TOXIC

Trash fire ’emergency’ chokes locals on Indonesia’s Java

By AFP
Published August 25, 2023

Firefighters on the outskirts of Indonesia's Bandung try to extinguish a fire that has been burning for five days - Copyright AFP ILYAS AKENGIN

A days-long fire at a landfill in Indonesia’s most populous province has been declared an emergency by local authorities as thick and putrid smoke from the blaze chokes nearby residents, officials said Friday.

The fire at the Sarimukti landfill in Indonesia’s West Java province — which serves the city of Bandung, home to 2.5 million people — has been burning since Tuesday.

At least 67 people who live near the landfill have been diagnosed with mild respiratory infections and two were hospitalised due to the effects of the toxic fire, according to a local health clinic.

The headmaster of an Islamic middle school six kilometres from the fire said students were told to stay at home because of the fumes.

“The smoke was rather thick and disrupted the study activity as well as threatened the students’ safety and health,” Amin Bunyamin told AFP.

“We are worried for their health because the fumes from the burning trash are different. The smoke is choking.”

At least 30 fire trucks have battled to contain the fire at the 25-hectare site with no success, with authorities blaming high temperatures and strong winds for keeping it ablaze.

It forced the local government to declare a 21-day state of emergency in the area, West Java regent Hengky Kurniawan said Thursday.

Sprawling Indonesian cities on its most populated island Java lack modern waste management infrastructure to process hoards of solid trash produced each day.

Kurniawan on Thursday blamed the fire on discarded cigarette butts and called on residents not to throw them away, “especially in this drought season”.

He added that authorities were not well-equipped to douse the fire, so water bombs would be dropped from helicopters sent by the country’s national disaster management agency on Friday.

The local official announced a temporary location for garbage collection would be set up but called on residents to manage their waste independently.

West Java governor Ridwan Kamil said Thursday that the country’s geophysics agency was attempting weather modification in the area, “so hopefully we will have rain” to douse the inferno.

Ecuador says vote to halt Amazon oil drilling a ‘terrible precedent’

DEMOCRACY DOES NOT TRUMP CAPITALI$M

By AFP
Published August 24, 2023

Yasuni is home to three of the world's last uncontacted Indigenous populations and a bounty of plant and animal species - Copyright AFP Tomas CUESTA

Ecuador’s energy minister said Wednesday that a vote to halt drilling in an Amazon oil block set a “terrible precedent” and it would be a long and complex task to dismantle the installation.

Ecuadorans voted in a referendum on Sunday to halt the exploitation of an oil block in Yasuni National Park, one of the most diverse biospheres in the world, a decision hailed as a triumph for climate democracy.

Yasuni is home to three of the world’s last uncontacted Indigenous populations and a bounty of plant and animal species.

However, Energy Minister Fernando Santos described the decision to halt drilling as “a very serious blow to Ecuador’s dollarized economy, which depends on crude oil, its main export.”

“This creates a terrible precedent. There are signed contracts, long-term commitments, the legal security of the country is in question.”

The government of outgoing President Guillermo Lasso estimates a loss of $16 billion over the next 20 years.

When the Constitutional Court in May gave the green light for the referendum, it established that state oil company Petroecuador would have a year to shutter operations if the “Yes” vote won.

Santos said this would be “physically impossible.”

“It is a very complex process, never in the world’s oil history, has such an important field, which produces 60,000 barrels a day, suddenly stopped,” said Santos.

He said dismantling the field implies “removing the installations, which are thousands of tons of steel, cables, installations of all kinds.”

Block 43 occupies 80 of the million hectares that make up the Yasuni reserve, and is considered the jewel in Petroecuador’s crown.

Drilling in Yasuni began in 2016 after years of fraught debate and failed efforts by then-president Rafael Correa to persuade the international community to pay cash-strapped Ecuador $3.6 billion not to drill there.

Oil exploitation has been one of the pillars of Ecuador’s economy since the 1970s.

Crude oil generated revenues of $10 billion in 2022, around 10 percent of gross domestic product.

Nearly 500,000 barrels are produced daily in the northeastern Amazon, in the shadow of the Andes, blighting the environment with wells, pipelines, and flames shooting into the air.

The industry has been a boon to state coffers and development, but environmentalists decry terrible pollution.

Apple unexpectedly supports Right to Repair Act

By AFP
Published August 24, 2023

NYC Apple store: — © Digital Journal.

Apple on Thursday confirmed it is endorsing passage of a California law requiring major gadget makers to enable people to fix their devices without taking them back to companies.

Supporters of a Right to Repair Act in California say Apple had been a ‘Goliath’ standing in the way of such legislation prior to its recent support for the bill in its home state – Copyright AFP Sam Yeh

A Right to Repair Act that mandates manufacturers provide customers and outside repair shops with tools, parts, and information needed to fix broken electronics is making its way through the state legislature.

