Behind the Cuba crisis is U.S. politics, intervention, trade embargo

 25-Jul-2021
Azhar Azam

U.S. and Cuban flags display side by side in Havana, Cuba. /Getty

Editor's note: Azhar Azam works in a private organization as market and business analyst and writes about geopolitical issues and regional conflicts. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The history of U.S. antipathy toward Cuba and intervention in the Caribbean island harks back to early 1960s when Washington failed to overthrow Cuban revolutionist leader Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Loss of U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista and a Soviet-inclined government next door at the height of the Cold War was a lethal brew for America.

Since then, Washington's Cuba policy has been dominated at isolating Havana economically through an adulterous trade embargo. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, American blockade of the small economy was noticed by the international world that chose to withdraw its support for "unjust" financial and trade restrictions, costing Cuban people a total of $130 billion in six decades.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 tried to shift the ineffective strategy and rescinded Cuba's designation as state of sponsor of international terrorism, restored diplomatic relationship and eased off sanctions on travel and remittances, among other measures. But the détente was suspended after Donald Trump took office.

More than 240 economic sanctions including a slew of new politically-driven measures before the 2020 U.S. presidential election returned Trump votes of the large Cuban-American population in South Florida. Yet crippling curbs deeply hurt a fragile economy, "really" affected Cuban people and contributed to food and medicine famines.

Before Trump was routed out of the White House, his administration made sure that Cuban people were completely squeezed and did not receive any respite from the United States. Just days away from his departure, he put back Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism and ripped off all diplomatic norms to blacklist Cuban Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas.

Joe Biden on the campaign trail vowed to reverse Trump's policy, which had "inflicted harm" to Cuban economy and added to worsening shortages of food and medicine. Nonetheless, once took oath as the U.S. president, he ignored advice of 80 House Democrats' advice in March to repeal the prior administration's "cruel" sanctions and overturn politicized decisions and opted to follow his predecessor.

Disregarding Cubans' calls to lift sanctions, the Biden administration on June 23 opposed a United Nations General Assembly resolution to terminate the U.S. embargo and exposed its willingness of reconciliation.

The near-unanimous vote for 29th consecutive time condemned America's sanctions and invited the ire of some leading international nations such as Beijing and Moscow, demanding Washington to end interference in Havana.

Many Democrats still are pressing Biden to waive sanctions on Cuba. They call on him to help Cubans by rescinding Trump-era sanctions and offering additional humanitarian and vaccine assistance to them as well as have "outright" rejected administration's defense of the embargo and use of "cruelty" as a point of leverage against ordinary folks.

On the other way around, the U.S. president is suppressing progressive voices in his own party as he designated head of Cuba's Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Alvaro Lopez Miera and Ministry of Interior's National Special Brigade.

Biden's response, outlined in a call with hardliners in Miami and welcomed by infamous Cuba-American Republican Marco Rubio, revealed the political nature of the new measures that appeared to strengthen his position in Florida.


Protesters in "Biden, hands off Cuba" protest demand that the Biden administration take immediate action to reverse the actions taken by the Trump administration to deepen the economic war against Cuba, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. /Getty

Biden, after secession from his commitment with Cuban people, labeled Havana government a "failed state" and intended to mull over options to reinstate the internet outages. While it's a paradigmatic case of foreign intervention, his temptation to receive cash remittances from Cuban-American wasn't short of incitement to violence.

This forms an opinion that Biden's vacillation to assist Cuban people fight health and economic challenges has nothing to do with the human rights; it is aimed at politicking to avoid increased risk of losing a slim majority in the House in 2022 from Florida, where Miami in 2020 deprived Democrats of two Congress members for pursuing normalization policy.

Cuba clearly is gripped with widespread protests owing to the death of food, medicine and electricity due to persistent U.S. "politics of economic asphyxiation". By politicizing Cuban crisis, keeping crudest measures intact and stoking social divide and violence in the Caribbean island, Biden, like Trump, wants to choke Cuban economy to force a violent change.

Havana's assertion about the U.S. embargo's role in ravaging Cuba's healthcare is discarded by American media, contending food and medicines are exempt from ban. That's untrue and misleading. In reality, Washington has stopped life-saving drugs bound for the ailing Cubans, causing even deaths, to describe it as having no respect for human life and international law.

Some Western outlets wrongly frame the unrest in Cuba as "World's Big Struggle: Autocracies vs. Democracies." It is not the case either. Exacerbated by pandemic, strife has stemmed from decades-old unwarranted U.S. trade embargo.

The UN resolutions, reaffirming non-intervention and non-interference in other states, and economists have identified such measures for adversely affecting Cuban people and blamed the hardening of American sanctions for shortage of staple foods.

Washington's vain words, shifting the responsibility of Cubans' economic suffering on Havana government and supporting violent demonstrations, won't help the people entrapped in economic and health crises. For that, the U.S. must stop politicizing the issue, bring an end to its intervention and lift the economic, commercial and financial trade embargo on Cuba.

American sanctions on Cuba will hurt the country’s people, not its regime

Even superpowers must learn to live with regimes they dislike.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
JULY 24, 2021

Protests broke out across Havana, Cuba, in July 2021 as the combined economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and US sanctions hit already shrinking livelihoods. (Photo: Alexandre Meneghini/ Reuters)

Forty-thousand Cuban immigrants, massed at the Orange Bowl college football match in December 1962, cheered wildly, as US President John F. Kennedy ended his unscripted speech. The battle-flag of the Bay of Pigs rebels, the ill-fated force despatched by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the previous year, would one day “be returned to this brigade in a free Havana”, the President vowed. From that time until his own death, President Kennedy waged a relentless covert war, to undermine Cuba’s communist regime, sanctioning CIA bombings, sabotage and assassination attempts.

But there was one thing Kennedy would not do: go to war to dethrone Latin America’s revolutionary icon, and Cuba’s President, Fidel Castro.

“The Soviet Union knows that the United States does not intend to invade Cuba and the United States knows that the Soviets have removed missiles from Cuba,” he explained to his National Security Council in November 1962, hours after negotiating the end of the superpower showdown that brought the planet to the edge of nuclear annihilation.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th US President.

Now, six decades on, Cuba has returned again as a significant test for United States foreign policy. As the largest protests since the mid-1990s have roiled Cuba, US President Joseph Biden’s government has sanctioned elements of Havana’s state security apparatus, in a shift away from campaign promises to work for a thaw.


For United States foreign policy makers, the big question is this: can sanctions, without the use of military force, in fact influence the conduct of regimes? The case of the tiny island, home to just 11 million people, is a useful prism to understand the United States’ prospects in more critical challenges, like Iran, North Korea and even China.

The immediate trigger for Cuba’s protests is familiar to Indians: the Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged key sectors of the economy, hurting already-fragile livelihoods. Tourism—already shrinking from United States sanctions—has fallen sharply, from a peak of 4.7 million visitors in 2018. Exports of medical skilled labour and biotechnology have declined. Remittances from the diaspora, estimated at $3.9 billion in 2019, have eroded dramatically.

For many ordinary Cubans, images released early this year of Fidel Castro’s nightclub-owning grandson bragging about his Mercedes crystallised resentment about a ruling élite that has strayed from its egalitarian promises.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, moreover, Cuba came to depend heavily on Venezuela for its oil and gas needs. In 2000, the two countries signed a preferential-trade agreement, in essence bartering energy for medical personnel. Venezuela’s own economic problems, though, have seen supplies shrink steadily since 2015, a problem accentuated by the United States sanctions targeting oil tankers and companies delivering oil.

