Friday, March 17, 2023

TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN’S STATUS IN TAIWAN, 1920-2020

17 March 2023 Adrian Chiu

Written by Doris T. Chang.

Image credit: 08.01 總統出席「國家人權委員會揭牌典禮」 by 總統府/ Flickr, license: CC BY 2.0.

Among all the gains made by Taiwanese women in the past century, achieving leadership roles in the political arena is perhaps Taiwanese women’s greatest achievement. During the Japanese colonial era, women had no right to vote. However, after lifting martial law in 1987, Taiwan emerged as a vibrant democracy. Due to political parties’ commitment to nominating more qualified women candidates for elections in the late 1990s and after that, the percentage of women elected to Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan reached 42 per cent in 2020 — the highest in Asia. This is equivalent to the percentage of women legislators in most Scandinavian countries. But Taiwanese women’s achievement in the political arena would not have been possible without making significant progress in their educational attainment throughout the twentieth century.

Education

In the early twentieth century, a segment of Taiwanese elites collaborated with the Japanese colonial government (1895-1945) to promote Taiwanese girls’ enrolment in colonial Taiwan’s primary schools. School attendance allowed the colonial government to assimilate Taiwanese children into modern Japanese culture and develop the skills and discipline necessary to become competent workers for the colonial economy. As a result, the matriculation rates of Taiwanese pupils steadily increased over time. By 1943, 60 per cent of Taiwanese girls were enrolled in primary schools—the second highest in Asia.

However, if girls aspired to get an education beyond primary school, only daughters from the upper- and upper-middle classes among the colonial elites could afford to send their daughters to high-school education. After receiving their diplomas, the few from well-to-do families would apply for admission into colleges and universities in Japan’s home islands.

In both the Japanese Colonial Era and the post-war Chinese Nationalist Period (1945-2000), there were two schools of thought on the education of women and girls. The Japanese colonial authorities and the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) government viewed girls’ education as a way to train them in Confucian ethics and socialize them to become wise mothers and educators of their children, managers of household affairs, and loyal subjects of the nation-state. By contrast, progressive intellectuals in both periods advocated that girls should be taught to become well-rounded individuals capable of achieving financial independence. Nevertheless, due to the concerted efforts of the Taiwanese government and the emphasis on education among Taiwanese parents since democratization, most young women below the age of 40 have earned a bachelor’s degree since the 2010s.

Labour Force Participation

On the contrary, women’s participation in the labour force remains challenging for Taiwan. Based on the data published by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education in 2017, women comprised the majority of the student body that majored in education, liberal arts, library science, business, law, health professions, social work, and hospitality; conversely, men comprised the majority of the student body majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Horizontal segregation along gender lines in college majors and occupational training has made integrating more women into STEM fields a persistent challenge in Taiwanese society.

Class is another dividing line for women. Well-educated women from middle-class backgrounds were more likely to participate in the workforce after having children than their working-class counterparts. Since middle-class households can hire guest workers from Southeast Asia to serve as full-time housekeepers and caretakers, this option enabled many middle-class women to pursue their careers outside the home. Conversely, working-class families might not have the financial resources to hire full-time domestics. Consequently, many working-class women would quit their paid work to care for small children or elderly family members at home. The lack of double incomes in many working-class households further exacerbated income inequalities between working-class and middle-class households in Taiwanese society.

Political Participation and Leadership

In contrast to the persistence of disparities in workforce participation along gender and class lines in Taiwanese society, women have made great strides in the political arena in the past century. During the Japanese colonial era, a notable example of an exceptional political leader was Hsieh Hsueh-hung (謝雪紅1901-1970). As a founder of the Taiwanese Communist Party in 1928, she envisioned a united front of all Taiwanese and Korean societies strata with left-wing progressives in Japan Proper to overthrow Japanese capitalism and imperialism. This could then pave the way for achieving the independence of Taiwan and Korea from Japanese colonial rule. Like most other Marxist-Leninists, Hsieh had a simplistic assumption that overthrowing capitalism and imperialism would automatically usher in a gender-egalitarian society [1] [2]. Therefore, rather than creating a separate women’s rights movement, Hsieh recruited women activists to participate in the anti-colonial proletarian movement. From her perspective, it was only through women’s active participation in revolutionary movements that gender equality could be achieved.

Just as the rise of Japanese militarism in the early 1930s led to the suppression of left-wing revolutionary movements in colonial Taiwan, political repression ensued after the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) government fled to Taiwan following its military defeat by the Chinese Communists. Still, progress in women’s political leadership continued. Under the martial law (1949-1987) era, the first woman to join the inner circle of Taiwan’s Democracy Movement (Dangwai) was Chen Chu (陳菊b. 1950). As a superb communicator and movement organizer during her youth, Chen recruited like-minded college students to canvass for dissident political candidates and served as a courier of confidential messages in the dissident community. When Formosa Magazine, a dissident publication, was launched to disseminate ideas among the Taiwanese public, Chen assumed the role of its deputy director. During the Kaohsiung Incident in 1979, Chen Chu and Hsiu-lien Annette Lu (呂秀蓮b. 1944), another woman activist, were the only two women among the eight Formosa staffers court-martialled and sentenced to long prison terms. Chen’s close working relationships with Amnesty International activists in Japan and Western democracies were instrumental in sustaining the pressure on the KMT regime to release political prisoners. Upon her release from prison, Chen was one of the ten founders of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986 — Post-WWII Taiwan’s first opposition party. In the early 1990s, Chen was elected to represent Kaohsiung in the National Assembly. She was appointed the Minister of Labour after the DPP became the ruling party in 2000 and subsequently served three terms as the Mayor of Kaohsiung.

