, make matters easier, that's why it is, but I do not like the bashing of currency, digital or otherwise, where many think it's the origin of all evil. I respectfully disagree. Please consider all this and believe on it, since this topic does affect your life.

When we speak of money in today's society, it has taken on many forms. From the days of farmers trading their crops today's digital, debit or credit card transfer and many forms in between. Our ancestors did not use money to get goods from each other, instead they used barter, which is an exchange of private products of value to what they needed or wanted from somebody else.

The first type of trade out of around 9,000 BC has been then came the plants, when farmers could trade a bushel of one item to get a bushel of another of equal value.

As society became more complex it became more difficult to find someone with exactly what you needed or was ready to take for what you were offering and to agree on the worth of each product. Out of this sophistication and as trade flourished money came into use.

The term money, yet another word for money, became a way of exchange. With this way of exchange, buying and selling did not need to take place in the same time, every could wait till they had accumulated money and were prepared to generate an exchange.

It is hard to imagine how our ancestors made exchanges in early history, in comparison to the current means of exchange, with the use of credit cards and now the digital money or electronic currency mainly used over the internet. Most often digital or digital money is used to pay for services and goods where as the purchaser of a product authorizes the seller to contact the issuing bank to transfer funds for payments.

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peaceniksandbolsheviks · 7 years

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Reflection V: Fanon (Ch. 1-2)

Frantz Fanon and his book The Wretched of the Earth have been one of the most frequently cited authorities on the subject of violence, alongside Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence. Like Sorel, his perspective is rather controversial: both King and Arendt, coming from proximately negative positions towards violence, decry the popularity of Fanon’s work amongst radical circles in the 1960s while also acknowledging the power of his prose and psychiatric insights. This reflection will focus on Fanon’s parallels with and connections to King, Arendt, and Benjamin, as well as what lessons might be derived from his work for a world living under globalized capitalism or oppressed populations living in a non-colonial nation.

Despite the continued resonance of Fanon’s work, it is grounded in specificity: the time, which saw multiple liberation movements and wars for independence across Latin America, East Asia, and Africa, and the place, situated not on all countries or all oppressed peoples, but specifically those who have been colonized. This makes it difficult to extract lessons for contexts that fall outside Fanon’s purview; he acknowledges this when he points out that capitalist or “Western” countries require mediators or “confusion-mongers” like priests and businessmen to mitigate the frustrations and alienation of their exploited populations (Fanon, 4). These subtle tactics are far less popular in the colonies, where the state relies on “pure violence…rifle butts and napalm” in founding the colonial regime (4). Yet in drawing links to other authors on the subjects of violence (as well as nonviolence, racism, religion, and national consciousness), one can derive some useful lessons for contemporary political circumstances.

Fanon frequently points out that the whole colonial regime was constructed upon violence, and now that violence is to be turned back upon it in a radical assertion of equality or transcendence. This claim bears strong resemblance to Walter Benjamin’s discussion of mythical violence as law-establishing and divine violence as law-destroying. Likewise, Fanon and Benjamin have a similar interest in capitalism’s dependence on violence. Yet they depart in the sense that Benjamin would likely consider Fanon’s emphasis on nationalism and national consciousness as just another part of the historical cycle which he describes: a constant replication of law through mythical violence, which nationalism relies upon most glaringly. To be fair, Fanon seems to see this as an issue as well, worrying about the potential political and economic problems that could arise in liberated former colonies due to underdevelopment and abandonment by the resentful ousted colonizers. Hence, a lesson from Fanon: the state (or law) and violence, and capitalism and violence, are deeply linked on a systemic level. Furthermore, the use of violence is again conditional: the establishment of a colonial regime through bloody force, and the subsequent long-standing exploitation and psychological warfare, are the historical reasons for unleashing violence by the colonized subject.

Arendt criticizes Fanon, as well as characters like Sorel, Sartre, and Nietzsche, for interpreting the use of violence in biological terms, linking violence, physiology, and the affirmation of life all together. Her abhorrence is understandable, considering this is a common pillar of historical fascism. That view is one possible interpretation of Fanon’s lengthy discussion of the three main outlets that colonized subjects express their aggression through: through “collective suicide” by brutalizing other colonized subjects, through myths that distract from the colonist as the enemy, and through dance-rituals that allow for the excising of the aggressive tension that has been ingrained upon them. But it is important to note that Fanon follows by pointing out that they abandon these myths for reality, demonstrating his materialist and Marxist influences. Certainly, Fanon uses biological or physiological language, and that may be a subject for reasonable critique – but he was, after all, a psychiatrist. Yet in his account the colonized is not inherently aggressive, and struggle is not a fundamental component of life. Everyday existence is not warfare in some kind of state of nature. It is only warfare due to the material conditions and psychological damage that colonialism imposes upon its subjects. Violence, for Fanon, is the outlet through which a human being that has long been denied their humanity, and who has been educated solely in the language of force, can express it. This ties into Arendt’s view of violence as an instrument, though it may be a more abstract instrument than she would like: violence, to Fanon, can liberate a colonized person both on a practical and psychological level, and is not merely a “weapon of reform” but has the potential for undermining an entire imperial system. The individual end is attained in the most immediate way, in Fanon’s description.

The King/Fanon relationship is perhaps the most fascinating because the two rely on astonishingly similar language (allowing for the translation of Fanon, naturally) in defense of their polar opposite tactics. Each speak of how their respective tactics bring to light a tension – for King, in the society, for Fanon, in the individual. Similarly, both talk of the liberatory power of their strategies, the psychological ramifications of racism and separation, and the problem of the inferiority complex in the racialized subject. Finally, both fall back on a certain level of martyrdom: King, through the emphasis on Christian suffering, and Fanon, through the idea of the collectively guided guerilla war in which one may not live to see the national freedom that is fought for, but attains or asserts the individual freedom in the act of violence against the colonizer. In the articulation of their tactics, both suggest that violence will be done to the revolutionary/protesting actors, and that this will only serve to further their cause. King lays his and other bodies down to highlight injustice, while Fanon suggests that the inevitable disproportionate brutality of colonialists as a response to insurgent violence will unify the nation due to the “pendulum of terror and counterterror”.