“Apple supports California’s Right to Repair Act so all Californians have even greater access to repairs while also protecting their safety, security, and privacy,” the iPhone maker said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Advocacy organization Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) called Apple’s move “an unexpected about-face,” describing the tech giant as having been a high-profile opponent of such laws.

A Right-to-Repair movement, of which PIRG is a part, has led to laws in a handful of other US states, the advocacy organization noted.

“It’s not just about providing parts and tools for repairs; it’s about empowering consumers to make environmentally responsible choices,” said Liz Chamberlain of repair tips website iFixit.

“Right to Repair has been building momentum in Big Tech’s backyard, it’s about time Apple opens the front door.”

PAKISTAN
A year on, Sindh’s flood victims remain stranded and forgotten

Exactly a year has passed since the day Sindh was declared a calamity-hit region. As the government promises to rebuild, the affectees continue to suffer.

Hawwa Fazal Published August 25, 2023 

Fatima welcomes visitors warmly into the dwelling she now calls home — a small compound with a kitchen set up in one corner and two charpoys in the other. The charpoys are each occupied by the men and women of the family.

Fatima and her family in their house at budhni goth — Photo by author

An open gutter is but two steps from her door in one of the several narrow alleys that make up Budhni Goth, a slum area located near the coastal belt of Karachi. Her family of 20 members is squeezed into a tiny 80-square-foot house. “Our home back in the village was huge, we had rooms for everyone. The children played in the large compound,” said Fatima.

The 50-year-old belongs to Kandiaro, a small town in Naushaharo Feroz district located in Sindh. She moved to Karachi after last year’s devastating floods swept away her home, her harvest and her livestock.

The majority of Pakistan’s second-most populous and agriculture-dependent province of Sindh was declared “calamity-hit” on August 23, 2022. It affected one in seven people in Pakistan and displaced nearly eight million people.

A year on, many of them are still homeless. Some languish in Karachi’s slums, while others live under the open sky awaiting the fulfilment of the government’s promises.

While rehabilitation and resettlement require years, the outgoing Sindh government had made ambitious plans, which it claimed would come to fruition in the next two years. There are, however, several flaws in the plan which stem from the cultural practices followed in Sindh.
Going back not an ‘option’

“We did go back to the village but the wadera (landowner) told us he doesn’t want a makata (a local land agreement) with us anymore and we should return to the city,” said Badal, Fatima’s husband.

In rural Sindh, as per a custom called ‘makata’, the ‘wadera’ (landowner) gives the farmer land for the season or the year — in some cases, the land is given for a longer time due to loyalty with the owners.

The farmer lives on and cultivates the land. The landowner sometimes gives the farmer a loan to buy pesticides, fertilisers and provide water. The profit from the yield is then shared by both the landowner and the tenant. At the end, the farmer is also required to pay off the loans acquired during the sowing season.

Badal and his sons approached other landowners but they all refused. Eventually, the family returned to the city. “Going back home is not an option for us anymore,” Badal sighs.

Two houses down the lane, in a slightly bigger house with fewer residents, resides Sajjad Ali, a 20-year-old, with his wife and parents. Sajjad limps to the charpoy in the compound while his wife rushes to the kitchen, a small room in the corner of the house with a small window opening up in the wall.

Sajjad and his family in the compound of their house — photo by author

Sajjad came to Karachi last year. Travelling from Naushaharo Feroz was tiresome — it took them three days via road. For the first two months — June and July — the family resided in government schools and later shifted to Budhni Goth.

Sajjad had recently had his appendix removed from the city’s government-run Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital. The operation was free. “Hospitals in Larkana [nearer to my house] were asking for Rs250,000. I couldn’t afford it and had to postpone the surgery several times. I never thought it could be done for free in Karachi,” he exclaimed.

To Sajjad, life in Karachi is full of freedom and possibilities. “We don’t want to go back. We earn a decent amount through our work,” he added. He and his father have been employed by a pharmaceutical factory nearby which gives them Rs800-Rs1,000 per day.

He said that if they returned to the village, they would have to pay the landowners all the money they had borrowed for sowing the fields that they were unable to harvest due to the floods. “He (the landowner) wrote down details of all payments and wants us to pay interest on the loan, which makes it twice the original loan amount. We can’t give him Rs100,000,” said Razia, Sajjad’s mother. For Sajjad’s family, life in Karachi is their chance to break the chains of economic slavery around their hands.

Not everyone has been so lucky though. Though there is no official count, families who stayed back in the metropolis are few and far between. Many who returned to their villages, buoyed by the government’s promises, are living in tents under the open sky. Meanwhile, the outgoing government began its work six months ago. The plans are ambitious but the results are yet to be witnessed, but the executives carrying out the plans are more optimistic.