Unlike Chen, Annette Lu did not join the Democracy Movement until the late 1970s. Throughout the 1970s, Lu was best known as post-war Taiwan’s pioneer feminist who authored New Feminism (新女性主義). In the seminal work, Lu called for revising gender-biased family laws and critiqued Confucian patriarchy. In 1979, upon hearing that the U.S. was switching its diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland, Lu authored a book titled Taiwan’s Past and Future (台湾的過去與未來) to argue for Taiwan’s survival in the international community. In addition, Lu advocated the peaceful coexistence of the ROC and PRC as two distinctive ethnic Chinese states. This perspective was contrary to the view of the KMT government at the time, which still claimed mainland China as an integral part of the ROC. After Taiwan was transformed into a nascent democracy in the early 1990s, Lu was elected to represent Taoyuan in the Legislative Yuan and became Taiwan’s first female vice president in 2000.

Both Chen Chu and Annette Lu’s pioneering leadership roles in the DPP paved the way for Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文 b.1956) to rise through the party ranks. As the DPP chairperson, Tsai was elected the president of Taiwan in a landslide victory in 2016 and again in 2020. Unlike other female heads of state in Asia, Tsai was not from a political family. Her father started out as a car repair shop owner and later built his wealth as a real estate investor. Analogous to Lu’s conceptualization of Taiwanese national identity in 1979, Tsai has consistently committed to peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between the ROC in Taiwan and the PRC on the mainland. As such, Tsai rejected the PRC’s proposal of “One China, Two Systems” for Taiwan’s political future, knowing that agreeing to the PRC proposal would have relegated Taiwan to becoming a mere territory of the PRC as it has been for Hong Kong.

In retrospect, women’s status in Taiwan has radically transformed in the past century, especially in politics. But even in education, more women than men have earned their bachelor’s degrees since the 2010s. Yet, as in most societies, STEM remained male-dominated in contemporary Taiwan. To integrate more women into STEM, parents of high-school girls with aptitude and interest in mathematics and the sciences should encourage their daughters to pursue these areas of study and careers. The government should also strengthen their partnerships with the private business sector to offer more scholarships for female students to study STEM in colleges and universities.

[1] Chen, Fang-ming, 1992. A Critical Biography of Hsieh Hsueh-hung (謝雪紅評傳). Irvine, Calif.: Taiwan chubanshe.

[2] Yang, Tsui, 1993. Taiwanese Women’s Liberation Movement under Japanese Colonial Rule (日據時代台湾婦女解放運動).Taibei: Shibao wenhua.

Dr Doris T. Chang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wichita State University, U.S.A. She received her PhD in East Asian History from the Ohio State University (2002). In 2009, she published a book titled Women’s Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan with the University of Illinois Press. It was the first book in English to bridge the historical divide between women’s movements in the Japanese Colonial Era (1895-1945) and the post-WWII Chinese Nationalist period. It examined the changes and continuities of Taiwanese feminist discourses and women’s movements from cross-cultural perspectives within the contexts of shifting geopolitical dynamics of Imperial Japan, Nationalist China, Taiwan, and the United States in the twentieth century. Dr Chang also authored several refereed articles in international interdisciplinary journals. Among the women political leaders in post-war Taiwan she studied include Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Vice President Hsiu-lien Annette Lü, and Chen Chü—the first woman who joined the inner circle of postwar Taiwan’s Democracy Movement. Since 2018, Dr Chang has served on the Associate Editorial Board of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. In 2022, she authored a chapter on “The Transformation of Women’s Status in Taiwan, 1920-2020,” in a book titled A Century of Development in Taiwan: From Colony to Modern State, edited by Peter C .Y. Chow.

This article was published as part of a special issue titled “A Century of Development in Taiwan.”

Fluorinated gas emission reductions to advance EU fight against climate change

ON MARCH 15, 2023
By European Parliament

Parliament’s Environment Committee agrees to an ambitious reduction of fluorinated greenhouse gases emissions, to further contribute to EU’s climate neutrality goal.

Members of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) adopted their position on revising the EU’s legislative framework on fluorinated gases (F-gases) emissions with 64 votes in favour, eight against and seven abstentions.

Move faster towards alternative solutions

To accelerate innovation in, and the development of, more climate-friendly solutions and to provide certainty for consumers and investors, MEPs want to strengthen new requirements proposed by the Commission that prohibit the placing on the single market of products containing F-gases (Annex IV). The text also adds prohibitions on the use of F-gases for sectors where it is technologically and economically feasible to switch to alternatives that do not use F-gases, such as refrigeration, air conditioning, heat pumps and electrical switchgear.

