Afghan tradition allows girls to access the freedom of boys

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV and ELENA BECATOROSan hour ago


KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In a Kabul neighborhood, a gaggle of boys kick a yellow ball around a dusty playground, their boisterous cries echoing off the surrounding apartment buildings.

Dressed in sweaters and jeans or the traditional Afghan male clothing of baggy pants and long shirt, none stand out as they jostle to score a goal. But unbeknown to them, one is different from the others.

At not quite 8 years old, Sanam is a bacha posh: a girl living as a boy. One day a few months ago, the girl with rosy cheeks and an impish smile had her dark hair cut short, donned boys’ clothes and took on a boy’s name, Omid. The move opened up a boy’s world: playing soccer and cricket with boys, wrestling with the neighborhood butcher’s son, working to help the family make ends meet.

In Afghanistan’s heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, bacha posh, Dari for “dressed as a boy,” is the one tradition allowing girls access to the freer male world.

Sanam, a bacha posh, a girl living as a boy, center, celebrates a goal as she plays soccer with boys from her neighbourhood, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. 

(AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

Under the practice, a girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, with all the freedoms and obligations that entails. The child can play sports, attend a madrassa, or religious school, and, sometimes crucially for the family, work. But there is a time limit: Once a bacha posh reaches puberty, she is expected to revert to traditional girls’ gender roles. The transition is not always easy.

It is unclear how the practice is viewed by Afghanistan’s new rulers, the Taliban, who seized power in mid-August and have made no public statements on the issue.

Their rule so far has been less draconian than the last time they were in power in the 1990s, but women’s freedoms have still been severely curtailed. Thousands of women have been barred from working, and girls beyond primary school age have not been able to return to public schools in most places.

With a crackdown on women’s rights, the bacha posh tradition could become even more attractive for some families. And as the practice is temporary, with the children eventually reverting to female roles, the Taliban might not deal with the issue at all, said Thomas Barfield, a professor of anthropology at Boston University who has written several books on Afghanistan.

Sanam, a bacha posh, a girl living as a boy, stands next to her father at their street stand selling masks, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

“Because it’s inside the family and because it’s not a permanent status, the Taliban may stay out (of it),” Barfield said.

It is unclear where the practice originated or how old it is, and it is impossible to know how widespread it might be. A somewhat similar tradition exists in Albania, another deeply patriarchal society, although it is limited to adults. Under Albania’s “sworn virgin” tradition, a woman would take an oath of celibacy and declare herself a man, after which she could inherit property, work and sit on a village council - all of which would have been out of bounds for a woman.

In Afghanistan, the bacha posh tradition is “one of the most under-investigated” topics in terms of gender issues, said Barfield, who spent about two years in the 1970s living with an Afghan nomad family that included a bacha posh. “Precisely because the girls revert back to the female role, they marry, it kind of disappears.”

Girls chosen as bacha posh usually are the more boisterous, self-assured daughters. “The role fits so well that sometimes even outside the family, people are not aware that it exists,” he said.

“It’s almost so invisible that it’s one of the few gender issues that doesn’t show up as a political or social question,” Barfield noted.

Sanam, not quite 8 years old, gets a boy's haircut, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: Bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

The reasons parents might want a bacha posh vary. With sons traditionally valued more than daughters, the practice usually occurs in families without a boy. Some consider it a status symbol, and some believe it will bring good luck for the next child to be born a boy.

But for others, like Sanam’s family, the choice was one of necessity. Last year, with Afghanistan’s economy collapsing, construction work dried up. Sanam’s father, already suffering from a back injury, lost his job as a plumber. He turned to selling coronavirus masks on the streets, making the equivalent of $1-$2 per day. But he needed a helper.

The family has four daughters and one son, but their 11-year-old boy doesn’t have full use of his hands following an injury. So the parents said they decided to make Sanam a bacha posh.

“We had to do this because of poverty,” said Sanam’s mother, Fahima. “We don’t have a son to work for us, and her father doesn’t have anyone to help him. So I will consider her my son until she becomes a teenager.”

A photo of Najieh dressed as a boy at a young age lies in a grass, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

Still, Fahima refers to Sanam as “my daughter.” In their native Dari language, the pronouns are not an issue since one pronoun is used for “he” and “she.”

Sanam says she prefers living as a boy.

“It’s better to be a boy...I wear (Afghan male clothes), jeans and jackets, and go with my father and work,” she said. She likes playing in the park with her brother’s friends and playing cricket and soccer.

Once she grows up, Sanam said, she wants to be either a doctor, a commander or a soldier, or work with her father. And she’ll go back to being a girl.

“When I grow up, I will let my hair grow and will wear girl’s clothes,” she said.

The transition isn’t always easy.

Najieh, who grew up as a bacha posh, sits at her house during an interview, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Oct. 1, 2021. In the heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society of Afghanistan, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, there is one tradition which allows girls access to the male world: bacha posh. A girl dresses, behaves and is treated as a boy, allowing her to play and to work as a boy would be able to do, until she reaches puberty. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

“When I put on girls’ clothes, I thought I was in prison,” said Najieh, who grew up as a bacha posh, although she would attend school as a girl. One of seven sisters, her boy’s name was Assadollah.

Now 34, married and with four children of her own, she weeps for the freedom of the male world she has lost.

“In Afghanistan, boys are more valuable,” she said. “There is no oppression for them, and no limits. But being a girl is different. She gets forced to get married at a young age.”

Young women can’t leave the house or allow strangers to see their face, Najieh said. And after the Taliban takeover, she lost her job as a schoolteacher because she had been teaching boys.

“Being a man is better than being a woman,” she said, wiping tears from her eye. “It is very hard for me. ... If I were a man, I could be a teacher in a school.”

“I wish I could be a man, not a woman. To stop this suffering.”

 

Video: In Afghanistan's heavily patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women and girls are usually relegated to the home, bacha posh, Dari for "dressed as a boy," is the one tradition allowing girls access to the freer male world. (AP Video/Mstyslav Chernov)

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BOY BRIDES 

Without animals to disperse seeds, some plants may not survive climate change

While birds and mammals that eat the fruit and seeds of plants -- an American robin is pictured eating winterberries -- can migrate to more hospital environs when needed, plants need these animals' help to do the same.

 Photo courtesy of Paul D. Vitucci/Rice University

Jan. 13 (UPI) -- As ecosystems warm or dry out because of climate change, plants and animals are being forced to move in search of friendly conditions. Animals can swim, scamper and fly, but plants are rooted in place -- they rely on seed dispersal to migrate.

That's a problem, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science, because the global loss of seed dispersers -- animals that spread plant seeds -- could inhibit the ability of plants to adapt to climate change.

Like animals, each plant species has evolved to thrive within a range of ideal conditions. While some species may be more adaptable than others, all plants have specific habitats for which they are best suited.

"Those habitat characteristics are going to be somewhere other than where they are now as a result of climate change," Rice University ecologist Evan Fricke, the study's first author, told UPI. "Our study focuses on how plants will get to those new places."

Plants need help to migrate

Trees don't have legs or wings, so they rely on other forces to colonize new territory. Natural forces like wind and flowing water can disperse seeds, but flowering species mostly rely on animals to scatter their progeny.

Until now, seed dispersal studies mostly were limited in scale, focused on a distinct location, a particular forest or an island.

