BARRICK GOLD 

Politics and Porgera: why Papua New Guinea cancelled the lease on one of its biggest mines

The announcement not to renew the goldmine lease is fraught but part of an attempt to ‘take back PNG

Jonathan Pryke and Shane McLeod

Tue 12 May 2020
 

A view of tailings at Barrick Gold Corp’s Porgera mine, Papua New Guinea. Photograph: Catherine Coumans/Reuters

Late in April, in the middle of a global pandemic and slow-boiling domestic economic crisis, the government of Papua New Guinea made the surprising announcement not to extend the mining lease on a goldmine that contributes roughly 10% of the country’s total exports.

The announcement not to renew the special mining lease for the Porgera mine was a shock, not least to the mine’s operator, Barrick Gold, and their joint venture partner Zijin Mining.

Papua New Guinea will not be dependent on Australia in 10 years, new PM says

Porgera is one of Papua New Guinea’s longest running goldmines. Operating for 30 years in the highlands province of Enga, this large mine was expected to produce around 250,000 ounces of gold in 2019.It employs more than 5,000 people and the 5% landowner and provincial equity stakehas helped to fast-track the efforts to bring services and education to one of the country’s most remote provinces.

While a significant economic contributor, the mine has also brought with it significant controversy, including concerns over human rights, environmental issues and conflicts over compensation.

While the government seems within its rights not to renew the lease, the blindsiding of the announcement has led Barrick to lash out, saying the move was “tantamount to nationalisation without due process”.Sign up for the Guardian’s weekly Pacific coronavirus email

So why has the government taken this drastic action?


Prime Minister Marape was sworn into office in May 2019 and quickly set a narrative to “take back PNG”, arguing that the PNG people were not getting their fair share of the benefits of the formal economy and major natural resource projects. PNG’s ongoing economic crisis has been well documented and is only set to deepen in the fallout of Covid-19. As the tenth most natural resource-dependent economy in the world it is no surprise that the natural resource sector found itself in the government’s crosshairs.

The government is in the middle of negotiating a number of major natural resource deals – PNG LNG expansion, Papua LNG, P’nyang LNG, Frieda River copper and gold, and Wafi Golpu gold – that have the potential to transform PNG’s economic prospects for decades if properly negotiated. The 2020 oil price collapse has sent many of these projects back into the freezer and forced the government to narrow its sights. The decision on Porgera is an attempt from the government to both harvest more benefit from existing projects and to send a shot across the bow to projects still in negotiation that they mean business.

The government is walking a tightrope. It should, of course, be looking to extract every cent of benefit from these projects that it can. But if the government pushes too far, and acts too erratically, already weak investor sentiment will evaporate. While the people of Papua New Guinea own the resources under their feet, the PNG resource industry is not yet at a point where it can exploit them without foreign capital and expertise.

It’s no secret that pressure for a move on Porgera was a theme in local politics. The popular Enga governor, Peter Ipatas, was keen for the province to get a greater stake in the mine’s future. Ipatas is one of the country’s most successful politicians, and was among a group of influential governors whose moves last year swung the prime ministership to Marape.

Yet the limits of the government’s approach are already being tested. Marape had hoped Barrick would keep the mine operating while negotiating its exit. But the company’s firm refusal of that option and its immediate shutdown of the mine have demonstrated its bargaining power. Barrick’s Chinese joint venture partner, Zijin, has flagged international political ramifications, warning the lease dispute could damage bilateral relations between PNG and China.

PNG could find another operator to take over the mine and re-open it, but would likely find that tricky in the midst of a high-stakes legal dispute.

The immediate prospects are shaping up as a lose-lose outcome for both sides. PNG is taking the income hit right when it needs to stabilise its finances. But any compromise to allow Barrick to continue operating would dismantle the strong local support that Marape has won by being seen to “take back” the mine for the country.

Barrick is big and multinational enough to survive without the Porgera revenue, but the longer a legal dispute with the government goes on, the more its claims to a social licence to return to operations would be diminished.

Both sides might welcome a timely intervention by the courts that could give them space to step away from the high-stakes conflict and negotiate an appropriate face-saving compromise.

Medieval Europe’s waves of plague also required an economic action plan

May 6, 2020 

The Black Death (1347-51) devastated European society. Writing four decades after the event, the English monk and chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, remarked that “so much wretchedness followed these ills that afterwards the world could never return to its former state.”

This medieval commentary reflects a lived reality: a world turned upside down by mass fear, contagion and death.

Yet society recovered. Life continued despite the uncertainty. But it was not “business-as-usual” in the aftermath — the threat of plague remained.

The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows a devastated landscape where death is taking people indiscriminately as it appeared to during a wave of plague. (Museo del Prado)

Slow and painful recovery

The post-Black Death world had “not been made any better by its renewal.” The French monk, Guillaume de Nangis, lamented that men were more “miserly and grasping,” “greedy and quarrelsome” and involved in more “brawls, disputes and lawsuits.”

The shortage of workers in the aftermath was acute. The contemporary Historia Roffensis notes that swaths of land in England “remained uncultivated,” in a world dependent on agricultural production.

A scarcity of goods soon followed, forcing some landlords in the realm to lower or pardon rents in order to keep their tenants. “If labourers work not,” quipped the English preacher, Thomas Wimbledon, “priests and knights must become cultivators and herdsmen, or else die for want of bodily sustenance.”

Sometimes, the stimulus came by force. In 1349, the English government issued its Ordinance of Laborers, which legislated able-bodied men and women be paid salaries and wages at the pre-plague 1346 rate.

Other times, the recovery was more organic. According to the French Carmelite friar, Jean de Venette, “everywhere women conceived more readily than usual;” none was barren and pregnant women abounded. Several gave birth to twins and triplets, signalling a new age in the aftermath of such a great mortality.
A common and familiar enemy

Then the plague returned. A second pestilence struck England in 1361. A third wave affected several other countries in 1369. A fourth and fifth wave followed in 1374-79 and 1390-93 respectively

.

A painting by Domenico Gargiulo of Naples depicts a wave of disease that ravaged the city in the mid-1500s.

Plague was a constant feature in late medieval and early modern life. Between 1348 and 1670, wrote historians Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, it was a regular and recurring event:

“… sometimes across vast regions, sometimes only in a few localities, but without omitting a single annual link in this long and mournful chain.”

