Why the new French secularism is no longer exportable

Sari Hanafi 

MIDDLE EAST EYE
3 August 2023 

Despite the merits of 'historical secularism' promoted by France around the world, the exclusionary and divisive character of the 'new secularism' has undermined its universality

Two women at a march in Paris against Islamophobia on 10 November 2019,

 following an attack on a mosque in Bayonne, France (Reuters)

The recent exclusionary policies in France have led many to question French new secularism and the problems inherent in its imposition on societies both within and outside of the country.

French secularism is not what it was at the beginning of the 20th century. While its main tenet, which guarantees individual freedom and equality, is still perfectly universal, there is no sociological evidence to suggest that secularisation should lead to a decline in religiosity.

Indeed, historical secularism has a number of virtues that give it a universal scope, including the protection of religion from the authority of the state and the protection of the state from any hegemony of the clergy.


This observation is based on a forthcoming study on the influence of French secularism among Arab groups on the secular left and on French efforts to enforce its version of secularism.

'Ethnocentric'

Undermining the universality of French secularism is its "ethnocentric" character, born of the Christian reformist conception of religion.

French secularism has taken religion in the Christian manner - more specifically in the manner of the Protestant Reformation - by reducing it to individual belief and freedom of conscience, and confining it to private spaces, such as the home and the church. As a result, rituals or any other public forms of religious affirmation (such as the wearing of the Islamic headscarf) tend to be considered an unacceptable form of proselytism.

In the name of defending the ideals of the French secular left, certain intellectuals and media figures have no hesitation in transforming themselves into "faqih" (Muslim jurist) or "mufti" to "prove" that the veil "is not part of Islam", or that it is a "symbol of the slavery of women". In a totally ethnocentric display, they project onto Muslim societies meaning and cultural interpretation that emanate only from European culture.

Such arguments clearly violate the most basic freedoms, since it is up to each individual to define and give meaning to his or her social behaviour.


In a totally ethnocentric display, defenders of French secularism project onto Muslim societies meaning and cultural interpretation that emanate only from European culture

The French law banning headscarves in schools and for civil servants in public institutions, passed on 15 March 2004, can legitimately be seen as an explicit violation of the freedom to practise religion. Driving this legislation more than anything appears to be the sheer rejection of, and genuine obsessive disgust for, the headscarf by the majority of French society.

In her 2009 book, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues for the condemnation of any legislation built on the subjective rejection of the actions of others. She further asserts that moral or legal judgments cannot be justified or legitimised by feelings of disgust or other forms of subjective rejection.

The exclusionary secularism "a la francaise" has been, alas, replicated in some European countries, while others resist. Where French lawmakers are banning what is part of the conception of the "good" in a society, such as diversity and individual freedom, their counterparts in the UK and Norway (not to mention the US, Canada and Australia, where the famous "Burkini" originated) see no contradiction in a Muslim policewoman wearing a hijab or a Sikh policeman wearing a turban.

Very recently, this radical opposition was once again expressed in at least two ways. A campaign launched by the Council of Europe to promote diversity among women, including the freedom to wear the headscarf, was met with virulent criticism - leading to its cancellation.

The French scholar Florence Bergeaud-Blackler saw it as part of a romanticisation of the veil that ignored the fact that some women are "raped, vitriolised and burnt if they do not wear the veil".

It is not anecdotal to add to this French exceptionalism that, of all the members of the European Union, only Paris - through the voice of Sarah El Haïry, in her capacity as state secretary for youth, some of whose relatives wear the headscarf - officially protested against the Council of Europe's campaign. This "secular identity", to use Jean Baubérot's words, transforms Islam into a religion alien to European culture and incompatible with democratic values.

A 'good life' for all

The most radical defenders of the new secularism in France consider secularism not simply an instrument of governance, but an objective in itself. In their view, secularism is no longer a means of implementing the values of political liberalism - ie the values of freedom, equality and pluralism - within the framework of a democratic state; they see it as an intrinsic bearer of universal values, whatever the consequences, for society.

The notion of pluralism here suggests diversity and a plurality of concepts that make it possible to think about the "good" and, therefore, a good life for different groups in society and for the individuals comprising them. In its "new" sense, however, secularism takes into account the historical conditions and cultural environment of only one segment of society (albeit a majority).

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For example, while the presence of a cross in public school classrooms is considered contrary to secularism, a cross in the public square of a country characterised by its Christian architectural heritage cannot be considered as such. When the liberal conceptions of justice and the "good" compete, society resorts to debate in the public sphere using public reason or moral justifications derived from culture, tradition and the influence of globalisation.

The affirmation of secularity poses no problem as long as the reasoning does not go beyond a sphere that is audible and acceptable to all citizens. It is difficult to distinguish in these reasonings between what is merely a composite vestige of religious teaching and cultural practice and other sources or moral references.

Secularism, therefore, plays the role of a means (and not an end in itself) of the grammar that makes it possible to control the pace of this debate and respect the concept of citizenship while accepting, for example (in the area of religious or ethnic cults, rituals and fests), exceptions for the benefit of minorities, as long as these exceptions do not harm society as a whole.

In a society where Christians make up the majority, it is natural that certain official holidays would have Christian origins. But this should not preclude citizens of other faiths from celebrating their own holidays, as is the case in France and Germany. In France, while six of the 12 national holidays observed are Catholic events, proposals to observe Muslim and Jewish holidays have only been met with controversy and disdain. Meanwhile, the French government recently requested that teachers in Toulouse provide the number of student absences during the Eid al-Fitr celebration, triggering alarm among Muslim families and criticism from anti-racism groups.

Negative vision

In addition to being a universal value, the French new secularism has deemed itself an authority for passing restrictive legislation against minority religions. In place of any public debate on what is common in French culture, minorities with different lifestyles (including all religious practices and rituals forming the "good life") are legislated against unilaterally.