Accelerate the transition to climate neutrality

The report introduces a steeper trajectory from 2039 onwards to phase down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) placed on the EU market, with the goal of a zero HFC target by 2050 (Annex VII). Phasing out HFC production and consumption in the EU would align these updated rules with the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality goal.

According to MEPs, the Commission should closely monitor market developments in key sectors such as heat pumps and semiconductors. For heat pumps, the Commission needs to ensure that the HFC phase-down would not endanger the RePowerEU heat pump deployment targets as the industry has to work towards replacing HFCs with natural alternatives.

Enhance enforcement to prevent illegal trade

MEPs propose more action on illegal trade in these gases by proposing minimum administrative fines for non-compliance. They also want customs authorities to seize and confiscate F-gases imported or exported in violation of the rules, in line with the environmental crime directive.

Rapporteur Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, NL) said: “F-gases are not well known, but have major implications for our climate, as they are very powerful greenhouse gases. In most instances, natural alternatives are readily available. That’s why we voted for an ambitious position to fully phase out F-gases by 2050 and in most sectors already by the end of this decade. We are providing clarity to the market and a signal to invest in alternatives. Many European companies are already at the forefront of this development and will benefit from it, because of their market position and export opportunities.”

Next steps

The report is scheduled to be adopted during the 29-30 March 2023 plenary sitting and will constitute Parliament’s negotiating position with EU governments on the final shape of the legislation.

Background

Fluorinated greenhouse gases, which include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulphur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride, are man-made greenhouse gases (GHG) with high global warming potential. They are used in common appliances such as refrigerators, air-conditioning, heat pumps, fire protection, foams and aerosols. They are covered by the Paris Agreement together with CO2, methane and nitrous oxide and account for around 2,5% of EU’s GHG emissions.

Additional reduction of F-gases emissions is needed to contribute to EU climate objectives and comply with the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

TIBET
André Lacroix: I.T.A.S. and the state of Tibetology

Mr Lacroix is a retired College Professor, and author of Dharamsalades.

He also realised the translation of The Struggle for Modern Tibet by Tashi Tsering, William Siebenschuh and Melvyn Goldstein

An international Tibetology conference organised by the I.A.T.S. will soon be held in Prague.

Are you familiar with the International Association for Tibetan Studies?

To be honest, before you told me about it,

I didn't know the International Association for Tibetan Studies, I.A.T.S. in English.

I informed myself this morning on the question and I noticed that it was an association which had been founded in Oxford in 1979, and I say 1979 is strange, it is precisely the year when Deng Xiaoping, wanting to put the Tibetan problem behind him, had organized high-level conferences between representatives of Dharamsala, therefore representatives of the Dalai Lama and representatives of the People's Republic of China. These negotiations finally failed because of the Tibetan negotiators' demands. They wanted to create, it was not a request, it was a claim, to create a greater Tibet which would have cut off China from a quarter of its territory, which obviously was an inadmissible claim for the Chinese representatives.

I also note that a following meeting of this association was held in Narita, Japan in 1989, that is to say the precise year during which the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize. There are bizarre coincidences, and I also discovered that it was at this meeting in Japan that the association wrote its statutes, and among these statutes is the fact that the members co-opt each other, which makes me apprehend that the work now held in Prague by this association is not imbued with the most complete objectivity. I'm afraid it's more or less tainted by anti-Chinese feelings.

In your opinion, what is good Tibetology?
Whom do you consider as a model Tibetologist?

Ideally, Tibetology should of course encompass history, the study of texts, the study of the philosophy, myths, legends, religion, religions. Because it is often believed that there is only Buddhism in Tibet, whereas there, the pre-existing religion was the Bön religion, of which there are still obvious traces today. So, all from a perspective that does not mask the geopolitical dimension, because it is certain that since the end, the fall of the Manchu empire, Tibet as been at the crossroads of all the imperialist attempts of the West, the Russians, the British and so on, it has always been part of the Chinese empire which is currently denied by the people of the International Campaign for Tibet. But it is a historical reality.
By taking advantage of the serious difficulties of the young Chinese Republic from 1911, which was a victim of the warlords and then from the struggle between communists and nationalists, the Japanese invasion and so on, China could not maintain its control over this remote Tibetan province. The British took advantage of this to make it a kind of protectorate which was unilaterally declared by the 13th Dalai Lama as an independent Tibet, but it's an independence that has not been recognized by anyone. So when Mao came to power, he simply recovered this province which for a time had escaped control because of the many difficulties of the young Chinese Republic. But, for me, a true Tibetologist, the paragon of Tibetology is Melvyn Goldstein who really is a master who fluently speaks Tibetan, who has been to Tibet dozens of times and travelled it in all directions, he is a very rigorous historian who obviously knows Tibetan who knows the history and has published studies which are really authoritative on the question. So all the little monographs are good to take, which reinforce and nuance, but I find that the essentials on Tibet have been said. In any case, he wrote a masterful book that we can never do without.

The Covid epidemic has disrupted international studies and exchanges, do you think that this epidemic has influenced Tibetan studies?