The disease impacted communities, villages and towns with greater risks to urban centres. With its dense population, London was scarcely free from disease with large outbreaks in 1603, 1625, 1636 and the “Great Plague” of 1665, which claimed 15 per cent of the city’s population.

No generation escaped its wrath.

Controlling the disaster

Governments were not shy in their responses. While their experience could never prevent an outbreak, their management of disease tried to mitigate future disasters.

Queen Elizabeth I’s Plague Order of 1578 implemented a series of controls to support the infected and their families. Throughout England, a government initiative ensured that infected people did not leave their homes for food or work.

Pesthouses were also built to house the sick and protect the healthy. In 1666, King Charles II ordered each town and city “to be in readiness in case any infection should break out.” If an infected person was discovered, he or she would be removed from the house and city while the former was closed for 40 days, with a red cross and the message “Lord have mercy upon us” affixed to the door.

In some cases, barriers, or cordons sanitaires, were built around infected communities. But they sometimes did more harm than good. According to the Enlightenment historian Jean-Pierre Papon, residents of the Provençal town of Digne in 1629 were prevented from leaving, from burying their dead and from constructing cabanes where they might have otherwise safely isolated from the disease.
State and moral authority

Experience and regulatory measures weren’t always effective.

The great plague that struck the southern French city of Marseille between 1720 and 1722 killed an estimated 100,000 people. Following the arrival of the Grand Saint-Antoine, a merchant ship returning from the Levant, “proper care and remedies” to prevent the fatal consequences of this disease were delayed and ignored. The disease spread to all parts of the city.

French artist Michel Serre’s 1721 work shows a view of the town hall in Marseilles during the city’s outbreak of plague the previous year. (Marseille Museum of Fine Arts)

The plague began to rage there within a matter of weeks. A corrupt doctor, false bills of health, political and economic pressures to unload the ship’s merchandise, and corrupt officials investigating the initial spread of the disease, all contributed to a disaster that could scarcely be contained in southern France.

Hospitals were saturated, unable to “receive the vast quantity of sick which came to them in throngs.” Exercising “double diligence,” authorities built new hospitals in the alleys, “fitted up large tents” on the city’s outskirts, filling them with “as many straw beds as possibly could remain there.”

Fearful of transmission on its shores, the English government quickly updated its protective measures. The Quarantine Act of 1721 threatened violence, imprisonment or death on anyone endeavouring to escape the enforced confinement, or those refusing to obey the new restrictions.

A portrait of Edmund Gibson, the bishop of London, attributed to English portraitist John Vanderbank. (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)

Some deemed these measures unnecessary. “Infection may have killed its thousands,” wrote one anonymous author, “but shutting up hath killed its ten thousands …”

Edmund Gibson, the bishop of London and an apologist for the government, disagreed. “Where the disease is desperate,” he wrote, “the remedy must be so too.” As such, he wrote, there was no point dwelling “upon rights and liberties, and the ease and convenience of mankind, when there was plague hanging over our heads.”

Social dislocation was an inevitable result — a necessary evil. But as medieval and early modern experiences with plague remind us, it is not a permanent fixture.

Author   Kriston R. Rennie

Visiting Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and Associate Professor in Medieval History, The University of Queensland
University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.


What can the Black Death tell us about the global economic consequences of a pandemic?

Miniature by Pierart dou Tielt

March 3, 2020

Concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus have translated into an economic slowdown. Stock markets have taken a hit: the UK’s FTSE 100 has seen its worst days of trading for many years and so have the Dow Jones and S&P in the US. Money has to go somewhere and the price of gold – seen as a stable commodity during extreme events – reached a seven-year high.

A look back at history can help us consider the economic effects of public health emergencies and how best to manage them. In doing so, however, it is important to remember that past pandemics were far more deadly than coronavirus, which has a relatively low death rate.

Without modern medicine and institutions like the World Health Organization, past populations were more vulnerable. It is estimated that the Justinian plague of 541 AD killed 25 million and the Spanish flu of 1918 around 50 million

By far the worst death rate in history was inflicted by the Black Death. Caused by several forms of plague, it lasted from 1348 to 1350, killing anywhere between 75 million and 200 million people worldwide and perhaps one half of the population of England. The economic consequences were also profound.
‘Anger, antagonism, creativity’

It might sound counter-factual – and this should not minimise the contemporary psychological and emotional turmoil caused by the Black Death – but the majority of those who survived went on to enjoy improved standards of living. Prior to the Black Death, England had suffered from severe overpopulation.

Following the pandemic, the shortage of manpower led to a rise in the daily wages of labourers, as they were able to market themselves to the highest bidder. The diets of labourers also improved and included more meat, fresh fish, white bread and ale. Although landlords struggled to find tenants for their lands, changes in forms of tenure improved estate incomes and reduced their demands.

But the period after the Black Death was, according to economic historian Christopher Dyer, a time of “agitation, excitement, anger, antagonism and creativity”. The government’s immediate response was to try to hold back the tide of supply-and-demand economics.

Life as a labourer in the 14th century was hard. British Library

This was the first time an English government had attempted to micromanage the economy. The Statute of Labourers law was passed in 1351 in an attempt to peg wages to pre-plague levels and restrict freedom of movement for labourers. Other laws were introduced attempting to control the price of food and even restrict which women were allowed to wear expensive fabrics.

But this attempt to regulate the market did not work. Enforcement of the labour legislation led to evasion and protests. In the longer term, real wages rose as the population level stagnated with recurrent outbreaks of the plague.

Landlords struggled to come to terms with the changes in the land market as a result of the loss in population. There was large-scale migration after the Black Death as people took advantage of opportunities to move to better land or pursue trade in the towns. Most landlords were forced to offer more attractive deals to ensure tenants farmed their lands.

A new middle class of men (almost always men) emerged. These were people who were not born into the landed gentry but were able to make enough surplus wealth to purchase plots of land. Recent research has shown that property ownership opened up to market speculation.

The dramatic population change wrought by the Black Death also led to an explosion in social mobility. Government attempts to restrict these developments followed and generated tension and resentment.

