A 100-year-old quote from a legendary economist explains why Americans are so angry about inflation. Lenin agreed

Colin Lodewick

Sat, June 11, 2022,

As prices for groceries and haircuts climb, and as gasoline prices soar during the start of the vacation season, Americans are pessimistic about the economy’s future.

And with the latest monthly Consumer Price Index released on Friday showing an 8.6% gain—the highest in 40 years—most product prices are unlikely to decline any time soon.

So what does that mean for consumers? Maybe the total unraveling of American capitalism, according to the much-studied English economist John Maynard Keynes.

The only catch: Keynes was observing the same phenomenon—high inflation—over 100 years ago.

Writing in 1919, amid rampant inflation in Europe, during the era of World War I and the Russian Revolution, Keynes became well known after publishing The Economic Consequences of the Peace. It included one famous passage in which he mused about some of the Bolsheviks’ criticisms of capitalism, particularly about high inflation.

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency,” Keynes wrote. “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

This “arbitrary rearrangement of riches,” he continued, strikes at both the security and confidence that people have in the economic system. He went on to explain that inflation turns consumers against capitalists—“profiteers,” in his words—when they see how those individuals accrue wealth while they suffer from inflation.

He then discussed inflation in the 1910s against the backdrop of war and revolution, and the social unrest that followed. “Lenin was certainly right,” he concluded. “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.”

Keynes’ economic writing ultimately gave birth to a “Keynesian” school of economics, and he personally helped negotiate the international postwar monetary order at the Bretton Woods conference following World War II.

But it was Keynes’ discussion of inflation that first put him on the map.

Debauched currency, 2020s style

As inflation gets worse, Keynes wrote, and the value of currency fluctuates unpredictably, the relationships between those who hold that currency and those who don't falls apart. “And the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery," he said.

Americans in the 2020s know a thing or two about a debauched currency.

Gasoline is at the heart of U.S. economic identity, with a hundred-year-old car culture forming the basis of American culture. With it now just shy of $5 per gallon nationwide, cue the unraveling?

Though multiple factors are to blame for the rising gas prices—lingering supply and demand disruptions from COVID, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy companies having problems increasing production, and the possibility of price gouging—consumers have started to complain. Just look at President Joe Biden’s plummeting approval rating and steady declines in the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey, which reflects increasing public concern.

“The idea that we're going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, it’s not likely in the near term,” President Joe Biden said at a press conference last week. Only a quarter of voters, however, believe that he’s handling rising gas prices well, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.

Conservative lawmakers are sinking their teeth into the issue. “In my state, the price of gas is so high that it would be cheaper to buy cocaine and just run everywhere,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) in a brief appearance on Fox News on Tuesday.

In 1919, Keynes wrote that though capitalists may bear the brunt of consumer anger, they’re merely a symptom of the economic system's wider failing. “The profiteers are a consequence and not a cause of rising prices,” wrote Keynes.

So how to solve it? Keynes says it’s ultimately up to the government to sort things out.

“If, however,” he wrote, “a government refrains from regulation and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Building Radical Consensus

By Diana Pound, 

originally published by Great Transition Initiative

June 9, 2022

There is so much with which I agree in Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher’s essay, but with limited time, I will provide a few thoughts and then explain my approach to what might be described as a form of “convivial conservation.”

Both their critique of capitalism and description of various conservation paradigms rooted in colonialism are about Western approaches. It is important to recognize other places and peoples working to care for nature see, value, and do things differently.

Capitalism is not the only political/economic system that damages nature. Accrual of wealth by exploitation of people and nature is at the heart of an array of state-based political/economic systems, including capitalism, communism, and imperialism. Who holds the wealth may differ (rich and famous, corporates, the state, a dictator, or royalty), but the impact on nature and people ends up the same. Working to change these systems to something better is an exceedingly long-term proposition. If convivial conservation asserts that “success in the conservation arena requires transforming the overarching global political economy,” we are out of time, and there won’t be success. When “the house is on fire,” the focus is on how best to put the fire out as quickly as possible—not the governance of the fire service. Those with the skill and clout to work at influencing the global political economy and global conservation paradigms must do so, but the focus has to be on how we can get on better trajectories and to better outcomes for nature and people now—last week, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

In the UK, there seems little awareness amongst environmental professionals that the roots of conservation practice here are in fortress conservation and colonialism. I mentioned it in a recent blog for the UK Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) and was asked to explain what I meant.1 Whether self-aware or not, these attitudes are still quite evident, particularly in the rewilding endeavor (a more male-dominated strand of UK conservation, which I suspect is no coincidence). But the problems extend beyond this paradigm. Back in 2003 at a gathering of the European part of the IUCN Commission for Education and Communication (CEC), a challenging conclusion was that one of the greatest threats to biodiversity conservation is the attitudes and behavior of conservationists. This includes linear and silo thinking; an “experts know best, so experts decide” mentality; scientism with the natural sciences seen as the only way of knowing; top-down approaches telling others what to do; black box methods; and a belief that the answer is to educate “them” and then make them rationally analyze (our) options. All these need to change—and fast.

I too share grave concerns about the “nature at our service” paradigm of ecosystem services, but in certain limited settings and contexts, it has its uses.2 For example, in England, if farmers are to stop operating on the production model that causes terrible damage to life support for humans and nature, they need income from creating and nurturing healthy landscape-scale habitats, regenerated soils, clean rivers, flood mitigation, clean air, and recreation access. With subsidies coming from the taxpayer, there has to be some fair way of calculating this. Likewise for making the cost/benefit case for natural coastal fringes or river management as part of better flood protection compared to large concrete structures.