Ambitious rebuilding plans

For rehabilitation and resettlement of the flood-affectees, the provincial government, in collaboration with the World Bank, created the Sindh Peoples Housing Scheme for Flood Affectees (SPHF). SPHF is a Section 42 company [a not-for-profit association], which comprises a board of directors from the private sector.

As per surveys conducted by the SPHF, 12.36m people were affected and 2.1m houses were damaged or destroyed across the province in last year’s floods, of which 85pc were katcha (mud) houses and 15pc were pakka (concrete). The cost of repairing the houses has been estimated at $5.5bn.

The World Bank has provided $500m for the project while the provincial government is funding it with $227m. The officials are, however, unclear on how they will cover the shortfall, although they have reached out to private companies for assistance.

SPHF CEO Khalid Mehmood Sheikh said that the project is completely transparent. “The project is beneficiary-driven and there is no contractor.”

The process of rebuilding a house for a flood affectee is being supervised by five different non-governmental organisations such as the Sindh Rural Support Organisation, Health and Nutrition Development Society, Sustainable Actions to Access Financial Capital Opportunities, National Rural Support Programme and Thardeep Rural Development Programme. Each organisation has been assigned different districts whose primary role is supervising the construction activity.

Each family that lost their home will be given Rs300,000 in four instalments to make a standard one-room house of 200 square feet. The first payment would be Rs75,000, followed by three more instalments of Rs75,000, Rs100,000 and Rs25,000. The amount will directly be transferred to their bank accounts. For those who don’t have any, their accounts will be created.

The payments would be disbursed only after they show completion certificates at each stage issued by the NGOs operating in their respective district.

According to SPHF spokesperson Sana Khowaja, the houses will be climate resilient. The implementation partners — the NGOs — have been tasked with guiding local residents on how to make climate-resilient structures and ensure they’re complying with the instructions while building the houses.

“We did find a few problems, like the absence of infrastructure in these places, which we intend to fix after the houses are completed. We have been given money to build these amenities,” said Sheikh.

“Another problem is that according to survey data 356,126 people live on encroached land or land owned by other landowners.” On this, the SPHF CEO said that a policy is being developed by the government in which they will decide the fate of the landless displaced flood affectees.

As of now, 525,000 requests have been approved and 100,000 people, who own land or had houses on state land, have been given the first instalments to build their homes.

“According to our survey, 474,257 women lost their homes. Among them are widows, unaccompanied elderly women, women with disabled husbands and women who have been abandoned by their husbands,” said Sheikh, adding that the government is particularly keen on empowering these women by giving them land titles and houses.

The project is expected to be completed within two years.

“People who lived in houses made up of roofs with leaves and branches will now have concrete houses. No matter how small, they will be able to protect themselves from rains and floods,” Sheikh smiled.

But for people like Fatima and her family, who are hundreds of miles away from home, crammed into a tiny house, Sheikh’s optimism bears little weight. She dreams of her large courtyard in Kandiaro and seeing her children run about and frolic in their fields.

“I just want to go back home but for that, we need a house with walls,” she said.

A young man looks through the window inside the home of a flood-affectee in Karachi. — Header image by author

India’s space quest

Editorial

Published August 25, 2023 


INDIA’S successful Chandrayaan-3 mission is indeed historic, as the craft became the first to land near the south pole of the moon. Moreover, with this feat, India joins a select club of nations — including the US, Russia and China — that have achieved controlled landings on the lunar surface.

While there is much wrong with modern India, especially with the Hindu majoritarian government’s repressive tendencies, this particular feat deserves appreciation as our eastern neighbour achieved on a lesser budget what richer nations accomplished by spending larger sums.

Nearly a decade ago, the Indians also successfully launched the Mangalyaan observer mission to Mars, while success was achieved in the latest moon mission after Chandrayaan-2 failed in 2019.

Perhaps the key to the success of India’s space programme, apart from sustained state support, is the quality and dedication of its engineers and scientists who helped make these difficult missions possible.

Comparisons are indeed odious, but there may be plenty for Pakistan to learn from India’s space success. Pakistan’s space programme was launched before India’s and managed modest success, such as launching a rocket in the early 1960s under the watch of luminaries such as Dr Abdus Salam.

In 1990, we managed to put a satellite, Badr-1, into space. These missions were accomplished with American and later Chinese help. However, in the decades since, our national space body, Suparco, has not achieved any stellar success.

There are various reasons for our space programme remaining earth-bound. Among these include the fact that, particularly in the recent past, Pakistan’s space agency has been helmed by retired military men, not experts in the field.

Also, much has been written about our education system, and the fact that it is not producing the required manpower to give Pakistan a qualitative edge in science and technology.