After its legislation on the headscarf, France adopted a law specifically against the burka, then yet another against the burkini, even though it is very difficult to establish that these practices in any way harm the majority or the social contract.

This normative frenzy continues in France with more recent cases: the French Football Federation's ban on interrupting a match to allow Muslim players to break their fast during the month of Ramadan, or the education minister's use of the notion of "religious symbols by destination" to ban the long dresses worn by some schoolgirls.

All this has led French political scientist Olivier Roy to warn against such an "extension of the domain of the norm" and of laws in several western countries, and against the shrinking of the public space for negotiation, debate and even dialogue.

In secular settings, the dissociation of politics and religion certainly makes sense whenever it is a question of limiting the exercise of politics by clerics whose action is confined exclusively to the interests of their believers. The politicisation of religion and the moral role it intends to play, negatively or positively, has become evident in many countries, including so-called "secular" ones.

The electoral influence of the churches has become clear in many democratic countries, where it affects both the left and right. In Brazil, the same Pentecostals who voted for Lula (and got 100 MPs in 2016) went on to vote for Jair Bolsonaro. Yet no one has called for a ban on "political Christianity".

So it is no longer acceptable to focus solely on the negative role of religiosity, politically and socially, because of its possible role in trajectories of radicalisation, sectarianism, or social and political subjugation.

In other contexts, religiosity can serve social progress, civic solidarity and/or resistance to colonialism and authoritarianism.

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The distinction between the political and religious spheres should simply mean the respective autonomy of religious and temporal institutions. However, the reality today, particularly where the Muslim minority is concerned, is quite different: the temporal authority is exercising dominance over religious institutions.

When former President Nicolas Sarkozy called for the organisation of the Muslim community in France, it was clear, even before elections were held, who would lead these communities. He mandated that he alone would nominate 30 percent of the council.

The France of Emmanuel Macron has equally discouraged any attempt at genuine representation of the Muslims of France, as this would "constitute obstacles to their assimilation policy" - a vague, albeit oft-repeated phrase in the French political class.

While the principle of state neutrality is necessary for the autonomy of religious institutions, this does not mean that the state can refrain from fairly managing and regulating religious pluralism, especially in a multi-ethnic and multicultural society.

Dispelling these wrong notions is essential to establishing a 'soft' secularism that is not divisive, and would be necessary and even indispensable to each society

If we look at a wide range of political systems - from the most repressive authoritarian regimes to liberal democratic states - we see that most of them are involved in managing religious pluralism. In such a configuration, the state may have different roles. This depends on its vision of the moral dimension of religion. It can be positive (policies of integration and inclusion, policies of recognition) or negative (policies of exclusion, prohibition of religious manifestations, cultural indifference, policies of non-recognition or misrecognition).

The new French secularism of exclusion focuses only on this negative vision and has become the fatal weapon of the (extreme) right. From Rachida Dati to Fadela Amara, the French parties have never chosen political actors (to be ministers or MPs) from Arab or Muslim origin, other than those supposed to have distanced themselves as much as possible from the culture of their ancestors, which is nonetheless that of a large segment of the Muslim community in France.
'Soft' secularism

There remains no question of the positive virtues of historical secularism that France has helped to promote throughout the world. However, for the reasons outlined, the new secularism promoted in France over the past few decades can no longer be exported as it has been in the past.

Firstly, religion is often wrongly regarded as a social sphere that is completely separate from the rest of society. But like Canadian socio-anthropologist Francois Gauthier, I refuse to see society as divided into distinct compartments, one of which is religion. Religious, cultural, political, social and economic spheres are, in fact, traversed by common logic that makes it possible to encompass a given society in its entirety, just as Marcel Mauss did.

Dispelling these misunderstandings is essential if we are to establish a "soft" secularism that is not divisive, and would be necessary and even indispensable to each society: a secularism that cannot be set up as an end in itself, sacralised and blind to the conditions under which it is implemented in each national or communal context.

Secularism is merely a mechanism - albeit to a great extent - capable of effectively affirming the values of the liberal political project.

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

Sari Hanafi is a Professor of Sociology, Director of Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, and Chair of the Islamic Studies program at the American University of Beirut. He is the President of the International Sociological Association.He is also the editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology (Arabic) and Chair of Islamic Studies program. Recently, he created the “Portal for Social impact of scientific research in/on the Arab World" (Athar). He was the Vice President of the board of the Arab Council of Social Science (2015-2016). He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales-Paris (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) (1994). He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on the sociology of religion, among various other publications.

FORWARD TO THE PAST

Dual Neutralization as a Pathway to a Denuclearized Korea

“Finlandization” for the North and “Austriazation” for the South provide a path toward unification – and denuclearization.

By Heinz Gärtner and Pascal Lottaz
August 03, 2023
THE DEBATE | OPINION

On July 27, the Korean Armistice Agreement that ended the bloodshed on the Korean Peninsula turned 70 years old. While the agreement did not bring a comprehensive peace – technically the two sides are still at war – it stopped the dying and laid the foundation for the separate development of two Koreas, locked in a state of constant mutual threat. That threat has been nuclear at least since the North developed its first indigenous bomb around 2006. Today it is getting worse, with the rapid development of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs and the South extracting nuclear assurances from the United States with the visit of a U.S. nuclear submarine in Busan.

While the U.S. and much of the world community might wish for de-escalation and ultimately denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, it must be recognized that all attempts to achieve that goal will fail as long as international political conditions to guarantee the survival of both political regimes are missing. Looking at what happened to Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine, the North Koreans would be quite frankly unwise to give up their nuclear stockpile without another ironclad guarantee for their safety. Solving the nuclear issue requires this political prerequisite to be addressed first.

The question is if denuclearization is even possible within a divided peninsula, or if a unification scheme might provide the key to success. The latter is most likely the case. A successful reunification must naturally go hand-in-hand with arms reduction, which could include a phasing-out of the mutual nuclear threat. If Korea can solve its Mexican standoff, the nuclear question will become redundant.