Yet there is an obvious disconnect between the two. King, commenting on Fanon, suggests that his endorsement of violence relies on European values despite supposedly wanting to transcend Europe, while Fanon, commenting on the “mediators” of nonviolence, accuses them of embracing a colonial construction that avoids the necessary work of revolutionary warfare (24). By their own accounts, both seek to transcend the European-American legacy. Fanon goes so far as to suggest that Western/European values are to be “vomit[ed] up” by the colonized subject when they assert their own humanity, while King seems more rooted in the American experiment and liberal values than he might wish to admit. The aforementioned Fanon passage raises another interesting issue regarding nonviolence and violence as practical means. Fanon ascertains that nonviolence advocates “are convinced violent methods are ineffective. For them, there can be no doubt, any attempt to smash colonial oppression by force is an act of despair, a suicidal act…They are losers from the start”. The brutality of this argument notwithstanding, this ties into one of the critiques of King from last week. His choice to emphasize nonviolence as a practical strategy as well as a moral principle requires that violence be ineffective in his narrative, despite the arguably ahistorical nature of such a claim. Of course, the circumstances and conditions differ between the two authors – King was writing as a minority who wanted to avoid further suffering, while Fanon was writing as an outsider commentating on a locale (Algeria) in which the oppressed outnumbered the oppressors locally, despite not outgunning them.

With all these connections in mind, the question lingers: what use is Fanon to us, living under global capitalism, living with perpetual warfare, living during the rise of right-populism and resurrected fascisms? There are the broad implications that parallel Arendt, Benjamin, and King: the importance of understanding your tactic, the consideration of violence or nonviolence as instruments towards some ends, the roles that law and economics play in these issues. The more specific derivations are trickier but might include Fanon’s psychological insights into oppression, which cannot be neatly transplanted to all forms but can be compared or modified in some way, the consideration of violence not simply as a means but as a political tactic in a way that Arendt and Benjamin left partly unaddressed, and the idea that there are certain systems that can only be responded to with violence. When Fanon says that colonialism is not reasonable, and only really responds to violence, he touches a nerve that is currently running through much of the West as it tries to come to grips with a staggered liberalism and resurgent fascism.