The once-central sugar industry, moreover, has been in long-term decline because of the lack of global demand. In 2019-20, Cuba produced only 1.2 million metric tons, down from 8.4 million in 1990.

Economic sanctions have often been legitimised as creating the conditions for a social revolution. Experience, though, has given little reason for such optimism.

Even though Cuba hoped trade with China and Russia would offset the problems imposed by then US President Donald Trump’s sanctions, the reality has fallen short of expectations. Trade with China, for example, was valued at only $1.3 billion in 2019, in line with a steadily declining trend from a high of $2.3 billion in 2015. Imports from Russia, similarly, have shown a significant decline since 2018—all signs of grinding economic problems these relationships could not offset.

Facing the pandemic-induced crisis, President Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez’s government instituted a series of reforms last year—among them, allowing the private sector, lifting a 10% tax on United States dollar, and convertible currency to be used to make some retail purchases. The most significant of these changes was dismantling a dual-currency system, which fixed the exchange rate of the Cuban peso at 24 per United States dollar.

In the long term, these reforms are expected to have positive impacts on Cuba’s economy. The short-term impacts on inflation and the country’s expansive social-security net have been severe, though. The question is: are Cubans, tired of blackouts, job cuts and rising prices, also ready for regime change?

Ever since 1960, when revolutionary Cuba nationalised American-owned oil refineries without compensation, the United States has maintained and deepened economic sanctions against Cuba—this, in spite of substantial criticism from the United Nations as well as Europe. The pressure has been, in no small part, driven by the electoral influence of the Cuban diaspora in the United States. In the course of the Cold War, though, the risk of a superpower conflict made invasion a less-than-attractive option.

As the scholar Donald Losman has argued, sanctions offer the United States government a half-way house between doing nothing and going to war. The decision to impose them, he argues, is taken “less on its intrinsic merits than because of its attractions in relation to the available options”.

The evidence for the effectiveness of sanctions as a foreign-policy tool is mixed. The scholar Robert Pape, among others, has shown that “economic sanctions have little independent usefulness for the pursuit of noneconomic goals”. “Nationalism,” Pape pointed out, “often makes states and societies willing to endure considerable punishment, rather than abandon what are seen as the interests of the nation”.

Economic sanctions have often been legitimised as creating the conditions for a social revolution. Experience, though, has given little reason for such optimism. Long decades of economic sanctions against Iran, for example, have shown no signs of undermining the regime, even though protests have often swept across the country. North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme succeeded in spite of its economic isolation. Even Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Husain, had to be removed by military action—not sanctions.

Learning from this experience, US President Barack Obama made a shift away from the past, restoring diplomatic relations, rescinding Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of international terrorism and facilitating the enhancement of travel and trade. Engagement, supporters of the policy argued, offered a more effective means to bring about change, since it would tie in the regime and the élite with the United States.

In an effort to build electoral capital with Cuban-American voters, though, President Donald Trump reversed course, reimposing sanctions that targeted Venezuela’s oil exports to Cuba. From 2019, the Trump administration re-designated Cuba a state sponsor of international terrorism, claiming it was supporting violence in other Latin American states, and restricting financial transactions involving the country.

Faced with images of police violence against protestors, President Biden has backed away from his promise to restore President Obama’s policies. Few experts, though, believe Cuba’s regime is about to collapse. As long as the government has the resources to retain the support of its coercive apparatus, the restoration of order is within its grasp. Even in 1994, when the collapse of the Soviet Union saw Cuba’s economy implode, its state apparatus proved resilient.

The CIA’s war against Cuba continued long after President Kennedy’s death. In 1976, United States-based Cubans allegedly tied to the CIA bombed a Cubana Airlines flight mid-air, killing 73 people. In 1997, the CIA was again implicated in terrorist attacks on tourism infrastructure in Havana. These attempts, like the sanctions programme, did little to destabilise the regime, and legitimised repression against dissidents.

Where does this leave United States foreign policy? An important lesson might be that even superpowers have to learn to live with regimes they dislike—unless the behaviour of those regimes is so threatening that war is unavoidable. Even then, witness the case of Iran and North Korea, the costs of war might outweigh any conceivable gains.Like his predecessors, President Biden has electoral reasons to step up economic pressure on Cuba. Escalating sanctions, though, will do little more than inflict greater hardship on the country’s poor.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
TAGS: #covid impact #Cuba protests #economic sanctions #foreign policy #Havana #Joe Biden #US Cuba relations #US foreign policy
FIRST PUBLISHED: JUL 24, 2021 

Business News | Stock and Share Market News | Financial News (moneycontrol.com)

Cuba slams latest US sanctions

Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez.

Havana, July 23 (IANS) The Cuban government has denounced the latest sanctions imposed against the island nation by the US administration.

“I refute the unfounded and slanderous US government sanctions against Army Corp General Alvaro Lopez Miera and the National Special Brigade,” Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

“I denounce that the State Department is exercising offensive and humiliating pressures on European countries, particularly six from Eastern Europe, and eight from Latin America, to force them to support a declaration condemning Cuba,” he added.

Earlier in the day, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions against Miera and an elite military unit popularly known as the “black wasps” for their participation in the “rebuke” of protests this month in Cuba.

The new sanctions come amid the worst outbreak of Covid-19 Cuba has seen to date, with a rise in infections, deaths and hospitalisations.

The ‘US factor’ bursts into the Cuban crisis


Published by: MRT

Published on: July 24, 2021


The factor EE UU It has burst into the open crisis after the protests of July 11 and 12 in Cuba, which is becoming more and more international. The new sanctions announced last Thursday by the Joe Biden Administration, which until now had said that Cuba was not a priority and was reviewing its policy towards the island, again open the way to diplomatic confrontation and threaten to close the doors. to the hope that some kind of relief can come from Washington to the critical economic situation that the country is going through.

It’s not going to be like that, at least for now. The US strategy complicates the solution of an explosive scenario, at times of great discontent in the population due to the hardships that are being experienced, with the economy in the red, the epidemic running rampant and the Government shrinking water, and when the very summary trials against hundreds of detainees in the protests, mostly young people.

The dynamics of pressure and sanctions from Washington tend to cause Havana to be castled, warn veteran observers. And perhaps that is why on Thursday even the most critical of the Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel saw as a bad omen the announcement of the Administration of Joe Biden that it will sanction the Minister of Defense, Álvaro López Miera, and the National Special Brigade – a the elite body of the Ministry of the Interior, popularly known as black berets, for the repression exerted by the security forces during the demonstrations that shook the island on July 11.

“Turn off and let’s go,” said, as soon as he heard the news, a retired professional whose son was arrested in the demonstrations in the Fraternidad park and released the next day. It was a meeting of friends, and at that time they spoke with concern about the first sentences of the summary proceedings, of up to one year in jail for public disorder and contempt, emphasizing those gathered that even voices close to the officiality have demanded that all the peaceful protesters are released and only those who participated in violent acts go to trial.

When the group learned of Biden’s statements, to the effect that “this is just the beginning” and that “the United States will continue to sanction the individuals responsible for the oppression of the Cuban people,” there were several who reached out. head. “With the United States there is no solution, compadre,” lamented one of those who had shouted the most up to that moment against the convictions of the protesters.