It is certain that the impossibility of travelling there certainly did not contribute to a better knowledge of the situation on the spot. On the other hand, insofar as many of these Tibetologists are scholars who study texts and so on, who communicate with each other by videoconference, and so on, I don't know if it influenced the studies so much, I don't know, but, of course it's always better to go and see what's going on. As a Tibetan proverb says: better to seeing once than to hear a hundred times, and this is very true, when you go there, you have another, a completely different understanding than when you just read.

What do you think of the new generation of Tibetologist, is there a positive change in their mentality?

Unfortunately no, compared to the great Tibetologists to whom I refer, I am thinking of people like Melvyn Goldstein who probably is the greatest Tibetologist in the world, who fluently speaks Tibetan, who roamed Tibet in all directions and who has a true Geopolitical vision, who has an enormous historical dimension. He is a gentleman who is, I believe, about my age, that is to say, he is an elderly man, I am thinking of Tom Grunfeld and so on. I can't think of anyone precisely, maybe I'm not informing myself well enough, but I do not see a lot of changes.
Maybe Barry Sautman who is younger but in any case I find that, it is also something that struck me, it is that Tibetology, good Tibetology it must be recognized, is unfortunately very often Anglo-Saxon. French Tibetology, for example, is quite lamentable. INALCO, the National Institute of Oriental Language and Culture in Paris, I would say, is a nest, with a few exceptions, of people who do not even hide the fact that they are against Communist China and whose studies are tainted by this anti-Chinese sentiment. It's quite lamentable. I would mention the names of Françoise Robin, Katia Buffetrille, Anne-Marie Blondeau and so on. These are not quite reliable personalities.

What do you think of the many scholars of Tibetan who have never been there? Is it possible for these people to express a real objective opinion?

In my opinion, it must be very difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would take someone who is extremely curious, who really wants to be informed without prejudice and who is a polyglot, who handles Chinese, Tibetan, English, French, German and so on. So maybe, but does this kind of character exist? I do not know. In any case, it's sure that when you set foot somewhere, you immediately have another vision than what you simply find in books. Myself, when I for first time went to Tibet, I thought, based on the Lonely Planet, a relatively reliable travel guide, this guide was talking about cultural genocide. Then, eyes like saucers when I first set foot there and I saw the omnipresence of monks and so on. I asked myself, but what is this travel guide talking about? And it was from that moment that I started to study, in particular Melvyn Goldstein, who has really done masterful works on the history of Tibet from the origins to the present day, with this quite remarkable aspect on history and geopolitics.

Internationally, the vast majority of experts on Tibet have long believed that the Chinese government has an unfair policy toward ethnic minorities.
Having visited Tibet several times, what do you think?

Unfortunately, experts, often the ones who are called to our media, are experts who are steeped in the Atlantic climate, which means that China remains the number one threat, and I believe everything can be explained by the fact that the United States are slowly loosing their hegemony, they cannot accept it, they therefore need an enemy to try to saving their leadership. They realise well as they are not stupid that this leadership is shifting towards China, they do everything to slow it down. How should I put it? It is a bipartisan struggle where Democrats are as hostile towards China as Republicans.

Do you think the conference in Prague will bring some positive and apolitical results for the field of Tibetology?

I tried to find out what topics were going to be covered but couldn't find them on the internet. I only found the conference timetable and which conference rooms et cetera, but I don't know who is invited to speak.

I don't know what topics will be covered, there will surely be some very interesting topics during this conference, but I cannot tell.

I'm still wary in general of the ambience, which is likely to be quite anti-Chinese.

PUBLISHED 8 MONTHS AGO

ON JULY 7, 2022

From: UpFront

Iraq war: ‘The media ended up being lapdogs, not watchdogs’

Twenty years on from the start of the Iraq war, we look at how the US and UK media helped sell the war to the public.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq 20 years ago, United States President George W Bush’s administration and its surrogates went into overdrive, pushing the narrative that Iraq, and its leader Saddam Hussein, posed an immediate and significant threat to the US, and the world.

Most of the media in the US and the UK uncritically repeated dubious claims about weapons of mass destruction and possible links to al-Qaeda, claims that were thoroughly debunked in the months and years that followed.

So how complicit was the media in selling the Iraq war to the public in the US and the UK? And has the press learned any lessons from past failures?

In an UpFront Special, Marc Lamont Hill is joined by publisher and editorial director of The Nation magazine, Katrina Vanden Heuvel; founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon; and former chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph, Peter Oborne

Bleak outlook awaits Iraq as authorities are accused of ignoring environmental threats

The UN has ranked the country as the fifth most vulnerable to climate change

The Tigris river. Iraq loses about half of the water in its rivers to evaporation and outdated irrigation methods. AFP

Sinan Mahmoud
Mar 17, 2023

An Iraqi government official has painted a grim picture of environmental degradation in the country due to climate change, and called for swift action.

“Climate change is real,” Deputy Environment Minister Jassim Al Falahi told a gathering of international experts, academics and policymakers attending the two-day Sulaimani Forum on Thursday.

“When we talk about drought today, we consider it a serious challenge linked to our national security.”