#frantz fanon #reflection

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: Previously I argued that the phony war on “islamic terrorism”, the incessant attacks on and indictment of Islam as a violent religion, and the claim to bring so-called “democracy” to a region ruled by “dictators” are ploys for U.S. wars in the Middle East. Real motives instead, I further argued, are driving these wars with the objective to destabilize, remake, or destroy Arab societies, partition all states that are not in line with the U.S. and Israeli policies, and, in short, dismantle the Arab world. Two agendas converge to implement this effort. The first has for a focus the aims of U.S. hyper-imperialism. Besides submitting the Arab nations to U.S. plans and military control, the quest for uncontested global hegemony is the core of this agenda. While such a quest is intrinsic to the making of the colonialist nature of the American state, the part related to the Arab world is a particular detail within the overall agenda. Explanation: The Arab regions in the Middle East and North Africa enjoy unrivaled geostrategic assets palatable to U.S. imperialism. However, targeting the Arab nations for war, destruction, and partition because of resources or geographic positions makes no sense in modern times unless a wider, deeper agenda is playing out in the U.S. calculation. This raises a series of questions. What are the forces directing the Arab agenda of the United States? Are these forces responsible for the persistent hostility toward the Arabs and the active destruction of selective states? Did such a plan start with Kissinger-controlled U.S. foreign policy during Nixon’s presidency or does it go further back in time? Were Sadat’s recognition of Israel, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Iraq’s American-induced invasion of Iran and Kuwait, and U.S. war on Iraq in 1991 the preparatory stages for that plan? A vital question: Do such forces persuade or coerce the United States to oppose all equitable proposals to solve the Palestinian Question? And to close, who is keeping the interventionist agenda going? Who are the proponents of the Fascist Military Pacification Model the United States wants to impose on the Arab nations? The second agenda belongs to Israel. Considering its complex logistics and interwoven interests with the global aims of the United States, this agenda is partly carried out by Israel and partly by the United States but with European and Arab vassals following orders. Israel’s agenda operates on nine levels each of which comes with own scope, parameters, and application tools: General Level: To expand the scope of Zionist narratives on Palestine, so-called right of Jews to return to it, fake historical rights, and so on. Films, TV, false archeology, fake research books, internet, propagandists, and all type of media—even cookbooks—are the avenues for such efforts. American Level: To preserve the duopoly system as is for easy management; keep the White House and Congress under tight Zionist control; keep the display of power as in AIPAC annual pageantries in order to demonstrate system’s obedience and Zionist control; conceive and implement U.S. foreign policy through American Jewish Zionists who occupy key posts in the American system. America’s European Vassals Level: To keep European states under the U.S. umbrella for a stronger Israeli control. Russian/Chinese Level: With over one million ethnic Russian Jews living in Israel, Israel has an advantage in Russia through organized Zionist lobbyists and oligarchs. The scope is to keep Russia out of the Middle East—it failed in Syria—and away from the Arabs. As for China, Israel provides American-designed military technology to increase influence thus preempting potential Chinese support for Arab causes. International Level: The U.S. belligerent posturing toward North Korea is not its own. It is Israeli by all standards and terminologies. Explanation: N. Korea provided military technology to Iran and Pakistan. That is anathema to Israel. If N. Korea were to stop cooperating with countries deemed adversaries to Israel, the U.S. saber rattling would cease instantly. The other scope is to keep flaunting any U.N. resolution critical of Israel using the U.S. hegemon as a buffer. America’s Arab vassals: The United States has practically ended, on behalf of Israel, the Arab system of nations through wars and interventions. Israel is now poised to submit all Arab regimes—not the peoples—to its military power and political will. Regional Level: To maintain Israeli superiority by means of American military supplies, as well as its own. However, the United States is now doing the major job by smashing the Arab states–one by one. The partition of Sudan and the pending partition of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen are examples. Palestinian Level: To implement the plan to settle the Palestinian Question on Israeli terms. This is how it works. Give the Palestinian a semblance of economic independence within the occupation regime; swallow what remains of historic Palestine; suffocate Gaza to death to stop the resistance; declare a “state” called “Palestine” in Gaza comprising lands taken from Egypt. Israeli Level: To intensify the Zionization, fascistization, chauvinism, and racism of the Israeli Jewish society. This is important for the continuation of the Zionist project to create a “greater Israel”. Further, the Zionist project was not about creating a “homeland” for the Jews of Europe. It is about Zionist expansions and empire. According to this scheme, turning the racist ideology of and the colonialist core of Zionism into a permanent way of thinking could guarantee the continuation of Israel as a peculiar racist state. Discussion What we want to see now is what did American Jewish Zionists do to rise to such an unprecedented power in the United States? There is a flipside to the coin. Was such a rise autonomous or dependent on factors rooted in the American system? In other words, who allowed Jewish Zionists to dominate the United States? To answer, we need a starting point. Jewish Zionist propaganda would like the uninformed to believe that the United States was already in pre-Zionist sympathies at least since President John Adams.1 An example of such propaganda outlets is the Zionist website Jewish Virtual Library. This so-called library made a compendium of U.S. presidents who, it claims, supported the idea of “restoring the lands of Israel” to its “people”.2 First, U.S. presidents prior to Theodore Roosevelt might have made favorable expressions to certain Jewish individuals. However, I view such expressions as apolitical, superficial, and ceremonial. Moreover, they had no bearing into the future—this was yet to unfold depending on world events. Nor did they set the path for Franklyn D. Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman to prepare for the installation of a Zionist entity in Palestine. It seems that the “Library” wants to convey the idea that rational political processes brought the United States to side with Zionism and later with Israel. Now, recalling that such “sympathies” might have been made in response to solicitations by Jewish personalities, they were not the political convictions of the American system. However, they became so after Woodrow Wilson publically endorsed the British Mandate for Palestine. Second, because the American system depends on ideological continuity, it is expected that Roosevelt’s anti-Arab racism and Zionist outlook would pass to his successors. Such passage would also confirm that new patterns of domestic power were emerging. Explanation: in U.S. political settings, the presidents of the imperialist state invariably adopt and further expand on the foreign policies of their predecessors. The pretense that what those presidents expressed had amounted to recognition of “Jewish claims” on Palestine is baseless. Needless to argue, the fate of Palestine, then under Ottoman rule until the end of WWI, was not a subject for U.S. presidents to decide. Colonialism, however, was the only historical force able to divide conquered nations according to self-interest or consequent to political machinations. Yet, those expressions revealed something interesting— the cultural ignorance of U.S. presidents. Fixated on biblical stories, they interchanged the religious affiliation of Europeans of Jewish faith with the ancient Hebrews. With this, a historical falsehood had been established. Later, this would become the rationalized basis to install a settler state in Palestine. When American Jewish Zionists twisted the arms of FDR and Harry Truman to make them agree to their demands, and when both presidents gave up under pressure, it became evident that a Jewish Zionist force was born. Under this premise, I view Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklyn D. Roosevelt as the primary facilitators of U.S. Zionism and its ascending power. Harry Truman is another story. Although, the Zionist state was born under his watch, he was not that essential in the gestation of Zionism toward power. It is true, however, that Truman, a war criminal and opportunist who sold out to Zionists to garner their vote, was a catalyst in turning American Jewish Zionists into the masters of the United States. Explanation: the installation of Israel gave momentum to the emergent power of Zionists. Still, during the transition from European Jewish invasion of Palestine to the installation of Israel, Truman did nothing but to continue with the moral cowardice and treachery of Franklyn D. Roosevelt toward the Arabs. To back the views I just presented, I will discuss in this part Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson; in the upcoming Part 5, I will discuss Franklyn D. Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt Since ever New York Jewish Zionists supported his campaign for governor of New York, and later for president, Roosevelt, a racist and an avowed colonialist in the American tradition, set the stage for a long-lasting confrontational U.S. policy toward the Arabs. With that policy came the gradual elevation of American Jewish Zionists to the claimed status of “king makers” of American politics—especially in the making of foreign policy. Here I want to stress one aspect, which is how the hate of the Arabs became synonymous with the Jewish Zionist power. It works like this: If an American individual wants to run for office, he must declare or pledge in advance his support of Israel against all its “enemies”—the Arabs. On the other hand, opposing Israel (or Zionism) on any ground could mean losing elections and careers. How did Theodore Roosevelt set the stage for a durable anti-Arab policy of the United States? Let us reprise a quotation that appeared in Part 2. In a private meeting held in 1907, Roosevelt confided: It is impossible to expect moral, intellectual, and material well-being where Mohammedanism is supreme. The Egyptians, for example, were a people of Moslem fellahin who have never in all time exercised any self-government whatever. Britain’s Lord Cromer, Roosevelt added, is one of the greatest modern colonial administrators, and he has handled Egypt just according to Egypt’s needs, military occupation, foreign tutelage, and Christian patience.3 [Sic], [Italics added] Roosevelt’s opinion on regions dominated by Mohammedanism—his word for Islam—was in tune with his bigoted ideology. Anyone, of course, is entitled to his opinion. But when an American president expresses racist remarks debasing peoples and their religion, the implication is enormous. Simply, it means that said president, his administration, and subsequent administrations would most likely take the same path. This is how political states stay in business. Eventually, a nurtured prejudice