Immediately after, what had to happen, happened. The Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, called a press conference in which he once again accused Washington of being behind the protests of July 11, of promoting manipulation through social networks to provoke the destabilization of the country and of exacerbate to impossible limits the economic embargo to aggravate the crisis and hardships on the island. Regarding the sanctions imposed on the Minister of the Armed Forces and the black berets, he stated that these were “politically motivated and intentional, and totally irrelevant from a practical point of view.”

The US, he said, does not have “the least authority, neither legal nor political nor moral, to go around sanctioning people around the world when it is known that they have a quite reprehensible behavior in terms of repression”, and added that it does not have “any authority moral to ask for the release of people detained in Cuba: it is an act of interference and intervention in our internal affairs ”. The Foreign Minister denied that most of the protesters were peaceful, and called on Washington to demonstrate that there were “disappeared” and minors under arrest, assuring that what happened was not “a social outbreak”, but that they were violent riots, and that those who they will be prosecuted for that reason they will have “all the guarantees of Cuban law.”

There is still no official number of detainees, nor has it been reported how many people will be brought to trial, an issue that is now at the center of debates on social networks – the internet is working again – where more and more people from the world of Culture speaks out against a strong hand in the trials and calls for an investigation into the allegations of police abuse made by some of those arrested.

In this tense environment, with more and more critical voices making themselves heard, and in the midst of a deep crisis that cannot be seen to end and that is the basis of the malaise that led people to the protests, the factor EE UU becomes key. “If they had a minimum of intelligence, they would remove the blockade now, what they are doing is strengthening the toughest positions within,” said the father of the young man arrested on 11-J.

There is considerable consensus that the US, instead of adding more gasoline to the fire, would do well to provide water to put it out, especially when the crisis tends to become international. Havana once again accused Washington of having evidence of its pressure on various governments of the former Eastern Europe and also on Latin American countries to condemn Cuba, something that some have already done. Meanwhile, other nations such as Spain try to maintain equidistance and ask for solidarity and humanitarian aid in these times of pandemic, while condemning the police violence used to silence the protest and criticize the embargo.

This Friday, The New York The Times published a letter from 400 intellectuals, politicians, artists, scientists and former heads of state calling for the White House to immediately lift the more than 240 sanctions adopted by Donald Trump during his term “that hinder Cuba’s efforts. to control the pandemic ”. Film figures such as Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and Mark Ruffalo are signed, or former presidents such as Lula da Silva (Brazil) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador).

While summary trials and jail sentences arrive in avalanche, in Havana and in other localities the queues and shortages remain and the pandemic advances. Renowned Cuban economists have actively and passively said that the intensification of the embargo, the persecution of financial and oil supplies, and the effect of the Helms-Burton law to discourage investment have exacerbated the crisis. But they point out that it is the structural inefficiency of the productive system and the economic reforms so often postponed, as well as the lack of spaces for debate to discuss different visions, which have put the country on the ropes. There is consensus that the solutions are internal, and depend only on the will of the Government to introduce far-reaching reforms, not patches, to alleviate the situation. But that the role of the United States is also an important factor.

BACKGROUNDER

Chile’s famed pensions system faces an existential crisis

Investor fears intensify that the model is disintegrating after congress approves second round of saver withdrawals

A woman holds a sign that calls for ‘Decent Pensions’. Pensions were at the heart of protests that roiled the country last year © AFP via Getty Images

Benedict Mander in Buenos Aires

 and Michael Stott in London 

NOVEMBER 15 2020

Chile’s celebrated $200bn private pensions system has served as a model for dozens of emerging markets since it was introduced in the 1980s. Now, it faces an existential crisis as public support for the model fades and populist politicians allow savers to withdraw funds during the coronavirus crisis.

The lower house of congress voted to allow Chileans to withdraw another 10 per cent of their pension funds last week, following a similar measure in July that saw withdrawals of some $17bn.

Congress could yet approve a third withdrawal next year, putting at risk a pool of savings that has driven the growth of Chile's capital markets and jeopardising future returns. 

Investors are increasingly concerned that the country’s famed economic model that has driven decades of steady growth is disintegrating. 

“Chile is a country in Latin America but it is not a Latin American country because there [have been] no attacks on investors or crazy economic policies. This is exactly what is at risk now,” said a senior pensions industry executive familiar with the Chilean market.

Since the outbreak of violent protests late last year demanding greater equality in Chile — with inadequate pension payouts a particular bone of contention — the pro-business government of President Sebastián Piñera “has presided over a degradation of institutional quality of such magnitude that we wonder what the future will be”, added the executive.

No one thinks that it is optimal to confront the crisis with money from pensions. Even so, Chilean families still need money to get to the end of the month . . . We have no other option

Maite Orsini, a leftist opposition legislator

Few would deny that Chile’s pension system needs reform.

Established almost 40 years ago during General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, Chile’s defined contribution model was the first fully private pensions system in the world. It was widely praised by institutions such as the World Bank and seen as a key part of the Chilean economic success story.

But problems with the model have become more apparent in recent years. The 10 per cent contribution rate is low, and paid fully by employees with nothing from employers except disability insurance. While the number of years of contributions varies between people, it is generally considered to be not long enough. The result is that about 80 per cent of pensioners receive less than the minimum wage.

The private pensions industry believes it is being made the scapegoat for a government failure to make employers contribute their fair share.

In a referendum last month, Chileans voted to replace the country’s dictatorship-era constitution with a new charter, which is likely to lead to a greater role for the state in the economy. The government has put together generous fiscal spending packages amounting to about 12 per cent of GDP since the outbreak of the pandemic, but critics say this is still not enough to heal the economic damage and stop people from making early withdrawals.

“No one thinks that it is optimal to confront the crisis with money from pensions,” said Maite Orsini, a leftist opposition legislator. “Even so, Chilean families still need money to get to the end of the month . . . We have no other option.”

“There are two ways of looking at this,” said Andras Uthoff, a pensions expert in Santiago. “If you look at the people most in need who can't support themselves, given that the government has been very mean in terms of social protection policy [during the coronavirus crisis], it would be reasonable to accept the withdrawal. But in terms of the pension system, it's a very bad idea.” 

Many are worried that by draining resources from pension funds now, the state will eventually be forced to pick up the slack and pour more resources into Chile’s pension system. That could raise the spectre of a permanent deterioration in public finances, as has happened in Brazil. Some believe that this is the covert agenda of Chile's left: to replace the private system with a fully state-funded model.

Chile’s government spends less than 3 per cent of GDP on pensions, compared with an average of 8 per cent in the OECD. But critics of the new withdrawals argue that taking out up to a fifth of the system’s assets to be spent now will only further weaken it. 

“Effectively what they are doing today means lower pensions in future,” said Fernando Larrain, director-general of the association of pension administrators. He said he was worried that the second pension withdrawal will put more than 4m people — or nearly half of the system’s 10-11m contributors — in a critical situation.

“These people will have zero funds and they are predominantly young and female,” he added.

One of the greatest problems is that there is little consensus over how to reform Chile’s pension system, according to Andrés Solimano, an economist and former World Bank country director in Santiago. He said this was compounded by a crisis of legitimacy of the political system reflected in the push for a new constitution.

“It doesn't make sense to decide today on a new pension system for the next 30 years. Now is not the time to embark on structural reform,” he said, suggesting that a question about pensions reform could be included in elections to draw up a constitutional assembly next April.

Hanging in the balance is a hefty pension pot that some fear is an attractive prize for populist politicians that have their eyes set on presidential elections next year.