When it comes to convivial conservation, some of us have been doing work that could be described this way for a while. Our team at Dialogue Matters design and facilitate multi-stakeholder consensus-building and negotiation related to the natural environment. By “consensus-building,” I don’t mean weak compromise; I mean stakeholders working hard to seek out win/wins for nature and all the different stakeholders and interests: looking for “both and” solutions and innovations. We have completed over 130 multistakeholder projects at local, national, and international levels. Some are collaborative research; others, better management of land, sea, rivers, species conservation, landscapes, fisheries, farming, water management, and climate change.

We help people come together across sectors, parts of society, and interests to combine their understanding of their part of the system and work out the optimum way forward for nature and people. Solutions can be a mix of technical, spatial, behavioral, market, operational, managerial, and governance. Outcomes are across the range for nature: areas left alone to nature, areas where local people and traditional practices are a fundamental part of how the ecosystem works, areas for active restoration or self-willed wilding, to greening highly altered urban areas. All are needed, but should not be imposed.

When I said above that I want to focus on what can be done now—last week, yesterday, today and tomorrow —I meant it for real, not in an aspirational way:

Last week, we ran the first workshop to help the UK fishing sector consider the most feasible and impactful solutions to transition to net zero and deliver other benefits.

Yesterday, it was all about bat conservation commissioned by Natural England ( England’s government agency for nature and landscape). In the second workshop in the dialogue, participants discussed if and how the implementation of regulation should be changed. The shift would be to refocus from conservation of local bats and roosts toward measures for bat populations, their habits and prey, and a developer’s levy used to deliver landscape-scale conservation measures, strategies, research, and support for volunteer roles. Participants included scientists, regulators, conservation charities, local authority ecologists, custodians of historic buildings from the church and National Trust, local bat conservation volunteers, developers, and ecological consultants. Together, they shared knowledge and ideas and then explored the pros and cons and action steps for their shared priorities. Previously resisted by some, there was a consensus that significant change was necessary—of course with caution about what exactly those changes end up looking like and an ask that the changes are developed collaboratively.

Today, we are completing a Tree Strategy for Jersey (UK Crown Dependency). In that dialogue, we had farmers, nature conservationists, arboriculturists, people responsible for roads and infrastructure, developers, tree nurseries, heritage, local community voices, young people, and many others. They co-created the contents of the strategy which we have written, using their words as much as possible. The resulting strategy is by the people of Jersey for Jersey’s people, trees, woodland, hedgerows, and wildlife. This is no top-down imposition by a few experts telling everyone else what to do and overlooking intricate system connections and effects. Tomorrow, we are continuing a project called “Quantocks Futures” a protected landscape that will lose iconic beech trees and other features to climate change. Multiple stakeholders, supported by wider community input, are exploring how best to adapt to these and other changes and make the most of their treasured landscape for well-being, livelihoods, and nature.

Delivering these deliberative consensus-building processes involves a great deal of design: who is in the core deliberations; any wider engagement to feed into that; mapping out questions, techniques, flows of knowledge, decision points, and then facilitating to enable points to be taken on merit not the status, power, or behavior of who said what. This encourages greater systems thinking, builds trust and understanding across differences, and—crucially—momentum for change.

Great outcomes can come even when people have very different values and politics if they work together in a principled and collaborative way—not one side trying to educate or change the other but co-designing what change looks like and how they will each play their part to deliver it. Our best commissions are when we can help people co-design the change and co-produce it too.

For me, that is what a great transition approach to biodiversity conservation looks like… today!

---

1. Diana Pound, “What does Transformative Change Mean?,” Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), December 22, 2021, https://cieem.net/what-does-transformative-change-mean-diana-pound-cenv-fcieem/.
2. Diana Pound, “The Eco….What Approach??,” International Association of Landscape Ecologists Conference Proceedings, 2011, https://ecosystemsknowledge.net/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Pound-RGS-2013.pdf.

 

Teaser photo credit: European beech trees. By Malene Thyssen – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=752225

WAR IS RAPE

Rape used ‘systematically’ during Lebanon’s civil war, report finds

Levels of torture and sexual violence used by combatants against women and girls during the 15-year conflict shocked investigators

The shrapnel-riddled Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut. 

The statue was hidden during Lebanon’s civil war, and returned when the conflict ended. 

Photograph: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images


Global development is supported by

About this content

Tessa Fox

Thu 9 Jun 2022

The full scale of the rape, torture and killing of women and girls during Lebanon’s civil war has been revealed after survivors were interviewed about their experiences for the first time in over 30 years.

Testimonies gathered by the human rights organisation Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), documented in a new report, provide evidence of systematic violence against Lebanese and Palestinian women and girls by government forces and militias during the 15-year war, which began in 1975. The conflict saw more than 100,000 people killed and 1 million displaced.

The report details horrific experiences of violence, including gang-rape, electrocution and forced nudity used to persecute women and girls – some as young as nine – from opposing communities.

Many have never spoken about their experiences before because, the women say, “they were never asked”, it added.

Q&A
What happened during the Lebanese civil war?

The passing of a law by the Lebanese parliament in 2018 – ratified two years later – to set up a national commission to investigate the whereabouts of those who disappeared in the war, enabled LAW to begin its investigation. It interviewed women from eight regions and conducted focus groups and surveys to record eyewitness accounts.