Meanwhile, England was still at war with France and required large armies for its campaigns overseas. This had to be paid for, and in England led to more taxes on a diminished population. The parliament of a young Richard II came up with the innovative idea of punitive poll taxes in 1377, 1379 and 1380, leading directly to social unrest in the form of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

Peasants revolting in 1381. Miniature by Jean de Wavrin

This revolt, the largest ever seen in England, came as a direct consequence of the recurring outbreaks of plague and government attempts to tighten control over the economy and pursue its international ambitions. The rebels claimed that they were too severely oppressed, that their lords “treated them as beasts”.
Lessons for today

While the plague that caused the Black Death was very different to the coronavirus that is spreading today, there are some important lessons here for future economic growth. First, governments must take great care to manage the economic fallout. Maintaining the status quo for vested interests can spark unrest and political volatility.

Second, restricting freedom of movement can cause a violent reaction. How far will our modern, mobile society consent to quarantine, even when it is for the greater good?

Plus, we should not underestimate the knee-jerk, psychological reaction. The Black Death saw an increase in xenophobic and antisemitic attacks. Fear and suspicion of non-natives changed trading patterns.

There will be winners and losers economically as the current public health emergency plays out. In the context of the Black Death, elites attempted to entrench their power, but population change in the long term forced some rebalancing to the benefit of labourers, both in terms of wages and mobility and in opening up the market for land (the major source of wealth at the time) to new investors. Population decline also encouraged immigration, albeit to take up low skilled or low-paid jobs. All are lessons that reinforce the need for measured, carefully researched responses from current governments.

Authors

Adrian R. Bell
Chair in the History of Finance and Research Dean, Prosperity and Resilience, Henley Business School, University of Reading

Andrew Prescott
Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Glasgow

Helen Lacey
Lecturer in Late Medieval History, University of Oxford
Disclosure statement

Adrian R. Bell receives funding from the AHRC and previously from the ESRC.

Andrew Prescott receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Rsearch Council.

Helen Lacey receives funding from the AHRC.

India uses coronavirus pandemic to exploit human rights in Kashmir

May 7, 2020

The United Nations has called for an immediate global ceasefire to “put armed conflict in lockdown” and focus on protecting the most vulnerable from the spread of COVID-19. Yet tragically, there are cases around the world where violations have occurred.

Ongoing developments in Kashmir include a crackdown on Kashmiri journalists, rising policing powers and enhanced curfew measures. These actions suggest that the Indian government may be exploiting the pandemic to accelerate its settler-colonial ambitions in the disputed territory.

Indian paramilitary soldiers guard at a closed market in Srinagar, Indian-occupied Kashmir, Aug. 21, 2019. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

For the past six years, I have worked as a researcher along the Line of Control (LoC) — the de-facto border that divides Kashmir into India and Pakistan. I am also on the board of directors for the advocacy organization, Canadians for Peace and Justice in Kashmir.

Thousands of Kashmiris live within a 10-kilometre radius of the LoC, which is so heavily militarized that it is visible from space.

Kashmiris are vulnerable to both the contagion and the violence of the ongoing conflict.
War during a pandemic

In April, the Indian army set up artillery weapons deep in Kashmiri villages, as far as 60 kilometres from bunkered areas, to launch long-distance fire on Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

This encroachment is creating widespread panic and anxiety. Locals are protesting the shifting of heavy artillery guns into their communities, fearing retaliatory fire from the Pakistani army.

It is an intentional strategy to station soldiers and artillery among communities to make it difficult for the Pakistani army to retaliate. The blurring of civilian and military targets amounts to a war crime.

The Indian army has used civilian populations as a human shield before. In 2017, footage emerged of a Kashmiri man tied to a military vehicle patrolling a Kashmiri town.

As Indian and Pakistani forces continue to exchange fire, widespread loss of civilian life and property is being reported on both sides of the LoC.

An underground community bunker in Neelum valley, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. (Nusrat Jamal), Author provided

During the exchange of cross-border fire, families are forced to take shelter in community bunkers. These are small enclosed spaces that make social distancing practices impossible to follow.

Furthermore, people trying to escape their villages during bombardment are prevented from leaving by the police as they enforce COVID-19 lockdown measures.
Asia’s Berlin Wall

The LoC, also known as Asia’s Berlin Wall, does not constitute a legally recognized international boundary. It was put in place in 1949 as a temporary measure until the status of Kashmir is resolved.

In her book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior, Cabeiri deBergh Robinson, associate professor of South Asian studies at the University of Washington, explains that in earlier years, the LoC was permeable and fluid. It was only after the Simla Agreement in 1972, that it came to mimic the impermeability of a border.

In this Oct. 4, 2016 photo, Indian army soldiers patrol near the highly militarized Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, in Pallanwal, Indian-occupied Kashmir. (AP Photo/Channi Anand) (AP Photo/Channi Anand)
‘100 little sleeps’

From 1990-2003, during the peak of the Kashmiri insurgency, the LoC was a site of intense conflict between Indian and Pakistani militaries.

Armies fired long-range artillery and mortar shells at each other, killing and harming civilians, property and livestock in the process.

Even though a shaky ceasefire was reached in 2003, skirmishes flare up unannounced.

During my research in the Neelum valley in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, a villager described living near the LoC: “We are never at ease. The firing can start at any time. It’s like having 100 little sleeps every night.”

The number of civilians killed on each side of the LoC is challenging to document, given a lack of government transparency.

The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) is responsible for monitoring the ceasefire. India stands accused of blocking UNMOGIP’s access to the LoC.

This year alone, India has committed 882 ceasefire violations.
Pre-existing inequality

Pandemics do not occur in a vacuum but exacerbate pre-existing inequalities.

Kashmir is ill-prepared to handle the pandemic. In Indian-occupied Kashmir, there is one soldier for every nine people but only one ventilator for every 71,000 people, and one doctor for every 3,900 people.

Health facilities along the LoC are severely deficient, reflecting India and Pakistan’s neglect of the sub-region.

Given the current suspension of high-speed 4G internet, Kashmiris are prevented from accessing necessary public health information needed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Internet and telecommunication services are restricted on both sides of the LoC.
Kashmir’s annexation

Amid the pandemic, on Mar. 31, India introduced a new domicile law. This is one of the many legislative changes set by India following the unilateral abrogation of Article 370 in August last year.

The domicile law paves the way for demographic flooding in Kashmir, which will allow non-Kashmiris to obtain property, compete for government jobs and impact the outcomes of a referendum on Kashmir’s future should it be held.