RELATED Study: North American bird population has declined by 2.9 billion since 1970

"Like most researchers, I had studied declines of seed dispersal on a pretty small scale, like on the island of Guam," Fricke said. "But seed dispersal is also important for this global phenomenon that is climate change, and seed dispersers are declining on a global scale."

To understand the global nature of the phenomenon, Fricke and his research partners -- including scientists from the University of Maryland, Iowa State University and Aarhus University in Denmark -- used data from several hundred seed dispersal studies to train a machine-learning algorithm to make connections between an animal's traits and its seed dispersal abilities.

"For example, the model can learn to realize that a small bird or bat won't disperse seeds as far as a large mammal like an elephant," Fricke said.

RELATED Non-native species are the primary seed-dispersers on Hawaiian island

But the model can make much more sophisticated inferences, too, Fricke said, like identifying the different dispersal patterns produced by a bird species that spends most of its time foraging on the ground and another that prefers to hang out in the tree canopy.

The model allowed researchers to more precisely estimate the seed dispersal capabilities of birds and mammals, for which there is little published research.

"We can infer what the seed dispersal would have been for now-extinct birds," Fricke said. "The same thing goes for a super rare monkey species that lives in a faraway isolated location."

Characterizing seed dispersal decline

Using the model, researchers characterized the global decline in seed-dispersing bird and mammal species. Fricke and associates estimate declines in seed disperser biodiversity has reduced the geographic mobility of plants by 60% globally.

Beyond identifying the scale of seed dispersal declines, the new analysis advances the quest to make sense of ecological complexity.

Inspired by what's called Ecological Network Theory, more and more scientists are paying closer attention to the mutualistic interactions that make ecosystems the diverse, dynamic places that they are.

"In short, networks are formed by sets of species, or nodes, connected by their interactions, or links, with each other in a certain location," ecologist Jeferson Vizentin-Bugoni told UPI in an email.

"Such interactions are often very complex and hard to study," said Vizentin-Bugoni, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in the study.

In a given ecosystem, for example, there may be 50 seed dispersing species and 100 plant species, forming as many as 5,000 unique links -- the kind of models developed by Fricke and others are essential to making sense of this complexity.

Though the algorithm developed by Fricke and company works to compensate for blind spots in the available data, Vizentin-Bugoni suggests the acquisition of more and better data remains the best way to make sense of network complexities, whether it's a forest or coral reef.

"The quality of the answers and solutions scientists provide to society depends on funding for better data to be collected and analyzed," Vizentin-Bugoni said. "This cannot be downplayed if society wants to understand and mitigate properly the impacts of climate change and species extinctions."

But data acquisition takes time, and the authors of the latest study suggest their findings have important implications for policy decisions being made right now.

Seeing the forest for the trees

Just as researchers have come to look at habitats and ecosystems more holistically, so too should conservationists and policy makers.

Too often, authors of the new study claim, conservation efforts focus on a single species instead of a community of connected plants and animals.

Efforts to preserve ecosystems and bolster the resiliency of plants and animals to climate change, they argue, must focus on protecting and re-establishing vital ecological relations -- between predator and prey, seed disperser and plant, pollinator and flower.

"While reforestation has been heralded as an important nature-based solution for mitigating climate change, this study underscores the importance of wildlife conservation and rewilding as a nature-based strategy for reducing the impacts of climate change on biodiversity," Haldre Rogers, co-author of the new study, told UPI in an email.

"Assisted migration is not feasible on a global scale. Therefore, conservation measures that protect and restore large-bodied seed dispersers are critical for facilitating movement of plant species to suitable habitat," said Rogers, an ecologist and associate professor at Iowa State University.

Quebec, Canada, reports increase in COVID-19 shots after proposing tax on unvaccinated
By Daniel Uria

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said the province has seen an "encouraging" increase in vaccinations after proposing a financial penalty for those who refuse to get vaccinated. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 13 (UPI) -- Quebec's health minister said the Canadian province has seen an increase in vaccinations after it proposed a fine for unvaccinated individuals earlier this week.

In a tweet on Wednesday morning, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said the province recorded 7,000 new first-dose appointments and administered 107,000 doses on Tuesday when the potential financial penalty was announced.

"It's encouraging!" Dube wrote.

On Tuesday, Quebec Premier Francois Legault said that the province would impose a health tax on residents who refuse to get their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks.

Legault did not specify exactly when the tax would go into effect or how large the fine would be but said he wanted the cost to be "significant" -- totaling more than $50 or $100. The proposed tax would also not apply to those with a medical exemption from receiving the vaccine.

Quebec has reported the most COVID-19 deaths of any Canadian province with more than 12,000. The province has ordered schools to close and implemented a 10 p.m. curfew due to rising cases amid the presence of the Omicron variant.

The premier added that 10% of eligible Quebecers had not received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while unvaccinated people make up 50% of the province's intensive care patients.

"Those who refuse to get their first doses in the coming weeks will have to pay a new health contribution," Legault said. "The majority are asking that there be consequences ... It's a question of fairness for the 90% of the population that have made some sacrifices. We owe them."

The province also last week announced that it would require residents to be vaccinated in order to buy alcohol or cannabis, with proof of vaccination already required to eat in restaurants, go to a gym or attend a sporting event.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Wednesday that he was awaiting more details about the proposed fine before he would support the idea, adding it must comply with the Canada Health Act -- which guarantees universal access to healthcare -- and be consistent with "the rights we all cherish as Canadians.

"Details matter. We need to know exactly what measures they're putting forward. We need to know the terms and conditions so we can know if it'll be effective," Trudeau said. "We'll be looking at the details to see how exactly this will transpire."

'It was like a different planet': Sand sculptures litter Lake Michigan beach

By Monica Danielle, AccuWeather, Accuweather.com 

A walk along Lake Michigan this week was a lot like a stroll through a museum gallery thanks to some weather elements coming together to create an incredible phenomenon. Small, delicate sand sculptures casually littered the beach at Tiscornia Park in St. Joseph, Mich.

"It was like a different planet," Terri Abbott told Fox 2. "I've never seen anything like them, and I spend a lot of time there!" Tiscornia Park is on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan, about 190 miles west of Detroit.

Photographer Joshua Nowicki has taken many incredible photos of the phenomenon and other beautiful winter scenes in the Midwest and says the sculptures are a fleeting creation of nature.

"They do not last very long. The wind completely erodes them or knocks them down. If the temperature goes up above freezing they crumble, and often in the winter, they soon get covered by drifting snow," Nowicki told Colossal. The sculptures this year are the biggest he's ever seen with the largest being about 15 inches tall.

The otherworldly phenomenon is caused when a combination of weather elements occurs simultaneously: wind, cold and snow or rain. The wind erodes the frozen sand, which is slightly wet from precipitation then the cold air holds the delicate shapes in place.

Alan Arbogast, the chair of the Geography Department at Michigan State University who also studies the state's dunes, explained to Fox 2 how the sand formations are created just like a sculptor chisels away at stone until a form emerges

"I imagine what happened is that the sand is frozen. Then, we had a big storm roll through a couple weeks ago with strong winds. The wind blew along the beach and blasted out the areas that were a little less frozen," he explained. "Those things aren't being built up. Everything around the features that are standing up was eroded from it. Those are the things that are left behind."