“There is a lack of leadership by the government,” warned another industry executive. “They are not protecting what made the Chilean economy successful, and they are being led by populism. They are mortgaging the future of Chile.”

https://www.ft.com/content/3c25b7e0-b31f-4d5b-9845-3514af2970a3

Israel-Gaza: How Palestinian resistance is challenging the tech supremacy of war

Ideology that reserves advanced technology and firepower for western superpowers is troubled by non-western players laying claim to these technologies

Ahmed D Dardir
23 July 2021 

An Israeli firefighter extinguishes a blaze caused by incendiary balloons launched from the Gaza Strip on 9 May 2021 (AFP)

In its latest confrontation with Israeli occupation forces, and in response to continued Israeli aggression against al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem residents, the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance unleashed a fleet of incendiary balloons targeting the colonial settlements bordering the Gaza Strip.

As Israel’s aggressive actions in Jerusalem have not technically violated the ceasefire signed in May, the Palestinian response had to eschew military force; instead, it creatively weaponised the mundane. While embodying the spirit of resistance, the Palestinian response had to remain low-impact, so as not to constitute a pretext for a new round of Israeli hostilities.

Yet, Israel responded by launching air strikes against what it claimed were Hamas targets in Gaza, effectively violating the ceasefire. Still, a significant part of mainstream western media and public opinion views this Israeli violation as justifiable self-defence, while the balloons from Gaza are seen as purposeless, misguided and provocative.




This paradox is maintained by racialised hierarchies of conflict that operate beyond the Palestinian context

The same attitude met the May confrontations. Although the Gaza-based resistance was able to use its missiles and drones - relatively primitive compared to Israel’s military capabilities - to maximum political effect, while minimising casualties and destruction on the Israeli side, they were still depicted by the mainstream media as misguided, chaotic or even desperate. On the other hand, Israeli missiles were portrayed as justifiable, with the state’s military power described as targeted and sophisticated.

This leads to a paradox, wherein the unguided missiles of the Palestinian resistance are guilty of targeting civilians, while the precise and targeted missiles of the Israeli occupation forces are innocent of the deaths of victims whom they “mistakenly” target. This paradox is maintained by racialised hierarchies of conflict that operate beyond the Palestinian context.
US war machine

In a world fascinated by cutting-edge, slick, state-of-the-art technology - by buttons, screens and computerised processes - the advancement of technology on one side masks carnage on the other. The computerisation of the US war machine infamously turned American wars at the turn of the century into real-life video games.

US air strikes against civilian and suspected militant targets have become a sanitised, computerised affair - an automated process where the location of targets, threat assessment, and process of launching a drone attack occurs largely in the bloodless circuits of mega-computers, somehow masking and justifying the killings.

Drones are parked in a hangar in the US state of Nevada in 2015 (AFP)

In his memoir, A Promised Land, Obama boasts: “The National Security Agency, or NSA, already the most sophisticated electronic-intelligence-gathering organization in the world, employed new supercomputers and decryption technology worth billions of dollars to comb cyberspace in search of terrorist communications and potential threats”, resulting in “nighttime raids [that] hunted down terrorist suspects mostly inside - but sometimes outside - the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq”. In other words, it was Obama’s signature tactic of targeted, extrajudicial killings.

As the rhetorical deployment of technology here sanitises the killings - of suspected terrorists, it must be stressed - it creates a technical backbone for the ideology of western supremacy, allowing the “civilised” and technologically advanced to exert physical, sometimes lethal, violence against “lesser” forms of human life.

This is the same supremacist ideology that justifies Israel’s crimes under the pretext that it is the “only democracy” in the Middle East - as though people not living under the paradigm of western liberal democracy do not deserve to live. Israel’s crimes are further justified by the fact that its war machine is precise and technologically advanced, as if this somehow legitimises the killing of victims who are precisely targeted.
Cause for alarm

The converse, however, does not apply. Technological advancements achieved outside the exclusive club of western powers do not merit a membership card for “technologically civilised” society, but are rather a cause for alarm that such technology is dangerously spreading beyond the approved clique.


This is the same hierarchy under which advancements by Iran and North Korea, which both face stifling US sanctions, in the nuclear field are treated not as technological advancements, but as cause for alarm that such technology is finding its way into unworthy and unreliable hands that are bound to misuse it. This same alarm, evidently, is not set off by the military nuclear programme of the one country that has used atomic weapons against civilians: the US.

 
 
Israel-Palestine: Apartheid cannot be defeated without armed resistance  Read More »

The dominant narrative reserves technologically advanced firepower - including sophisticated, computerised and smart weapons - for western powers. Non-western states and actors are left with incendiary weapons that are bound to misfire. This partially explains the western obsession with suicide bombing, which it imagines as the sole or predominant modus operandi of non-white insurgents.

The ideology that reserves advanced technology and firepower for western superpowers is, nevertheless, continuously troubled by non-western players laying claim to these technologies, be they other superpowers (China), “rogue states” (Iran and North Korea), or insurgent groups waging wars of liberation against colonial powers and their proxies.

An array of tactical and strategic concerns ultimately pushed the Palestinian resistance towards missile and drone technologies. Although I do not suggest they did this to make a point, it does trouble the dominant racialised assumptions and hierarchies, undermining the white monopoly over targeted, sophisticated and technological fire. The so-called international community can choose to recognise this achievement, or to continue performing mental acrobatics to reassure itself of the primitive and misguided nature of the resistance’s fire.



What matters most is how this advancement “rids the colonised of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude”, to use the words written in a similar context by the great anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon. “It emboldens them, and restores their self confidence.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Ahmed D Dardir holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University. His forthcoming book is tentatively titled Licentious Topographies: Global Counterrevolution and Bad Subjectivity in Modern Egypt. He is a regular contributor to a number of media outlets. His personal blog can be found at https://textualtrimmings.blogspot.com.

WATER CRISIS WATER IS LIFE

Iran: Angry Khuzestan residents rise against decades of neglect

Water crisis that has been intensifying for years has affected all aspects of life for Iranians in the southwestern province

Iranians in northwestern Tabriz hold a rally in solidarity with Khuzestan, far to the south (Twitter)

By MEE correspondent in Khuzestan, Iran
Published date: 25 July 2021 

Ali*, a 21-year-old unemployed man, can no longer find work in his province, Khuzestan, even as a farmworker. He says the water shortages have destroyed the agriculture sector in Iran's oil-rich southwestern province.


'Why do we have to face water shortages in the province where the Karun River is full of water?'

- Ali, unemployed in Khuzestan

"We are sick and tired of this situation. Why do we have to face water shortages in the province where the Karun River is full of water?” Ali told Middle East Eye as he contemplated a bleak future in a province where residents have long complained of marginalisation.

"What should I do as a young person? Where can I get a job? How do I make a living? We are stifled by so many problems. Why doesn't anyone pay attention to us?"

Ali, who lives in a village in Ahvaz County, is one of too many people suffering as a result of the water crisis in Khuzestan.

For a week now, the province has been in the spotlight in Iran. On the evening of 15 July, people took to the streets in a number of cities in the province, including Ahvaz, Abadan, Hamidiyeh and Shadegan, Khorramshahr and Mahshahr, to protest against the lack of water and frequent power outages.

The protesters chanted slogans such as "The river is thirsty," "I am thirsty," and "We give our lives and blood to the Karun," while some burned trash cans and tyres in a sign of growing anger over years of neglect despite repeated warnings that the province has been at risk of water shortages.