Amira Radwan, now 54, witnessed the rape of girls in Kfar Matta, where she lived in 1982. The village was the scene of a notorious massacre of Druze civilians by the Lebanese Forces, a Christian Phalangist militia.

“They used to tie up the father and brother and make them watch the girls being raped,” Radwan said, adding she also knew of women being raped using glass bottles.

As rape was considered to bring shame on the family, women and girls were often ostracised if they spoke of their experiences.

“We suffered a lot from not being able to talk about these crimes that happened,” Radwan said.

An amnesty law passed in Lebanon in 1991 granted immunity for crimes committed against civilians during the war, which has allowed a culture of impunity and lack of accountability to develop, the report noted.

“These women and girls (and family members who witnessed these crimes) are double victims – first the sexual violence inflicted upon them and then the total and utter failure to hold individuals and state agents accountable for these grave violations or even acknowledge what has happened,” states the report.

“We were quite shocked by our findings; we thought we would find sexual violence had taken place on an opportunistic level, but not systematically,” LAW’s executive director, Antonia Mulvey, told the Guardian.

The report calls for crimes against women to be further documented “to counter the male-dominated narrative of the civil wars and amplifying survivor and victims’ voices”, but also recommends that sexual violence against men should be recorded too.

The urgency of the research became more evident, Mulvey said, as the economic situation deteriorated in Lebanon and violent rhetoric increased, raising concerns among women who survived the civil war that the abuse and targeting would happen again if the state collapsed.

The primary aim of the report is to acknowledge the shocking level of sexual violence that took place.

“It is of course painful to bring back these memories but I’m very happy to be talking about this [now] because I think it is important to speak up … in order to spread awareness for new generations,” Radwan said.

The report urges an expansion in provision of legal and psychological services to support victims and survivors of gendered crimes.

Sexual Violence by Russian Troops in Ukraine “Chronically Underreported,” U.N. & Amnesty Int’l Find

STORY JUNE 09, 2022

This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today.DONATE

TOPICS

Russia
Ukraine
Sexual Harassment & Abuse

GUESTS

 Pramila Patten
United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict.

Oksana Pokalchuk
executive director of Amnesty International Ukraine.

LINKS Oksana Pokalchuk on Twitter


The United Nations is demanding an independent investigation into charges of rape and sexual assault committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. We speak with Pramila Patten, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who is just back from Ukraine and told the Security Council Monday about multiple shocking reports of rape and assault — all of which Russia has since denied. “We are dealing with a crime which is chronically underreported,” says Patten, who emphasized the need to establish safe spaces for victims to come forward and ensure no perpetrators be granted amnesty through a potential ceasefire or peace agreement. We also speak with Oksana Pokalchuk, executive director of Amnesty International Ukraine, whose organization is investigating the alleged war crimes.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations is demanding an independent investigation into charges of rape and sexual assault committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, told the U.N. Security Council Monday about an increasing number of reports of sexual abuse and human trafficking. On Monday, Patten addressed both the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace.


PRAMILA PATTEN: We have all heard the accounts of horrific acts of sexual violence, reports of gang rape, rape in front of family members, sexual assault at gunpoint, women who have become pregnant as a result of rape, as well as the reports of refugee women and children being exploited by traffickers and predators who view this turmoil not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to abuse the vulnerable. …


We have debunked the insidious myth that sexual violence in conflict is inevitable. Now we must demonstrate, through proactive protection and empowerment efforts, that it is indeed preventable.


It is time to move from best intentions to best practice to catch the women and girls who may otherwise fall through our safety nets. Let us not forget that while the eyes of the world are on the Ukrainian women and girls who are caught in the crossfire, who are living in terror in occupied territories, and who have been deported or forced to flee their homes and homeland, they are looking to us. We must not and cannot fail them.

AMY GOODMAN: Russia has rejected the accusations that its troops committed sexual violence in Ukraine. This is Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N.


VASSILY NEBENZIA: [translated] The ratcheting up of accusations of Russian service personnel committing crimes of a sexual nature since the very beginning of our special military operation in Ukraine has become a favorite tactic of the Kyiv regime and our Western colleagues. We all recall how in the Ukrainian and Western media, and also in this room, our soldiers were repeatedly accused of sexual violence with reference to certain reports containing allegedly reliable data. However, no evidence was provided.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by two guests. Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, she recently returned from Ukraine. Also with us, Oksana Pokalchuk, she is executive director of Amnesty International Ukraine. She’s been investigating war crimes by Russian forces since the full-scale invasion began at the end of February.

Pramila Patten, let’s begin with you. You’re just off your address to the U.N. Security Council. Talk about what you found in Ukraine.

PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, you will all recall that it was only a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the first reports of sexual violence began to surface. And as the conflict passes the 100-day mark, unfortunately, we continue to receive reports of sexual violence.

I was in Ukraine from the 1st to the 5th of May, and I also went to Poland and Moldova. I did not meet with victims of sexual violence in Ukraine — I was in Lviv and Kyiv — for obvious reasons: security. But I met with civil society organizations who were frontline service providers who have engaged with victims. I also met with families of victims. And, of course, I met with government officials and signed a cooperation agreement.

But what I can tell you is that the reports — credible reports — from civil society organizations, but also from government officials, like the Office of the Prosecutor General or the vice prime minister, Olha Stefanishyna, with whom I signed the framework of cooperation, shared a lot of information with me about brutal sexual violence being committed, significantly against women and girls, but also against men and boys.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Pramila, could you talk about the fact that, as many have pointed out, the number of sexual — incidents of sexual violence is likely massively underreported? Because a representative of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, for example, said that sexual violence, in particular, is a hidden crime, because many women and girls will likely never come forward and report what’s happened.