Demographic flooding as a colonial strategy has been used by Israel along the West Bank as well as China in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
A Kashmir yet to come

The pandemic has inspired thinking on the complete restructuring of our world. It has shed light on the centrality of care workers and those at the forefront of our food systems.Kashmiri men ride a shikara, a traditional gondola, to catch fish in the interiors of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, Indian-occupied Kashmir, April 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

It is forcing us to imagine “a world we do not yet know and cannot describe” as scholar Vafa Ghazavi recently wrote.

A just world won’t emerge as if by magic. We will need to fight for it.

The LoC does not signal the closure of Kashmir’s forms and futures. It is a site of potentiality, for a Kashmir yet to come.

This Kashmir would not be held back by the paucity of our imagination or the lack of available language. It would be a Kashmir where Kashmiris can freely choose learning, laughter and living.

#FREEKASHMIR  #KASHMIR IS #INDIA 'S   #GAZA

Author
Omer Aijazi
Postdoctoral research fellow, Religion and Anthropology, University of Toronto
Disclosure statement
Omer Aijazi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to conduct research in Kashmir and Northern Pakistan.
Partners
University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.

How Steinbeck's Cannery Row spoke to me – even in small-town Indonesia 

The 1945 novel was one of the first I translated – and it released to me the secrets of authorship in my own language
Eka Kurniawan
Mon 11 May 2020

 

‘This novel invites us to see the world from a humble, and at times very narrow, perspective.’ Street sign in Monterey, California. Photograph: Ian G Dagnall/Alamy Stock Photo

We can argue over which John Steinbeck novel is the best. Some might pick the The Grapes of Wrath, an epic about the working class, about migration. Others might say Tortilla Flat, about a group of unemployed paisanos living from one small party to another. Or maybe Of Mice and Men, a tragedy about what it means, and how, to be human.

But if I were to pick the most important Steinbeck novel in my life, both as a reader and as a writer, I would say Cannery Row. Published in 1945, the novel is loosely about a group of unemployed people who live in the sardine-canning district of Monterey, California, and try to organise a party for their friend. Perhaps some other books have affected my life to a degree, but this book changed me in a completely different way.

The poor people in this novel, with their simple language, try to speak and to understand the world like intellectuals

I discovered it at a time when I was new to serious literature. I was still an undergraduate at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, to which I came from a small coastal town, Pangandaran. Before setting foot on campus, I had only read collections of silat (martial arts fantasy) and horror novels by local writers, with the occasional addition of a hacky romance. When I imagined what “literature” meant in those years, novels like that were what came to my mind.

Yogyakarta may not be a big city – although it was briefly the capital of the Indonesian republic – but it seemed very large indeed for a boy from a small town, especially when it came to its books. I easily found the bookstores, from the very large shops to the small stalls that lined the roadsides, as well as the many libraries. It was during this period that I became acquainted with not only the Indonesian canon but also with the literary maestros of the rest of the world. It was a time when, full of curiosity, I became intoxicated with foreign-language books. I explored these new works like a treasure hunter and eventually discovered a cave full of gold: English.

Actually, I had read one book in English, when I was in middle school. But it was forgettable. This time around, I was engaged in a more serious effort to expand my knowledge, combined with a deep curiosity about something foreign. English opened a window in my mind, especially when I encountered works that were not available in translation at the time.

How could these writers produce such works? And how could I write like them? I often made small summaries of these books after I read them. Sometimes I rewrote them in my own language, just to understand the structure and movement of the stories. But I felt that it was not enough. I really wanted to sit in the chairs of these writers, imagine myself being them, and write the same works word for word. There were only two ways to do it. Rewrite them verbatim – or translate them.

With some modest experience under my belt, I decided upon the second with Cannery Row. The book, which I bought used, was one of the first that I was determined to translate, and it was a truly extraordinary experience. I not only felt like I was sitting in Steinbeck’s chair, with my fingers writing as if they were his fingers, but I was also forced to explore various possibilities within the Indonesian language.

This novel, as I later learned, shared much with his other novels: it invites us to see the world from a humble, and at times very narrow, perspective. From the engine of a dilapidated Ford Model T to the cash register of a grocery store owned by a Chinese immigrant, even to a brothel. The world in this novel was certainly different from the one I lived in, but at the same time, as a small-town boy I was able to feel a connection to it.

‘17,000 islands of imagination’: discovering Indonesian literature

The most challenging thing, of course, was the language. We know that Steinbeck often uses conversational language and dialect, but there was something more important than that. In Cannery Row, he employs a satirical, ironic tone. The poor people in this novel, with their simple language, try to speak and to understand the world like intellectuals. Grocers who deal daily with people who are unable to pay their modest bills talk about their problems as if they are talking about the state of the world economy. This creates a very powerful comedy.

I would not say the results of my translation were good. Far from it. Years later, when a publisher obtained the translation rights for the novel, they contacted me to use my attempt. I gave it to them, although I had to re-edit it into what was almost a whole new translation. But I can feel the sentiment embedded in that original translation until today. The adventures of Mac and his friends, Doc with his laboratory, their adventures in a beat-up car, a drinking party that ends in chaos: it all feels like it came from my own fingertips. The book opened a window into the world for a young reader and also, in a mysterious way, released the secrets of authorship.

• Eka Kurniawan’s novels include Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger

Translated from Indonesian by Krithika Varagur

It’s time to take UFOs seriously. Seriously.

Alexander Wendt is one of the most influential political scientists alive. Here’s his case for taking UFOs seriously.

By Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Updated May 9, 2020

The “Area 51 Basecamp” event at the Alien Research Center in Hiko, Nevada, on September 20, 2019. Mario Tama/Getty Images


The Pentagon recently released three videos of UFOs recorded by the Navy — one taken in 2004 and the other two in 2015. The videos, which first leaked a couple of years ago, show … well, it’s not exactly clear.

There are various objects — two of which look like aircraft — spinning through the sky and moving in ways that defy easy explanation. As the images bop across the screen, you can hear the pilots’ excitement and confusion in real time as they track whatever it is they’re seeing.

I’m not what you would call a UFO enthusiast, but the videos are the most compelling I’ve ever seen. They seem to confirm, at the very least, that UFOs are real — not that aliens exist, but that there are unidentified objects buzzing around the sky.

Now, do I think aliens are real? Yeah, probably. Are they flying spaceships into our atmosphere? Who the hell knows?