Iran: Protests over water shortages grow in Khuzestan region amid rising violence

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In June 2020, people in different parts of the province protested against the lack of water for daily consumption and agricultural purposes, but their demonstrations were violently suppressed. Security forces using pellet guns wounded a number of demonstrators and several others were arrested. Although the authorities at the time said they would solve the problem of water supplies to Khuzestan's villages, their promises have yet to be fulfilled.

Water mismanagement

"People in Tehran would not be able to withstand life in Khuzestan for even a week. The temperature is 50 degrees Celsius, coupled with high humidity, and we have no water," Ahmad*, a 19-year-old who lives in Mahshahr city, told MEE.

"Ever since we could remember, we have never had drinking water, and we have always had to buy water bottles. The people in cities are better off. Water is delivered in tankers to people in villages."

Qassem Soleimani Dashtaki, the provincial governor, confirmed after the protests escalated on 21 July that water has been delivered to 702 villages in Khuzestan in tankers.

However, the move is far from resolving the deeply rooted problem facing the population in the province. Excessive use of groundwater resources, pollution from oil production, water transfers from the Karun and other rivers in Khuzestan to other provinces, and development projects have caused environmental damage and widespread water shortages.

In an interview on 19 July, Hadi Savari, a former member of the Ahwaz City Council, blamed improper dam construction in the province as the main reason for the water crisis.

"Khuzestan has four important rivers, Karun, Dez, Jarahi and Zohreh, and two large wetlands, Shadegan and Hur al-Azim, which have always been full of water throughout history," Savari said.

Iranian press review: Former presidents condemn crackdown on protests

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"One-third of Hur al-Azim is located on Iranian territory and has been destroyed due to road construction and its division into five basins for oil exploration, as well as the closure of water inlets to Iran by the Iraqi government."

Protests spillover

The speed of the protests' spillover to other provinces is unprecedented. The demonstrations, which quickly spread to almost all cities of Khuzestan, were taken up in cities further afield, such Kermanshah, Isfahan, and in parts of Lorestan province and Tehran. In response, security forces stepped in to confront and end the unrest.

Photos posted on social media showed the deployment to Khuzestan of police forces from Tehran. Social media activists also posted images of armoured and riot vehicles being unloaded off a plane at Ahwaz Airport in Khuzestan. Several pictures circulating on Twitter show tanks, armoured water cannon trucks and other anti-riot equipment vehicles on the roads in the province.

Meanwhile, authorities have shut down the internet in most parts of Khuzestan in a bid to curb the protests. NetBlocks Internet Observatory reported on 22 July that data confirmed serious disruption to cellular networks in the province beginning on Thursday 15 July.

The strength of the crackdown on protests was quickly condemned.

"They have really no shame," said Naeem*, a 20-year-old from Izeh who had witnessed the mobilisation of anti-riot forces. "They shot at people indiscriminately, while our demonstration was completely peaceful. We were unarmed. We did not have guns.

"Why are they shooting at us? We were not even carrying rocks and sticks. We just chanted that we wanted water."


'Why are they shooting at us? We were not even carrying rocks and sticks. We just chanted that we wanted water'

- Naeem, after protests in Izeh

Izeh, a city of 200,000 people, joined the protest movement after demonstrations spread to small towns. The slogans chanted in the city have been more radical than in other areas in the province, which might explain why the crackdown in Izeh was harsher than in other cities.

Protesters spoke out against the Iranian establishment, with chants that included "Death to the Islamic Republic" and "Death to Khamenei," Iran's supreme leader.

There are different figures available on the number of people killed in the protests so far. The governor of Khuzestan claimed in a press conference on 20 July that only one person, who was accompanying security forces, had been killed in the protests. On 23 July, Amnesty International announced that security forces had killed at least eight protesters in the province.

Meanwhile, Iranian state media claimed that demonsrators were killed not by security forces, but by rioters and separatists in an attempt to hijack the protests.
'All talk'

It took more than a week for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to react to the unrest in Khuzestan. In a speech on 23 July, he described people's grievances as valid and blamed the crisis on authorities.

"No one can complain about these people. If the problems in the field of water and sewage in Khuzestan province had been solved by now, we would not be witnessing such problems today," he said.

'During eight years of war with Iraq, this province was destroyed, and now, our own soldiers are killing us and shedding our blood'

- Adel, from Dezful

"The people expressed their displeasure because they are frustrated. This is not a small problem, especially in Khuzestan's hot climate.

"I call on the authorities to quickly solve the problems of the province's people who are really loyal."

Khamenei's remarks come despite the fact that the security forces responsible for the clampdown on protesters in Khuzestan act under his command or under the command of agencies appointed directly by him.

Such statements would unlikely pacify people's anger, although a continued crackdown could end the protests, even if temporarily.

"They are all talk. They just say people have rights, where are these rights? Is a bullet our right? Or shedding our blood? Is it an excessive demand to ask for water? They have no shame,” says Adel*, a 24-year-old from Dezful.

"During eight years of war with Iraq, this province was destroyed, and now, our own soldiers are killing us and shedding our blood. They also curbed access to the internet so that no one can hear us getting killed."

* Interviewees' surnames removed on request

Violence escalates in water-shortage protests in Iran’s Khuzestan

Six nights of protests over water shortages have turned deadly, with three civilians and one police officer killed.

By Maziar Motamedi
21 Jul 2021

Tehran, Iran – A third civilian has died during protests over water shortages in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province, authorities confirmed.

Hossein Nabovati, caretaker of Izeh county’s governor’s office, said on Wednesday that a young man, who he did not name, was hit by a car during protests on Tuesday night and later died of injuries.

“The way he was injured and the identity of his perpetrator or perpetrators is under investigation,” he said.

Nabovati also denied that three more protesters were killed during the protests and said 14 police officials were injured.

Authorities had earlier confirmed that two civilians, 18-year-old Ghasem Khozeiri and 30-year-old Mostafa Naimawi, were shot dead on Friday, but they say the young men were not protesters and were murdered by “opportunists and rioters”.

More protesters are feared dead but officials have yet to confirm further fatalities. They have also not disclosed how many civilians have been arrested.

Iranian authorities said earlier on Wednesday that one police officer, identified by officials as Zargham Parast, was shot dead by “agitators” in Khuzestan, where six nights of protests over water shortages have turned deadly.

State media reported that another police officer in Bandar Mahshahr was wounded after taking a bullet to his leg on Tuesday night, as videos and reports out of the oil-rich southwestern province indicated that violence had not ceased.

Sporadic internet slowdowns or blackouts have been reported across the province for several days. Despite the internet restrictions, numerous videos have come out of several counties in Khuzestan in the past week, in many of which shots can be heard and tear gas is seen being used.

In some videos, protesters can be seen venting angrily at baton-wielding security forces clad in black, riding motorcycles in large numbers.

A video purportedly from Tuesday night showed a tank, set up as a monument to the gruelling eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, set on fire while tyres are seen set aflame to close roads.

The videos could not be independently verified.

Oil-rich Khuzestan, parts of which were temporarily seized by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein after he invaded Iran with backing from the West, has faced water problems for decades.

This year, however, has been especially difficult for the province – and the whole country by extension – due to extremely hot temperatures and droughts that have led to widespread blackouts and water shortages.

Officials acknowledge that the province has been hit hard, but they claim separatist groups are to blame for the violence and accuse foreign media of trying to take advantage of the situation to oppose the theocratic establishment.