READ MORE
UN calls for immediate international action to combat Iraq’s climate change crisis

Iraq's rivers, which account for more than 90 per cent of its freshwater reserves, currently receive less than 30 per cent of their normal flow from Turkey and Iran, Mr Al Falahi said.

“The main reason for the drought is the policy of the upstream countries and climate change, [which] have led to huge land degradation,” he said.

The country is losing about 400 square kilometres of arable land every year and this has affected the lives of about a third of its population employed in the agriculture sector.

Policymakers have been accused of ignoring the threat.

About a fifth of the water in rivers is lost to evaporation, due to high temperatures, while 30 per cent more is lost as a result of outdated agricultural and irrigation methods, he said.

Mr Al Falahi said the drought would be “one of the main sources” of unrest and social, health, economic, political and security crises if it continues and authorities fail to adopt measures to mitigate it.

The most affected provinces are the southern regions of Thi Qar, Mayssan, Basra and Muthana, he said.

In ancient times, Iraq was known as Mesopotamia, or the Land Between the Two Rivers.

Its extensive alluvial plains gave rise to some of the world's earliest civilisations: Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian.

The civilisation of Ancient Mesopotamia thrived along the banks of the great two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, in the middle of a vast desert.

In the last few centuries, Iraqis have relied on these rivers for water to drink and irrigate crops, with the waterways acting as major transport routes.

But now, the picture is dire, with Iraq ranked by the UN as the fifth-most vulnerable country to climate change.

It is reeling under its worst drought in decades, with temperatures above 50°C last summer, and sandstorms a frequent occurrence.

The two rivers are drying up as a result of dams built upstream in Turkey and Iran, and poor water management. Many of Iraq’s lakes have shrunk in size.

Desertification affects 39 per cent of the country, with 54 per cent of its agricultural land now degraded, mainly due to high soil salinity.
Water quality

Another major concern is the pollution of rivers, due to different human activities.

“Millions of different types of pollutants are being [discharged] into the rivers every day,” Mr Al Falahi said, with state-run institutions, especially municipalities and the Health Ministry, accounting for 95 per cent of the waste.

Iraq has set a goal to stop this practice by 2030, he said, without elaborating.

Environmental activist Jassim Al Asadi, the founder and managing director of the Nature Iraq NGO, criticised the government for not doing enough — especially where marshlands are concerned.

It took him 13 years to convince officials at the Water Resources Ministry to set up a treatment plant for waste in one section of the marshlands.
Endangered marshes

During the 1970s, water covered about 9,650 square kilometres of land and this would increase to 20,000 square kilometres due to floods in times of heavy rain, he said.

The abundance of water was a natural solution as pollutants were diluted, while salinity was low at 200mg per litre of total dissolved solids.

Since then, Iraq's marshes suffered significantly as huge sections were designated for agriculture and oil exploration, apart from the damage caused by decades of war.

However, by 2005, the marshes had improved to about 40 per cent of their original size and Iraq aimed to recover 5,560 square kilometres of the land that had dried up during Saddam's reign.

But as the country experienced severe water shortages last summer, water covered less than 8 per cent of the 2005 target area.

The marshes, which were declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2016 for their biodiversity and ancient history, are also affected by high salinity.

The water at the nearest point in the Euphrates contains more than 2,800 mg per litre of total dissolved solids.

Some parts of the marshes could exceed 28,000 mg per litre, slightly less than the 33,000 mg per litre recorded at sea.

The acceptable level for rivers is between 2,400 and 2,600 mg per litre.

As a result, thousands of the country's inhabitants left for nearby cities after losing between 23 per cent and 33 per cent of their buffalo herds and selling more than 60 per cent of them for a low price.

“Today, the marshland water is stagnant,” Mr Al Asadi told the forum, which was organised by the Institute of Regional and International Studies at the American University of Iraq in the city of Sulaymaniyah.

“Day after day, we are finding it hard to feed the Iraqi marshlands with proper water,” he said. “We have to reconsider the existing water and agricultures strategies and to adopt new ones.”

Updated: March 17, 2023

A remaining pond at the dried-up Sawa Lake on the edge of Iraq’s western desert. AFP

Mass Protests in Israel Often Start on a Neighborhood Street, or an App

A movement against the government’s judicial overhaul plan is a grass-roots affair spread by word of mouth and WhatsApp messaging groups.

A protest in Jerusalem last month against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to overhaul the country’s judicial system. Critics say the effort will undermine the country’s democratic institutions.

Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

By Isabel Kershner
Reporting from Jerusalem
March 17, 2023,

The four activists arrived stealthily just after dawn at the well-guarded home of the Israeli minister in a leafy residential street in Jerusalem. Dropping to the sidewalk, they handcuffed themselves to one another through sections of pipe, and to a nearby lamppost, for a “lock-on” protest in front of the front gate.

The police showed up almost instantly. So did about a dozen neighbors who had been tipped off about the protest, which occurred on a recent weekday, via a neighborhood WhatsApp group. They emerged from nearby apartment blocks and houses, and one from a nearby park, waving large Israeli flags.