The best anyone can say is that there’s a non-zero chance that some of these UFOs were made by non-human hands, and that, I’d argue, is reason enough to talk about them. But it’s barely cracked the news cycle. Even in a pandemic, you’d think we’d have a little time for UFO talk.

So in an attempt to force a UFO conversation into the public discourse, I contacted Alexander Wendt, a professor of international relations at Ohio State University. Wendt is a giant in his field of IR theory, but in the past 15 years or so, he’s become an amateur ufologist. He wrote an academic article about the political implications of UFOs in 2008, and, more recently, he gave a TEDx talk calling out the “taboo” against studying UFOs.

Wendt is about the closest thing you’ll find to a UFO expert in a world in which ufology isn’t a real science. Like other enthusiasts, he’s spent a lot of time looking at the evidence, thinking about the stakes, and theorizing about why extraterrestrials would visit Earth in the first place.

In this conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity, we discuss why scientists refuse to take UFOs seriously, why he thinks there’s a good chance ETs are behind the aircraft in those videos, and why he believes the discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the most significant event in human history.
Sean Illing

Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

Alexander Wendt

Well, it’s kind of like asking if somebody believes in God. It’s just an odd question. I certainly believe that it’s very likely there’s extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe, and I suspect even most scientists might agree with that now. The real question is, are ETs here? And that’s obviously a much more debatable question.

Sean Illing
Are they here?

Alexander Wendt
I think the odds are high enough that we should be investigating it. It’s as simple as that.

Sean Illing
Why would aliens conceal their existence? I know you have theories on this —

Alexander Wend
It’s possible they’ve been here all along. And that’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately, which is a bit unsettling. Because it means it’s their planet and not ours. They could just be intergalactic tourists. Maybe they’re looking for certain minerals. It could just be scientific curiosity. It could be that they’re extracting our DNA. I mean, who knows? I have no idea. All I know is that if they are here, they seem to be peaceful.


Sean Illing
You’ve thought about this a lot, Alex. You must have a hunch as to which of those scenarios is most likely.


Alexander Wendt
I think if they are here, they’ve probably been here a very long time — that’s my guess. And, look, there are medieval woodcuts that seem to show UFOs. There are UFO stories in the Bible, apparently, or at least stories that are interpreted that way. So I think they’ve probably been here a long time if they’re here.


Sean Illing
We’re having this conversation because you’ve been very public about calling out a “taboo” against studying UFOs. What’s your claim here?


Alexander Wendt
It’s very simple. There are things going on in the sky that are strange and do not have an obvious explanation. These are UFOs, and like any other unidentified phenomenon, human beings are curious creatures and normally scientists will rush out to study whatever we find fascinating or puzzling. But in this case, scientists won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. And that’s the taboo.

So even though the Navy is now saying, “Hey, we’ve got UFOs on film, here they are,” the scientists are still not going to study them. So there seems to be something blocking the scientific community from engaging this phenomenon, even though anything else even remotely this interesting would generate limitless research dollars.


Sean Illing
Is this some kind of conspiracy of silence? How does a taboo like this take hold in the first place?


Alexander Wendt
We argued in our 2008 academic paper that the modern state is what we call anthropocentric. Basically, that means human beings are sovereigns. In ancient times, it was the gods or nature that was thought to rule over everything. Now it’s human beings. And this principle is embodied in the state. And if you call that into question, if you call into question that the state is not the only potential sovereign here, the whole legitimacy of the state is called into question. So the whole worldview of the modern state is very vulnerable to the UFO question. You can’t even ask the question because it raises the possibility that there could be ETs here. And that would just blow everything wide open.

Sovereignty and the UFO Alexander Wendt The Ohio State University Raymond Duvall University of Minnesota Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is. 

Sean Illing
That’s an argument for why states might not be interested in this question, but it doesn’t explain why non-state actors or the private sector isn’t particularly eager to study this.


Alexander Wendt
Now, that’s a very good point. In our paper, we only dealt with states. What’s interesting lately is that states seem more willing to engage with this than scientists. I think there’s a hubris in the scientific community, a belief that human beings are the most intelligent species on this planet, and it’s very hard to come to grips with the idea that if there are aliens here, they’re obviously much smarter than we are.

I’ve received a lot of emails from individual scientists in response to my TEDx talk. And all of them said the same thing, which is, “Thank you, we wish we could study this, but we can’t because our lives depend on getting grants from the government and other research institutes, and if anybody gets worried that we’re interested in UFOs, boom, they won’t get a cent and their careers will be in the tank.” But I still think most scientists believe this is all nonsense anyway, and that’s frankly disappointing.

“I WORRY ABOUT MY FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS MORE THAN I WORRY ABOUT THE ALIENS”

Sean Illing
I think there are other explanations here, but we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk about these Navy videos. What do you think you’re seeing when you watch these?


Alexander Wendt
The first thing I’d say is that it doesn’t matter what I think because I’m not a scientist, right? I don’t know what’s on those videos. But to me, I listened to the pilots, to their voices, and I trust them much more than I would trust myself. And they’re clearly seeing something extraordinary. Now, whether it’s alien life, who knows? It’s a plausible explanation. My point is that we should be agnostic about this and simply study it scientifically. Let’s do the science and then we can talk about what we found. Until we’ve done that, it’s all bullshit.


Sean Illing
Is it possible that there is no real taboo and that the lack of rigorous study has more to do with the limits of the field or the paucity of evidence than anything else?


Alexander Wendt
Well, it’s true that the evidence we have is very vague. Most of it is anecdotal. It’s not scientific. A lot of it is eyewitness reports. On the other hand, the evidence has been going on for many decades. It’s very consistent, in many ways. It’s all over the world. There’s a huge number of cases and there is physical evidence in the form of videos or radar accounts. And when that evidence comes from the US Navy, it’s safe to say that it’s legit and not doctored

Sean Illing
But what would a science of UFOs even look like? How do we study empirically something for which there’s so little empirical evidence?


Alexander Wendt
Like Elizabeth Warren says, I have a plan for that.


Sean Illing
Great, let’s hear it.


Alexander Wendt
About five years ago, some colleagues of mine and I formed a nonprofit called UFODATA. And the objective we set for the nonprofit was to create a ground-based network of surveillance stations that would monitor the sky 24/7 with cameras and various other technologies, looking for UFOs. Anything comes along, boom, the cameras start snapping pictures or radar or film until the UFO passes. The technology is very sophisticated now and very cheap.