Sunset photo of the sand sculptures at Tiscornia Park in St. Joseph, Mich., on Tuesday. (Twitter/DavidCaulfield_)

Like much of the country, parts of Michigan experienced cold weather and brutal winds in early January, making for perfect conditions for the phenomenon to occur. Brutally cold air from the Arctic made its way through the North Central states and into the Northeast

The gusty conditions across portions of the Midwest led the outside air to feel even colder than the thermometer reading as AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperatures dipped below zero at times across northeastern Iowa, northern Illinois and central Michigan. AccuWeather forecasters say Tuesday was the coldest day of the winter so far in the region. The high on Monday was 20 degrees Fahrenheit with a low of 15 degrees. Overnight into Tuesday, the temperature dropped as low as 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

The average high temperature for this time of year in St. Joseph is 34, with the low bottoming out at 20, on average, according to the latest 30-year climate normals. Meanwhile, lake water temperatures have been running above normal this winter across the Great Lakes, with Lake Michigan's water temperature 1.1 degrees above average as of this week

While the frigid temperatures aren't ideal for humans, it's clearly the perfect weather to form these sandy creations that caused several people, including meteorologist Dave Caulfield, to brave the cold for some stunning shots. Nature is incredible and can sometimes make sub-freezing temperatures a little more bearable.

Probe of Texas National Guard border mission demanded over suicide attempts
By James Barragán, The Texas Tribune & Davis Winkie, Military Times

Migrants wait to turn themselves over to National Guard and Customs and Border Protection officials in Del Rio, Texas. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

Jan. 13 (UPI) -- Thirteen Democratic members of the Texas congressional delegation called Thursday for a sweeping inspector general investigation into Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott's highly touted border mission, following news reports of poor working and living conditions for troops, habitual pay problems, and suspected suicides tied to the operation.

The letter comes as another service member, based in the city of Pharr, survived a suicide attempt Sunday, according to an incident report obtained by Army Times and The Texas Tribune.

In a letter addressed to Col. Daniel Heape, inspector general of the Texas Military Department, the lawmakers said Operation Lone Star was "severely eroding the readiness of our National Guardsmen and their ability to be deployed on federal orders."

"It is clear state leadership does not have our troops best interest in mind. Instead, they continue to use them as political props, whether it be through assigning them to support OLS or by refusing to comply with federal vaccine requirements intended to protect them from COVID-19," the letter read, using an abbreviation for Operation Lone Star. "As such, we urge you to launch a full investigation into TMD's actions related to OLS and how this mission is impacting the well-being, morale, and overall readiness of our troops so Texans can have a full accounting of what is happening to these servicemembers."

The co-signers of the letter comprise all Democrats in the Texas congressional delegation: Reps. Veronica Escobar of El Paso; Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green, Sylvia Garcia and Lizzie Fletcher of Houston; Lloyd Doggett of Austin; Colin Allred and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas; Marc Veasey of Fort Worth; Joaquin Castro of San Antonio, Filemon Vela of Brownsville; Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen; and Henry Cuellar of Laredo.

The lawmakers referenced a story by the Army Times in late December that reported on four suicides by soldiers tied to Operation Lone Star. In January, the publication reported on another suicide attempt tied to the mission and another soldier who died when he accidentally shot himself in an alcohol-related incident.

The soldier who survived Sunday's suicide attempt was transported to the hospital after telling another soldier she had ingested prescription medications and alcohol in her unit's hotel, according to the incident report.

RELATED Texas lawmakers decry mistreatment of National Guardsmen on border duty

On Tuesday, Abbott pushed back on the reports of suicides being linked to his border mission, saying his detractors were "just playing politics." He pointed to the military's broader suicide problem, adding that the Texas suicides are under investigation and he suspected that not all "actually occurred during Operation Lone Star."

In fiscal year 2017, the Texas Army National Guard saw nine suicides, 14 attempts and 42 ideations among its troops, according to budget documents. Army Times asked state officials for more recent numbers Thursday but did not immediately receive a response.

On Thursday, Abbott spokesperson Nan Tolson said President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats "have turned a blind eye to the United States' borders that they all swore to protect and defend."

"The reckless open border policies have created an absolute crisis along our southern border, with a 61-year record-high number of illegal immigrants surging into our state and millions of lethal doses of drugs like fentanyl streaming into our country," Tolson said in a written statement. "Texas has had no choice but to step up and address this crisis in the wake of President Biden's and Congressional Democrats inaction."

Tolson said Operation Lone Star had deployed more than 10,000 Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers, erected temporary barriers and built a state-funded border wall to deter border crossings. She also touted Abbott's $36 million in grants to local law enforcement and prosecutors who he directed to arrest migrants and prosecute them for state crimes. Tolson said the operation had resulted in more than 186,000 migrant apprehensions, more than 10,000 "border-related" crime arrests and more than 208 million lethal doses of seized fentanyl.

But Tolson did not answer questions about poor working conditions, habitual pay problems and suicides tied to the congressional request for an investigation.

"Texas will do whatever it takes to secure our southern border and protect Texans in President Biden's absence, because nothing is more important than the safety and security of our communities," Tolson said.

The Texas Military Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawmakers also cited Army Times reports on habitual pay issues and poor working and living conditions during the mission, calling them "severely concerning."

"These alarming reports call into question decisions made by the leadership of the TMD and Governor Abbott, and necessitate an immediate impartial and comprehensive investigation of all TMD actions related to OLS and the conditions of National Guard troops deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border," the letter read.

Abbott deployed Operation Lone Star last March after blaming Biden for an increase in migrant crossings at Texas' southern border. The mission sent a sharp increase of Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to the border in an effort to curb migrant crossings.

But some soldiers on the border have said the mission lacks a clear directive and that they play little role in apprehending migrants attempting to cross into Texas, according to the Army Times. Other troops at busier sections of the border have expressed concerns about a shortage of first aid and protective equipment for their interactions with people who cross, retired Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston, the Texas Army National Guard's former top enlisted soldier, said last week in a news conference with Allen West, a GOP candidate for governor and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.

Last fall, the Texas Military Department increased the number of troops deployed to Operation Lone Star from 1,200 in June to about 10,000 by November. The department said the drastic increase led to "austere conditions" for troops. The department's public affairs office said all pay issues were resolved as of last week and has cautioned against drawing a link between the operation and the suspected suicides.

Texas Guard officials are telling a different story behind closed doors, though. More than 80 soldiers' pay issues weren't resolved as of Tuesday, 36th Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Charles Aris said in a Wednesday town hall event. Army Times and the Tribune obtained a recording of the 2-hour event.

On Tuesday, Abbott told the Tribune "all paycheck issues have been resolved." Tolson, his spokesperson, did not respond to a question about the ongoing paycheck issues.

The congressional Democrats praised National Guard soldiers for their other recent state deployments on recovery efforts after last February's deadly winter storm, which left millions of Texans without power for days, and the aftermath of Hurricanes Ida and Laura in Texas and Louisiana. But they expressed concern that consecutive deployments "take a toll on a servicemember who has already spent weeks away from home."

"Being activated again for OLS, sometimes with less than a four-day notice, is leading troops to scramble to get their civilian affairs in order, if they are able to, without any idea when they may be able to return to their civilian lives," the letter read.