PRAMILA PATTEN: You are absolutely right. And that’s why I didn’t wait for accurate bookkeeping, hard data, to react. And that’s why I went to Ukraine, because we are dealing with a crime which is chronically underreported. And that’s my concern. And for me, going to Ukraine was to send a strong message, especially to victims, to urge them to break the silence, because their silence is the perpetrators’ license to rape.

And as of the 3rd of June, only 124 reports of sexual violence are verifiable, are of a verifiable nature, and are being looked into by the human rights monitoring of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And that verification process is ongoing. And you can imagine that we — due to security and access constraints, the verification process is taking time. But in 102 cases, perpetrators are reported to be Russian Armed Forces, and two cases from Russian-affiliated groups.

But, for sure, that we are only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. And this is why I signed the framework of cooperation and discussed with the government in Ukraine, but also in Moldova and Poland as refugee-receiving countries, the need to establish safe spaces which will be conducive — to provide a conducive environment for the victims to report, because due to stigma and a host of reasons, this crime is very much invisible.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I’d like to bring in Oksana Pokalchuk, a representative — you are the executive director of Amnesty international Ukraine. Your organization and you, yourself, have been carrying out an investigation on possible war crimes, including sexual violence, but broader war crimes, in and around the area of the capital Kyiv. Could you tell us what you’ve found?

OKSANA POKALCHUK: Yeah, sure. So, the pattern of crimes committed by Russian forces in the Kyiv region — but not only, of course — that we have documented includes both unlawful attacks and willful killings of civilians. So, we have to face it that a lot of killings, and most of them, were just apparently extrajudicial executions. So it was a straight will to kill people there.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And explain the areas you were in. Where all did Amnesty conduct investigations of this nature?

OKSANA POKALCHUK: Sure. Our last report was about the Kyiv region. So, we were in different areas around Kyiv and which were in occupation for more than two months. So it was Borodyanka, Bucha, Hostomel, Stoyanka and many, many other cities and villages around Kyiv. So, for example, in Borodyanka, we found at least 40 civilians were killed in disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks which devastated an entire neighborhood and left thousands — really, thousands — of people homeless. So, in Bucha, for example, we documented 22 cases of unlawful killings by Russian forces. And yeah, as I said before, most of them were apparent extrajudicial executions.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do you respond, Oksana Pokalchuk, to Russia saying you haven’t provided the evidence?

OKSANA POKALCHUK: Well, how I would respond? We have evidences. And as far as I know, there are a couple of — there are a couple of cases that are already under the investigation by Ukrainian authorities — if you’re talking about sexual violence, of course, because it’s much more when we talk about other war crimes. But when we come back to the sexual violence, as far as I know, it’s a couple of cases are under the investigation. So I hope that soon we will see open and transparent court proceedings on the matter and it will be [inaudible] bring to justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Pramila Patten, I wanted to ask you about the whole debate within Ukraine about how explicit to be. And you, I’m sure, have dealt with this around the world. I mean, there’s been the firing of a human rights official in Ukraine for being extremely explicit about the rape of children. And there’s a whole discussion within the human rights and journalistic community in Ukraine. Can you talk about how to talk about this?

PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, this is one of the areas where my office and the United Nations system will be providing support to the Ukrainian government. And that’s part of the framework of cooperation, which I have signed, that is providing support in the area of justice and accountability.

We are dealing with a very sensitive issue. And we know why victims do not come forward to report, and one of the reasons being the retraumatization and the revictimization. And there are guiding principles on how to engage with victims, on how to document evidence and how to investigate. And one of the fundamental principles is the “do no harm” principle, which is extremely important.

And this is precisely why I will be deploying, following the framework of cooperation that I signed on the 3rd of May — will deploy staff with expertise on sexual violence documentation, investigation, prosecution. They will be embedded not only in the Office of the High Commissioner’s human rights monitoring team but also in the Office of the Prosecutor General to support the investigation, to support the documentation, to support the collection of evidence before the evidence trail goes cold. This is crucial. There will be no justice if that stage goes wrong.

And we have seen a lot in the past, whether it is in Iraq or with the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, who have been interviewed, for example, over 15 times, with all the inconsistency that comes along, then making cases untenable in a court of law. So, we want to reverse that culture of impunity into a culture of justice and accountability. We have to get it right. And I’m very encouraged by the multiplicity of efforts to bolster justice, to bolster accountability.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Pramila, could you say — you’ve said explicitly that any peace agreement, whenever it comes, should state explicitly that there will be no amnesty for perpetrators of sexual violence. Could you explain why you think sexual violence should be treated differently from other war crimes, and in what instances amnesty has been granted in areas of conflict where sexual violence has been prevalent?

PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, history has taught us that during multiple peace negotiations, the first item that has been on the negotiation table — where, of course, women are conspicuously lacking — the question of amnesty for crimes of sexual violence has always been on the table. And there are contexts where the option was women or peace. And as usual, women get sacrificed.

So, I am very encouraged by the fact that the Ukrainian government was very receptive to my suggestion of this area of priority, this pillar in the framework of cooperation be included, that in the event of any ceasefire agreement or peace agreement, that there will be specific provisions to ensure that there is no amnesty for sexual violence crimes, because war have limits, and international humanitarian law makes it very clear. And sexual violence can never be excused, can never be amnestied. And we have a solid normative framework with resolutions of the Security Council on the question of amnesty.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Oksana, there have been, of course, as you know, accusations of alleged war crimes — although, of course, much fewer in number — by Ukrainian forces. What do you know about those allegations? And what have you found in your investigations, alleged war crimes by, of course, Russian forces, but also Ukrainian forces?