Sean Illing
I don’t quite understand the need for that. There are thousands of satellites and radar systems operating all over the world at every moment, surveilling and recording and tracking. An obvious question is, why are there not more sightings? Why is there not more evidence? Why are there so few compelling pieces of evidence?


Alexander Wendt
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the parameters of these technologies that we use to look for asteroids and meteors and all these other things are such that UFOs may not be within those parameters. And so they’ll just be discarded as noise or unnoticeable junk. So that’s one explanation for why we see less than we might.

Secondly, no one has bothered to actually look for UFOs. We’re looking for ETs around distant stars, we’re looking for comets, we’re looking at all kinds of other things in the atmosphere. No one, as far as I know, is seriously looking for UFOs. But to me, it doesn’t really matter why we don’t see more. What matters is those three videos that the Navy released. I defy anyone to watch those and come away thinking there’s nothing there worth investigating. Those pilots who spent thousands of hours in the sky, who are flying the most sophisticated machines in the entire world, are seeing something that they have never seen before and are completely blown away by it.

Again, these are videos released by the Navy, and so I’m inclined to believe what I’m seeing. What’s striking is that the objects don’t behave like natural phenomena. One of the objects rotates as it’s flying against the wind, which is not normal. And the pilots are clearly under the impression that these objects are under intelligent control.

Sean Illing
Are you persuaded at all by some of the non-ET explanations? For instance, that some of the UFOs are actually weather balloons or drones or shadows of aircraft above, and that what appear to be advanced maneuvers are really just the product of infrared glare or camera angles or eyewitness errors.


Alexander Wendt
I think the majority of UFO reports probably have conventional explanations like that and they’re just misidentifications by observers on the ground. That’s probably the majority of cases. So it’s really the hardcore minority cases that don’t have those kinds of obvious explanations. And that’s where we have better physical evidence, or authoritative sources, like the military. And it’s really easy to throw out skeptical possibilities. But I look at those videos and they don’t look fake to me at all.


Sean Illing
No, they don’t.


Alexander Wendt
The pilots clearly don’t think so, either.


Sean Illing
Tell me the truth: You think it’s aliens, right?


Alexander Wendt
I think so. If I were placing a bet, I guess I would say 51 to 49 in favor of ETs. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the opposite were true. Again, we haven’t done the science.


Sean Illing
That’s a big number, Alex.
Alexander Wendt
It is.


Sean Illing
To say that something is hard to explain is not to say that it’s inexplicable, though. It’s entirely possible — likely, even — that there’s a simple account of these encounters and we just don’t have it yet. What’s the Occam’s razor explanation for these UFO sightings?


Alexander Wendt
To me, the Occam’s razor explanation is ETs.


Sean Illing
Really?


Alexander Wendt
It explains all the cases just like that. And you don’t need a whole bunch of different theories or assumptions for all these different phenomena, right? Because the phenomena are different. But I guess I don’t see a competing explanation of any kind that would explain some of the stuff that we either have on film or the pilots have seen. And, again, why didn’t the military come up with these alternative explanations? They must have thought about them and concluded it doesn’t fit the data.


Sean Illing
I’m not sure that’s right. They may have a strong hunch but simply can’t prove it, so it remains officially “unidentified.” We can definitely say that the chances that aliens are involved is non-zero, but beyond that, I have no idea.


Alexander Wendt
That’s pretty close to my position.


Sean Illing
But a weather balloon or malfunctioning radar systems or just eyewitness mistakes seem like much simpler explanations.


Alexander Wendt
But you’d have to explain why multiple instruments were all malfunctioning in the same way at the same time. You’ve got multiple jets up there, you’ve got radar on the ships down below tracking at the same time. You’ve got communications going on with people on the ships and the planes and the guys in the planes. So whatever explanations people do offer, they’ve got to fit the data.

It doesn’t look like that was a weather balloon that those guys were seeing. I assume professional fighter pilots are pretty good at spotting and recognizing weather balloons, and surely that’s a common occurrence. It’s easy to be a skeptic here, I get that. All I’m saying is that there’s enough here to justify the science. The puzzle is that we’re not doing the science. To me, that’s the essential phenomenon that’s of interest.


Sean Illing
Why should scientists care about UFOs? Why should philosophers care? Why should anyone care?


Alexander Wendt
Because if ETs were discovered, it would be the most important event in human history.


Sean Illing
Why?


Alexander Wendt
If it became known, it could be a very dangerous event in the sense that we might see a collapse of state authority. We might see chaos. The possibility of contact with a civilization that has vastly more knowledge than we do is exciting and terrifying and unpredictable.


Sean Illing
I mean, isn’t that a case for putting our heads down and minding our fucking business? Stephen Hawking famously warned humanity about the perils of first contact with an alien species. “If aliens visit us,” he said, “the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”
Was he wrong?

Alexander Wend
My feeling is that if they’re here, they’re almost certainly peaceful, because if they were not peaceful they would have wiped us out a long time ago. They can probably do it very quickly. So my assumption is they don’t mean any harm. But it’s still the case that society could implode or destabilize as a result of colliding with ETs.


Sean Illing
That’s a big assumption. If they are here, they might be peaceful, sure. But they might also be on a scouting operation. They might be looking for holes in our defenses, weaknesses in our societies and in our physical bodies. The point, obviously, is that we have no freaking idea. So maybe that’s the case for following Hawking’s lead here, right? Maybe it’s best to not go poking about for superior life.


Alexander Wendt
I’ve thought about this, and I worry less about poking around and getting conquered and more about the potential realization that these things are here and then an internal implosion of our society. So I worry about my fellow human beings more than I worry about the aliens. So I guess in that sense, I disagree with Hawking’s premise that they’re out to get us. But sure, it’s possible they’re on a surveillance mission. But people have been reporting UFOs for at least 80 years, and that’s a really, really long surveillance mission. And also, why would they want to conquer us? That’s like us conquering ants.

Sean Illing
If some of these UFOs are the products of alien life, why haven’t they made their presence more explicit? If they wanted to remain undetected, they could, and yet they continually expose themselves in these semi-clandestine ways. Why?


Alexander Wendt
That’s a very good question. Because you’re right, I think if they wanted to be completely secretive, they could. If they wanted to come out in the open, they could do that, too. My guess is that they have had a lot of experience with this in the past with civilizations at our stage. And they probably know that if they land on the White House lawn, there’ll be chaos and social breakdown. People will start shooting at them.