could evolve into state policy— the systematic destruction of the Original Peoples of the United States and the ideology of the Third Reich are examples. Consequently, it is not farfetched to say that Roosevelt’s prejudice had come a long way. Today, it has become the official philosophy of the United States. A few decades after Roosevelt, John Kennedy, then a senator from New York, proved the assessment I just made. In search of the so-called Jewish vote, he had to go through the rituals of praise (allegiance) to Zionism and to exempt it from the disasters in the Middle East. In addressing a gathering at B’nai Zion Anniversary, he virtually licked the Zionist rear end without shame, pride, or, at least, a little cultivated historical and cultural knowledge. With his speech (1958), Kennedy proved beyond any doubt that 11 years after the installation of Israel (1947), the power of American Jewish Zionist had become a strong fixture in U.S. politics. He said: This myth – with which you are all too familiar – is the assertion that it is Zionism which has been the unsettling and fevered infection in the Middle East, the belief that without Israel there would somehow be a natural harmony throughout the Middle East and the Arab world. Quite apart from the values and hopes which the State of Israel enshrines – and the past injuries which it redeems – it twists reality to suggest that it is the democratic tendency of Israel which has injected discord and dissention into the Near East. Even by the coldest calculations, the removal of Israel would not alter the basic crisis in the area. For, if there is any lesson which the melancholy events of the last two years and more taught us, it is that, though Arab states are generally united in opposition to Israel, their political unities do not rise above this negative position. The basic rivalries within the Arab world, the quarrels over boundaries, the tensions involved in lifting their economies from stagnation, the cross-pressures of nationalist – all of these factors would still be there even if there were no Israel.4 Comment I could write a full dissertation on Kennedy’s speech and the excerpt I just cited . . . What Kennedy said is a classic example of political succumbence. It also shows how indoctrinations, political posturing, and the expected benefits from sycophancy seep from a political epoch to another. For instance, in his lengthy speech, he never uttered the words Palestine or Palestinians. And when he talked about the Palestinians kicked out of their lands by Jewish Zionist terrorists, he called them “Arab refugees”. (See pictures of Palestinians kicked out by Zionists in 1948). Beyond that, it confirms that the imperialist state had blindly embraced the Zionist narratives. And to close, it demonstrates a culture of obedience to Zionism, and acute prejudice against the Arabs. Above all, Kennedy’s speech highlighted the ascending power of American Jewish Zionism in the United States. There is more. Kennedy externalized the standard political making of an American politician seeking office. When candidates confront the issue of Israel and the Arabs before Jewish Zionist gatherings, they invariably become arrogantly offensive toward the Arabs, but exceedingly flattering toward Zionism. (I added Italics to every sentence of the excerpt where a counter-argument can be made to demolish Kennedy’s assertions. I stop here, however, to avoid derailing this article.) Let us go back to Roosevelt. When he made his racist feelings known, he appeared to have implied that only when Christianity is supreme, intellectual and well-being are guaranteed. In saying so, he gave Jewish Zionists the ideological weapons to fight Arab and Palestinian nationalisms. To be noted, Roosevelt’s praise for Lord Cromer is revealing. In casting his praise with words such as, “the greatest modern colonial administrators”, he left no doubt that the guiding light of the United States is an ideology that glorifies colonialism and slavery while turning colonialist administrators into symbols of virtue and rectitude. Aside from supremacist beliefs, Roosevelt’s use of the concept “Christian patience” lacks originality. He plagiarized Rudyard Kipling’s concept of “White’s man burden”. This observation is important: it shows how ideological contagion works. Knowing this little bit about Roosevelt’s sentiments, it should not be surprising, therefore, when he stated it is “entirely proper to start a Zionist state around Jerusalem.”5 The question one may ask, what were Roosevelt’s rationales and historic justification for a Zionist state “around Jerusalem”? Why is it “entirely proper to start a Zionist state”? What makes it proper: his ideology or bigotry? Why did he ignore the Palestinians who lived in, around, and beyond Jerusalem? Woodrow Wilson From studying how U.S. presidents interacted with Zionism and Israel, we may be able to draw some conclusions. For instance, from Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover, the trend was to mix theology, mythology, and colonialism. From FDR to George H. W. Bush the tunes changed to include the primacy of imperialism and the usefulness of Israel to America’s global agenda. From Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, theology and mythology resurfaced but this time the fuel is anti-Muslim Christian Zionism, anti-Arab Neocon Jewish Zionism, and the new plans to partition the Arab states. It is known that the beginning of any process is a tone-setter for the next enterprise. Under this light, Wilson’s way of thinking about a Zionist state acquires special importance. It rested on four grounds: theological dogmas, Manifest Destiney beliefs, colonialist mindset, and on his conviction of the virtues of European colonialist states. When he (under suspicious circumstances),6 selected the Jewish Zionist Louis Dembitz Brandeis to be his informal advisor on foreign policy, he set the precedence for the rise of many Jewish Zionist advisors and chiefs of staff to presidents and vice presidents.7 But when he appointed him to the Supreme Court, he initiated the process of the Zionist penetration into the American state. To evaluate how Brandeis was working on the mind of Wilson, I am going to quote Jerry Klinger. Klinger is a Jewish Zionist propagandist and a founder of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. In his article Judge Brandeis, President Wilson and Reverend William E. Blackstone changed Jewish history Klinger details the intellectual and ideological interactions Between Wilson and Brandeis: Brandeis knew and understood Wilson. He understood what influences Wilson would respond to. He understood the soul of President Wilson. Brandeis was a master politician and courtroom manipulator of opinion and direction. Wilson needed to be appealed to on the basis of faith but not by faith alone would the President act. Wilson needed to be sure of his political base of popular support for his actions. He needed to be sure it was the right thing for America. He weighed his actions carefully and not impulsively. [Emphasis added] He continues further down: Wilson further understood through Brandeis that there were delicate negotiations going on in Britain for a declaration of intentions regarding Jewish interests once Britain had wrested control of Palestine from the Turks. [Emphasis added] Most important for Brandeis was that Wilson understood he had significant grassroots American political and faith based support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Blackstone Memorial was an American document and not a British document. It was important for Wilson and Brandeis to show that they were not the followers of the British. American foreign policy was not shaped and directed by the British but by American interests. [Emphasis added] Comment Well, now that we know how Wilson had gotten his political education on the claims of Zionism, let us move forward. Brandeis is a master manipulator. Klinger’s statement that Brandeis convinced Wilson that “supporting the British plan for Palestine means that American foreign policy was not shaped and directed by the British but by American interests” was a winning tactic. It gave self‑importance to a United States. I view that tactic as an early indication of how American Jewish Zionists intended to manipulate the United States. Did Wilson comply with the coaching imparted to him by Brandeis? Certainly, in his book, The Elected and the Chosen: Why American Presidents Have Supported Jews and Israel, page 179, Denis Brian, an Irish Christian Zionist provides an adequate answer: Like many previous presidents, Wilson compared the Jews of the old testament with the colonists and the early history of America. He then goes on to quote Wilson directly: Recalling the previous experiences of the colonists in applying the Mosaic Code to the order of their internal life, it is not to be wondered at that the various passages in the Bible that serve to undermine royal authority, stripping the Crown of its cloak of divinity, held up before the pioneer Americans the Hebrew Commonwealth as a model government. In the spirit and essence of our Constitution, the influence of the Hebrew Commonwealth was paramount in that it was not only the highest authority for the principle, “that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” but also because it was in itself a divine precedent for a pure democracy, as distinguished from monarchy, aristocracy or any other form of government. To think that I, the son of the manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people. Comment Despite academic credentials and a university post, Wilson manifested clear intellectual confusion. First, he mingled between diverse categories of thought. Second, his mix-up was so severe that he bundled theology (divinity, etc.) with mythology as in his “various passages in the Bible”. And, if that were not sufficient, he added to the mixture a dose of political gibberish as in the dictions “pure democracy”, “monarchy”, etc. Then he resorted to colonialism as in his phrase “to help restore”…etc. Not only that, but his approach to important U.S. policy directions that structurally overlooked the existence of the Palestinians—the future victims of his planned “restoration” smacks of ignorance, dishonesty, callousness, and ethical perfidy. I wonder how Wilson would have responded to a question such as this: Mr. President, did you ever think to restore the Original Peoples of the United States to the lands you and your predecessors have stolen by fire, forced relocations, and extermination? Next, I will discuss Franklyn D. Roosevelt and other issues. • First published in American Herald Tribune Read Part One here; Part Two here; Part Three here Next: Part 5: Part 6: Interview with Francis Boyle Part 7: Interview with James Petras Part 8: Interview with Kim Petersen * The Austrian Nathan Birnbaum coined the term Zionism in 1890. I view any prior similar ideology as pre-Zionist. * Jewish Virtual Library, S. Presidents & Israel: Quotes About Jewish Homeland & Israel * Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945, University of North Carolina Press, 2008, p. 16. * JFK Presidential Library and Museum, Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the B’nai Zion, February 9, 1958. * Quoted in Benjamin Glatt, Today in History: Teddy Roosevelt and the Jews, The Jerusalem Post, 2016. * Alleged Wilson’s adultery was seized to blackmail him. I’m no fan of hoaxes and allegations. However, unbiased research is needed to ascertain validity. The following link provides some background on this issue: The Making of Woodrow Wilson— An American Nero? * Examples include Henry Kissinger, Samuel Berger, Irving Lewis Libby, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, etc. http://clubof.info/