The letter from the congressional Democrats comes as criticism of the mission mounts against Abbott for his handling of the troops. Earlier this month, West blasted the mission as a political stunt that led soldiers to "rush into a failure." West also called for the resignation of the Texas National Guard's top military leader, Texas Adjutant General Tracy Norris.

West retired from the military in 2003 after he was investigated for torturing an Iraqi detainee for information.

Beto O'Rourke, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, has also criticized Abbott's handling of the mission, saying he has failed to provide the deployed troops basic rights and calling on the governor to send the troops home if he cannot provide them.

On Wednesday, state Rep. Alex Dominguez, D-Brownsville, announced in an op-ed in the Military Times that he'd asked the House General Investigating Committee to begin an investigation into the suicides and morale on the mission. Dominguez, chair of the chamber's veterans caucus, also called on Abbott to impose a moratorium on further troop deployment until the House completed its investigation and Abbott released a plan to address the morale crisis on the mission.

Tolson, Abbott's spokesperson, did not answer questions about Dominguez's call for an investigation or his request for a moratorium on deployments. State Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, the chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, declined comment.

Dominguez also requested information from the Texas Military Department regarding Operation Lone Star, as well as recommendations for the Legislature on how to remedy issues with housing, pay, benefits and leave.

Other legislative leaders, including the lawmakers in charge of committees overseeing the Texas Military Department, have also expressed concern following the Army Times reports and have begun seeking information from the department.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. Read the original here. The Texas Tribune is a non-profit, non-partisan media organization that informs Texans -- and engages with them -- about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Turkish writer Ahmet Altan: 'I prefer prison to exile'



Turkish author Ahmet Altan says he feels an added urgency to write after spending nearly five years in jail on tenuous charges (AFP/BULENT KILIC)

Remi BANET
Thu, January 13, 2022, 7:20 PM·3 min read

Freed after nearly five years in jail for alleged involvement in a failed coup, Turkish journalist and author Ahmet Altan, 71, now counts his time by the number of books he has left to write.

Celebrated in the West -- particularly Germany and France, where he won literary prizes while still behind bars -- Altan remains in a tricky situation back home, where he faces the threat of further prosecution.

But speaking to AFP in his Istanbul flat, Altan said he would rather spend his last days in a Turkish prison "where I spoke my native language" than be a free man in exile, where "you are nearly no one (and) have no roots".

"Writers are very anxious because every minute is a minute that you can write, you can do your job, so every minute that you don’t write, you feel regret," he said in fluent English.

"I feel it now much more than before prison," he confided, ensconced in a black leather chair flanked by stacks of books.

- 'Revenge' -

Altan, who has sold nearly seven million books worldwide, was one of tens of thousands of Turks jailed or fired from their jobs in purges that followed a 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The soft-spoken intellectual was locked up in Silivri, an Istanbul prison complex fitted out with Turkey's largest courtroom -- the main venue for mass trials that saw more than 2,500 suspects jailed for life.

Altan was partially singled out for his work with Taraf, a newspaper he founded. The government closed the paper on allegations it had obtained financial backing from a US-based Muslim cleric Erdogan blames for the coup plot.

Released less than half way through his 10.5-year sentence last April by order of the European Court of Human Rights, which found "no evidence" of wrongdoing, Altan returned to his family having written two more books in jail and nearly completed a third.

The first, a prison memoir called "I Will Never See the World Again", was translated into 28 languages but never published in Turkey.

He describes the second, a novel called "Lady Life", as an ode to freedom and his personal "revenge".

It became a best-seller in Turkey after his release, scooping up France's Prix Femina foreign book prize in 2021.

"It's kind of saying, 'you couldn't steal those five years from me'," the silver-bearded writer said of the novel, between cigarette puffs.

He recalled writing "eight or nine hours a day", while his two cellmates nagged him about the endless cigarette smoke.

- 'Exile would be harder' -

One day in prison he stumbled across FlashTV, a "low-end" channel that showed voluptuous women singing and dancing in skimpy dresses.

"They were the only ladies I could see while in prison... I really liked to watch it but my cellmates were very religious," laughed Altan, who describes himself as an atheist who is passionate about religion.

"Lady Life", a story of a literature student who falls in love with two sensuous women, "came in this atmosphere", he said.

"I lived in some other world," he said. "If you can write, there is nothing to complain about."

Altan's jailing sparked international outrage, turning him into a symbol of oppression in Turkey after the coup attempt.

Thirty-eight Nobel laureates -- including JM Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro -- published a letter in Britain's Guardian newspaper in 2018 calling on Erdogan to secure the writer's release.

Aware of his high profile and the new court proceedings he faces, Altan shies away from answering overtly political questions today.

But while he vows to publish his future books abroad before trying his luck at home, Altan sounds resolute about staying in Turkey, no matter what.

"It's not because of courage. But being in exile is something I believe is harder than being a prisoner," he said.

In exile, "you may be safe and secure ... but you cannot feel like you are (sleeping) in your own bed, in your own home. I'd rather be in prison."

rba/raz/zak/gil

Venezuela: The Decline Of An Oil Giant In Crisis


By Margioni BERMEDEZ
01/13/22 AT 9:26 PM

Leaks, rusted pipes, pieces of broken equipment scattered about and staircases leading nowhere: Lake Maracaibo's oil field is a metaphor for Venezuela's once-flourishing petroleum industry that is now on its knees.

More than a century ago, the Maracaibo basin in northwestern Zulia state was the birthplace of a business that transformed the country into one of the world's 10 largest oil producers and a Latin American economic heavyweight.

By 2008, the country was producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day.

View of oil installations on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela -- the oil field there is in disrepair, much like the industry as a whole across the country 

Photo: AFP / Federico PARRA

Just 13 years later, it can only muster 500,000 to one million barrels per day amid a grinding economic crisis marked by years of recession and hyperinflation. Venezuela's gross domestic product per capita is now similar to that of Haiti.


Despite sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves, the country battles fuel shortages and frequent blackouts, and at one point even had to import fuel from Iran.


The Maracaibo basin was once a flurry of oil activity, with a halo of light over the complex visible at night from a fair distance.

Today, it is a humid swamp that stinks of oil from leaking pipes floating on the water.

The equipment in the Lake Maracaibo oil basin is now in a state of disrepair, with installations rusted out or broken Photo: AFP / Federico PARRA

Hardly anyone risks going to that area "for fear of an explosion due to the gases," one fisherman who asked not to be named told AFP.

The oil platforms have long been pillaged of any valuables, including taps and valves that control the flow of oil and gas.

State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) had a monopoly in the 1970s, and then Hugo Chavez forced all private firms to merge with it after he came to power in 1999; after that, the industry fell victim to corruption and problems with maintenance 

Photo: AFP / Yuri CORTEZ

It is a sea change from the prosperous 1970s when Venezuela's oil industry was nationalized, giving state-run PDVSA a monopoly.

That lasted until the 1990s when the industry was opened to private capital.

But after Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, he ordered all private oil companies to merge with PDVSA and made the state institution the majority shareholder.

View of an oil refinery operated by state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) in Puerto La Cruz -- PDVSA was once a cash cow for Venezuela's government but mismanagement and corruption led to hard times for the company and its workers Photo: AFP / Yuri CORTEZ

From then on, the industry was hit by corruption, poor decision-making, problems with maintenance and aging equipment, and later financial sanctions.