Sadly, we have become consumers of science and technology, and not producers of knowledge. Moreover, we lose our best minds to brain drain as bright youngsters opt for greener pastures due to stifling bureaucracy and lack of merit and opportunities at home.

While Pakistan cannot afford to pursue vanity projects — a former minister had boasted about putting a person in space — a functional space programme is important for defence and civilian needs.

Perhaps we can learn from India in this respect by revamping Suparco and encouraging our brightest to innovate and reach for the stars.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2023

Brain drain

Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry 

Published August 20, 2023

POST-dinner conversations in most urban middle-class households start these days with commentaries on the unstable politics and abysmal economic situation of Pakistan and end with the concern about the youth exodus from Pakistan to the seemingly greener pastures of North America, Europe, Australia and the Gulf. However, before drawing any conclusions, it would be important to take a broader look at the issue.

Firstly, Pakistanis going abroad is not a new phenomenon. Since 1971, the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment estimates that over 10 million Pakistanis have gone abroad for employment. Secondly, figures vary from year to year, with no particular trend of a steep rise. In 2022, 800,000 left Pakistan for employment overseas, which is less than the pre-pandemic figure of 946,571 in 2015. Thirdly, accurate numbers of those going abroad are hard to estimate because many avail student visas or permanent residency visas or go abroad through illegal means.

Hence, what is more relevant to the debate are not the numbers but reports that most of those moving abroad these days comprise Pakistan’s youth. PIDE economist Faheem Jahangir Khan says that “67 per cent of Pakistani youngsters want to leave the country”. The trend of brain drain is also being reported by other surveys and analyses.

The youth are Pakistan’s future leaders. At a time when the European and Chinese populations are aging, the youth bulge here is an advantage if they can participate in the development of their own country rather than serving societies abroad. The reality, however, is that students are desperately looking for scholarships to study in the US, Australia, Europe, China and East Asia. Those already in foreign universities are reluctant to return because of joblessness in the country. Talented IT professionals are being lured by West-based companies who offer lucrative terms. Our leadership and intelligentsia, therefore, have a responsibility to identify the reasons for the youth leaving Pakistan, and then make policies that incentivise the youth to work for the country.

Why does the youth want to leave?

A major reason that frustrates our youth is the pervasive unemployment in the country. There are nearly 200 universities in Pakistan many of which award degrees in disciplines for which there are no jobs in the market. Having spent considerable sums on education, not finding a well-paying job is a deeply frustrating experience for a young person. The lucky ones who find jobs are also frustrated because of abysmally low salaries. Sarah Gilani, a start-up professional who worked for many years in Pakistan and now lives and works in Austria, says that the work culture in Pakistan is rigid and leaves little room for a healthy work-life balance, particularly for working women.

Young physicians also want to move abroad for better salaries and access to modern medical technologies. Sameera Rabbani, who graduated from a medical school in Lahore and now lives in Australia, observed that doctors are underpaid, overworked and underappreciated in Pakistan as opposed to the West where they are paid adequately, with a contribution to the retirement fund.

Some professionals like Maheen Ahmad, who teaches at a premier institution in Islamabad, wish to go abroad only to improve educational qualifications. She recognises, though, the growing financial difficulties of salaried professionals and limited job growth prospects in Pakistan.

The second source of frustration for the youth is the deep political polarisation that exists and that is exacerbating the economic crisis. Nearly every family has been affected by this bitter political divide, particularly the youth. The third reason for the youth’s growing disaffection is their aspiration for a life of respect, dignity and prosperity. They want equal opportunities and a level playing field. They are disappointed to find that the system does not work for them, but just for a select few, ie, the elite.

So, what can be done to stem the brain drain? First, the country needs stable politics, a charter of economy that binds political governments to ensure continuity of economic policies, and ease of doing business for investors, traders, and industrialists. Secondly, job creation should be a high priority. Since governments can create only so many jobs, it is industry which can absorb educated and semi-skilled youth. The education system should pivot towards technical education and vocational training to feed industry and the IT sector.

Thirdly, we need an efficient judicial system at all levels. Above all, the country needs a climate of justice, equal opportunity and dignity for every citizen. The National Security Policy announced last year provides a good way forward.

The writer is a former foreign secretary and author of Diplomatic Footprints.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2023

SPACE RACE 2.0
Japan’s ‘Moon Sniper’ mission looks to match Indian success

AFP 

Published August 25, 2023 

This handout photo taken on June 1 and released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) shows the “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon” (SLIM) at the satellite fairing assembly building at the Tanegashima Space Center, Kagoshima prefecture.— AFP


Hot on the heels of India’s historic lunar landing, Japan’s space programme is hoping to rebound from a string of setbacks next week with the launch of its own mission: “Moon Sniper”.