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Yuval Noah Harari: Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so

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Yuval Noah Harari: Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so

The visionary historian, author of two dazzling bestsellers around the condition of mankind, takes questions from Lucy Prebble, Arianna Huffington, Esther Rantzen and an array of our readers

Last week, on his Radio 2 breakfast show, Chris Evans read out page one of Sapiens, it through the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. Considering that radio audiences in those days each morning aren’t recognized for their appetite for intellectual engagement the prior segment had worked with Gary Barlows new tour it had been a unique gesture. But because Evans stated, page one is easily the most stunning first page associated with a book.

If DJs are vulnerable to mindless hyperbole, this was a honourable exception. The subtitle of Sapiens, within an echo of Stephen Hawkings great work, is A Short History of Humankind. In grippingly lucid prose, Harari sets on that first page a condensed good reputation for the world, adopted by a listing of the books thesis: the way the cognitive revolution, the farming revolution and also the scientific revolution have affected humans as well as their fellow microorganisms.

It’s a dazzlingly bold introduction, which the rest of the book meets on nearly every page. Although Sapiens continues to be broadly and noisally recognized, some critics have recommended that it’s too sweeping. Possibly, but it’s an intellectual pleasure to become taken along.

Its certainly one of individuals books that cant help but cause you to feel smarter for getting see clearly. Obama and Bill Gates have gone through that have, as have numerous others within the Davos crowd and Plastic Valley. The irony, possibly, is the fact that among the books warnings is that we’re at risk of just as one elite-dominated global society.

In the center from the book may be the contention that what made Homo sapiens probably the most effective individual, supplanting rivals for example Neanderthals, was our capability to have confidence in shared fictions. Religions, nations and cash, Harari argues, are human fictions which have enabled collaboration and organisation on the massive scale.

Initially printed in Hebrew this year, it was converted into British 3 years later and grew to become an worldwide bestseller. It ranges across numerous disciplines with apparently easy scholarship, getting together an enthusiastic knowledge of history, anthropology, zoology, linguistics, philosophy, theology, financial aspects, psychology, neuroscience and far else besides.