The government of outgoing President Hassan Rouhani said it has allocated new funds to alleviate the situation while the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said they are deploying water tankers to the thirsty region.

The province also saw some of the largest crowds during the 2019 nationwide protests that formed over the abrupt tripling of petrol prices. Human rights organisations say hundreds were killed during those protests as internet access was almost completely cut off across the country for nearly a week.
Iranians’ reactions

Over the past week, both social and conventional media are filled with accounts and news from and reactions to the situation in Khuzestan.

Hashtags in Farsi such as #KhuzestanIsThirsty and #KhuzestanHasNoWater have been widely used to direct attention towards the crisis and protests that have been scantily covered by international media.

Some civilians have tried to raise funds to buy water bottles and tankers to send to Khuzestan, but others have pointed out that such moves belittle the long-term issues faced by the people of the province who require a sustainable solution after years of mismanagement and neglect following the war.

“Khuzestan’s problem stems from illegal water transfer projects from river forks and stealing water from the source of the rivers by water mafias,” tweeted Fereshteh Tabanian, a lawyer based in Ahvaz.

Khuzestan residents have pointed out on social media that the province has never truly had drinkable tap water and they have had to buy their water or take it from the rivers, many of which have now dried up as well.

The same dirty tap water is now shut off for many citizens.

Power outages also exacerbate the situation as many use electricity-powered pumps to get water inside their homes.

On Tuesday, a group of activists and human rights advocates including Narges Mohammadi, who was freed from prison in October 2020 after serving eight and a half years, demonstrated in front of the interior ministry in the capital, Tehran, to express support for the people of Khuzestan.

Mohammadi’s husband, Taghi Rahmani, said the activist and several others were arrested. He later said they were released in the early hours of Wednesday.

Two former presidents – reformist Mohammad Khatami and hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – have also criticised authorities’ reaction to the protests.

“No political, security, military or law enforcement organisation has the right to confront the people’s protests with violence, weapons or bullets with the excuse of countering chaos,” Khatami said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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Two killed in Iran’s Khuzestan water crisis protests

Khuzestan, Iran’s Richest Province Is Also the Most Miserable Province
By Mahmoud Hamidi
-24th July 2021

There is no doubt that Khuzestan province alone is the richest province in Iran in terms of natural resources. But in terms of indicators of misery, it can be said that Khuzestan ranks at the top of the country’s provinces.

A province with many miseries created by the regime. One day the people must experience power cuts. The other day they must experience devastating floods. Another day they must experience drought in a region which is one of the most watered regions in Iran. Another day they must experience darken sky caused by dust and sandstorms caused by the destruction of wetlands and finally, they must experience the overflow of the municipal sewage system to the streets of their cities.

Of course, the poverty and misery of Khuzestan do not end here. On a sea of ​​oil and next to the rivers that were once the wettest in the country, these days the people of the cities of Khuzestan are experiencing another misery due to the lack of drinking water and lack of access to safe water.

But the poverty and misery of Khuzestan are not only related to environmental issues. The government has done everything possible to discriminate against the citizens in this province.

Khuzestan province is the 18th province in terms of social capital, which a low result is because of the double discrimination by the government, lack of care for the affairs of the province, lack of social freedoms, and lack of close ties with the capital.

According to some reports, 75% of the citizens of Khuzestan believe that the government discriminates against this province.

71% of Khuzestan Arabs believe that they are living in poverty and another 81% believe that unemployment is higher among them than in other provinces. Khuzestan province currently has the highest unemployment rate among the 31 provinces of the country.

In terms of employment, Khuzestan province has the last employment rank in terms of population among the provinces of the country.

The combination of these discriminatory factors along with recent droughts, poverty, extreme heat, the presence of respiratory pollution caused by fine dust and pollutants of industrial plants, unemployment, and inefficient management has made Khuzestan province with about 200,000 migrants rank first in the country in the past few years.

In terms of education, Khuzestan province has the worst rank in the country. This province ranks first for children who have dropped out of school in the country.

Government statistics show that there are 11,000 school dropouts in the province. Different mother tongues and not studying in it, which is obvious discrimination, are the reasons for children not attending school in this province.

Khuzestan also ranks third in the country in terms of illiteracy and this province is facing a shortage of more than 14,000 teachers.

Khuzestan ranks second in the country in terms of marginalization with a 400,000 marginalized population. Of the total area of the province, about 6,000 hectares, equivalent to 13% of this province, is considered urban blight.

Khuzestan is the second province in terms of social harms and in terms of the total number of lawsuits in proportion to the population of the province, which the main reason for this situation is poverty and other social problems in the province.

Khuzestan is not in a good position in terms of women’s employment, which is one of the indicators of development in modern societies. This province is ranked 24th among 31 provinces of the country.

In the field of municipal wastewater, about 35% of the cities in the province do not have environmental permits for municipal wastewater disposal.

This means a catastrophe in the urban environment. Evidence in recent years shows that with every rain, even a small amount, sewage flows into the streets and houses of people in Khuzestan.

In recent decades, illegal dams, drying marshes, and wetlands for oil extraction have turned one million hectares of land in Khuzestan province into deserts, which plays a major role in creating dust storms that endanger the health of the province’s citizens.

Currently, in this province, three critical centers for creating dust have been created in the cities of Ahvaz, Mahshahr, and Hendijan.

Air pollution is another problem in Khuzestan province. In Khuzestan, 11 million tons of carbon dioxide are produced from industrial activities and 38 million tons from the energy sector, which together becomes 49 million tons of air pollutants or 5.7% of total greenhouse gas emissions of the country are produced in this province.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING, RIGHT

Hong Kong is ready for Gay Games 2022
As organizers, we are unified in our commitment to the success and preserving the legacy of the Gay Games in Hong Kong.

Commentary by Dennis Philipse and Lisa Lam, 

co-chairs of Gay Games 11 Hong Kong 2022 

Friday, July 23, 2021


HONG KONG, CHINA - NOV 25, 2017: Members of the Legislative Council and NGOs join the pride parade in support minority rights.Photo: Shutterstock


We’re less than 500 days away from Hong Kong hosting Asia’s first Gay Games in November 2022, a region where two-thirds of the world’s population live. As momentum and excitement continue to build around our preparations, so does the socio-political commentary among certain quarters – both good and bad.

As organizers, we are unified in our commitment to the success and preserving the legacy of the Gay Games in Hong Kong, and remain confident that this celebration of the Games’ values of participation, inclusion and personal best will outshine and outlive any dissenting voices.

Related: Hong Kong has become a police state. So why are the Gay Games still being held there?

We recognize that Hong Kong – and indeed, the world – is a very different place from 2017 when we celebrated our city’s winning bid to host the 2022 Gay Games. The city has gone through two turbulent years: first, our normally peaceful and orderly city was rocked by protests and social unrest; then we, like the rest of the world, felt the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the many challenges and difficulties, there have been some bright spots during this time. To date, our city has one of the world’s lowest COVID-19 infection and death rates despite never being locked down, thanks to the community spirit of our population. Wearing masks for the greater good was never an issue here.

Our quintessentially Asian, vibrant city of seven million inhabitants has always been a melting pot of diversity and multiculturalism. This city’s LGBTQ+ community in 2021 is thriving more than ever before, with a growing public interest in pro-queer social groups and events, through long-established organizations such as Pink Alliance, Big Love Alliance, and Rainbow of Hong Kong, and widely-supported annual events such as the Hong Kong Pride Parade, the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and Pink Dot.