PDVSA did not immediately respond to requests from AFP for comment for this story.

Many analysts believe the key moment in the industry's decline came in the early 2000s when Chavez, who died in 2013 while still president, became embroiled in an protracted battle with PDVSA executives.

The clash resulted in a crippling strike from December 2002 to March 2003, during which production dropped to a historic low of just 25,000 barrels a day.

Cracked oil pipelines like this one cross through farms and private property in Venezuela's eastern oil zones 

Photo: AFP / Yuri CORTEZ

Blasting the "sabotage" of Venezuela's oil production, Chavez sacked most of PDVSA's management and thousands of employees, replacing them with people "loyal to the revolution" who often lacked the necessary expertise.

Production rebounded after the strike, but by 2009, 70 businesses involved in the supply chain were also nationalized.

This resulted in "a lack of maintenance, and a lack of motivation among employees," whose salaries plummeted, said one former employee identified here as Carlos (his name has been changed to protect his anonymity).

He had started working at PDVSA in the early 2000s, when he was just 18.

On some oil platforms in Venezuela, idle employees at one point began "fishing to feed themselves" as provisions were no longer reaching them, said one current employee who asked not to be named 

Photo: AFP / Federico PARRA

But when the onetime "cash cow" for Venezuela's government encountered hard times, so did its employees.

"Many women left their husbands because they no longer worked for PDVSA. Families broke up. I didn't earn enough any more," said Carlos, who blamed his own divorce on a loss of income.

By that time, half of the country's oil wells were paralyzed.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has blamed US sanctions for the crisis in the oil industry, but the problems predate the punitive measures imposed by Washington Photo: AFP / ADALBERTO ROQUE

In 2013, the crisis deepened when subcontractors stopped working due to unpaid bills.

Idle employees began spending their days "fishing to feed themselves" as provisions never reached workers on the platforms, recounted Maria, who worked for the company at the time and still does (her name has been changed for this story).

The pipeline's operator has been accused of delaying repairs on damaged parts of the Meraux Pipeline that were detected during a 2020 inspection. 

In photo: a man carries buckets while working to clean up an oil spill near a PDVSA pipeline in Voladero, Monagas state Photo: AFP / Yuri CORTEZ

The politicization at PDVSA had reached a high point: even computer screensavers at the company used pictures of Chavez, and later, his successor Nicolas Maduro.

"Hiring people based on their politics badly affected production... we got rid of experienced people, and any semblance of meritocracy disappeared," said Maria, who asked that AFP not explain the job she performs for PDVSA.

It also created a "breeding ground for corruption," with embezzlement at the highest level, she added.

In 2017, authorities launched a vast operation targeting corruption within PDVSA, investigating former managers including the company's ex-president Rafael Ramirez.

Oil leaks are killing off wildlife in Lake Maracaibo -- a dead fish is seen here 

Photo: AFP / Federico PARRA

"They seize public resources and illegally seek to legalize the capital," Attorney General Tarek William Saab said at the time.

Ramirez, now in self-exile in Italy, said the accusations against him are politically driven.

Several witnesses with direct knowledge of the situation, including Maria, said PDVSA vehicles were put to private use, company funds were used for personal purchases -- and even televisions and computers were stolen.

But that was nothing new.

"There's old corruption and new corruption," said Carlos Mendoza Pottella, a professor of oil economics at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, adding that irregular purchases and illicit practices were already happening in the 1980s.

With PDVSA in solid decline, some employees jumped ship and found jobs as taxi drivers or in supermarkets, while engineers and geologists fled abroad in search of opportunities.

Maria stayed, however, and works twice a week for a meager 60 bolivars (less than $15) per month and no benefits. Before, she had a good salary and medical coverage.

"We are in God's hands now," she said.

"No oil employee can live off their PDVSA wage," said Maria, except for those employed by "mixed companies" -- joint ventures with Chinese or Russian firms.

Venezuela blames US sanctions for its difficulties, but those punitive measures only began in 2014 -- long after the rot had set in.

By the time Donald Trump intensified sanctions against Venezuela when he took office in 2017, the country's oil industry was already on its knees, though they have certainly made things even more difficult.

Once Venezuela's main crude oil client, the United States today hinders even the importation of spare parts needed by refineries, as it moves to eviscerate Maduro's government, which it no longer recognizes.

Roy, a 30-year-old fisherman who only gave his first name, remembers how impressed he was by the complex on Lake Maracaibo.

Now, the abandoned installation does little but pollute the water, with crude occasionally spewing out of the dilapidated platforms.

"One day, I saw oil spraying 70 meters into the air. I thought it was water but it was oil," said Roy.

Some areas of Lake Maracaibo are known as "dead zones" because oil slicks, visible on NASA satellite images, have deprived them of oxygen.

Local residents are bearing the brunt of the environmental disaster.

"The oil slicks prevent you from working," said Roy, who added he once lost 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of crabs ruined by crude.

The lake's floor is criss-crossed by "a mishmash of pipes and pipelines releasing oil that is killing biodiversity," said Mendoza Pottella.

But it's not the only problematic site. Leaks are common wherever Venezuela drills for oil, although PDVSA rarely acknowledges them.

In Venezuela's eastern oil zones, near the town of Maturin, residents say cracked pipelines pass through farms and private property.

"There is a continuous leak," complained Eleazar Gonzalez, who grows bananas and papayas in the village of Los Pozos de Guannipa. "It pollutes everything."

This week, three people were injured in an oil pipeline explosion to the east of Lake Maracaibo in Naricual, not far from Maturin.

Despite the chronic problems, Maduro nevertheless claimed earlier this month that production had climbed back up to one million barrels a day and said the aim was to double the figure in 2022.

Over the past year, there was a "small uptick" in activity, and PDVSA has started to pay its subcontractors, a businessman with decades of experience in the sector told AFP on condition of anonymity.

In an era where the world is seeking to move away from fossil fuels, Maduro has vowed to break the economically crippled country's reliance on so-called "black gold."

"We are not going to depend anymore on oil," he said, calling for more economic diversification.

HOW VENEZUELA BECAME ONE BIG CASINO
In the midst of the country’s economic collapse, casinos—and the dollar—are king again.

By William Neuman

THE ATLANTIC
Photographs by Lexi Parra
JANUARY 4, 2022

The monkey entered the casino after midnight. It clung to the arm of a short man with a military haircut. The man stood and watched the action at the roulette tables while the monkey, a capuchin with a brush cut like its owner’s, swiveled its head from side to side. A waiter fed the animal a cold french fry. Once, between spins of the wheel, the monkey leaped onto the baize table and then back into its owner’s arms.

It was a Friday night, in an affluent Caracas neighborhood called Las Mercedes, and inside the casino, which had opened a few weeks earlier, gamblers pulled crisp $100 bills off thick rolls of American cash. The same silent older women who populate casinos everywhere fed $10 and $20 bills into video slot machines. The national currency, the bolivar—named after The Liberator, Simón Bolívar, the country’s anti-imperialist founding father—was nowhere in sight. A group of men roared over wins and losses at a roulette table where the brightly colored chips cost $1 each. What passed for the high rollers in the place convened at another roulette table, where the croupier swept away as much as $1,000 in chips after each spin.