The author of the accomplished and-reaching book is really a youthful Israeli historian whose career, up to that time, have been dedicated to the relative academic backwater of medieval military history. Apparently, Sapiens is dependant on an opening course to world history that Harari needed to educate, after senior colleagues dodged the job. The storyline goes the major Israeli publishers werent interested. Nobody saw worldwide stardom beckoning.

This past year, Hararis follow-up, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, was printed within the United kingdom, becoming another bestseller. It develops most of the styles explored in Sapiens, especially examines the potential impact of biotechnological and artificial intelligence innovation on Homo sapiens, heralding possibly the start of a brand new bionic or semi-computerised type of human.

Again, its an exciting book that can take the readers deep into questions of identity, awareness and intelligence, grappling with what types of choices and dilemmas a completely automated world will show us with.

Now 41, Harari increased in a secular Jewish family in Haifa. He studied history in the Hebrew College of Jerusalem and completed his doctoral at Oxford. He’s a vegan and that he meditates for 2 hrs each day, frequently happening extended retreats. He states it will help him concentrate on the problems that really matter. He lives together with his husband on the moshav, an farming co-operative, outdoors Jerusalem. Being gay, he states, helped him to question received opinions. Nothing ought to be overlooked, he’s stated, even when everyone believes it.

Among the pleasures of studying his books is the fact that he constantly calls on readers, both clearly and unconditionally, to consider what we should know and our opinion we all know. And that he has very little time for fashionable stances.

He writes and speaks just like a man who isn’t excessively troubled by doubt. In the event that makes him seem arrogant, allow me to clarify: he gets to his conclusions after a lot of research and contemplation. However, once hes convinced themself and that he states he always leaves it towards the evidence to determine his thinking he doesnt restrain in the efforts to influence the readers. It can make for which Jared Gemstone known as unforgettably vivid language.

Harari is really a naturally gifted explainer, almost always ready using the telling anecdote or memorable example. Consequently, its tempting to determine him less like a historian than as some type of all-purpose sage. We requested politicians and readers to pose questions for Harari, and a number of these ( below) were of the moral or ethical nature, seeking solutions by what ought to be done, instead of about what is happening. However the Israeli appears accustomed to the function, and perfectly pleased to give his best shot at replying. A historian of a time long ago and the long run, he’s created out another discipline of their own. Its one achievement by an impressively multiple-minded man.

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Photograph: Sonja Horsman for the Observer

We are living through a fantastically rapid globalisation. Will there be one global culture in the future or will we maintain some sort of deliberate artificial tribal groupings? Helen Czerski, physicist Im not sure if it will be deliberate but I do think well probably have just one system, and in this sense well have just one civilisation. In a way this is already the case. All over the world the political system of the state is roughly identical. All over the world capitalism is the dominant economic system, and all over the world the scientific method or worldview is the basic worldview through which people understand nature, disease, biology, physics and so forth. There are no longer any fundamental civilisational differences.

Andrew Anthony: Are you saying that the much-maligned Francis Fukuyama was correct in his analysis of the end of history? It depends how you understand the end of history. If you mean the end of ideological clashes, then no, but if you mean the creation of a single civilisation which encompasses the whole world, then I think he was largely correct.

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Photograph: Dan Wooller/Rex Shutterstock

What is the biggest misconception humanity has about itself? Lucy Prebble, playwright Maybe it is that by gaining more power over the world, over the environment, we will be able to make ourselves happier and more satisfied with life. Looking again from a perspective of thousands of years, we have gained enormous power over the world and it doesnt seem to make people significantly more satisfied than in the stone age.

Is there a real possibility that environmental degradation will halt technological progress? TheWatchingPlace, posted online I think it will be just the opposite that, as the ecological crisis intensifies, the pressure for technological development will increase, not decrease. I think that the ecological crisis in the 21st century will be analogous to the two world wars in the 20th century in serving to accelerate technological progress.

As long as things are OK, people would be very careful in developing or experimenting in genetic engineering on humans or giving artificial intelligence control of weapon systems. But if you have a serious crisis, caused for example by ecological degradation, then people will be tempted to try all kinds of high-risk, high-gain technologies in the hope of solving the problem, and youll have something like the Manhattan Project in the second world war.

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Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

What role does morality play in a future world of artificial intelligence, artificial life and immortality? Will an aspiration to do what is good and right still motivate much of the race? Andrew Solomon, writer I think morality is more important than ever before. As we gain more power, the question of what we do with it becomes more and more crucial, and we are very close to really having divine powers of creation and destruction. The future of the entire ecological system and the future of the whole of life is really now in our hands. And what to do with it is an ethical question and also a scientific question.

So to give just a simple example: what happens if several pedestrians jump in front of a self-driving car and it has to choose between killing, say, five pedestrians or swerving to the side and killing its owner? Now you have engineers producing the self-driving cars and they need to get an answer to this question. So I dont see any reason to think that AI or bioengineering will make morality any less relevant than before.

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Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

After reading Homo Deus I began to wonder why we are so wilfully ushering in a future that will slowly make us redundant. We are the only animal obsessed with progress. Should we try to resist the idea of the future as one of inevitable technological advancement and create a different kind of futurism? Matt Haig, author You cant just stop technological progress. Even if one country stops researching artificial intelligence, some other countries will continue to do it. The real question is what to do with the technology. You can use exactly the same technology for very different social and political purposes. If you look at the 20th century, we see that with the same technology of electricity and trains, you could create a communist dictatorship or a liberal democracy. And its the same with artificial intelligence and bioengineering. So I think people shouldnt be focused on the question of how to stop technological progress because this is impossible. Instead the question should be what kind of usage to make of the new technology. And here we still have quite a lot of power to influence the direction its taking.