The rocket will carry a lander expected to reach the Moon’s surface in four to six months as well as an X-ray imaging satellite designed to investigate the evolution of the universe.

The launch is scheduled to take place on Monday after bad weather pushed it back by a day, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on Friday.

Japan’s space programme is one of the world’s largest, but its first attempt to put a lander on the Moon failed in November 2022, and a new type of rocket exploded during a test last month.

JAXA’s hopes are now centred on the “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon”.

As its acronym suggests, SLIM is small and light, standing 2.4 metres high, 2.7 metres wide and 1.7 metres long, and weighing around 700 kilogrammes.

Dubbed the “Moon Sniper” for its precision, JAXA is aiming to land it within 100 metres of a specific target on the Moon, far less than the usual range of several kilometres.

Using a palm-sized mini rover that can change shape, the probe — developed with a toy company — aims to investigate how the Moon was formed by examining exposed pieces of the lunar mantle.

“Lunar landing remains a very difficult technology,” Shinichiro Sakai from the SLIM project team told reporters on Thursday while paying homage to India’s success.

“To follow suit, we will do our best in our own operations,” Sakai said.
India’s success

On Wednesday, India landed a craft near the Moon’s south pole, a historic triumph for the world’s most populous nation and its low-cost space programme.

Previously, only the United States, Russia and China had managed to put a spacecraft on the lunar surface, and none on the south pole.

India’s success came days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region and four years after the previous Indian attempt failed at the last moment.

Japan has also tried before, attempting last year to land a lunar probe named Omotenashi, carried on NASA’s Artemis 1, but the mission went wrong and communications were lost.

And in April, Japanese start-up ispace failed in an ambitious attempt to become the first private company to land on the Moon, losing communication after what the firm called a “hard landing”.

Japan has also had problems with launch rockets, with failures after liftoff of the next-generation H3 model in March and the normally reliable solid-fuel Epsilon the previous October.




Last month, the test of an Epsilon S rocket, an improved version of the Epsilon, ended in an explosion 50 seconds after ignition.

Plasma wind

The workhorse H2-A rocket launching from Tanegashima in southern Japan on Monday will also carry the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) developed by JAXA, NASA and the European Space Agency.

The satellite’s high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic observations of the hot gas plasma wind that blows through the universe will help study the flows of mass and energy as well as the composition and evolution of celestial objects.

“There is a theory that dark matter is preventing galaxies from expanding,” explained XRISM project manager Hironori Maejima.

“The question of why dark matter does not converge, and what are the forces that spread it, is expected to be clarified by measuring plasma with XRISM. “

PAKISTAN

Who set fire to Jaranwala?

Umair Javed

INCIDENTS of anti-minority mob violence under the pretext of blasphemy allegations have risen steadily since the mid-2000s. As per the usual, formulaic response, last week’s incident in Jaranwala was followed by a range of condemnations from the civil and military leadership and from the mainstream, high-profile clerics of all denominations.

The specificity with which places of worship were targeted by a large crowd is evidence of both the scale of the rot within society and the high level of local organisation required to make it possible. TLP, other Barelvi extremists, and their backers have much to answer for.

A preliminary analysis of the Jaranwala tragedy shows that anti-minority mob violence has two aspects. The first of these is the law-and-order aspect, which is what state officials tend to focus on. The assumption is that in any society there will be instances where violence can become likely.

However, local authorities should be able to take administrative steps required to defuse any potential situation, such as a blasphemy allegation, that may result in violence. If law-and-order administration is effective and far-sighted enough, such an intervention would help mitigate the risk of a full-blown riot. In the Jaranwala case, it was not.


Failing to resolve a situation prior to its escalation, the law-and-order aspect of the response would then involve managing a mob to limit its ability to carry out violence. Whether this is through riot control, detention, or other use of force, is immaterial. The aim should be to prevent any loss of life and property of a community at risk.

In the Jaranwala case, this too did not happen. In fact, if video evidence is anything to go by, local law enforcement remained passive, while administrators attempted to negotiate with the extremists from a position of weakness.

Extremist clerics, pandering politicians, conniving generals, status-seeking businessmen, and honour-seeking young men all feed into it.

The third stage, having failed at the first two, involves punitive consequences for those involved in the violence. This would mean strong punishments that are sufficient to act as a deterrent. The idea being that while one unfortunate incident has happened, the consequences would be enough to prevent another one from taking place.

Worth pointing out that there were zero convictions from the 2013 Joseph Colony incident so there is no deterrence to speak of. A hundred houses were burnt and 115 accused persons were acquitted. It seems the houses set themselves on fire.

Beyond the law-and-order aspect, the second aspect of mob violence is social and political. Mobs are not instant creations. The ideas that rile them up do not appear out of nowhere. The methods they use for violence are not spontaneously learned. The resources they draw on do not magically descend from heaven (or, as would be more appropriate, ascend from hell). All of these things have definitive roots in society.