One neighbor carried a placard that read: “If you don’t stand up as a CITIZEN, they will turn you into a SUBJECT.” Some chanted “Shame!” when the police used pliers and hammers to try to break the human chain of activists — three men and a woman — outside the home of the official, Nir Barkat, the economy minister in the right-wing government that took power late last year.

Efforts by the government to exert greater control over the judiciary have prompted waves of protests across Israel in recent weeks.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters have filled streets and squares in Tel Aviv and other cities on Saturday nights to voice their opposition to what they see as a move to undermine a cherished pillar of Israeli democracy.

Four activists handcuffed themselves to one another and to a lamppost outside the house of Nir Barkat, the economy minister, in Jerusalem.

Credit...Isabel Kershner

Retired security chiefs and justices, Nobel Prize winners, former prime ministers and business leaders have marched in mass protests, addressed the crowds or added their names to petitions and newspaper advertisements condemning the move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government to overhaul the judiciary.

There are small, pop-up protests occurring across the country, too, sometimes involving just one person with a sign.

The protests are also playing out in quiet neighborhoods like Beit Hakerem, home to Mr. Barkat, drawing in ordinary Israelis of all ages and from all walks of life, emphasizing the depth of the anger in the country over the direction of the new government.

The Eyal family, who said they live in “a less fancy house” on the same street as Mr. Barkat, were among the neighbors who came out to support the protest outside the economy minister’s home. It was one of many that have been organized outside the homes of the politicians behind the judicial overhaul in recent weeks.

What to Know About Israel’s Judiciary Overhaul

A divisive proposal. A package of proposed legislation for a far-reaching overhaul of the judicial system in Israel has set off mass protests by those who say it will destroy the country’s democratic foundations.

Here is what to know:

What changes are being proposed?
Israel’s right-wing government wants to change the makeup of a committee that selects judges to give representatives and appointees of the government a majority. The legislation would also restrict the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws passed by Parliament and weaken the authority of the attorney general, who is independent of the government.

What do opponents of the plan say?
The front opposing the legislation, which includes Israelis largely from the center and left, argues that the overhaul would deal a mortal blow to the independence of the judiciary, which they view as the only check on government power. They say that the legislation would change the Israeli system from a liberal democracy with protections for minorities to a tyranny of majority rule.

Where does Benjamin Netanyahu stand?

In the past, Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, was a staunch defender of the independence of the courts. His recent appointment of Yariv Levin, a leader of the judicial overhaul, to the role of justice minister signaled a turnaround, even though Netanyahu publicly promised that any changes would be measured and handled responsibly.

Is there room for compromise?
The politicians driving the plan said they were prepared to talk and a group of academics and lawmakers, in the meantime, met behind the scenes for weeks to find a compromise. On March 15, the government rejected a compromise by Issac Herzog, the president of Israel, that was dismissed by Netanyahu soon after it was published.

“He should know what his neighbors think,” said Amit Eyal, 24, a medical student, adding, “I feel like I was born in one country and now it’s changing into another.”

When the police tried to move along the Eyals and other neighbors, they said they were just out for a walk and paraded around in a circle on the street.

“We are very busy people,” said Mr. Eyal’s mother, Sara Eyal, 58, a professor of pharmacy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “But speaking for myself, this is more important.”

Bills being hastily pushed through Parliament by the governing coalition would essentially give the government the power to appoint judges, severely curtail judicial review over legislation and allow the legislature to overturn Supreme Court rulings with a bare majority.

Critics say that the move would be dangerous in a country that lacks a formal written constitution or any other significant means of checking the government’s power.

Polls indicate that a majority oppose the proposed bills, and many older Israelis say the divisions the plans have wrought have provoked one of the country’s most perilous periods since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War, or since the war in 1948 surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel.

Underpinning the protests in neighborhoods like Beit Hakerem and around the country is a broad, diverse alliance of grass-roots initiatives and organizations — representing women, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, veterans, the high-tech industry and health workers — that has come together to create one of the most sweeping popular struggles in decades.

Many communicate by word of mouth or through groups formed on WhatsApp and on other encrypted messaging platforms popular in Israel, which are often focused on workplaces, neighborhoods and communities.

An informal body known simply as “the struggle HQ” has amplified those messages, coordinating between the groups, advertising and helping set up stages and sound systems for the mass protests and planning for days of “national disruption” or “national resistance,” as weekday, countrywide protests have been called.

The group is staffed mainly by volunteers under the operational leadership of Eran Schwarz, an air force pilot turned social activist. A crowdfunding campaign had raised nearly 9 million shekels (about $2.5 million) as of Thursday and donations from businesspeople paid for a countrywide billboard campaign.

That is all helping to drive Israelis onto city streets, and in smaller communities, out to demonstrations at road junctions in more rural areas.

Israeli naval reservists protesting near the Haifa port. The mass demonstrations have brought together Israelis from a wide range of backgrounds.

Credit...Reuters

Parents and children have been rallying outside schools. Rainbow flags raised by L.G.B.T.Q. advocates mingle with blue and white Israeli flags that have become an emblem of the protest movement — an act of re-appropriation after years when the flag was more often raised at right-wing protests. Women’s rights activists dressed in red robes and white bonnets based on the dystopian novel and television series “The Handmaid’s Tale” weave through the crowds at demonstrations. Army reservists wear khaki T-shirts with the logo of the group “Brothers in Arms.” Farmers drive tractors in slow convoys to snarl traffic.