I struck up a conversation with a man who had geometric tattoos on his right forearm. We talked about how the casinos had been banned for years by Venezuela’s self-proclaimed socialist government. I asked why, all of a sudden, in the midst of the country’s catastrophic economic collapse, the government had allowed casinos to operate again. He was a gambling man—perhaps he’d had a bad night—and he gave a wry laugh behind his blue paper face mask. “For our loss,” the man said.

When I left the casino I stood for a moment on the sidewalk out front and looked up at the three large video screens mounted high on the building’s brick facade. A computer animation played over and over. It showed packs of $100 bills raining from the sky until they filled up the screens.

This is the new Venezuela, where games of chance substitute for oil wells and the image of Bolívar has been replaced by the face of a new liberating hero: Benjamin Franklin.

The late Hugo Chávez, the founder of what he called Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, decried capitalism as a casino economy, and he derided casinos as a social ill akin to drug addiction and prostitution. His government forced them to close; the last one shut its doors about a decade ago. But today, under Chávez’s acolyte and successor as president, Nicolás Maduro, the whole country has become a casino, where millions are stuck in a daily, low-stakes struggle for dollar chips and a few high rollers stuff their pockets with greenbacks.

Ilived in caracas from 2012 to 2016, when I was the Andes region bureau chief of The New York Times, and I returned regularly after that, until the coronavirus pandemic interrupted travel. When I went back in November after two years away, one of the first people I spoke with was a middle-class friend who was, like nearly everyone here, having a hard time making ends meet.


“There are two Venezuelas,” my friend said. “The one where people have dollars”—he meant bank accounts full of them—“and the one where people make $5 a month.” He was exaggerating. Government workers (including his wife) currently receive a monthly salary of seven bolivars, which is equivalent to about $1.50.

Anne Applebaum: Venezuela is the eerie endgame of modern politics

Since Chávez’s death in 2013, Venezuela has gone through an extended political and economic crisis. Over eight years, the economy has shrunk by about 80 percent—an unprecedented collapse in a country not at war. The nation has experienced hyperinflation and an outflow of millions of refugees. Hyper-devaluation has left the bolivar virtually worthless. Economic sanctions by the United States, piled on by former President Donald Trump in an attempt to quickly force Maduro from power—and continued under President Joe Biden—have added to the misery. Millions of people go hungry. The United Nations World Food Programme estimated in 2020 that a third of the country’s residents were “food insecure” and in need of assistance to put enough food on the table. About 6 million people (a fifth of the pre-crisis population) have fled the country.

Maduro’s answer to the political pressure has been repression: crack down on protestors, jail opponents, manipulate elections. The most recent example occurred during my visit in November, when the Supreme Court nullified a key governor’s election, in Chávez’s home state of Barinas, that appeared to have been won by an opposition candidate. On the economic front, Maduro started out with gross mismanagement, including immense deficit spending that sent inflation soaring above 300,000 percent a year.


But recently Maduro has embarked on a different course. While maintaining his loud socialist-flavored public pronouncements, he has slashed public spending and social programs. And, with the devaluation of the bolivar, he has embraced the yanqui dollar. Today, dollars are everywhere in the street, and bolivars are scarce. Prices in most stores and restaurants are listed in dollars. Food carts have signs saying: “Hotdogs $1.”

Venezuelans call this “dollarization,” and there is a double-sided irony in the shift from bolivars to Benjamins. On the one hand, a government that proclaims itself socialist—and sees the United States as its No. 1 enemy—has encouraged the use of dollars in place of its own currency. On the other hand, the U.S. sought, through sanctions, to crush the economy and choke off Venezuela’s access to dollars by declaring an embargo against the country’s oil sales, which account for more than 95 percent of export revenue. (Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.) The result, against all expectations, is a country where the dollar has become the de facto national currency.

Maduro’s decision to bring back casinos derives from the logic of a late convert to capitalism. The country saved virtually nothing during the boom years of high oil prices under Chávez. That was followed by a period of low prices and a drop in oil production, caused largely by mismanagement of the state-controlled oil industry. That devastated the nation’s bottom line and deprived the government of billions in income. Oil-export revenues were less than $8 billion in 2020, down from $94 billion in 2012.

Now Maduro is desperate for any hard currency he can get. In a dollarized country, casinos are one potential source. The first of this new wave of casinos opened about a year ago in a luxury hotel on a mountaintop overlooking Caracas. Then, in August, news leaked that the government had decided to allow 30 more casinos to open, including several in the capital. (As with many of Maduro’s economic policies, no official announcement was made.) The betting palace that I visited in Las Mercedes was among the first of these. I asked a government spokesperson for details of the arrangement with the private casino operators, including licensing fees and taxes. He told me he had requested the information and received no response. (Interview requests sent to three senior government officials also went unanswered.)

As i waited to speak with Asdrúbal Oliveros, a prominent economist, I looked out the window of a conference room in his fifth-floor office. Across the street was an enormous pit with a rusting John Deere backhoe parked halfway down a dirt ramp. I’d seen holes like this one all over the country, construction projects abandoned like the nation’s hopes. To one side I could see the building that contained the offices of Raúl Gorrín, a wealthy businessman with close ties to the Maduro government, who was indicted and sanctioned by the United States in connection with a multibillion-dollar bribery and money-laundering scheme. Behind a high wall, and empty in the midday sun, languished the green soccer fields and tennis courts of a private school that has educated generations of the Caracas elite. And in the distance, the green expanse of the Ávila mountain loomed under a blue Caribbean sky, the city’s eternal backdrop.

Oliveros told me that after eight years of catastrophic contraction, he projects that the economy will have shrunk in 2021 by less than 1 percent. “We are entering a phase of stabilization,” he said.

Dollarization has been the biggest factor in this stabilization. Oliveros estimates that about two-thirds of retail transactions are now in dollars. Many private-sector employees are now paid in dollars. Government workers and others who are still paid in bolivars often have second and third jobs—where they earn dollars. As in the United States, app-based delivery services are booming; you can have everything from takeout food to rum to caviar delivered, usually by motorcycle, and this has provided dollar income to thousands of young men living in the slums. About $2.5 billion a year, according to Oliveros, comes in through remittances sent by refugees in other countries to relatives who stayed home. The dollar has also served as an anchor for inflation. Prices in dollars are still rising but not as rapidly as prices in bolivars.

Read: How an elaborate plan to topple Venezuela’s president went wrong

The second stabilizing factor is that a more pragmatic government has made a kind of pact with the private sector. “To the degree that you don’t get involved in politics, the government will let you be,” Oliveros said. Gone are the frequent attacks on the private sector and threats to expropriate businesses and property; the government has eliminated many of the price controls that once choked the economy and has stopped enforcing those that remain.

The government has stuck to its drastic cutbacks in public spending and has shown discipline in resisting the quick populist fixes that were once common. Maduro refrained from ordering an increase to the minimum wage ahead of gubernatorial and mayoral elections in November; he went through with an increase in fuel prices just weeks before the vote. At its peak, in 2016, government spending reached 40 percent of gross domestic product, Oliveros said. This year it could be as low as 10 percent of a much smaller economic output. Oliveros called it a spending cut that “has no historical precedent.” What it amounts to is a classic neoliberal austerity package (but more severe and with essentially no public discussion) of the kind that Maduro and his leftist cohort routinely rail against. It is common here to see images of the leftist icon Salvador Allende, the former socialist president of Chile, but the government’s current approach is more akin to the University of Chicago–inspired economic policy of the man who overthrew Allende, General Augusto Pinochet.