OKSANA POKALCHUK: We are now in a situation when a lot of territories where allegedly some war crimes were committed or are now committing, they are under occupation. So, we need to wait for the moment where we, as Amnesty, will be, and, of course, Ukrainian and international investigators will be able to reach this area and to do investigation on the ground, because without being on the ground, without collecting proper evidences, it is impossible to say about war crimes. I mean, we can’t — in my opinion, we can’t presume it.

Of course, there are no war where there are one party of the war would be — I don’t know — will not violate international humanitarian law, and another part will. Of course, we have to face that, of course, Ukrainian army — I mean, we will find these evidences. But so far, we don’t have enough evidences to talk about it in legal terms. So we have to wait for liberation of occupied territories, come to the territory and just gather information, gather evidences there.

AMY GOODMAN: Pramila Patten, as we wrap up, Ukraine was already one of the leading countries in Europe when it came to human trafficking. You also have addressed this issue. If you can describe what you saw and how this issue should be addressed?

PRAMILA PATTEN: Well, with the displacement of close to 14 million people in the past hundred days, mostly women and children, with 6.8 million of women and children, mainly, having fled across borders, what I see is a human trafficking crisis within a humanitarian crisis. And human trafficking is not a separate issue. It is a symptom of a refugee crisis that breeds the exact conditions that human traffickers prey upon: economic impoverishment and a lack of better options. And we know from 2014, even in Ukraine and in the region, how human trafficking thrives. And human trafficking is one of the most serious organized crimes of the day, transcending cultures, geography and time. And we also know that for predators and human traffickers, war is not a tragedy, it is an opportunity.

What I saw in both Moldova and Poland, where I visited reception centers, is that the majority of the refugees are living with host communities. And there are grave security and protection concerns in both countries. These reception centers are run by volunteers, with only a bare-bone presence of the United Nations agencies. There is a complete lack of oversight in terms of accommodation offers by private citizens, a lack of oversight of transportation arrangements. These are really serious concerns. The reception centers, although the premises have been offered by the local government, they are being run by a multiplicity of actors volunteering to provide services. And from what I saw, they have little or no training or experience in supporting victims, victims of trafficking or persons at risk of trafficking.

And what is also clear, in all fairness, is that these refugee-receiving countries are overwhelmed. And they urgently need support to be able to allocate sufficient resources to support the responses, given that even service providers and NGOs have limited capacity to sustain an adequate and safe level of response.

So, I think what is needed, what is critical, is that the international community mobilize to ensure that effective protection systems are in place in all transit and destination countries and at all border crossings. And given the challenges of this transnational organized crime, as well as the very complex nature and multiple dimensions of human trafficking, the response requires an integrated and holistic response, a concerted cross-border response by humanitarian partners, law enforcement agencies, border forces, immigration officials and political leaders. On Monday, when I briefed the Security Council, I urged for a regional European compact to be led by the European Council. And I have the firm conviction that this is what is required at this point in time.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Pramila Patten, we want to thank you for being with us, U.N. special rapporteur on sexual violence in conflict, and Oksana Pokalchuk, executive director of Amnesty International in Ukraine.

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Kremlin Hate Speech Incites War Crimes In Ukraine

2022-06-09
By EU vs Disinfo

After years of collecting, analysing and archiving examples of Russian disinformation on the EUvsDisinfo platform, we have come to expect a certain degree of bombast and unpredictability from pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets. Sure, the overall course of disinformation and propaganda is clear, with the same narratives playing out time and time again, like a broken record. But every now and then, the pro-Kremlin disinformation machine lowers the bar so much, even we are taken aback. 

Such was the case this week.

The Kremlin’s rhetoric about the unjustifiable war of aggression Russia unleashed on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has never been tame nor rational. It has been shaped by disinformation, heavily laden with Orwellian newspeak and characterised by self-righteous chest-thumping since day one. Yet this week, one of the most prominent pro-Kremlin disinformation pundits went a step further. A one-time Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a man once hailed as the harbinger of moderate Russia, now pulled out all the stops. Using his favoured Telegram platform, Mr Medvedev unleashed nothing short of hate speech, heavily implying that all Ukrainians should be wiped from the face of the earth. Of course, this not the first time Mr Medvedev riles the followers of this Telegram channel amounting to incitement of violence and justification of war crimes.

This outburst, while thoroughly morally reprehensible, does not mark a turning point in the pro-Kremlin rhetoric. It is rather the summation of a narrative of dehumanising and vilifying all Ukrainians, equating them to the Nazis and publicly calling for their eradication in a manner that can only be described as genocidal. Language matters and words spoken with such unbridle hatred can lead to very real and very tragic consequences for the people in Ukraine. And those who dare to speak such words must be held to the same account as those who pull the trigger.

Don’t Hate the Haters

The pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem also put its characteristic cognitive dissonance on full display, by revamping the #StopHatingRussians social media campaign with a new video, slinging baseless accusations of Western attempts to cancel Russian culture. It is particularly odd to appeal for hatred to be stopped with one hand while dishing it out with the other. Then again, the Russian state-controlled disinformation outlets have always used the “Russophobia” argument to explain away any Western criticisms or counteractions. And ever since the liar-in-chief himself complained about the “cancel culture” going after all things Russian, the pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem has been more than happy to amplify this angle as well.