Unification Through Neutralization

Save a geopolitical miracle, North Korea will remain tethered to China not only economically but also as a buffer state to the U.S. military threat. Likewise, South Korea remains dependent on its military integration with Washington to deter the North. Hence the fate of the peninsula is tied to the interests of their respective guarantor states. “Solving Korea” is a four-way game. Even if there was an inner-Korean peace deal, it would be spoiled by one of the guarantors if they felt the change would threaten their interests.

Hence, other things being equal, only a win-win-win-win situation has any chance of success. For the two Koreas, this would mean unification, as both have been longing for this outcome for the past 70 years. It is often the German experience of 1989-90 that is cited as a model for Korean unification but a more realistic path is, in fact, the one Germany explicitly rejected – namely a permanent neutralization.

The literature on Korean neutrality is vast and there is no lack of ideas or arguments of why a neutral peninsula would be a good thing. Our argument is different in the sense that we are able to show how a neutralization process in both Koreas separately could realistically lead to the desired outcome. Concretely, we are proposing the concepts of “Finlandization” for the North and “Austriazation” for the South as a way toward unification.

The Finlandization of North Korea

“Finlandizing” North Korea would mean changing the current China-North Korea mutual defense treaty toward a security agreement akin to the one the Soviet Union used to have with Finland. This partial alliance guaranteed Moscow that Finnish territory would not only be off-limits to its adversaries, but that the Finns were contractually bound to the defense of the Soviet Union should an attack through their territory on the USSR be attempted. The crucial point is that this was not a universal mutual defense pact but a limited one, securing the USSR’s northwestern flank.

The agreement also provided for bilateral consultations and the option of Soviet support for Finnish defense. Importantly, there was no automatism prescribed in the treaty. Finland was only obliged to come to the aid of the USSR in case of an attack through its own territory, which would have already triggered Finnish defenses anyhow and is therefore very different from a traditional mutual defense obligation like NATO’s Article 5.

For North Korea, one can reason in analogous terms. Since China is a great power with a nuclear triad and all possible capabilities of self-defense, the only real danger Beijing faces from the Korean Peninsula is the stationing of hostile nuclear or conventional assets near its southern border, only a few hundred kilometers from major industrial hubs and its own capital city, or from troops that could invade its territory from that flank. There is little hope that the North Korea could come to the help of China in case of a confrontation between Chinese and U.S. navies, nor would its military be useful in the case of a war with India or another distant neighbor. North Korean troops and military assets are of little value to Beijing other than for the defense of hostilities emanating from the territory of the South or the Sea of Japan/East Sea.

To China, North Korea’s strategic value is the buffer function it plays. A change from the current mutual defense treaty to a Finnish-style agreement in which North Korea promises to defend itself and China against attacks through its territory would not only be in line with current North Korean defense policy, but also guarantee China exactly the same benefits that it already enjoys today under the current treaty. Furthermore, a provision like Article 4, that the territory of North Korea can under no future agreement be made part of a hostile alliance to China, would further enhance Chinese security by ensuring that in a reunified Korea, no hostile troops or assets could be stationed in the northern territories.

Such an agreement would not be a change to the status quo; it would not represent a additional security benefit to China. It would, however, enable North Korea to take a decisive step toward a neutral position, compatible with a reunified neutral state.

Austriazation of South Korea

For its part, South Korea could aspire to follow an Austrian model to achieve a neutral position of its own. In 1955, Austria agreed not to join any military alliance and not to allow any foreign military bases on its territory as a condition to regain independence from the four post-war occupation powers. However, there was no ideological neutrality. Austria quickly adopted Western values and started a process of integration in the market economy, which eventually led to its accession to the European Union in the 1990s. This development was accepted by the Soviet Union, mainly because Austria did not become a member of NATO.

In terms of military capabilities, some neutral countries – foremost Sweden and Switzerland – experimented with the development of nuclear weapons, reasoning that such capabilities would be necessary to independently defend their territories in case of a hostile (Soviet) intervention. Austria, by contrast, quickly became a model for the concept of a Central European Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) – a Polish idea – prescribing military disengagement from the blocs and a nuclear-free status of the participating states.

This concept of a conventionally armed but non-nuclear neutralist state is suitable for the first South Korean step toward security compatibility with the North. It would be based on a change in the current security treaty with the United States on the one hand, and a South Korean pledge concerning nuclear weapons on the other. The treaty change would have to be effected with the U.S. to the extent that the two countries agreed to shift from a reciprocal commitment of mutual defense to a unilateral commitment from the United States toward South Korea, in exchange for the continuous lease of extraterritorial military bases on the peninsula, in the same way, the Japan-U.S. security treaty functions.

A unilateral South Korean commitment to remaining nuclear-free is in line with current U.S. policy that rules out nuclear sharing, the deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear assets to South Korea, or even South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons. Beyond these commitments, South Korea would not have to give up its security ties with the United States or Japan. Procurement of weapons, exchange of military know-how, and even joint maneuvers to maintain interoperability would still be possible and should still take place. The goal would not be to disarm South Korea, just to initiate a neutralist foreign policy that signals future compatibility with that of the North.


Step by Step

Neutralization does not have to be complete from the beginning, as steps toward neutralism can be made without endangering North or South Korean security. Even the denuclearization of the North can be put off until actual unification negotiations start because, under a dual-neutralist framework, North Korea would not yet be pressured to abandon its nuclear capabilities. Likewise, the framework would give time for political and economic rapprochements, be it through working on a federalist future or through a slowly evolving inter-Korean customs union with limited supranational powers, akin to the early European Coal and Steel Community.

A “real” solution can only be negotiated in a process that would have to look similar to the “4+2 Talks,” through which modern Germany was established. In the Korean case, it would be a multilateral process involving the two Koreas plus the United States, China, Russia, and Japan – the members of the erstwhile Six-Party Talks – that would need to agree on a roadmap.