The other model for Maduro’s new economic vision is China. Government ministers and managers have been told that they need to make government agencies and companies more efficient and to work with the private sector, according to a former official I spoke with (who requested to remain anonymous to speak freely). The message to private companies that they are free to grow as long as they steer clear of politics also mimics the Chinese experience.

And then there is dirty money. “There is a whole structure of illicit activities, activities in a gray zone: smuggling gold, smuggling gasoline, extortion, money laundering, movement of illegal merchandise through ports and airports, drug trafficking,” Oliveros told me. This has turned Venezuela into a giant money-laundering machine. As the money enters the economy, it has a “multiplier effect,” Oliveros said, paying for legitimate goods and services and creating employment.

Las Mercedes, with its casino, fancy restaurants (charging New York prices), and flashy cars, is at the heart of what people here call “the Bubble”: Outside, the country might be in ruins, but tonight, we party. The Bubble serves the small elite that has persisted through the crisis, and it is the playground for the enchufados, the plugged-in set that has grown rich from official connections, which often means by paying bribes to get inflated government contracts.

And here is another irony: The effervescent economy in the Bubble, with enchufados partying in clubs, sipping expensive whiskey, shopping for designer clothes in exclusive boutiques, dropping their pets off at plush dog salons, driving new SUVs and sports cars, is partly a consequence of the U.S. sanctions intended to punish those very people. The U.S. government has sanctioned about 150 individuals tied to the Maduro government, most of them living in Venezuela. It has canceled the visas of more than 1,000 people. Many others, who have no ties to the government, have seen their U.S. bank accounts closed as financial institutions, afraid of running afoul of sanctions, avoid anything connected to Venezuela. “The sanctions have definitely made it more difficult for many people to spend their money outside the country,” said Tiziana Polesel, the president of the National Council of Commerce and Services, a private-sector business group. And if you’re barred from taking your money abroad, you have to spend it at home.


One of the most pervasive manifestations of the economic changes afoot here are the stores called bodegones, which sell imported goods in dollars. When I was last in Venezuela, in 2018 and 2019, the country was in chaos, there were shortages of basic goods, store shelves were often empty, and people had no money—most were broke, bolivars were scarce, and dollars were hardly used. When I returned in November after two years, the effect was dizzying. Now there were dollars everywhere and the stores were full.

Wanting to lower prices and prevent shortages, the government has looked the other way, allowing the extensive import of goods without tariffs or customs or sanitary inspections. In the bodegones, you can find giant boxes of Frosted Flakes from Costco. Bags of almonds from Trader Joe’s. Frozen organic cherries from Turkey. Beauty masks from South Korea. Whole prosciutto hams from Italy. Samsung televisions and LG washing machines. Champagne, Rioja, and whiskey galore. In a sense, the bodegones are a middle-class version of the government’s pact with the business community. The message is: Go out and spend your money and buy whatever you want; just don’t protest.

The pricing is often bizarre. Because no taxes are involved, you can buy a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black for almost half the price you would pay in New York. Some stores are known for selling appliances at cut-rate prices. “A lot of this economic activity that you see could be intended to cover up money laundering,” Polesel said. “We see it when we analyze the prices being charged for some products in the Venezuelan market and you realize that they are below what is being charged for the same product on Amazon. There you have two possible explanations. Either it’s money laundering or it’s someone who knows absolutely nothing about doing business—they’re losing money and will go out of business in two or three months.”


Either way, if you don’t have the dollars, it doesn’t matter how many $11 jars of Nutella are on how many bodegón shelves. The same goes for supermarkets, where the relaxation of price controls and the influx of imports have helped fill shelves, but at higher prices.

The result is a vast increase in inequality—the product, over several years, of Venezuela’s economic collapse, augmented by U.S. sanctions, and now the government’s unannounced austerity program. Lots of products on store shelves doesn’t mean that things are better. It only means that they appear better. By opening the floodgates to imports, the government was creating the appearance of abundance. But it is an abundance only for those who can afford it.

“Now there’s plenty of food, the supermarkets are full,” Alexandra Castellanos told me. “But what are you going to do if you don’t have money to buy?”

Castellanos lives with her husband, Ronald, and three children, in a barrio in southwest Caracas called Macarao. Ronald has severe anemia and had to leave his job as a maintenance worker in an office building. The couple receives a monthly box of subsidized food, which lasts a few days, and government benefit payments that add up to less than $10 a month.

Read: How populism helped wreck Venezuela

Ten dollars doesn’t go far in the dollarized economy. A carton of 15 eggs costs $2.50. A kilo of corn flour to make arepas, the Venezuelan staple, costs about $1. Ground beef costs about $2 a pound.

As we talked, in a dingy bakery on a noisy side street, Alexandra’s daughter, Zorángelis, sat beside us. She was a month shy of 3 years old, and she weighed 22 pounds; a doctor had told Alexandra that the girl was 10 pounds underweight. Alexandra pushed up the sleeve of her daughter’s flowered blouse and gently pinched her thin arm. “She’s not building up muscle mass,” she said.


Ronald has gotten free treatment at public hospitals for his anemia, but he needs vitamin B12 injections and other supplements that the family has to buy on its own and cannot afford.

For a while, Alexandra would take the subway to a large, open-air fruit and vegetable market and gather scraps for her family from what the vendors threw away. But so many indigent people started going to the market that fights would break out over the scraps. “People are killing each other there over garbage,” she said. She stopped going.

Before the crisis, Alexandra had steady work, and she and her family lived well. We talked about the Bubble in the wealthy, eastern part of Caracas, which people refer to simply as “the East.” She observed that the new casinos were a good thing because they would create jobs. Her eyes got bright when I described the booming restaurants and bars of Las Mercedes. “The East,” she said, “is another world.”

After i left the casino in Las Mercedes (the monkey was still there, now tucked inside its owner’s nylon bomber jacket, curious black eyes poking above the zipper), I drove a few blocks to a restaurant and nightclub called Lupe. The street was lined with muscular SUVs, several with bodyguards lounging beside them. Lupe functions as a kind of wormhole. You walk through the door and suddenly you’re in Miami, and the worries of an economically devastated Caracas are far away.

When I entered at 2 a.m., hundreds of people were crammed into the long, narrow space—men with open shirts, gold chains, and big watches, women with low necklines showing off surgically enhanced breasts. Merenguetón pounded from big speakers. Bottles of imported Scotch sat on tables. A few people managed to dance in the crush. Venezuelans are typically conscientious about wearing face masks in public, but here, other than the servers, almost no one wore a mask.


In the Bubble, a new high-end restaurant seems to open every week. On another night during my visit I attended the opening of a giant restaurant complex called MoDo. It has five kitchens; separate areas that serve French, Asian, and Mexican food; a pizza restaurant; a craft-beer bar, a cocktail bar; and a café and ice cream parlor. It employs more than 300 people, including servers, cooks, and a team of sommeliers, all paid in dollars. Waiters in blue shirts served foie gras, escargot, and duck magret, while on a stage, four young singers belted out Bruno Mars and other pop tunes, accompanied by a woman on an electric violin: You’re amazing, just the way you are.