Promotion of this “campaign”, at least on Twitter, seems to be rather coordinated, with Russian diplomatic accounts on the platform, including the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, leading the charge to lend these claims a semblance of credibility. However, since the Russian diplomatic accounts have also been shamelessly spreading disinformation about Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Twitter moved to limit the promotion of Russian government accounts, the pro-Kremlin peddlers of “Russophobia” have also sought to fake legitimacy in other ways. The most recent effort, showing a near-total lack of any journalistic integrity, was to propagate the aforementioned video via false accounts impersonating well-known legitimate Western news outlets.

Glad to Starve You

Finally, the topic that is on everyone’s mind lately – the looming global food crisis – has not gone unnoticed by the pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem. In fact, the Kremlin has already actively employed its disinformation tools in an attempt to shape the global narrative about this topic early on. Now, perhaps coming to realise that the world will not be so easily hoodwinked into accepting Russia’s claims of blamelessness, the Russian state-controlled disinformation machine switched to a higher gear in shifting the blame for putting the world’s most vulnerable population at a risk of starvation and famine.

Let’s be very clear. The ability of Ukraine, the world’s fourth largest grain exporter, to grow, harvest and supply the grains was disrupted by one thing and one thing only. Russia’s unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine launched this February. Global food security has been further damaged by Russia blocking Ukrainian ships exporting the grain, attacking and destroying transport infrastructure, including bombing shipping terminals, and even pillaging of Ukrainian grain reserves for resale in third countries. Holding the world hostage to justify an unjustifiable war and willingness to starve innocent people is beyond heinous. While the Kremlin is willing and ready to commit such senseless atrocities, shifting the blame and peddling hate speech, any pretence of Russia’s humanitarianism will ring hollow.

By EU vs Disinfo

Complex Taiwanese and Chinese identities are exposed after gunman enters church

June 9, 2022
EMILY FENG

LAGUNA WOODS, California – Just before David Wenwei Chou glued and chained shut the doors of California's Geneva Presbyterian Church, then shot the elderly congregants inside, he mailed his handwritten diaries to a Taiwanese newspaper.

He titled his screed: "Diary of an Angel of Destroying Independence" — referring to Taiwanese independence from China.

The rampage this past May left one person dead and five injured. It also exposed how complex Taiwanese and Chinese identities are — and how a combustible mixture of political enmities imported by diaspora communities combined with American gun culture can prove deadly.

At first, English-language coverage mistakenly described Chou, the shooter, as a Chinese immigrant. In fact, he was born in Taiwan to Chinese parents who left China following the end of a brutal civil war in 1949 — a group of people in Taiwan called waishengren, meaning "outside province people." Many waishengren were part of a mass exodus of Kuomingtang officials and their families, the political party that lost to the Communist Party that now governs from Beijing.

The Kuomingtang Party expected and wanted Taiwan to one day become one country with China. For many waishengren, being affiliated with the then-ruling Kuomingtang also conferred privileges indigenous Taiwanese residents did not enjoy, but those privileges dwindled as Taiwan became its own democracy.

"So [waishengren] say wait a minute, we have these privileges before, but how come we don't have them now? They start to think of themselves of Chinese, and that's why they come out with the idea to come out and kill the Taiwanese," says Tony Lee, a Taiwanese-American activist in Los Angeles.

Even in California, waishengren immigrants and benshengren, or "native province people" Taiwanese, keep to each other. For example, the church that Chou targeted was known for its wealthy, pro-Taiwanese benshengren congregation.

Chou emigrated from Taiwan to the United States at the age of 1, and at first, he seemed to settle in to U.S. life. He earned a Taiwanese degree in hospitality management and wrote a book on wine. But then, as his life and finances unraveled after a divorce, he began ranting to acquaintances about how much he resented Taiwan's de facto independence.

"He was very agitated," says Jenny Koo. "Every time he brought up Taiwan independence he got very worked up. I just thought it was not right."

Koo heads a Las Vegas branch of the Peace and Reunification Society, which works for Taiwan's unification with China. The group is closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

Chou, the shooter, tried to join in 2019, and pictures from a meal celebrating the society's founding show him dressed in a loose button-down shirt toasting Koo and others.

Koo said she didn't let him join, and he had showed up to the meal without being invited: "Our association writes essays, but we respect the other side's opinions. They are not monsters. But Chou demonized them. You could tell from the language he used that he no longer saw people from Taiwan as people."

For some, immigrating to the United States can be a fresh start: a chance to wipe the slate clean of Old World grudges to live simply as an American. For Chou, emigrating from Taiwan seemed only to amplify historical divisions — a phenomenon Taiwanese writer Leona Chen calls "the immigrant time capsule."

"The very salient political conflicts and tensions experienced during martial law were sort of incubated and carried over by our parents and grandparents' generation," says Chen. "Then they just continued to stay that way even as Taiwan has evolved and changed and softened some of those divisions."

Chou, the shooter, is in police custody and has been charged with one count of capital murder and five counts of attempted murder. Dr. John Cheng, who died in the church attack, is remembered as a hero for charging Chou and helping subdue him long enough for the police to arrive.

So far, there's no indication of imminent war between China and Taiwan, but the casualties of this conflict are already cropping up.

 PODCAST

PODCAST, ESSENTIAL MIDDLE EAST

Why is Muslim hate on the rise in India?