The sociopolitical aspect of violent incidents such as the one in Jaranwala is far harder to tackle because it is so wide-ranging. A toxic mix of extremist clerics, pandering politicians, conniving generals, status-seeking businessmen, and honour-seeking young men all feeds into it.

Over the past decade and a half, Pakistani society has witnessed the Barelvi far-right gain recognition, prestige, and massive followership by weaponising the issue of blasphemy and respect for the Prophet (PBUH).

Drawing on global incidents, they have domesticated the idea of a threat to Islam in a country that is 95 per cent Muslim. Incidents like Jaranwala happen because of the takeover of mosques, the discrediting of mainstream clerics, and the use of grassroots organising and digital outreach.

But they also happen because generals are happy to co-opt these movements for political ends. They happen, in part, because a braying mob paid a few thousand rupees each is useful to cut down a political government to size. And because a few thousand votes are useful to achieve the desired election result.

They happen because a politician who gets up and says he would cut off the head of an alleged blasphemer ends up validating vigilante violence as a source of prestige.

A politician who says he will not forgive others for endangering respect for the Prophet (PBUH) by attempting to make a procedural change in some legal document is also part of the problem.

A politician who makes unfathomable changes to marriage documents in a bid to publicise his pious credentials has also contributed to the issue. And an assembly that attempts to pass legislation widening the ambit of blasphemy and endangering an entire sect is adding explosive fuel to an already burning fire.

There are other contributions at play here as well. There is the local bureaucrat who doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers. There’s a businessman who wants to earn a bit of recognition in the community, so ends up sponsoring a few religious gatherings and donates to a local TLP chapter.

Maybe he does it under pressure, maybe he believes in what’s being preached, or maybe he’s just in it for the name on the banner or the plaque outside the mosque. The intentions are immaterial because the outcome is the same.

And then there is the actual mob itself. Young men, with little prospects of upward social and material mobility. Religious rhetoric provides them with a sense of community and of being a part of something bigger. Indoctrinated with notions of honour and masculinity that can only be validated by taking revenge from some vulnerable minority over an imagined crime they probably didn’t even commit.

Even in a state of heightened pessimism, one could see the possibility of a low-capacity state like Pakistan fixing the law and order aspect of mob violence to some degree. Addressing the toxic social and political aspect, however, seems far more difficult.

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.

Twitter: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2023

TODAY'S MEME: 

TRUMP MUGSHOT 

BECAUSE EVERYONE IS SHARING HIM

Reluctant Warriors: U.S. Allies Should Restrain Washington Regarding Taiwan


Ted Galen Carpenter

Senior Fellow, Randolph Bourne Institute

Throughout the Trump and Biden administrations, U.S. policy regarding Taiwan relations has become increasingly hardline. President Biden has even erroneously stated on several occasions that the United States has a legal obligation to defend Taiwan akin to its commitments under NATO or the bilateral security treaties with Japan and South Korea. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has reacted angrily to Washington’s increasingly blatant support for Taiwan’s de facto independence. A dramatic increase in the PRC’s military exercises near the island is just one manifestation of growing tensions. 

U.S. leaders have pressured its allies in East Asia to back Washington’s confrontational policies toward the PRC on the Taiwan issue. In terms of rhetorical support, the Biden administration has scored some significant successes. However, there is now growing evidence that U.S. allies are very uneasy about the escalating risks. Countries that the United States appears to be counting on to provide tangible military backing in the event of an armed clash between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan are noticeably reluctant to go that far. 

Eunomia analyst Daniel Larison concludes that “even the most reliable treaty allies, including Japan and Australia, would be reluctant to join what would be a very costly U.S. war effort.” And “in the absence of allied support, the already daunting challenge of defending Taiwan would become even more difficult.” The uneasiness is evident even in Japan, the country that the United States would need the most in any military showdown in the PRC. 

A July 15, 2023, Wall Street Journal article notes that “The U.S. is seeking more clarity from Japan as the two sides try to develop a combined operational plan for a Taiwan conflict.” A Pentagon spokesman stated that “the U.S. and Japan share a commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait,” and that “the U.S. welcomes Japan’s interest in expanding its roles, missions, and capabilities. This will enhance deterrence.”  However, the Journal also highlights the limits of probable Japanese support for Taiwan. “’If you ask the question of whether you are willing to risk your life to defend Taiwan, I think 90% of Japanese people would say ‘no’ at this point,’” concluded Satoru Mori, a professor of politics at Keio University in Tokyo. 

Larison provides even more evidence to support a pessimistic conclusion. “As an analysis for Voice of America noted last year, Japanese involvement in a Taiwan conflict is ‘far from certain and not popularly supported within Japan.’ According to a poll this spring conducted for The Asahi Shimbun, just 11 percent of Japanese respondents said that their armed forces should join the U.S. in the fighting, and 27 percent said that their forces should not work with the U.S. military at all.”