Nevertheless, the separate neutralization of the two Koreas is a step that can precede actual unification talks and could even be initiated by either North or South Korea or in consultation with each other. This has the advantage of giving much more agency to the Koreans in a geopolitical process that, at many crucial junctures, was taken over their heads. These dual processes do not preclude that the steps toward neutrality can happen simultaneously and be coordinated. They should be accompanied by a new dialogue between the North and the South, confidence building, and the resumption of cross-border exchanges.

In the end, a legally binding neutralization of a denuclearized but unified Korean state would be the ultimate goal to realistically solve the security conundrum in the region. China would benefit from these steps first by decreasing its own security commitment to North Korea while maintaining its strategic buffer, which would eventually grow to the entire size of the peninsula.

The United States, too, would gain from this arrangement as it would secure the status quo for as long as the peninsula was not completely neutralized, denuclearized, and politically stable. Once that was achieved, a phased-out troop withdrawal would free up valuable U.S. resources without leaving a power vacuum in Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. presence in Japan would remain unaffected.

To future-proof the agreement from a U.S. perspective, another provision from the Austrian State Treaty can function as a template, since it contained a clause guaranteeing Austria would never again join a union with Germany. For Korea, a similar treaty could expressly prohibit territorial claims of any external power (like China or Russia). In this way, a united peninsula could serve in perpetuity as a buffer zone, the way Switzerland buffered its neighbors for over 200 years.

The Korean Peninsula has always been a geostrategic hotspot. Had it been removed from great power rivalries, that would have benefitted all parties in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries alike. Maybe a baby-step approach toward neutralization from both ends can finally change the security dynamic.


GUEST AUTHOR
Heinz Gärtner teaches at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna. Among other things, he chairs the advisory board of the International Institute for Peace in Vienna and of the Commission Strategy and Security of the Austrian Armed Forces. He has published widely on issues of international security, transatlantic relations, arms control, and the Middle East.

GUEST AUTHOR
Pascal Lottaz  is an associate professor at the Law Faculty and Hakubi Center of Kyoto University (Japan). He researches neutrality in international relations and directs the network neutralitystudies.com.

 

UK: What is needed to protect freedom of expression for all

POSTED ON AUGUST 03, 2023  Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn

This week, a new debate started in the UK media about the state of freedom of expression in the country, as Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Evening Standard, announced the launch of the newspaper’s new campaign to ‘fight for free speech’. 

Quinn McKew, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19 offers her perspective:

ARTICLE 19’s Global Expression Report makes clear that freedom of expression is on the decline in the UK, falling to its lowest level in the past 20 years. For a country that prides itself on defence of press freedom, this should be ringing major alarm bells.  

But to change course, you have to understand what is going wrong. Contrary to Evgeny Lebedev’s assumption that “political correctness” is to blame, for the most part the decline is driven by the UK government’s very own agenda, hardwired on silencing dissent.

In the past year, the Conservative government put in place legislation which all but outlaw public protest; continued to push through the Online Safety Bill, which risks introducing a level of online censorship and surveillance on people’s communication unseen in liberal democracies; and continued to indicate that withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights is not off the table. 

Due to these actions, ARTICLE 19’s Global Expression Report is not the only global ranking to note a worrying decline in the UK. The Civicus Monitor, which tracks the state of civil society freedoms globally, downgraded the UK from “Narrowed” to “Obstructed” status this year. Human Rights Watch warned that the country risks joining the list of countries which abuse, rather than protect human rights. 

The Global Expression Report is clear that freedom of expression is under attack globally, with 2022 the lowest global ranking for freedom of expression seen since the start of the century. As autocrats rise, they first increase government censorship of the media and attacks on journalists and those who seek to challenge them.

The UK does urgently need to reverse course and protect freedom of expression, including the ability of all to voice unpopular opinions and dissent on government policies. In fact for years, civil society organisations have been working tirelessly calling on the government to proactively protect the voices of protestors and drop their attempts to break the encryption of communications online. That is a campaign we’d like to see the Evening Standard backing.

MODI'S INDIA

Court rules that Varanasi mosque can be surveyed to see if it stands on site of Hindu temple, in move inflaming community tensions


An Aerial view shows Gyanvapi mosque, left, and Kashiviswanath temple on the banks of the river Ganges in Varanasi, India, Dec. 12, 2021.

UTTAR PRADESH’S High Court ruled today that a 17th century mosque in Varanasi may be surveyed to see if a Hindu temple once stood on the site.

The decision will inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the Hindu holy city, which is represented by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the country’s parliament.

Petitioners’ lawyer Vishnu Shankar Jain said the court ruling meant that the Archaeological Survey of India would survey the structure without damaging it. Chief Justice Pritinker Diwaker said: “Scientific survey is necessary in the interest of justice.”

But the committee of the Gyanvapi mosque said they would appeal to India’s Supreme Court. Spokesman Khalid Rasheed said: “We are hopeful that justice will be done as the mosque is 600 years old and Muslims have been praying there for so long.”

The mosque is at the heart of a separate legal battle with five Hindu women seeking permission to perform Hindu rituals there.

The Anjuman Intezamia Masjid Committee, as the mosque committee is formally known, says the survey will breach Indian laws protecting places of worship.

A 1991 law states that the nature of all places of worship, with one prominent exception which is already central to Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, should be maintained as it was when India became independent in 1947.

The exception is the Ram Janmabhoomi or Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque razed by a fanatical Hindu mob in 1992 on the grounds that it had once been the site of a temple to the Hindu god Ram or Rama, and indeed his birthplace.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a Hindu temple could be erected on the site of the razed mosque, and foundation stones were laid by Mr Modi and the head of his BJP party’s street fighter wing the RSS in a ceremony in 2020.

Transferring places of worship between the religions is incendiary and highlights Mr Modi’s push to shift India from a secular state to a specifically Hindu one.

Mosques built under the Muslim Mughal empire, which the government has also been accused of writing out of textbooks, are a target of Hindu nationalists, with surveys like that planned for the Gyanvapi mosque used to justify restoring sites to their “original” use.