Hong Kong enjoys one of the world’s lowest crime rates, one of the world’s highest life expectancies, and visa-free access for visitors from 145 countries and regions. We are proud of our reputation as a world city, ranked third in the Cato Institute’s 2020 Human Freedom Index behind only New Zealand and Switzerland. While 2021’s Pride parade was canceled due to public health concerns related to Covid-19, LGBTQ+ events have never encuntered opposition from the Hong Kong Government.

Gay Games is organized by a diverse team of 180 passionate volunteers, and funded with the support of LGBTQ+ and ally communities, participants, commercial partners, and sponsors. The event also enjoys the support of many branches of the Hong Kong government, including the HK Tourism Board, InvestHK (department for foreign direct investment), Equal Opportunities Commission, and BrandHK (government news service). Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Ms. Carrie Lam has also voiced her support for its ideals and pledged her government’s support for the event.

The LGBTQ+ community has also made significant progress with notable advances in both legal rights and growing public acceptance and support.

It’s been 30 years since Hong Kong’s Legislative Council passed historic legislation to decriminalize homosexual acts and despite room for improvement when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights and protections, public support in 2021 is higher than ever before and trending in the right direction. For example, a 2019 longitudinal survey from the Chinese University’s Sexualities Research Programme found that 60% of Hong Kong residents agree that there should be legal protection against discrimination for people of different sexual orientations. This percentage surged to 80% among respondents in the 18 to 34 age bracket.


A number of legal victories have also been achieved in support of Hong Kong’s LGBTQ+ movement in areas such as spousal rights.

Yet in spite of this progression on all fronts, there remains a level of conservatism with regards to LGBTQ+ rights both in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia. While there has been no direct opposition to LGBTQ+ rights in a legislative sense, to politicize the issue and suppress not only the Gay Games, but the entire LGBTQ+ community in Hong Kong. We are resolute and united against those efforts. As organizers of the Games, we know we must not be complacent, and why the work to spread messages of inclusivity and positivity must continue unabated.

This is the reason for us to bring the Gay Games to Hong Kong, the first time in Asia.


The event will bring diverse groups of people together to experience shared moments of joy through sports, arts and culture, community, and fun. We hope to build a sense of community that will last a lifetime. For people from Asia, it will be a great opportunity to join the event close to their hometowns. This will be an unforgettable experience, to feel the inclusiveness of joining a sport, arts, and culture event that’s bigger than themselves, together with more than 12,000 participants, and over 75,000 spectators and volunteers from 100 countries.

As the world emerges from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gay Games Hong Kong will be a symbol of the strength of the human spirit, resilience, and solidarity. We are saddened to witness so much division in the world today, but that is precisely the reason for our community to persevere, to stay united, and make Gay Games a resounding success.

During these turbulent times, our theme of “Unity in Diversity” is more salient than ever. We have the opportunity to make Gay Games a symbol of love triumphing over hate, of human connections trumping geopolitics, of understanding over misinformation.

Hong Kong and its people are ready to welcome participants and spectators from all over the world to Gay Games 2022 with arms and hearts open.

See you in November 2022!

Dennis Philipse and Lisa Lam are the co-chairs of Gay Games 11 Hong Kong 2022.

Popular Gay TV Show in Hong Kong Draws Political Attacks, Raising Worries Over Rights

The hit romance has been praised by LGBT groups, but a pro-Beijing lawmaker said it broke China’s national security law

WALL STREET JOURNAL By 

July 23, 2021 

Popular Gay TV Show in Hong Kong Draws Political Attacks, Raising Worries Over Rights - WSJ

Ossan’s Love: does Hong Kong television rom-com featuring Canto-pop stars from Mirror mark a shift in city attitudes to gay relationships?


Show starring boy band singers Anson Lo and Edan Lui is first drama on mainstream Hong Kong television to focus on same-sex relationships
Cultural observers say the 15-part series that aired this summer has reshaped public perceptions of city’s sexual minority groups

Chris Lau
Published: 25 Jul, 2021


Canto-pop stars Edan Lui and Anson Lo in Ossan’s Love. Photo: ViuTV

The love stories of gay men are rarely featured on Hong Kong television, but the recent popularity of a romantic comedy airing on a major channel suggests a shift in public attitudes to same-sex relationships.

The 15-episode series Ossan’s Love – a ViuTV remake of a Japanese show – marked the first time that a mainstream Hong Kong television station had produced and screened a drama focusing mainly on gay relationships.

Featuring two heartthrobs from the city’s hottest boy band, Mirror, the story follows a journey of self-discovery by Edan Lui Cheuk-on’s straight character “Tin Tin”, who comes to question his sexuality after being pursued romantically by his male boss. The show’s original title means “old men” in Japanese.

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Anson Lo Hon-ting, another star from the 12-member Canto-pop group, plays “Ah Muk”, who is Tin Tin’s gay housemate and has a crush on him.

Lui’s character eventually falls for Ah Muk and he professes his love for his housemate in a scene that diehard fan Vivan Cheng found especially touching. “I just keep looping it,” she confessed. “It was really sweet.”

Cultural studies scholars and activists now suggest the significance of the show – which ran daily between late June and mid-July – has gone beyond its commercial and artistic value.

They argue the programme and its ensuing popularity is reshaping public perceptions of the city’s sexual minority groups, which are often marginalised by the local media.

Ossan’s Love has been a television hit in Hong Kong. Photo: ViuTV

Some have said its influence is already visible, suggesting officials and politicians are treading more cautiously on

LGBT issues, including applying extra care over the terminology they use.

“The show is making history by featuring such themes on television,” said associate professor Denise Tang Tse-shang, from Lingnan University (LingU).

“It has provided space for people to start being curious,” she added.

The scholar, who specialises in media and gender studies, said gay characters in the past were often cast in side roles and painted in a negative light, following a certain stereotype.

In the past three years, the city’s cinemas have screened Tracy, a film about a transgender character’s struggle, and Suk Suk – or “Uncle Uncle” – which explores the lives of older gay men.

Denise Tang, from Lingnan University. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Tang said both films were a success, but they were confined to audiences who attended cinema screenings, as opposed to watching on free-to-air television.

Riding on Lui and Lo’s stardom, the latest show had sparked discussion among housewives and even straight men, she said.

Kelly Chan Wing-lam, a 21-year-old university student and an avid viewer of the show, found that her mother had tuned in, as well her friends.

“We talked about which scene caught our eye,” said Chan, a fan of Mirror.

Divided paths: finding acceptance as elderly gay men in Hong Kong

But Cheng, in her 30s, noticed that not every fan of the series was prepared to embrace diversity, nodding towards some of her older female colleagues.

“They basically said they still could not accept gay people, unless they are as handsome as Anson Lo,” she recalled.

Associate professor Lucetta Kam Yip-lo, from Baptist University’s department of humanities and creative writing, said the original Japanese series did not attempt to cover gay relationships in a particularly realistic way, and never intended to take up the baton of gay rights.

“The stories are fictionalised and romanticised relationships between young men and they do not necessarily reflect the life of gay men in real life,” she said.

Anson Lo, whose fans crowdfunded an advert wishing him happy birthday, stars in Ossan’s Love. Photo: Winson Wong

But she suggested the show had helped to challenge some stereotypes for Hong Kong audiences, who were mostly drawn to the show by the appearance of Mirror singers rather than the same-sex love element.

Jerome Yau Ming-lock, chief executive of LGBT group Pink Alliance, said the series had heralded subtle changes to the political landscape.