A group of 1973 war veterans stole an old tank from the Golan Heights and loaded it onto the bed of a truck, apparently intending to bring it to the center of Tel Aviv. They did not get far before the police stopped them.

Health workers in white coats have also become a visible feature of the protests.

“There is no health without democracy, and no equality in health care without democracy,” Dr. Hagai Levine, the former chairman of Israel’s Association of Public Health Physicians, said in an interview, explaining why doctors and nurses were mobilizing.

The health workers have set up WhatsApp groups with thousands of members to provide updates about local activities. They distribute what they call “prescriptions for democracy” and carry mock “casualties of dictatorship” on stretchers.

Israel’s vaunted high-tech industry has also been active in the protests, with some companies providing buses to ferry workers to mass rallies amid worries that investors will be scared away by the judicial changes.

Tel Aviv last week, in one of many protests that have engulfed the commercial hub in recent weeks

.Credit...Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

Thousands of other protesters have paid their way and funded their own activities.

“People are donating for the battle for democracy,” said Nadav Galon, a spokesman for the protest movement. “It’s a civil awakening.”

Veteran commanders and officers of the military’s armored corps have set up a protest tent between the Supreme Court and the Parliament.

“People have had enough,” said Ilan Feldman, 62, a tank brigade veteran, listing a litany of grievances, like exemptions from mandatory army service for ultra-Orthodox Jews and the fact that the prime minister is on trial for corruption. “The judicial reform plan is just the final straw,” he added.

Nurit Guy, 88, lost Shachar Guy, her son, who served in a tank crew, and an American volunteer soldier, Zvi Wolf, whom she had informally adopted, within a day of each other during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. She came alone one recent lunchtime to visit the veterans’ protest tent from her village in southern Israel.

Many protesters communicate by word of mouth or through groups formed on WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging platforms that are popular in Israel.

Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

“Fear paralyzes,” she said. “My protest may not change what happens, but it means I didn’t sit quietly; I raised my voice,” she added.

Back in Beit Hakerem, a neighborhood that mostly votes for centrist or left-wing parties, people have been seething about the judicial overhaul plans for weeks.

On Fridays, about 50 residents regularly gather at a nearby junction and hold noisy protests with drums, whistles and horns.

It was fertile ground for the four activists who came from their own neighborhoods around Jerusalem to block Mr. Barkat’s home. One of them, Hagai Elron, 34, who runs a moving company, said they felt compelled to prevent the minister from leaving home.

“We say to the members of the government who are harming the citizens by going out to work that it’s preferable they stay home,” Mr. Elron said. (The protesters were removed after about an hour, clearing the way for Mr. Barkat to get to the office later without any apparent inconvenience.)

Across the road from the minister’s home, a neighbor had hung a red banner from a balcony reading, “Wake up Nir, the house is on fire.” Another wrote an anonymous poem and stuck it outside Mr. Barkat’s house.

“From enlightened neighbors he benefits,” it read. “But he is tearing the country to bits.”

IT'S NOT A DEMOCRACY IT'S A JEWISH STATE

Israel’s Unrest Could End Up Making Its Democracy Stronger

COMPROMISE IS THE ANSWER

PM Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled he’s willing to back off on some of his hard-right coalition’s extreme proposals for judicial reform—which might be the way out of this crisis.

Josh Feldman
Published Mar. 17, 2023
OPINION

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Reuters

To watch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of late has been to watch a game of escalating recklessness played out on a national scale. Desperate to extricate himself from his corruption trial, he has formed an unprecedentedly hardline coalition, which on one hand has given power to bigots and extremists long confined to Israel’s fringe and on the other is pushing radical judicial reforms that risk tearing the country apart—both socially and democratically.

Erstwhile known in Israel for his cautious governance, Netanyahu has unleashed a judicial reform package so far-reaching, with his coalition pushing it through at breakneck speed, that it has sparked accusations of a “judicial coup” and mass nationwide protests. A raft of catastrophic warnings from myriad corners of Israeli society have simultaneously flooded in, ranging from senior military and security officials, to leading economists, to Israel’s historically apolitical president, who last week decried the reforms as “oppressive.”

This Extremist Could Destroy Israel as We Know It
WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?
Josh Feldman

But despite the external impression that the Jewish state is teetering on the edge of disaster, Netanyahu appears to be softening his stance on the proposed judicial reforms at the heart of the unrest—to not only be more palatable to the Israeli mainstream but to, in fact, strengthen Israel’s democracy.

There is clear consensus support in Israel for judicial reform. Israelis know the courts are too powerful and that long-overdue, constructive changes to the system would enhance Israel’s democratic status. Indeed, a recent poll from the Jewish People Policy Institute found that only 16 percent of Israelis oppose the idea of judicial reforms. The uproar in Israel is not born out of opposition to reforms per se, but rather a combination of widespread distrust of Netanyahu’s coalition, and the proposed reforms’ radical nature, which as they stand would essentially neuter Israel’s Supreme Court.

