Does Modern Science Already Allow Us to Manage the Weather?

BY JOHN P. RUEHL

 NOVEMBER 24, 2023
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Photo by Dave Hoefler

As winter settles over New Delhi, cold air sinks, trapping pollution in the city. Smoke from seasonal fires stemming from farming practices in India’s north further reduces the city’s air quality, which typically ranks the worst in the world. New Delhi’s government has sought prior solutions to easing pollution, including traffic restrictions and air-filtration towers. But in 2023, it has turned to the controversial practice of cloudseeding to try and increase rainfall and improve air quality for the first time.

While the effectiveness of cloudseeding remains a debate, that hasn’t deterred more than 50 countries from investing millions annually in weather modification initiatives. Mexico recently stepped up its cloudseeding efforts to combat drought, having begun its first program in 2020, while Indonesia has used cloudseeding to try and fill up dams and prevent flammable vegetation from drying in anticipation of this year’s fire season.

The roots of weather manipulation trace back to 1946, when U.S. scientists Vincent J. Schaefer and Irving Langmuir dispersed dry ice particles into a cloud, which caused ice crystals and visible snowfall. Since then, the U.S. government has deployed cloudseeding programs, primarily in Western states like Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada, to try to increase rain and snowfall.

This technology also caught the eye of the private sphere. Vail Ski Resort in Colorado has used Western Weather Consultants to deploy generators on mountaintops to induce snowfall since 1975, with dozens more operating in the region. Since 1997, the West Texas Weather Modification Association has worked to increase rainfall over southwestern Texas. The UK’s Oliver’s Travels meanwhile offers cloudseeding services to ensure clear weather for weddings in France.

The principal use of this technology has been to enhance precipitation, but other uses have been explored. From 1962 to 1983, a U.S. government initiative called Project Stormfury tried to weaken tropical cyclones with no real success, while attempts through other programs to limit the effects of storm-to-ground lightning also proved inadequate. However, Project Cold Wand saw more successful experimentation with fog dissipation techniques in the early 1970s, while U.S. airlines have also used fog dissipation technology for decades.

The Kremlin has also long experimented with this technology. Following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Soviet Union used cloudseeding to increase rain in the region to wash radioactive particles from the air and prevent them from reaching Moscow. Today, Russia employs this technology to clear skies for its annual Victory Day Parade in Moscow, while hail suppression technology has also been used by Russia to protect crops and property.

Other governments have also dedicated significant resources to cloudseeding for decades. Since 1951, France’s Association to Suppress Atmospheric Plagues has grown to an extensive nationwide program, while Thailand’s Royal Rainmaking Project has been active since 1969. In recent years, cloudseeding has grown increasingly popular in the water-stricken Middle East and parts of Africa. Morocco, Ethiopia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia all have national programs, while several more countries are considering it.

However, China has established itself as a leader in weather modification over the last two decades. China’s “weather army” employs almost 50,000 people, thousands of rocket launchers and cannons, and dozens of planes, largely through the China Meteorological Association Weather Modification Center. In 2006, cloudseeding was used to clean sand off Beijing after a severe sandstorm. Two years later, cloudseeding was used to reduce pollution and pave the way for sunny weather before the 2008 Summer Olympics, practices that were repeated for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

China’s cloudseeding is not just limited to its capital city, with most Chinese cities employing their own programs. Additionally, the Yangtze River basin, currently in severe drought, saw 241 flights and 15,000 rocket launches between June and November 2022, alleged to have resulted in “8.56 billion metric tons of additional rainfall” according to Chinese government sources.

Most supporters estimate that successful cloudseeding can result in a 10 to 30 percent increase in precipitation, but doubts persist over these figures. It also remains difficult to document increases in rainfall and accurately decide where precipitation will fall. In light of these limitations (as well as the questionable economic viability of weather modification), Israel halted its 50-year cloudseeding program in 2021.

Since the inception of cloudseeding technology, however, there has been concern over its potential for weaponization. In 1957, the president’s advisory committee on weather control warned that weather manipulation could develop more destructive weapons than nuclear bombs.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. government’s cloudseeding Project Popeye spent millions of dollarsbetween 1967 and 1972 to extend Vietnam’s monsoon season in an attempt to flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail and disrupt the North Vietnamese Army’s supply lines. The Soviet Union is also suspected of using cloudseeding to increase rainfall in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War to similarly turn areas into mud and disrupt the movements of the Mujahideen.

But public concern over the weaponization of weather prompted the signing of the National Weather Modification Policy Act of 1976, and the U.S., along with other countries, signed the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Technique (CONMED) in 1977 that requires signatories refrain from militarizing weather modification.