Military support from other East Asian allies seems even more uncertain. The Philippines government has explicitly ruled out letting the United States use bases on its territory to support a war over Taiwan.  South Korea has been noticeably quiet and noncommittal about its posture if an armed conflict erupted over Taiwan. Even Australia, an especially reliable, longstanding ally, has explicitly declined to give the United States a firm commitment of support in the event of a Taiwan war. That hesitation is significant, since Canberra joined the U.S. militarily even in Washington’s ill-advised ventures in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

If the East Asian powers do not want to risk the United States dragging them into a disastrous war with the PRC to defend Taiwan, they must become more proactive in restraining Washington. That task will not be easy, given the rising influence of Taiwan’s hawkish advocates in the United States. Indeed, a powerful, bipartisan narrative is becoming entrenched that America has both a strategic and moral imperative to back a vibrant democracy against the threats posed by an aggressive, one-party state. 

Pro-Taiwan hawks are making it a high priority to secure allied support for a U.S.  showdown with the PRC over Taiwan. A typical recent example is an article by Hal Brands, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He proclaims that the goal should be to “secure an explicit agreement that three crucial regional powers — Australia, Japan, and the U.S. — will all be in it together if war comes.” Brands’ ostensible purpose is to strengthen deterrence by making it clear to Beijing that the PRC would be fighting three major adversaries if it attacks Taiwan. Interestingly, Brands does not emphasize drawing South Korea into such an arrangement. Rather than deterrence, though, his more likely goal is to trap Canberra and Tokyo into a commitment they can’t escape if war broke out. 

The East Asian allies must not only recognize such snares, but they must also push back hard against the concerted campaign. Ambivalence on the Taiwan issue will not benefit those countries or regional peace. It is essential for allied governments to explicitly inform Washington that if it continues to escalate its support for Taiwan, the United States will have to fight any resulting war with the PRC on its own. There is no doubt that U.S. leaders would respond angrily to such a stance. There might even be threats to withdraw the U.S. security commitments to recalcitrant allies. Nevertheless, America’s East Asian partners need to save Washington from its mounting folly to prevent a potentially catastrophic impact on their own countries. This is no time for them to be coy.

CHINA US Focus

Society & Culture

Creators and Destroyers of Science

Aug 14, 2023
Philip Cunningham

Independent Scholar

“Oppenheimer” is more than a movie, it’s also a meditation on moral questions that ring as loud in today’s world as they did during the race to build the atomic bomb in the face of the rise of fascism and World War II. Questions about nationality and nationalism, ethnic origin and political loyalty pervade the film. It also vividly raises questions about competing loyalties, loyalty to friends and relatives in conflict with military discipline and the law. What about the conflict between loyalty to one’s conscience and loyalty to the state?

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a man of many worlds, a native New Yorker who fell in love with the high desert of New Mexico, a member of a Jewish minority in a predominantly Christian country. He was a scientist, a linguist, a philosopher, an American military man and a freewheeling socialist in intimate contact with orthodox pro-Soviet communists. As director of the vast Manhattan Project, he was a core member of the U.S. military industrial complex even before the term was coined by President Eisenhower.

It’s hard to sum up such a complex life in a few words, and Christopher Nolan, despite his inspired direction, and some clever cinematic tricks, struggles to find the essence of so complex a man in this rambling, three-hour film.

But if a physicist as unique and hard-to-fathom as Oppenheimer can be usefully compared to another person, the equally unique and hard-to-fathom Qian Xuesen of China immediately comes to mind.

Both men were castigated as disloyal to the U.S. by security authorities dealing with real security breaches and the fevered imagination of paranoid minds. Both men were true cosmopolitans, fluent in different languages and cultures, and both were on their sleeves internationalist ideas that transcended the narrow nationalisms of the day.

Both men had huge bureaucracies put at their command, and both men hastened the coming of the day when mutual assured destruction was paradoxically a means of keeping the peace.

Both men paid a price for being laser-sharp in their technical insights and blurry in politics. Both men were hard to pin down, both for their equivocations and perceived moral ambiguities, and during the Red Scare in the U.S., both men were pilloried for their political leanings and political contacts.

It’s worth noting that both Oppenheimer and Qian Xuesen adamantly denied being communists during the time period in question, but questions linger. What is known, ironically enough, is that both men were associated closely with card-carrying communists such as Robert’s younger brother Frank. Guilt by association, guilt by unconventional ideas, guilt by dint of minority ethnic status, and guilt by strident internationalism in a society rippled with intolerance proved sufficient to take them down.