Netanyahu understands this, and after being caught off guard by “the vehemence of the resistance [and] the vehemence of the anger” at the reforms, as The Times of Israel’s Haviv Rettig Gur put it, he is now trying to drag his coalition back from the edge.

The signs have been there for weeks. On Feb. 15, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had sought to water down the reforms, at which Justice Minister Yariv Levin—who, alongside MK Simcha Rothman, is the reforms’ key proponent—threatened to resign and topple the coalition. One week later, in a social media post, Netanyahu declared: “Citizens of Israel, it’s time to talk,” while also emphasizing the need “to reach agreements or at least reduce the disagreements between us.”

Then again, on March 3, reports emerged that the prime minister had abandoned a plan to announce a temporary halt to the reforms after Levin again threatened to quit “if the legislation was paused for so much as a day,” according to The Times of Israel. On March 13, in a transparent call for dampening the reforms, he tweeted a Wall Street Journal editorial on the issue. “The right may have to compromise. The left may have to calm down,” the subheading read.

I Was Canceled for Criticizing Israel
CORPORATE MEDIA CENSORSHIP
Katie Halper

Bibi, it seems, has begun to confront this mess that he brought upon himself and is desperately trying to fix it before it’s too late.

He “shot himself in both legs,” says veteran Israeli commentator Ehud Yaari, and is “limping as fast as he can towards a compromise.” He’s even called in the reserves. In yet another signal of his desire to block legislation that would damage Israel’s democracy, Netanyahu has reportedly tasked long-time confidant and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer with solving the crisis.

While much of his party has remained publicly silent over their alleged concerns, Netanyahu is not alone in attempting to bridge the divide. Earlier this month, senior Likud MKs Yuli Edelstein and Danny Danon signed an open letter calling for dialogue and a negotiated compromise. On Tuesday, the Kohelet Policy Forum, which was instrumental in formulating the current legislation, publicly called for compromise in order to reach a “broad consensus,” and suggested that the “override clause”—widely viewed as the most dangerous of the reforms—could be scrapped altogether.

Even Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who is not exactly known for political moderation—predicted on Tuesday that the legislation will be softened to something acceptable to Israel’s “mainstream.”

None of this is a given, of course. Not only is there immense pushback against compromise from coalition figures such as Levin, but, as Rettig Gur explains, “Every single party in the coalition actually has a different aspect of this reform that it cannot let go of.” Even if most coalition members are willing to alter the legislation, opposition from just one party in Netanyahu’s fractious government could bring it all crashing down.

Israel Could Be Headed for a Cold Civil War
HOT HEADS IN THE HOLY LAND
Lloyd Green

Such internal pressure, according to Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer, is exactly why Netanyahu rejected President Isaac Herzog’s long awaited proposal which aimed to serve as a foundation for widely accepted judicial reforms. “Netanyahu himself, frantic to defuse this crisis which is sapping his government of public support and endangering the Israeli economy, would have taken it,” Pfeffer writes. “But not his cabinet colleagues and coalition partners.”

There are no shortcuts in the path ahead for Israel’s longest-serving premier. A public discussion about the power imbalance between the courts and government was long overdue, and rather than approach it in a responsible manner, Netanyahu let his coalition partners exploit a genuine issue to push an agenda that threatens Israel’s very democratic and social fiber. But he’s now desperately working to find his way back. If he succeeds, he may well help pass “a reform that would leave Israel not just not weaker and less democratic,” Rettig Gur says, “but actually by reaching a middle ground would leave it stronger and more democratic than before.”

Now that would be one hell of a coup.

Western Canada rumbled by earthquakes Thursday morning

Story by Stephanie Swensrude • Yesterday

Parts of Alberta and B.C. were shaken by multiple earthquakes Thursday morning, according to Earthquakes Canada.

A magnitude 5 earthquake was recorded 30 kilometres east northeast of Reno, Alta., Thursday March 16, 2023.© Earthquakes Canada

The first two quakes were recorded at 8:46 a.m.: a 4.5-magnitude earthquake, which was recorded 39 kilometres east northeast of Reno, Alta., and a 4.2-magnitude earthquake in the Peace River region.

Earthquakes Canada had originally recorded the earthquake near Reno as being 5.0-magnitude but later downgraded the rating.

Reno, a tiny rural hamlet about 40 kilometres southeast of Peace River, was shaken again just before 9 a.m. by another 4.6-magnitude earthquake recorded 35 kilometres east-northeast of the hamlet. Meanwhile, a 4.2-magnitude event was recorded in the Dawson Creek, B.C., region.

At 9:07 a.m., another earthquake of magnitude 3.8 came from the same region near Reno, according to Earthquakes Canada.

Related video: Multiple earthquakes reported in Alberta, details here (The Weather Network)
Areas. Just E southeast of Peace River in Alberta,
Duration 0:43
The Weather Network
Multiple earthquakes reported in Alberta, details here
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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Friday, March 17, 2023

TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN’S STATUS IN TAIWAN, 1920-2020

TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN’S STATUS IN TAIWAN, 1920-2020

Iraq war: ‘The media ended up being lapdogs, not watchdogs’

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