MORNINGSTAR.UK

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

Musk joins the right-wing legal crusade against tech researchers

BY ELLERY ROBERTS BIDDLE

3 AUGUST 2023 

CODA

LITIGIOUS ELON AND THE WAR ON RESEARCH

Another social media research organization is being sued this week, this time by the company formerly known as Twitter. On Monday, X filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that tracks violent and hateful speech on social media. X claims that the research organization violated its terms of use when it scraped data from the platform, among other allegations. 

Much of the filing focuses on the impact that the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s research has had on advertising and, by extension, on X’s bottom line. The group regularly uses its findings to pressure big brands to stop buying ads on X because showing ads next to tweets filled with racist speech and political disinformation is generally regarded as bad for business. This increasingly popular tactic among tech-focused civil rights advocacy groups in the U.S. has proven powerful and may indeed be one reason that X’s ad revenues have plummeted since Musk took over.

The court filing and the company’s all-but-incomprehensible blogpost about the lawsuit say plenty about how this strategy threatens X’s business model. But the company also argues, as Musk so often does, that X is simply trying to protect people’s rights to free speech and that the researchers want to undermine it. Nevermind that hate speech and threats of violence are routinely deployed as silencing tactics by trolls of many stripes, including Musk himself. The filings also make many mentions of the organization’s focus on trying to reduce online disinformation about topics like Covid vaccines, reproductive healthcare and climate change. X argues that this aspect of the group’s work is driven by ideology, when in reality, it is driven by hard facts. Covid vaccines work, reproductive healthcare is a human right, and climate change is real.

The case against the Center for Countering Digital Hate is all too similar to the spate of legal threats recently brought against members of the Election Integrity Partnership, a research coalition assembled around the 2020 election in the U.S. that included the Stanford Internet Observatory, the German Marshall Fund and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, among others. These research groups were focused on tracking election-related disinformation — including state-run accounts promoting false information about who won the 2020 election — and alerting social media companies. When Twitter was still Twitter and Elon Musk was just a foul-mouthed super user of the site, the company actually did try to reduce demonstrably false information about voting rights and election outcomes. Right-wing politicians and magnates like Musk have long leaned on the argument that this infringes on people’s rights to free speech. But even now, when Musk is at the helm of this rapidly disintegrating but still very influential platform, he can’t seem to get enough. So he’s taking this comparatively tiny research group to court.

Imran Ahmed, who leads the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told the New York Times that Musk’s actions are “a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research.” They are also undoubtedly taking up the Center’s time and resources that would otherwise be spent doing more research in the public interest. 

GLOBAL NEWS

Senegalese authorities ordered a nationwide mobile internet shutdown on Monday after officials apprehended and jailed opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and the country’s Interior Ministry moved to dissolve the PASTEF party, which Sonko leads. This latest chapter in the long-running conflict between Sonko and Senegalese President Macky Sall has seen large pro-PASTEF rallies and heavy-handed state responses, including internet restrictions. In this case, officials indicated that the shutdown was ordered “due to the dissemination of hateful and subversive messages in a context of disturbance of public order.” A similar shutdown was imposed last June and turned into a curfew-style system, with people allowed to use the internet during the day but kicked offline in the evening hours.

Don’t like the police? Don’t say so in Jordan, where the parliament is mulling over a draft cybercrime law that covers everything from “content that provokes strife” to regulations reining in Big Tech. The law would make it a crime to post any material online that “undermines national unity, incites or justifies violence or hatred, or disrespects religions,” and it includes special provisions criminalizing speech related to law enforcement officials.

The law would require social media companies with more than 100,000 subscribers (read: Meta) in Jordan to establish offices in the country. Embarking on the well-trodden path of heavyweight countries like India, some — but not all — Jordanian MPs appear eager to require more cooperation between Big Tech and the government. These policies typically force companies into much stricter compliance with local law, lest they put their business or even their own employees at risk. And it can spell trouble for people who use social media to hold the government to account or document police abuse. Since Jordan’s draft law also makes it illegal to publish any material about law enforcement officials “that may offend or harm” the institution, well, we can guess what might happen next. Alongside the Jordan Open Source Association and SMEX, global groups like Access Now, Article 19 and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are publicly opposing the law.

There’s new evidence that the U.S. government has been using spyware built by Israel’s NSO Group, despite the fact that the company was officially blacklisted by the White House in March. Documents reviewed by the New York Times in April showed that U.S. government agents, operating behind a front company called Riva Networks, were using a geolocation tool built by the Israeli surveillance tech giant that would allow agents to track anyone through their mobile device, without their knowledge. White House staff, who said they knew nothing of it before the Times’ story ran, put their best guys on it — they asked the FBI to investigate. But this week, it came to light that the NSO contract was held by….the FBI.

The revelations shouldn’t be surprising — NSO first worked its way into U.S. government contracts in 2019. But they sure do cast a shadow over Biden’s ban on commercial spyware.

New Antarctic Starfish Are Doting Parents and Vicious Predators

A close examination of a collection of starfish in the Smithsonian revealed even more starfish inside those starfish.

Paralophaster ferax, a new species of starfish, and its brood of babies.

Credit...Christopher Mah

By Darren Incorvaia
Aug. 4, 2023

Christopher Mah, a biologist at the Smithsonian, was scouring the shelves of the museum for deep-sea starfish when he had an idea: Why not see if any of the specimens were preserved with their last meal still digesting inside of them, to help understand their natural diet?

Following this whim, he cut open a preserved stellar sea creature from Antarctica, but instead of food, he found new life frozen in time within the creature’s coelomic cavity. There were around 10 baby sea stars, each the spitting image of their parent, which like many starfish was probably hermaphroditic.

Dr. Mah described the brooding starfish as a new species, Paralophaster ferax. He published the finding, along with a plethora of other natural history observations of Antarctic starfish, in the journal Zootaxa in June.