Will humans always find ways to hate each other, or do you lean more towards Steven Pinkers view that society far less violent than it was once, which this trend is placed to carry on? Sarah Shubinsky, readers I am inclined to accept Steven Pinker. We currently reside in probably the most peaceful era ever. There’s certainly still violence My home is the center East and so i know this perfectly well. But, comparatively, there’s less violence than in the past ever. Today more and more people die from overeating than from human violence, which is actually an amazing achievement. We cant be sure concerning the future however, many changes get this to trend appear robust. To begin with, there’s the specter of nuclear war that was possibly the main reason behind the decline of war since 1945, which threat remains. And next, you will find the alternation in the character from the economy the economy switched from as being a material-based economy towards the understanding-based economy.

Previously, the primary economic assets were material such things as wheat fields and gold mines and slaves. So war made sense since you could enrich yourself by waging war upon your neighbours. The primary economic asset is understanding, and it is tough to conquer understanding through violence. The majority of the large conflicts these days continue to be in individuals areas such as the Middle East, in which the primary supply of wealth is material its gas and oil.

Photograph: SilverHub/Rex/Shutterstock

You stated our predilection to produce abstract concepts for example religion, nationality etc may be the quality which designated sapiens using their company hominids. Considering that can also be the muse for wars that could produce our destruction, could it be a strength or perhaps a weakness? Esther Rantzen, broadcaster When it comes to power, its apparent this ability made Homo sapiens probably the most effective animal on the planet, and today provides for us charge of the whole planet. From your ethical perspective, whether or not this was bad or good, thats an even more complicated question. The important thing concern is that because our power depends upon collective fictions, we’re not good in distinguishing between fiction and reality. Humans think it is tough to understand what is real and what’s only a imaginary story in their own individual minds, which causes lots of disasters, wars and problems.

The very best test to understand whether a business is real or imaginary may be the test of suffering. A nation cannot suffer, it can’t feel discomfort, it can’t feel fear, it’s no awareness. Even when it loses a war, the soldier suffers, the civilians suffer, however the nation cannot suffer. Similarly, an organization cannot suffer, the pound sterling, if this loses its value, it doesnt suffer. Each one of these things, theyre fictions. If people keep in mind this distinction, it might improve the way you treat each other and yet another creatures. It is not such smart to cause suffering to real entities within the service of imaginary tales.

AA: However these fictions frequently inspire us to complete excellent achievements. Would an unblinking look at reality produce the same motivation? We certainly take some fictions to be able to have large-scale societies. Thats true. But we have to begin using these fictions for everyone us rather to be enslaved by them. A great example is probably a football game. The laws and regulations from the game are imaginary, theyre a development of humans, there’s nothing anyway that mandates the laws and regulations from the football game. As lengthy while you the reason is that are simply laws and regulations that individuals invented for everyone your goal, you’ll be able to take part in the game. Should you completely quit these laws and regulations since they’re imaginary, then you definitely cant play football.

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The future of human food? Professor Mark Post shows the worlds first lab-grown beefburger in London, August 2013. Photograph: Alamy

So Im certainly not recommending that people stop using all these fictional entities. You cannot have a large-scale economy if you dont use money. But you can use money in the same way you use the football laws, and still remember that this is just our creation. And similarly with the nation. There is nothing wrong in principle in having feelings of loyalty towards the group. But when you forget that this is a human creation, then you can end up sacrificing millions of people for the interests of the nation, forgetting that its the people who invented it.

Is being compassionate and empathetic a major flaw in human evolution? Is psychopathy the future for our species? Dominic Currie, reader No, I dont think so. First of all, if it is, then its going to be quite a terrible future. But even if we leave aside the moral aspect and just look at it from a practical aspect, then human power comes from cooperation, and psychopaths are not very good at cooperation. You need empathy and compassion, you need the ability to understand and to sympathise with other people in order to cooperate with them effectively. So even if we leave aside all moral issues, still I dont think that empathy is bad for us or that psychopaths are the future of humankind.

AA: You argue that humanism is a product of capitalism. Is it inseparable from capitalism? There are close connections between them but I dont think they are inseparable. They can certainly go along different ways in the 21st century. One of the big dangers we face is exactly the separation of capitalism from humanism, especially from liberal humanism. In the last decades the main reason why governments all over the world liberalised their politics and economics is not because they were convinced of the ethical arguments of humanism, but rather because they thought it will be good for the capitalist economy.

Now the fear is that in the 21st century capitalism and humanism will be separated, and you could have very sophisticated and advanced economies without any need to liberalise your political system or to give freedom to invest in the education and welfare of the masses.

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Photograph: Fiona Shaw for the Guardian

Was the move from hunter-gathering to farming a mistake? If so, how can we make the best of it now? Philippa Perry, writer and psychotherapist It depends on your perspective. If youre talking from the perspective of a pharaoh or some ancient Chinese emperor, then it was a very good idea. If you look at it from the perspective of a simple peasant woman in ancient Egypt, then it looks like a pretty bad idea. If you look at it from the perspective of the middle classes in the affluent societies of today, then again it looks like a very good idea. If you look at it from the perspective of somebody in Bangladesh who works 12 hours a day in a sweatshop, again it looks like a bad idea.

There is absolutely no way to turn back the clock, with 8 billion people returning to living as hunter-gatherers. So the question is really how to make the best of our current situation, and how not to repeat the mistakes of the agricultural revolution. With the new revolution in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, there is a danger that again all the power and benefits will be monopolised by a very small elite, and most people will end up worse off than before.

You said animal farming might be the worst crime in history. What advice do you have for helping society end it? Jacy Reese, reader Our best chance is with what is known as cellular agriculture or clean meat, which is the idea of creating meat from cells and not from animals. If you want a steak, you just grow a steak from cells you dont need to raise a cow and then slaughter the cow for the steak. This may sound like science fiction but its already a reality. Three years ago they created the first hamburger they made from cells. It is true it cost $300,000 nevertheless its always like this with a brand new technology. Right now, 2017, the cost, so far as I understand, is lower to $11 per hamburger. And also the developers expect, that, given enough investment and also the proper research, they might bring lower the cost to under a slaughtered meat hamburger within, I do not know, ten years approximately.