Then, as now, some of the most outstanding scientists of the day were Jewish Americans or Americans of Chinese descent. That’s one reason why many of the targeted were Jews and Chinese, but prejudice was a factor, too. As America emerged victorious from a long, bloody war, a groundswell of American triumphalism and ideological intolerance swept society.

The sheer brilliance of outstanding scientists working on dual-use technology such as nuclear fission and rocketry is itself a double-edged sword, their knowledge can be put to good or evil, and the scientists themselves can be painted good or evil. One brilliant stroke in the film uses a concept derived from the Schrodinger Cat thought experiment in quantum mechanics to illustrate the internal divisions of a man who is simultaneously winning big and losing big, simultaneously creating and destroying.

During the period in question, Jews and Chinese, for a variety of historical reasons, family ties and educational links to the “old country,” be it war-torn China or war-torn Central Europe, were often more conversant with communism than immigrants from other lands. In the 1930s in particular, many Americans of diverse backgrounds had reasons, not unreasonable in the day and age they lived, to view communism as a progressive force, at least in terms of combating fascism, racism and fighting for worker’s rights.

America’s domestic flirtation with the far left was by no means limited to ethnic minorities; the rise of Hitler and collapse of capitalism and explosion of poverty at the outset of the Great Depression provided fertile ground for new ideologies and paradigms to live by.

Be that as it may, the moment Josef Stalin showed his truly brutal opportunistic colors by aligning with Adolf Hitler under the terms of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact should have put paid to the idea of Soviet communism as a progressive force, if the Moscow show trials and other abuses did not provide sufficient evidence of murderous malfeasance already.

An important difference in the trajectory of the lives of these two politically vulnerable physicists is the way losing security clearance played out. For Oppenheimer, it was a fall from grace, if being in the good graces of a blood-stained military establishment can be considered a form of grace, and descent into infamy and obscurity with an uptick of recognition at the end.

For Qian Xuesen, who, unlike Oppenheimer, had a homeland to go back to, newly-liberated China provided an out that proved definitive. He left the U.S. forever and re-dedicated his efforts advancing rocketry in China.

During the height of war, both China, then under KMT representation, and Russia, under the same old Joe Stalin, were deemed worthy allies of the U.S. in the joint cause to rid the world of Hitler and Nazis who were inflicting incomparable horrors on humanity. China and the U.S. also shared a joint mission, in the indomitable spirit of the Flying Tigers, to rid the world of Tojo’s imperial invaders and free China from Japanese domination.

By the time Mao announced the establishment of a new China in 1949, the U.S.-China honeymoon was over and intractable problems related to the Taiwan-mainland split fed directly into the animosities of the Cold War pitting communism against capitalism.

Qian Xuesen had convincing credentials as a scientist, willing and able to contribute to the advance of American science before he fell victim to a McCarthyesque witch hunt in 1950, part of the same maelstrom of intolerance and paranoia that also netted Oppenheimer four years later.

Qian studied at MIT and taught at Caltech. In collaboration with the Hungarian physicist Theodore Von Karman, (who like Oppenheimer was multilingual, studied in Europe and was of Jewish descent) Qian helped found the Jet Propulsion Lab. During the war, Qian worked for the U.S. Defense Department and Department of War and achieved the U.S. military rank of colonel.

One of the many virtues of doing a film about physicists is that physics itself provides a template to handle, if not reconcile, seemingly contradictory forces. The Schrodinger effect, by which a particle is, and isn’t, at the same time was utilized in filmic terms to show Oppenheimer both as hero and villain, guru and monster, a shining light and a force for darkness. When the Trinity test of the world’s first atomic bomb results in a suitably demonic explosion, Oppenheimer is shown navigating both thunderous applause and the imagined bodies of victims reduced to ash.

Despite his contributions, Qian Xuesen’s 1955 move to China, a China no longer in the U.S. orbit, could not be construed a lateral move to an erstwhile ally but rather was seen as an act of defiance, a wholesale defection to the enemy camp. The duality inherent in the structure of Nolan’s cinematic vision of Oppenheimer suggests that it may be possible, though not easy, for both the U.S. and China to be grateful for Qian Xuesen’s contributions to science.

On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the inventions most closely associated with the stellar minds of these two indisputably brilliant men were weapons of destruction.

When it came time for Oppenheimer to reflect on his greatest “success” which was simultaneously a catastrophic “failure” in humanistic terms, he turned to Sanskrit scripture which he was conversant with in the original. Borrowing a line from lord Krishna addressing his loyal charioteer Arjuna, he says:

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"

Despite the depressing topic, “Oppenheimer” has done great box office in the U.S. market, and has been cleared for showing in China, where the retention or deletion of nude scenes has generated more advance interest in potential viewers, and is likely to be more a problem for the censors, than the harrowing Cold War politics.

CHINA US Focus