Published On 9 Jun 20229 Jun 2022

An international backlash has been growing against India’s governing Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), after the party’s national spokeswoman Nupur Sharma and Delhi media operation head Naveen Kumar Jindal made disparaging remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

KEEP READING

list of 4 items

list 1 of 4

Tunisia’s political crisis deepens: What’s next?

list 2 of 4

Israel’s arrests of Palestinian children under the spotlight

list 3 of 4

Is the hijab on trial in India?

list 4 of 4

EU looks to the Middle East to replace Russian gas imports

end of list

Meanwhile, Muslims in India have been going through uneasy times – from violence, persecution, to repeated calls to literally wipe them out. So why is this happening in the world’s biggest democracy and who is behind it?

In this episode:

• Salil Shetty (@SalilShetty), Former secretary general of Amnesty International

Credits:
This episode was produced by Khaled Soltan, Hayat Mongodin, and host Sami Zeidan. George Alwer is our sound designer. Aya Elmileik is our lead engagement producer and Munera AlDosari is our assistant engagement producer. Omar al-Saleh is our executive producer.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Israeli study: Climate change is bringing expected storms – but 60 years early

Study by the Weizmann Institute of Science, in the Nature Climate Change journal, uses 30 massive, intricate computer networks to better model and predict climate change.

By JEWISH NEWS REPORTER

June 9, 2022

The arrest of Rabbi Jeffrey Newman Protest in The City, London Extinction Rebellion’s

 October Rebellion, London, 2019 Photo by Paul Powlesland

A new Israeli study has found that climate change is already causing a “considerable intensification” of winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere to a level not anticipated until 2080.

The study, published by the Weizmann Institute of Science in the Nature Climate Change journal, is part of an effort by scientists around the world to use 30 massive, intricate computer networks to better model and predict climate change.

It compared previous predictions of human-caused intensification of winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere with current storm observations and found that the “bleak” reality was far worse than expected.

“It became clear that storm intensification over recent decades has already reached levels projected to occur in the year 2080,” said a statement from the institute.

The study, led by Dr Rei Chemke of Weizmann’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department in collaboration with Dr Yi Ming of Princeton University and Dr Janni Yuval of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “shows that current climate models severely underestimate the intensifi cation in mid-latitude storm tracks in recent decades”, the report said.

“A winter storm is a weather phenomenon that lasts only a few days. Individually, each storm doesn’t carry much climatic weight.

“However, the long-term effect of winter storms becomes evident when assessing cumulative data collected over long periods of time,” Chemke said, explaining that the storms affect the transfer of heat, moisture and momentum within the atmosphere, which consequently affects the various cli-mate zones on Earth.

“One example of this is the role the storms play in regulating the temperature at the Earth’s poles.

“Winter storms are responsible for the majority of the heat transport away from tropical regions toward the poles,” he said, noting that without their contribution, the average pole temperatures would be about 30°C (54°F) lower.

Chemke also noted that the current trends pose “a real and signifi cant threat to societies in the Southern Hemisphere in the next decades”.

The study said it only examined storms in the Southern Hemisphere because the inten-sifi cation there has so far been stronger than in the north.

However, Chemke said that if the trend persists, “we will be observing more significant winter storm intensification here in the upcoming years and decades”.

The study researchers also investigated whether these sudden changes could be attributed to natural changes in climate patterns or were caused by external factors such as human activity.

They found that, over the past 20 years, storms have been intensifying faster than can be explained by internal climatic behaviour alone.

The study also examined why current models were not able to accurately predict the storm changes and found that it was due to changes in atmospheric jet streams.

However, the study found that while there were problems predicting these specific events, most current computer modelling of climate change was accurate.

“The models are doing a very good job at forecasting nearly all the parameters,” Chemke said.

“We’ve discovered one parameter for which the sensitivity of the models needs to be adjusted.

“Changes in temperature, precipitation, sea ice and summer storm patterns, for example, are all being simulated accurately.

Still, the research results were alarming, the study said, noting that climate projections for the coming decades are graver than previous assessments, and in this case with dire implications for the Southern Hemisphere.

“This means that rapid and decisive intervention is required in order to halt climate damage in this region,” the statement said.

ELECTORAL JUNTA

Egypt: Global youth summit aimed at 'rejuvenating democracy' to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh

Conference for young MPs will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh next week, despite concerns over exiled and imprisoned Egyptian lawmakers

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi giving a speech during the swearing-in ceremony for his second four-year term in office in June 2018 (AFP)

By Rayhan Uddin
Published date: 9 June 2022 

A leading global organisation that champions parliamentary democracy is holding a youth summit in Egypt, despite being warned about the country’s treatment of former MPs and political activists.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) will hold its Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh on 15-16 June. The summit will bring together 200 young parliamentarians from 60 countries to coordinate action on climate change, and will be co-hosted by the Egyptian parliament.

The IPU’s slogan is “for democracy, for everyone”, and one of its key objectives is to take action to defend current and former MPs from alleged human rights violations.

'For the young Egyptians who are not free to move, who are not free to write or tweet, it is simply a contradictory message'

- Abdel Mawgoud Dardery, former MP

However, in the run-up to the event, a former Egyptian MP raised the cases of over 100 MPs who are imprisoned in the country with the IPU - but the organisation took no further action.

“It is very unfortunate and very tragic indeed that the IPU is doing this,” Abdel Mawgoud Dardery, the former MP for Luxor who now lives in exile in the United States, told Middle East Eye.