Dr. Mah also describes a new genus of starfish and 10 additional new species. Starfish are invertebrates of the class Asteroidea, so they’re also known as asteroids (yes, another cosmic name). You have to go back to 1940 to find “the last time a novel brooding species from Antarctica was described,” Dr. Mah said.

P. ferax is unlike most starfish species, which reproduce by shooting their eggs and sperm into the water and leave their young to fend for themselves. But the habit of holding onto offspring — brooding — has evolved multiple times and is especially common in Antarctic waters.

The popularity of parental care in Antarctic asteroids may have to do with the strength of the currents flowing through their frigid homes, said Cintia Fraysse, a starfish biologist at the Austral Center for Scientific Research in Ushuaia, Argentina. “The currents are tough, so it’s hard to reach the seafloor to settle as a larva,” Dr. Fraysse said.

Solaster regularis, another species of starfish named in the paper, which has a smaller, partially digested starfish of the species, Anasterias antarcticus, in its mouth.

Credit...Christopher Mah

Many species are also so deep down that sunlight can’t reach photosynthetic plankton, leaving the larvae with little food to eat. For the babies to survive, it makes sense for a parent to raise them until they’re big enough to scuttle off on their own.

While many starfish brood their young, they don’t all use the same parenting strategies. Some, like P. ferax, hold their little starlets in a special body cavity; others just put them in their mouths. Still others have developed baby-carrier-esque structures between their arms to hold the juveniles. “Kind of like an armpit cage,” Dr. Mah said.

While finding brooding babies was a pleasant surprise for Dr. Mah, his instinct to check out whether the starfish were caught chewing their food also proved fruitful for his original question. One specimen, an Antarctic sun star or Solaster regularis, had a smaller, partially digested starfish of the species Anasterias antarcticus in its mouth.

Often erroneously seen as docile or motionless, starfish are in fact voracious predators, Dr. Fraysse said, preying on sea urchins, crabs and, as Dr. Mah saw, even other starfish. “They control the benthic ecosystem,” Dr. Fraysse said. “They extend the stomach out of the mouth” so they can eat things bigger than themselves. One particularly ravenous specimen, kept at the Smithsonian but not used for this study, has the arm of another starfish sticking out of its mouth.

Dr. Mah didn’t have to travel to Antarctica to make these discoveries — he just had to go to work. Most of the deep-sea star specimens were collected in the 1960s by the U.S. Antarctic Research Program. When they ended up at the Smithsonian in 2010 nobody paid much attention to them. Dr. Mah hopes his work will shine a spotlight on the importance of good old-fashioned organismal biology.

“Very few people get down to species level and investigate the critters the way that people used to,” he said.

Observing the natural history of animals, be they in nature or sitting on a museum shelf, provides the foundation that the rest of zoology depends on. “When we do physiology or reproduction,” Dr. Fraysse said, “this kind of work makes it easier for us.”

PAKISTAN

The new data protection law is a farce aimed at violating citizens’ privacy

Progressive developments in data protection can only be made through inclusive policy-making processes that seek input from privacy experts, tech companies, and, most importantly, citizens.

Shumaila Shahani 

Published August 1, 2023

Over the last few weeks, Pakistan has aggressively pushed for increased control over cyberspace, with the federal cabinet hastily granting approval to two new bills and another reportedly in the works.

One of the primary objectives of the new legislation is to realise the long-standing ambition of data localisation. Among these bills, one proposes amendments to the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) — a law notorious for enabling state-led political censorship.

As for the second bill, called the E-Safety bill, there is neither a published draft nor have any consultations been held, leaving citizens uninformed about its potential implications.

The third bill in question is the draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 (PDPB), which was circulated in June and has drawn flak from rights activists for various reasons, including its provision for data localisation.

Section 31(2) of the PDPB requires organisations and businesses that handle “critical personal data” to process and store such information within servers located in the country. However, the responsibility of defining what constitutes “critical personal data” has been entrusted to the National Commission for Personal Data Protection, which is expected to be established under the law. Concerns have also been raised regarding the independence of this Commission.



Although the government received feedback and recommendations on the bill, it remains uncertain whether the draft, recently approved by the federal cabinet, addresses any of the concerns raised or incorporates the feedback received.

Why the govt wants data localisation

Pakistan’s pursuit of data localisation is driven by two primary motivations. First, the challenges it faces when dealing with social media platforms, particularly in obtaining access to user data that it wants censored or removed. These demands are often justified under vague terms such as “national security” and “national interests.” Social media platforms push back against this proposition, citing data privacy concerns as the main reason for their reluctance to share certain data with the government.

Second, the government aims to adapt to the new political landscape by asserting ownership over user data of its voters. In recent years, the impact of user data on shaping political landscapes has become increasingly evident. Political entities use personal data to create detailed psychological profiles of voters, categorising them based on personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and behaviour. These intricate psychological profiles provide insights into the preferences and inclinations of different voter segments. Equipped with this wealth of information, political actors strategically tailor content to manipulate and sway public opinion in their favour, thus advancing specific political agendas.

This use of personal data raises significant concerns about its potential impact on human agency and autonomy. When personal data is exploited to target and manipulate individuals without their awareness, it undermines their capacity to make independent and informed decisions, thereby posing a threat to the essence of democratic participation.

Consequently, the push for data localisation, which essentially means transferring the ownership of critical personal data to the state, has triggered apprehension among rights activists and privacy advocates, who are worried that such measures could jeopardise user privacy and provide the government with greater control over online content and communications.



While the PDPB does mandate user consent for data collection, the reality presents a different picture. In many instances, this consent is either uninformed, as users are not provided with sufficient information about how their data will be used, or it is coerced, meaning that users may find themselves compelled to consent to almost any form of data processing if they wish to access essential digital services. The alternative would be to forgo access to these services entirely, which is not viable in a world where people have transitioned to the digital world for their daily-needs.