You can find the same contrast between poor and rich neighborhoods in cities in the United States, of course, but there is still ample ground in between. Here, as the crisis grinds on, the middle class is squeezed ever thinner and the country is left with a small elite and a massive underclass. Venezuelans will tell you that the Bubble is an illusion. But it is a seductive one, like a mirage in the desert. The country has fallen so far that even a small blip seems magnified—a transformation. A slowing of the economic contraction (some economists are even more optimistic than Oliveros, predicting that production will increase this year) is a palpable change after years of free fall.

The Bubble is an illusion because only a relatively small number of people enjoy it; a few hundred people partying at Lupe is not a sign of a broad recovery. And despite their novelty, the casinos—I visited three of them over several days—were far from full. The reason is obvious: There is no tourism, and very few Venezuelans have the extra money to blow at the blackjack table. But the Bubble is also an illusion because it’s a splurge of consumerism built on the government’s willingness to allow cheap imports and on its rapprochement with the private sector. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.


But for now, the party goes on.

I spoke to a bon vivant and influencer who is a fixture on the invite list for society parties, restaurant openings, product launches, and promotional events. After some slow years, the pace of life has accelerated again. He described the recent opening of a new steak house, where top-shelf booze and bubbly flowed until 4 a.m. “They threw the house out the window,” he said, using a phrase for unrestrained spending. “We’re coming from a time when you would go to an event and all of a sudden they’d say, ‘We ran out of booze.’ Not anymore.”


William Neuman is the author of Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela. A former reporter and foreign correspondent for The New York Times, he served as the paper's Andes Region Bureau Chief from 2012 to 2016.

Changing times for Saudi's once feared morality police


Rima, a 27-year-old Saudi woman, holds her electronic cigarette as she vapes at a coffee shop in downtown Riyadh, a sign of the changing times in Saudi Arabia

 (AFP/Haitham EL-TABEI)

Haitham El-Tabei
Thu, January 13, 2022

In deeply conservative Saudi Arabia the religious police once elicited terror, chasing men and women out of malls to pray and berating anyone seen mingling with the opposite sex.

But the stick-wielding guardians of public morality have watched gloomily as in recent years their country eased some social restrictions -- especially for women -- and grumble bitterly at the changing times.

"Anything I should ban is now allowed, so I quit," Faisal, a former officer, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his identity, told AFP.

Saudi Arabia, home to the two holiest Muslim sites, has long been associated with a rigid branch of Islam known as Wahhabism.

The notorious morality police -- officially titled the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, but known simply as the mutawa -- were previously tasked with enforcing the observance of Islamic moral law.

That included overseeing any action considered immoral, from drug trafficking to bootleg smuggling -- alcohol remains illegal -- down to monitoring social behaviour including the strict segregation of the sexes.

But the force was sidelined in 2016, as the oil-rich Arab kingdom tried to shake off its austere and ultra-sexist image.

Some restrictions have been eased on women's rights, allowing them to drive, attend sports events and concerts alongside men, and obtain passports without the approval of a male guardian.

- Deprived of 'its prerogatives' -

The mutawa has been "deprived of all its prerogatives" and "no longer has a clear role", said Faisal, 37, dressed in dark traditional robes.

"Before, the main authority known in Saudi Arabia was the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue. Today, the most important one is the General Entertainment Authority," he added sarcastically.

He was referring to the government agency that organises events, including a performance last year by Canadian pop star Justin Bieber at the Saudi Formula One Grand Prix car race and a four-day electronic music festival.

For decades, the mutawa's agents cracked down on women who did not properly wear the abaya, an enveloping loose black dress worn over the clothes.

The rules now on the abaya have been relaxed, mixing between men and women has become more common, and businesses are no longer forced to close during the five daily prayer times.

Turki, another ex-mutawa agent who also asked for his name to be changed, said the institution he worked for a decade effectively "no longer exists".

Those officers who remain do so "only for the salary", he said.

"We no longer have the right to intervene, nor to change behaviours that were considered inappropriate", he added.

- 'Hit us with sticks' -

Since becoming Saudi Arabia's de facto leader in 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to position himself as a champion of "moderate" Islam, even as his international reputation took a hit from the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

For writer Saud al-Katib, the reduction of the mutawa's power constitutes a "significant and radical change".

Many ordinary Saudis such as Lama, a woman puffing a cigarette in the centre of the capital Riyadh, say they are not shedding tears for the agents.

"We would not have imagined smoking in the street a few years ago," said Lama, her flowing abaya robe open to show her clothes beneath.

"They would have hit us with their sticks," she said laughing.

Rather than patrolling the streets, mutawa agents now spend much of their time behind their desks, developing awareness campaigns on good morals or health measures.

The mutawa is now "isolated", said a Saudi official who requested anonymity, noting "a significant drop in the number of its employees".

- 'Saudi identity' -

Mutuwa leader Abdel Rahman al-Sanad wants to reform the force -- in a country where more than half of the population is under 35 years old -- and has even told a local television station the commission would recruit women.

Sanad has admitted some agents had in the past committed "abuses", and carried out work without any "experience or qualification".

Ahmad bin Kassem al-Ghamdi, a former senior mutawa official ousted in 2015 because of his progressive views, said the commission's "biggest mistakes were following individual mistakes" by some officers.

This, he told AFP, "caused an adverse and negative" impact to its image.

But the authorities cannot afford to get rid of it completely, according to Stephane Lacroix, an expert on the region and a professor at France's Sciences Po university.

The mutawa are linked "to a certain Saudi identity to which many conservative Saudis adhere," Lacroix said.

But, while some things have changed, others have not.

Although the religious police have seen their powers wane, alongside the reforms have come a crackdown on dissidents -- including intellectuals and women's rights activists.

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Japan team carries out world-first spinal cord stem cell trial

Researchers at Tokyo's Keio University want to study whether induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be used to treat the injuries (AFP/Behrouz MEHRI)

Tomohiro OSAKI
Fri, January 14, 2022, 

A Japanese university said Friday it has successfully transplanted stem cells into a patient with a spinal cord injury, in the first clinical trial of its kind.

There is currently no effective treatment for paralysis caused by serious spinal cord injuries, believed to affect more than 100,000 people in Japan alone.

Surgeons at Tokyo's Keio University want to study whether induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be used to treat the injuries.

iPS cells are created by stimulating mature, already specialised, cells back into a juvenile state.

They can then be prompted to mature into different kinds of cells, with the Keio University study using iPS-derived cells of the neural stem.

The first step in the trial involved implanting more than two million iPS-derived cells into a patient's spinal cord in an operation last month.

"This is definitely a huge step forward," Masaya Nakamura, a Keio University professor who heads the research, told reporters.

But there remains "lots of work to be done" before the treatment can be put to use, he added.

The initial stage of the study aims to confirm the safety of the transplant method, the researchers said.

The patient will be monitored by an independent committee for up to three months to decide whether the study can safely continue and others can receive transplants.

The team also hopes to see whether the stem cell implants will improve neurological function and quality of life.

The university received government approval for the trial in 2019, but recruitment was temporarily put on hold because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Details of the patients remain confidential, but the team is focusing on people who were injured 14-28 days before the operation.

The number of cells implanted was determined after safety experiments in animals, and the researchers cautioned that while they will be monitoring for therapeutic effects, the study's main goal is to study the safety of injecting the cells.

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