He pointed to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s remarks when she was asked about the show last week.

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Even though Lam again refused to commit herself to introducing an anti-discrimination law based on sexual orientation, she urged people not to adopt “a discriminatory attitude or even hurl malicious abuse” at those from sexual minority groups.

“From my memory, I have not seen the chief executive use such strong wording on this issue,” Yau said.

But pro-establishment lawmaker Junius Ho Kwan-yiu, who has been vocal in LGBT debates, reportedly said earlier this week that the show had breached the Beijing-decreed national security law because it advocated the lifestyle of childless families, contrary to the country’s three-child policy.

Anson Lo and Edan Lui star in the remake of a Japanese gay drama. Photo: ViuTV

Choi Chi-sum, general secretary of the Society for Truth and Light, a group supporting traditional family values, shrugged off any suggestion the show was a cause for concern, describing it merely as an entertainment product driven by commercial decisions.

“People are not looking surprised because they have accepted the fact that these shows can be aired on TV. But that doesn’t mean their acceptance goes beyond that,” said Choi, urging parents to guide their children when watching such shows.


Tang, from LingU, acknowledged that the popularity of one show was unlikely to bring a sweeping shift in societal attitudes in the long term, but added every scene was bringing small changes.

Mars' 2 weird moons began as 1 large moon, study suggests

An impact may have split the moon in two.
By Kellen Beck on February 24, 2021

An artist's interpretation of the event where a single moon orbiting Mars was struck and split into the two moons Phobos and Deimos. Credit: Mark Garlick

Mars may have had a single moon before something smashed into it, tearing it asunder into the two moons we see today.

In a study published Monday in Nature, scientists explained how they used the orbital patterns of Phobos and Deimos along with seismic data from NASA's InSight mission to create a simulation of where their paths began, like a digital time machine. When they looked far enough back, it indicated the orbits once intersected, giving rise to the new smashed-moon theory.

While many moons in our solar system are spherical bodies like our own moon, Phobos and Deimos are not, explained Amirhossein Bagheri, lead author on the study and a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Geophyics, ETH Zürich.

“The Martian moons are quite irregular,” he said in a phone interview. “They are really potato-like things. They don't look like our moon.”
What makes Phobos and Deimos stand out

As moons go, Phobos and Deimos are quite small. The larger, oblong Phobos is roughly 157 times smaller than Earth’s moon with an equatorial circumference of around 43 miles. It and its little brother are much less dense than our Moon, meaning their interiors are more porous and possibly fractured, a fact gleaned from Phobos's large Stickney Crater.


Stickney Crater is visible on the lower right side of this image of Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons. Credit: Nasa / Jpl-Caltech / University Of Arizona

“After the Viking mission in the '70s, there was almost a consensus that Phobos and Deimos were captured asteroids,” Bagheri said, meaning Phobos and Deimos were asteroids traveling through our solar system that were trapped in Mars’s orbit.

The problem is the moons' orbits don’t line up with that theory.

Bagheri said an asteroid caught by Mars should have an elongated orbit.

“We expect that the orbit would be really eccentric, but that's not the case for the Martian moons," Bagheri said. "They're quite circular.”

Not only are the orbits near-circular, they also occur around the equator of Mars. That's what you would expect to see from moons that were formed alongside or from a rotating planet — called “in situ” (Latin for “on site”). Asteroids, meanwhile, can begin orbiting a planet at a wide range of angles and would likely not be orbiting as close to the equator as Phobos and Deimos are.

Earth’s moon is generally believed to have formed after Earth was hit by something roughly the size of Mars 4.5 billion years ago. The impact kicked up a bunch of molten debris, which swirled around the rotating Earth and eventually formed our nice, round moon with its circular, equatorial orbit.
Stepping through the orbital time machine

Phobos and Deimos are not locked at a certain distance from Mars. Phobos, the closer moon, is slowly moving closer toward Mars at a rate of roughly six feet per year. Deimos on the other hand is moving away from Mars several inches each year.

Taking that in consideration along with other, complex factors, the team was able to create the simulation, explained fellow study author Michael Efroimsky, research scientist at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

“It turns out that at some point, the orbits of Phobos and Deimos intersected or were extremely close, which gives us an opportunity to think they are probably remnants of a larger body,” he said in a phone interview.

He said if the impact was intense, the parent body could have just disintegrated. If it wasn’t very intense, it’s possible it could have split into two large pieces, one of which fell a little closer to Mars and the other spun out a little further.

Some key pieces to putting together the puzzle of the simulation were the interiors of Mars and the moons.

We don’t know much about Phobos and Deimos because we don’t have spacecraft on them. But we have new information about Mars from NASA’s InSight, which measures seismic activity. By looking at marsquakes, scientists can piece together a map of the planet's deep interior. This information paired with tidal calculations help create a more accurate simulation.
Solidifying the theory

To make this moon-smashing theory more solid, more evidence is needed to more accurately define Phobos and Deimos, two bodies that haven’t seen any visitors on their surfaces.

“Of course, the most reliable way to test our theory would be to have some geological probes,” Efroimsky said. “That would be absolutely wonderful.”

Luckily, a mission called Martian Moons Exploration from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency will investigate both moons. The plan is to launch in the mid 2020s. It will also return a sample of Phobos back to Earth, if everything goes well.

“We have been in touch with them,” Bagheri said.
SEE ALSO: Immerse yourself in Perseverance's 360-degree vista of Mars

If the mission’s instruments are accurate enough and the tidal forces are large enough (which Bagheri thinks they are), they could better understand the interiors of the moons.

“Basically, that can solve the $10 question,” he said.

Scientists discover 150-million-year-old 'grandfather' of crocodiles

BY REUTERS BUENOS AIRES SCIENCE
JUL 24, 2021 


Fossils are important ancient artifacts that increase the knowledge we have of today's world. In that vein, a 150-million-year-old fossilized skeleton that was discovered in the mountains of southern Chile has now been assessed to be the ancestor of the semiaquatic reptiles of the modern wild known as crocodiles, the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences announced Friday.

The species, named Burkesuchus mallingrandensis, was found in 2014 in an Andean fossil deposit near the Patagonian town of Mallin Grande by Argentine and Chilean researchers. Since then it has been analyzed at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences (MACN) in Buenos Aires.

Paleontologist Fernando Novas holds the fossil skull of the Burkesuchus mallingrandensis, which could shed light on the origin of modern crocodiles, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 9, 2021. (Reuters Photo)

The specimen is a "grandfather" of current crocodiles and should allow scientists to understand how they evolved, the museum said.

Scientists believe the fossil will help them understand how these reptiles went from being terrestrial to aquatic. Along with other fossils, the discovery supports the idea that South America was the cradle of evolution for crocodiles.

About 200 million years ago "crocodiles were smaller, and did not live in water. Paleontologists always wanted to know what that transition was like," Federico Agnolin, who found the specimen, told Reuters.

Fossilized bones of the Burkesuchus mallingrandensis, which could help to shed light on the origin of modern crocodiles, are pictured in Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 24, 2020. (Reuters Photo)

"What Burkesuchus shows is a series of unique traits, which no other crocodile has because they were the first that began to get into the water, into fresh water," Agnolin said.

According to the MACN, crocodiles appeared at the beginning of the Jurassic period, around the time of the first dinosaurs.

In a few million years they got into the water, thanks to the existence of warm and shallow seas. South America is known for its richness in marine crocodile fossils.