Genuine data protection does not come from adding provisions for superficial consent or data localisation. The real emphasis must be on curbing extensive data collection and restricting it to what is genuinely necessary for specific purposes, such as advancements in education or healthcare sectors.

Unfortunately, the reality today is quite different with user data stockpiled in surplus, left dormant within archives for future possibilities of exploitation. Moreover, promoting community participation in data collection processes is essential to empower people to take ownership of their own data and gain actual control over what information is collected, for what purpose, and how it is shared.

However, such progressive developments in data protection can only be made through inclusive policy-making processes that actively seek input from privacy experts, tech companies, and, most importantly, citizens.

For Pakistan to progress towards data protection, it must prioritise transparency from the outset. Holding public discussions and debates about proposed laws is crucial to address concerns and foster trust in the government’s efforts. Unfortunately, the current approach of secrecy and haste to policymaking stands in stark contrast to these principles.

The writer is a lawyer and a researcher working for digital rights and free speech

PAKISTAN/ WAZERISTAN

Why does TTP target police?

The TTP’s attacks on the police are part of a scheme to propel the military towards the cities.

Muhammad Amir Rana 

FOLLOWING last month’s terror blasts in KP, a police officer’s tears flowed at the funeral of his lost comrades. One can only imagine the strain of facing colleagues and bereaved families as they endure the constant threat of terrorist assaults. Primarily in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the less-equipped and undertrained police force has valiantly battled terrorists for two decades, suffering severe losses. The Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan briefly ignited hopes of peace. Yet, the stark reality is a brutal surge in violence, with policemen now directly in the line of fire.

Although the police are a prime target, other law-enforcement agencies have also suffered casualties in terrorist attacks and during counterterrorism operations. Since the Afghan Taliban takeover in August 2021, the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and similar groups have attacked security forces 368 times, resulting in the death of 652 personnel and 1,049 injured. According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies’ database, police have incurred significant casualties, with 244 deaths, while the military has lost 101 personnel, Levies 55, and FC 29. Since 2001, when the terrorism threat escalated in the country, 2,100 police personnel have been killed and 7,000 injured.

Despite the risk to life and limb, the police force’s morale remains high. One example is a policeman who chased and attempted to stop a suicide bomber targeting a mosque in Khyber recently, saving numerous lives. However, a question raised by policemen and their families is why they are the primary targets of terrorists.

Several theories and explanations exist, including the belief that the police are a soft target because they lack the training to combat militants or conduct counterterrorism operations effectively. The KP Police argue that they have successfully prevented militants from infiltrating the country’s heartland. While a combination of factors may be at play, the TTP contends that the police pose a significant obstacle to their plan of targeting the army and have warned the force multiple times to disassociate itself from the military.

The TTP’s attacks on the police are part of a scheme to propel the military towards the cities.

The TTP’s justification for attacking the police force appears to be a strategy to erode trust among law-enforcement agencies. Data shows that most attacks occur at police stations in or near urban centres, far from military installations. This strategy suggests their capability to spread the conflict beyond borders, thereby supporting the Taliban’s claim that the TTP operates within Pakistan, and not from safe havens inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan has formally protested, urging the Taliban to stop the TTP from attacking the country, but Kabul has yet to acknowledge this publicly. International watchdogs and organisations, including a United Nations Security Council monitoring committee, support Pakistan’s assertion that the TTP seeks to regain control in Pakistan’s former tribal areas. The UN report explains how the TTP has gained momentum in Afghanistan since the Afghan Taliban’s takeover two years ago and how other terrorist groups operate under its cover.

The TTP’s attacks on the police are part of a broader scheme to demoralise them, reduce their resistance, and propel the military towards the cities. The TTP understands that the military isn’t ideally fit to handle police duties, potentially triggering public resentment. They tested this strategy in Swat and observed similar outcomes in the tribal district after the Fata merger. The Taliban used a comparable strategy in Afghanistan, enabling them to seize cities and establish shadow governments. Creating divisions within the law-enforcement agencies and between security forces and the public is a dangerous tactic.

The TTP and its affiliate groups are extending their influence to Balochistan districts near Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southern Punjab, and northern Sindh — regions that form the country’s backbone — by connecting all provinces and major transport lines. If the TTP successfully establishes terrorist bases and allies with Baloch sub-nationalist groups in these areas, it could compromise Pakistan’s internal security, including CPEC.

The TTP has been modelling itself on the Afghan Taliban, including establishing a presence in Balochistan. The Afghan Taliban’s presence dates back to 1996, while the TTP only emerged in 2007 and initially showed no interest in Balochistan. Over time, as it solidified its power in former Fata, the TTP created its Balochistan chapter, known as Tehreek-i-Taliban Balochistan. The TTP has also expanded its outreach into Punjab, including the outskirts of Islamabad. This highlights the TTP’s increasing reach across vital regions within Pakistan.

Underestimating the threats posed by terrorism only aids the terrorists. The ideological strength of these groups, bolstered by an extensive network of religious madressahs and groups, should not be underestimated, as the TTP can exploit the religious and ideological paradigm of the religious institutions. The TTP can inspire the graduates of religious institutions through its narrative and portray counter-offensives by law-enforcement agencies as oppressive.

Religiously motivated terrorist groups are good at cultivating narratives and developing their arguments. The TTP and the Islamic State-Khorasan group are competing in this domain, but both share common objectives when it comes to the Pakistani state. The state mostly focuses on kinetic measures, and even if it creates a message to counter the terrorists’ propaganda, it cannot inject this into people’s minds as narratives need a conducive political environment to grow. Another challenge the police face is their public image; neither the state nor the department has paid the needed attention to it.

In any case, police are a key component in countering the terrorism threat, requiring strengthening and adequate intelligence support. This enables them to maintain the safety of cities and free up the army and paramilitary forces to deal more effectively with border threats.