Its still a way before you decide to view it within the supermarket as well as in McDonalds, however i think thats the only real viable solution. Im vegan, and that i avoid meat along with other animal products, but Im under no illusion will be able to convince vast amounts of others to stop completely meat and milk and so on. But when we are able to produce them from cells, then great. It will likewise have lots of environmental benefits since it will lessen the enormous quantity of pollution which is because high animal farming today.

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Bettany Hughes Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Does the phrase the modern mind mean anything to you, and if so when was the modern mind born and what does it look like? Bettany Hughes, historian We know very little about the mind. We dont understand what it is, what are its functions and how it emerged. When billions of neurons in the brain fire electrical charges in a particular pattern, how does this create the mental experience, the subjective experience of love or anger or pain or pleasure? We have absolutely no idea. And because we understand so little about the mind, we also dont know how and why it emerged in the first place. We assume that the people in the late stone age who drew the cave art of Lascaux and Altamira had fundamentally the same minds as we have today. And we also assume that Neanderthals had a different kind of mind, even though they had bigger brains than ours. But the details at present are far beyond our understanding.

AA: You live in a part of the world that has been shaped by religious fictions. Which do you think will happen first that Homo sapiens leave behind religious fiction or the Israel-Palestine conflict will be resolved? As things look at present, it seems that Homo sapiens will disappear before the Israeli political conflict will be resolved. I think that Homo sapiens as we know them will probably disappear within a century or so, not destroyed by killer robots or things like that, but changed and upgraded with biotechnology and artificial intelligence into something else, into something different. The timescale for that kind of change is maybe a century. And its quite likely that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will not be resolved by that time. But it will definitely be influenced by it.

Would we and all the other species on this planet have been better off without the cognitive revolution? Would we then still be living in harmony with all the other forms of life instead of dominating them and making ourselves unhappy in the process? NassauOrange, posted online Im not sure about harmony because there is also a lot of violence and disharmony between other species. But we definitely would not have dominated the planet if we did not undergo the cognitive revolution. And then, also, you would not have the ecological crisis that the planet now faces. So yes, without a cognitive revolution, I guess most other organisms, most other big animals, would be much better off.

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Were the Lascaux cave paintings in France created by minds like ours? Photograph: D Nidos/ Departement 24

What concerns you most about the world, and what are you doing about your concerns? LeaActforChange, posted online There are so many different concerns that Im not sure which is the biggest one. At present, because of the enormous power of humankind, maybe the biggest concern of all is human blindness and stupidity. Were an extremely wise species in so many ways but when it comes to making important decisions we have this tendency sometimes to make these terrible mistakes, and we are now in a situation when we just dont have much room for error. As we gain more and more power, the consequences of making a stupid choice are catastrophic for us and for the entire ecological system. So this is a great cause for concern.

Is anti-intellectualism is rising in the west? If so, is there a relation between the rise of anti-intellectualism and the decline of liberalism? guneydas, posted online Im not sure that its rising. Its definitely there but it was always there, and Im not sure if the situation now is worse than in the 1950s or 1930s or the 19th century or the middle ages. So yeah, its definitely a concern. And I would say its not so much anti-intellectualism as much as anti-science. Because even the most fundamentalist religious fanatics, they are intellectuals. They give far too much importance to the human intellect. One of the problems with a lot of religious fanaticism is that it gives far too much importance to the creations of the human intellect and far too little to empirical evidence from the world outside us.

AA: Are you confident that radical Islam is nothing more than the death rattle of the pre-modern era? In the 21st century, humanity is facing some very difficult problems, whether its global warming or global inequality or the rise of disruptive technology, such as bioengineering and artificial intelligence. And wWe need answers to these challenges, and at least as of March 2017 I havent heard anything relevant being offered by radical Islam. So this is why I dont think that radical Islam will shape the society of the 21st century. It could still be there, it could still cause a lot of trouble and violence and so forth, but I dont see it creating or shaping the road ahead of humankind.

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Photograph: Mike McGregor/Observer Magazine

Youre clearly a big-picture guy, so what do you do to recharge and get the perspective that you need for your work? Arianna Huffington, entrepreneur I read a very large number of books from all fields, all disciplines. I usually start with a big question, such as whether people today are happier than in the past, or why men have dominated women in most human societies. And then I follow the question instead of trying to follow my own answer, even if it means I cant formulate any clear theory.

AA: What does meditation do for you? Above all it enables me to try and see reality as it is. When we try to observe the world, and when we try to observe ourselves, the mind constantly generates stories and fictions and explanations and imposes them on reality, and we cannot see what is really happening because we are blinded by the fictions and stories that we create or other people create and we believe. Meditation for me is just to see reality as it is dont get entangled in any story, in any fiction.

How would you advise the individual who wants to live a good life and contribute to the wellbeing of those not yet born as well as those already here? Paul Baker, reader Get to know yourself better, and especially what you really want from life, because otherwise technology tends to dictate to people their aims in life, and instead of technology serving us to realise our aims, we become enslaved to its agenda. And its very difficult to know what you really want from life. Im not saying its an easy task.

AA: If we can indefinitely prevent death, would it still be possible to create meaning without what Saul Bellow called the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything? I think so, yes. You have other problems with what happens when you overcome old age, but I dont think lack of meaning will be a serious problem. Over the past three centuries, almost all the new ideologies of the modern world dont care about death, or at least they dont see death as a source of meaning. Previous cultures, especially traditional religions, usually needed death in order to explain the meaning of life. Like in Christianity without death, life has no meaning. The whole meaning of life comes from what happens to you after you die. There is no death, no heaven, no hell there is no meaning to Christianity. But over the past three centuries we have seen the emergence of a lot of modern ideologies such as socialism, liberalism, feminism, communism that dont need death at all in order to provide life with meaning.

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