Dardery said the summit gives legitimacy to a parliament that "most Egyptians" consider to belong to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, rather than the Egyptian people.

Dardery became a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party in 2012, until Sisi ousted Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected leader, in a military coup the following year.

Since then, former MPs, opposition figures, journalists, and activists have faced a major crackdown. Rights groups say over 60,000 political prisoners have been imprisoned since the 2013 coup.

Freedom House, an NGO that conducts research on democracy and freedoms, described the elections of the Egyptian president, senate, and representatives as “neither free nor fair”, marred by intimidation, detention of critics, and severe interference by authorities.

A spokesperson for the IPU has defended its decision to partner with the Egyptian lower chamber for next week’s summit.

“[Our] role is to facilitate parliamentary diplomacy and dialogue between parliamentarians for peace, democracy, and sustainable development,” Thomas Fitzsimons, the IPU's director of communications, told MEE.

He added that the organisation held events all over the world in partnership with its 178 member parliaments.

“The conference is part of our overall ambition to rejuvenate democracy and ensure the voice of young people are heard.”

Young Egyptians 'not free'

Yet Dardery said the partnership is more akin to a betrayal of youth.

“For the young Egyptians who are not free to move, who are not free to write or tweet, who are not free to like a post on Facebook, it is simply a contradictory message,” Dardery said. “It's giving a very bad name to the IPU, that it’s becoming part of their subjugation.”

One youth leader targeted by Sisi's government is Zyad El-Elaimy, a leading young voice during the 2011 pro-democracy revolution.

A lawyer, he became one of the younger new members of parliament in 2012, after the ousting of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

'Now there’s 107 members of parliament who have been jailed ... for nothing but that they were representatives fairly and freely elected by the Egyptian people'

- Abdel Mawgoud Dardery, former MP

Now Elaimy is among scores of former MPs imprisoned on dubious charges.

Fitzsimons told MEE that the IPU took action to defend persecuted parliamentarians around the world, but that it had not received any information about Elaimy. He said that the organisation would “certainly consider it” if a formal complaint was made.

But Dardery says that he has written to the IPU about over 100 former MPs - including Elaimy.

“I gave the IPU a list of 102 - now there’s 107 - members of parliament who have been jailed from 2013 until today, for nothing but that they were representatives fairly and freely elected by the Egyptian people,” he said.

“The IPU said nothing. They said that issue is not on our agenda now.”

The former MP added that he even turned up to the global organisation’s offices in New York to discuss the issue.

Fitzsimons confirmed that the IPU had received a list of names, but it was not able to launch investigations without more specifics on each individual.

Ten icons of Egypt's 2011 revolution now languishing in prison

Read More »

Among those on the list were former parliament speaker Saad El-Katatni and seven former MPs who died in custody, including Essam el-Erian, Hisham al-Qadi Hanafi, and Morsi, who served as an MP before becoming president.

To date, the only former Egyptian MP who the IPU has raised awareness about is Mostafa al-Nagar, who is believed to have been forcibly disappeared by Egyptian authorities in 2018.

In addition to those imprisoned, over 60 former Egyptian MPs, including Dardery, currently live in exile. Several of them have had their assets frozen, their passports revoked, and their relatives arrested.

“Why can't [the IPU] meet with MPs who are in exile?” Dardery asked. “If they have to still go to Egypt… why can’t they demand a visit to meet their jailed colleagues?”

Asked whether the IPU would speak up on imprisoned MPs, Fitzsimons said "that is not the object of the conference, which is about climate change and bringing in the youth voice".

TURKIYE

38 students detained as police use excessive force at ODTÜ pride march

By Turkish Minute
- June 11, 2022

Turkish police used excessive force to disperse an annual pride march held at Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) in Ankara on Friday, despite a ban recently imposed on the event by the rector’s office, detaining 38 students, local media reported, citing data from the Contemporary Lawyers Association (ÇHD).

Earlier this week the rector’s office said in an email sent to students that security measures would be taken if the students insist on holding the “unauthorized march,” adding that there are efforts to present ODTÜ as the center of these marches and that such efforts damage the prestige of the university.

According to Turkish media reports, police officers, including riot police, broke up the march, employing batons, plastic bullets and pepper spray to disperse the students and detain some of them.

Nils Muižnieks, Amnesty International’s Europe Director, called on Turkish authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release the students who were detained for exercising their right to peaceful assembly by “marching peacefully for their rights to dignity and equality.”

“Scenes of peaceful Pride marchers on the METU campus being confronted with police using unnecessary and excessive force, including pepper balls, are deeply disturbing, particularly as this is a repeat of the brutality we saw here three years ago,” Muižnieks said.

The pride march was organized by the university’s LGBTI organization Solidarity Club, established in 2011. The club, which has been organizing pride marches at the university since 2011, had not been able to hold the gay march for the last two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The previous pride march at the university took place in 2019 despite a ban from the rector’s office, when police battered and detained some students who took part. Eighteen students and a professor who were later indicted for violating the law on demonstrations and public meetings were acquitted of the charges. An Ankara court ruled in 2020 that the ban on the pride march had no legal basis.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread. After a spectacular Pride March in İstanbul drew 100,000 people in 2014, the government responded by banning future events in the city, citing security concerns.

It is common for ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) politicians and their leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to attack LGBTI individuals and accuse them of perversion and destroying family values.

Meanwhile, Turkey was ranked 48th among 49 countries as regards the human rights of LGBT people, according to the 2021 Rainbow Europe Map published by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)-Europe in May.