Counterterrorism departments exist in every province, but the ones in KP grapple with several issues, such as tenure security, capacity, training and budgetary constraints. Crucially, faith in the police and CTDs from superior security institutions and civilian governments is indispensable.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2023

US Justice Department faces biggest test in its history with election conspiracy case against Trump

 Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks about the verdicts in the Proud Boys trial, May 4, 2023, at the Department of Justice in Washington. The Justice Department is facing the biggest test in its history in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump. It is navigating unprecedented conditions in American democracy while trying to fight back against relentless attacks on its own credibility and that of the U.S. election system.

 (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

 A letter that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, of Ohio, wrote on June 9, 2023, to Attorney General Merrick Garland is photographed in Frederick, Md. The Justice Department is facing the biggest test in its history in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump. It is navigating unprecedented conditions in American democracy while trying to fight back against relentless attacks on its own credibility and that of the U.S. election system.

 (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)

BY COLLEEN LONG AND LINDSAY WHITEHURST
August 4, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the Justice Department was announcing the highest-profile prosecution in its history in Washington, Attorney General Merrick Garland was 100 miles away, meeting with local police in Philadelphia.

He stepped outside briefly to speak about how the decision to indict Donald Trump for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election came from career prosecutors and was led by a special counsel committed to “accountability and independence.”

In other words, this wasn’t about politics.

Try as Garland might, though, there is no escaping the politics of the moment when the Justice Department of a president who is running for reelection is indicting his chief political rival, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

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And though he has distanced himself from the investigation since he appointed special counsel Jack Smith 10 months ago, Garland has the last word on matters related to the prosecution of Trump as long as he is the attorney general.

The Justice Department is facing its biggest test in history — navigating unprecedented conditions in American democracy while trying to fight back against relentless attacks on its own credibility and that of the U.S. election system. The success or failure of the case has the potential to affect the standing of the department for years to come.

“In grand terms this is a really huge historic moment for the Department of Justice,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

President Joe Biden has sought to distance himself from the Justice Department to avoid any appearance of meddling when the agency is not only probing Trump, but also the president’s son Hunter. But it’s going to get more challenging for Biden, too. Anything he says about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol from now on could complicate matters for prosecutors. And any trial is likely to take place against the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election.


The latest indictment is the third criminal case filed against Trump this year, but the first to try to hold him criminally responsible for his efforts to cling to power in the weeks between his election loss and the Capitol attack that stunned the world. He pleaded not guilty on Thursday before a federal magistrate judge and was ordered not to speak about the case with any potential witnesses.

Trump has said he did nothing wrong and has accused Smith of trying to thwart his chances of returning to the White House in 2024. Trump and other Republicans have railed against the investigation and the Justice Department in general, claiming a two-tiered system of justice that vilifies Trump and goes easy on Biden’s son, who was accused of tax crimes after a yearslong probe.

“Another dark day in America as Joe Biden continues to weaponize his corrupt Department of Justice against his leading political opponent Donald J. Trump,” said U.S. Rep Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

Trump’s own Justice Department was subject to complaints of politicization, drawing heavy criticism as the federal probe of Russia’s 2016 election interference thrust prosecutors center stage and dragged out scandals that Trump seized on as proof of a “deep state” operating against him.

The release of the Russia report by special counsel Robert Mueller was colored by politics, with then-Attorney General William Barr issuing a four-page memo ahead of the report that was widely criticized as spinning the investigation’s findings in favor of Trump. Mueller’s actual report — two volumes and 448 pages — was far more nuanced and laid out in part how Trump directed others to influence or curtail the Russia investigation after the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017.


On Nov. 9, 2020, as Trump began to suggest with no evidence there might be widespread voter fraud, Barr issued a directive pushing prosecutors to investigate any suspected instances. But by the waning days of the Trump administration Barr had turned against Trump, telling The Associated Press before he told the president that there had been no widespread election fraud.

Garland, a longtime federal appeals court judge who had been Barack Obama’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court but never got a hearing, was chosen by President Biden to be a stabilizing force. He promised to return the Justice Department to “normal,” restoring its reputation for political independence and ensuring equal justice.

Throughout his career, Garland has been steeped in Justice Department procedures and norms, and as a judge his decisions were thorough but “judicially modest,” said Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer who served as deputy attorney general in the 1990s and has been a Garland colleague and friend for decades.

“His view was, you do what you need to thoroughly and well and you don’t reach, you don’t do more than you have to do,” she said.

While Garland hasn’t been directly involved with the Trump case since naming Smith as special counsel, the indictment handed down Tuesday reflects a similar approach, she said. “It doesn’t rely on crazy new theories. It does not try to do more when less would be more effective,” she said.


Indeed, the indictment covered much of same ground that played out on live TV, or was unearthed in the House investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, where violent protesters beat and bloodied police officers, smashed through windows and occupied the Capitol for hours.

If Smith loses the case, the Justice Department could lose credibility, particularly as the barrage of Republican attacks against the department grows. If prosecutors win, a former president could see time behind bars. If Trump is reelected, he could undo the charges and has said he plans to “completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI,” part of a larger effort by Trump to push more power toward the presidency.

“There are pieces now in play that the Justice Department is going to continue to take on for years to come,” said Robert Sanders, a senior lecturer of national security at the University of New Haven. “The next 12 months are going to be a critical stage in the history of this nation.”

Against that fraught backdrop, the broader work of the department goes on.

On the same day Trump was arraigned in Washington, federal prosecutors announced guilty pleas in a racist assault on two Black men who were brutalized during a home raid in Mississippi. And U.S. officials also announced the arrest of two U.S. Navy soldiers for spying for China in California.


Garland, during his Philadelphia visit, went almost immediately back to the community event he’d gone there to observe, chatting with police officers outside, as reporters shouted questions about the unprecedented indictment. But Garland wouldn’t bite.

“I appointed Jack Smith special council to take on the ongoing investigation in order to underline the department’s commitment to accountability and independence,” he said. “Any questions about this matter will have to be answered by the filings made in the courtroom.”
___

Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

COLLEEN LONG
The White House, law enforcement and legal affairs