So I think what they’re doing is trying to get us used to the idea that they’re here with the hopes that we’ll figure it out ourselves, that we’ll go beyond the taboo and do the science. And then maybe we can absorb the knowledge that we’re not alone and our society won’t implode when we finally do have contact. That’s my theory, but who knows, right?


Sean Illing
It’s an interesting theory, and as likely as any other, but Hawking’s theory is every bit as plausible —
Alexander Wendt
That’s right. But people have speculated that any civilization that’s able to travel between the stars would have to become nonviolent, because they would never survive long enough if they’re violent among themselves to actually reach a point where their technology was that sophisticated. And human beings don’t seem to be as violent as we used to be, so there’s that.


Sean Illing
I’d say our institutions have evolved and the incentives guiding our behavior have evolved, but I don’t think we have. I think human beings are as nonviolent as their circumstances allow them to be.


Alexander Wendt
That’s fair.


Sean Illing
If there’s a non-zero chance that aliens are real and they know we’re here, it’s crazy that governments aren’t more concerned about the dangers. We’ve all seen the same movies. How do you explain the apparent indifference here?


Alexander Wendt
For governments, there’s no real upside to talking about this. They can’t control this. If there are ETs, they don’t have the power to do anything about it. They’re helpless in the face of ETs. And there’s a big downside risk of social chaos, loss of authority, loss of control and all that. So I think governments have lots of reasons to let a sleeping dog lie, which is why the Navy’s thing is so surprising in a way.


Sean Illing
Maybe several governments already know of ETs and aren’t revealing that knowledge for all the reasons you suggest.


Alexander Wendt
I’m a strong disbeliever in any kind of conspiracy argument. I don’t think there has ever been a conspiracy to cover up the truth that we know that aliens are here. At most, we’ve covered up the fact that we have no idea what’s going on.

“FOR GOVERNMENTS, THERE’S NO REAL UPSIDE TO TALKING ABOUT THIS. THEY CAN’T CONTROL THIS.”

Sean Illing
What’s the argument or the piece of evidence that gives you the most pause? What makes you think there’s nothing here?


Alexander Wendt
That’s a good question. That I don’t have a good answer shows my bias in a way. I guess I’d like to see more videos of the sort the Navy just released. It’s likely they have other videos they haven’t released. So I guess I would like to see more physical evidence. I suppose that’s my answer: The thing that gives me the most pause is that we have so little evidence.


Sean Illing
You said a minute ago that we might be in a pre-contact situation in which ETs are gradually acclimating us to their presence. If that’s true, what should we be doing to prepare for whatever comes next?


Alexander Wendt
Actually, that’s the next article I would like to write. I don’t know what the answer is right now. I only write articles where I don’t know the answer ahead of time. But I guess I will say this: Montezuma could’ve prepared a lot better for Cortes than he did, had he only known Cortes was coming.

The economic crisis exacerbates how much we undervalue women’s work

Women and people of color were already at a disadvantage — then the pandemic hit.

By Emily Stewartemily.stewart@vox.com May 11, 2020


Cashiers wearing protective masks at a grocery store in Bushwick, Brooklyn in New York City on April 2. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
This story is part of a group of stories called

Evidence-based explanations of the coronavirus crisis, from how it started to how it might end to how to protect yourself and others.

The coronavirus has compounded a crisis onto deep, longstanding economic inequities in the United States. And women, particularly women of color, communities of color, and impoverished Americans are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn.

On May 7, Vox Media and the National Partnership for Women and Families hosted a panel conversation about the ways in which the coronavirus has disproportionately impacted different segments of the workforce, and the ways in which people who are already struggling are being further left behind during the pandemic. The discussion delved into how the crisis has affected workers, the disadvantages many people were facing heading into the crisis, and whether there’s hope that any of this will bring about real change. Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, and Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, participated in the panel, along with Vox senior reporter Anna North and Vox reporter Emily Stewart (me).

“In very subtle and not so subtle ways, we have watched these cultural norms and these social policies perpetuate and devalue the work that women do,” said Ness.


Since the onset of the crisis, more than 33 million Americans have filed new jobless claims. More than 20.5 million jobs were lost during the month of April alone, with the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 14.7 percent. Unemployment insurance systems have been overwhelmed, leaving many unemployed people scrambling. Meanwhile, essential workers who have kept their jobs have found themselves in a precarious spot. They continue to go to work, putting themselves and their families at risk, often for low wages and insufficient benefits. Many would rather quit their jobs but feel like they can’t, because doing so usually disqualifies you for unemployment benefits.


Look one layer deeper, and you start to see a picture of what these workers look like. The April unemployment rate was 13 percent for men and 15.5 percent for women; it is 14.2 percent for whites, 14.5 percent for Asians, 16.7 percent for blacks, and 18.9 percent for Hispanics. And across every racial group, the unemployment rate for women is higher than it is for men. And many essential jobs are disproportionately held by women, people of color, and those who are already vulnerable.

“Very few people realize the extent to which women are these frontline workers and essential workers that we’re talking about,” Ness said.

The coronavirus crisis has exposed many cracks in the system and exacerbated longstanding inequalities. Take, for example, the gender pay gap: Women make about 80 cents to the dollar compared to men, and for black and Hispanic women, the statistics are much worse. Women with full-time employment lose a collective estimated $900 billion each year. Now, in the global pandemic, government officials have shuttered broad swaths of the economy. Those making less money before, and therefore less able to save, have a harder time weathering the storm.

“If you are paid less money, you are less able to absorb any kind of crisis or disruption in income,” said Dixon.

When the US begins to emerge from the coronavirus crisis and the economic catastrophe that comes with it, the question then becomes whether some positive change can come of the pandemic. More Americans have suffered the consequences of an insufficient social safety net, and the country has recognized how essential some often under-recognized workers are. Policies and government actions that seemed unimaginable just a few months ago — stimulus checks for American households, expanded unemployment benefits — have been enacted. The country could revert to how it was before, or it could look toward a sort of new New Deal, like what happened after the Great Depression, and create a more equitable America.

'If your child is hungry, you will eat your rulers to feed your children'

How a Lebanese city was pushed over the edge

By Tamara Qiblawi and Ghazi Balkiz, CNN
Video by Tariq Keblaoui

Sat May 2, 2020

Tripoli, Lebanon (CNN) -- A large bag of the thistly gundelia plant arrives at Um Ahmad's door as it does nearly every day. Wearing a double layered headscarf, she settles into a blue armchair. She has until the afternoon to trim the spines off the wild plant for her customers to cook.

"We work on the akoub (gundelia) so that we can live," says Um Ahmad, using a pseudonym.

When visitors walk into her dark, cavernous room to meet her, she doesn't even look up. A drama series blasts from an old TV.

I get paid 10,000 liras for five kilograms of this," she mumbles, peeling the stems of the spiny plant with a small curved knife. Because the Lebanese lira is in free-fall, her payment is worth just over $2.

"The akoub doesn't even come every day," says Um Ahmad, never meeting her guests' eyes.

Um Ahmad lives beneath a centuries-old souk (or marketplace) in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli.

Outside, the city roils with violent demonstrations, known as the "hunger protest." These started just as Lebanon was loosening its coronavirus lockdown, and beginning to contend with poor living conditions exacerbated by the near shutdown of the economy.
Nightly confrontations between demonstrators and the Lebanese army have rocked Tripoli over the last week, turning it into the epicenter of the country's renewed uprising against its political elite.

Protests against Lebanon's political class, which has ruled the country since its civil war and is widely accused of corruption, engulfed its main urban centers in late 2019. At the time, tens of thousands of Tripoli's protesters flocked onto the streets. The city was dubbed "the bride of the revolution," both because of its energetic protests and because it was believed to have borne the brunt of political corruption.

Tripoli is the poorest city in Lebanon, despite being home to some of its most high-profile billionaires. A slum stretches across the banks of the city's Abu Ali river, just minutes from pockets of extravagant wealth. The income disparity was always stark, but these days, Tripoli's locals say it is unbearable.

"No one has trust in the banks. No one has trust in the state. There's injustice, there's shame and there's oppression," says Ahmad Aich, who runs a shoe stand.

Aich's voice rises to a crescendo. As with many Tripoli natives, the conversation begins with the soft tones of a city folk known for their kindness to strangers, but quickly turns into a tirade about living conditions.

"The solution is for the army chief to round up all the politicians who robbed this country and to put them in jail," says Aich. "They pillaged the country and killed it and killed its people."
Calls for the army to deliver justice echo across Tripoli even as demonstrators hurl stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at the armed forces. The military has responded with brute force. It has fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and, in some instances, live fire, at protesters, killing one on Monday and wounding dozens over the last week.

"The army are our brothers. What we want is for them to join us, take the politicians from their houses, and throw them in the garbage dump," says protester Ghassan, a 24-year-old handyman and a father-to-be who asked not to disclose his full name for security reasons.
"If your child is hungry, you will eat your rulers to feed your children," he adds.
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab has called the demonstrations "natural" given growing economic hardship, but has accused rioters of infiltrating the protests in order to cause unrest. The Lebanese army also acknowledged the right to "freedom of expression" and cast suspicion on violent protesters. It said it would launch an investigation into Monday's death.

Rising poverty

Lebanon's economy has taken a nose dive since last year. Before an uprising gripped the country in October 2019, the World Bank said nearly one third of the population was living under the poverty line. Earlier this year, the bank updated that statistic to 45% for the year 2020. Now, after government measures designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus halted the economy, Lebanon's government believes up to 75% of the country needs aid.
It is a dramatic drop in living standards for a country which in 2018 had the highest GDP per capita among the Arab world's non-oil producing nations.

In recent weeks, the Lebanese lira lost over half its value, hurting both merchants and consumers. Small shop owners are struggling to secure supplies, and the country's growing legions of poor people can't afford to buy them.

In Tripoli, many people say that most staple goods have at least doubled in price, making the working class increasingly reliant on aid from charities.

Amer El-Deek, 30, used to own a shoe stand and made ends meet with a daily income of $10. Now, he says, all he can do is beg and rely on food packages from an Islamic charity.


"We don't know how we're even alive," says Deek, the father of a six-year-old. "I now go to sleep and think: God, I hope I don't wake up. I hope I die tomorrow."

'Hunger protests'

When the "hunger protests" kicked off last week, few were surprised. "I see that a revolution of the hungry is coming," Hezbollah-backed MP and former intelligence chief Jamil El-Sayyed tweeted in December.

The uprising's largely peaceful protests turned violent after a nearly two-month respite due to coronavirus. In Tripoli, protesters staged large demonstrations outside politicians' homes vowing to avenge their alleged corruption. Nearly every bank branch in the city has been damaged by the protests, with demonstrators voicing their fury at the banking sector's discretionary capital controls.

On any given work day, long queues of people begging to withdraw their cash can be seen outside bank branches. Lebanese authorities have resisted calls to formalize capital controls, raising suspicions that the economic elite in Lebanon have been exercising their influence to remove their funds from the country, while small depositors are largely denied access to their life savings.

Young and old head to Tripoli's protest sites after Ramadan's Taraweeh prayers, which are performed after the fast is broken during the holy month.

They arrive on mopeds, gather in crowds and yell protest chants. Most do not wear face masks, and no one is observing government-mandated social distancing rules. That's because most of the people on Tripoli's streets believe that coronavirus doesn't exist here.
The lockdown has stoked resentment, fueled rumors of a government conspiracy to further impoverish the poor and ultimately ignited the protests.

"We don't have coronavirus here in Tripoli. Coronavirus is a heresy. (The politicians) made it up," says one city native, Marwan el-Zahed.


"What do I care about coronavirus," says another Tripolitan, Ahmad Abou Abdallah. "(The politicians) are worse than coronavirus. They are dirtier than coronavirus. They are making people hungry. Doesn't that make them worse than the virus?"

Read more: Violent protests erupt in Lebanon as pandemic makes financial crisis worse
Fourteen cases of the coronavirus have been reported so far in Tripoli. In total, Lebanon has had 740 confirmed cases of the virus and 24 deaths. It has received some credit for a largely successful bid to contain the virus.

Underground, Um Ahmad is too busy working on her gundelia to talk politics. She has also lapsed into disillusionment.

"My situation is just as you see it," she says, gesturing to her home's conditions. "Sometimes I empty the pulp of zucchini for people. But also that doesn't come every day."