Nonetheless, concern remains over how current technology and practices could ignite conflicts. Iranian officials accused Israel and the UAE of “working to make Iranian clouds not rain” in 2018, while China’s expansive plans for its cloudseeding operations have also brought concern from India.

Alternate methods of weather manipulation are also underway. In 1996, a U.S. Air Force report titled “Weather as a force multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” discussed how the advancement of surveillance technologies could see clouds made of smart particles deployed to generate “intelligent fog.” There have also been projects designed to trigger lightning within clouds, which could complicate operations for the United States’ heralded F-35 plane, which cannot fly within 25 miles of a thunderstorm.

Outside militarization initiatives, new weather modification projects are also on the horizon. Proposals to add nutrients to the ocean to encourage phytoplankton growth and increase carbon absorption, or ocean fertilization, are increasingly discussed. Sea and cloud brightening projects to reflect sunlight and reduce global warming are also becoming mainstream ideas, despite ongoing uncertainty about their destructive potential or ineffective results.

As weather modification technology continues to develop, we should be wary of further privatization and militarization. Cloudseeding privatization, for instance, has become increasingly globalized. Based in Fargo, North Dakota, Weather Modification, Inc. provides cloudseeding services to India. Switzerland’s Meteo Systems has been active in the UAE for over a decade.

With dozens of countries and companies now offering cloudseeding services, policymakers should design and enforce new regulations for weather modification. While agreements and institutions like CONMED and the World Meteorological Organization Expert Team on Weather Modification play important roles, the stage is now crowded with various actors vying for a larger role in applying the technology.

Global coordination should be seen as a necessary undertaking to avoid the potentially catastrophic effects of manipulating the weather. Before governments and companies embark on large-scale efforts to alter the weather, additional regulation in anticipation of future technologies can serve as a protective measure to avoid environmental crises and mitigate the rise of conspiracy theories.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

Rebirth of a Nation: US History According to DW Griffith

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

 NOVEMBER 24, 2023
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Still from Birth of a Nation.

Since many high school students across the country will be back to learning their history of the US from Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, it’s perhaps instructive to recall that when Birth of a Nation premiered at Clune’s Auditorium in LA, to large protests by the NAACP, it was still called The Clansman, the title of the racist novel by Thomas Dixon it was based on. In fact, it’s possible that the print that was shown at the White House, which generated such a frenzied reaction from Woodrow Wilson, was still called The Clansman. Dixon was a pal of Wilson’s and had arranged the showing, the first film ever screened at the White House.

Apparently, the film hit Wilson with a kind of cinematic gestalt, liberating his inner racist, which, of course, was never too deeply submerged in his twisted psyche to begin with. After emerging from Griffith’s three hours of depraved melodrama, which rewrote American history as a story of white grievance and retribution, Wilson pronounced: “It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

DW Griffith was a southerner, raised in Kentucky on the myth of the Lost Cause. Did he really believe it? Who knows? Griffith was an educated man, but he knew the allure of myth, the desire to right history’s wrongs and make them feel like your own, as in the novels of Walter Scott. Griffith took the most modern medium and technology and used it to look back, not forward. The camera lens became a kind of time machine, a deeply reactionary one in his hands.

Intertitle from Birth of a Nation.

Birth of a Nation doesn’t present a particularly coherent narrative. The film unfolds as a sequence of disjointed episodes, with a cliffhanger every 15 minutes or so. Dixon got a big payday, maybe the biggest of any writer ever in Hollywood, but he didn’t write the script. There wasn’t really a screenplay. Despite his grandiosity and repeated mining of historical and biblical subjects, Griffith’s about words or facts or story or even plot. It’s about the manipulation of feelings and buried anxieties and prejudices. It’s about using images to pull emotional and psychological triggers.

This was American history viewed through a distorting lens, where the players were projected in reverse: the victims became villains, the villains became villains, the terrorized became terrorists, and terrorists became avengers. There it was up on the screen. Who was a teacher or a book to tell you any different?

Thus Birth of a Nation set the template for modern advertising, public relations and politics. Forget what the books and newspapers say, trust your eyes and your gut.

When the lights went down in the theater, what did those audiences think? Were they watching history or were they living it? Did they thrill to torch-lit rides of the Klan or feel motivated to light a torch themselves? Did the film vindicate bigotry or inflame it?

How persuasive was this cinematic myth-making, this re-birthing of American history. Well, consider that Erich von Stroheim, who went on to direct Greed, that mangled indictment of American capitalism, was Griffith’s top assistant on Birth of a Nation. Though eccentric, Von Stroheim was a smart, if not brilliant, man. Did he understand the kind of film he was making and the kind of demons it would spawn?

Consider also that DW Griffith, the neo-confederate, and Charlie Chaplin, the communist, were not only pals but business partners. They founded, along with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, their own production company, United Artists. Chaplin was later chased out of the country by the kind of hysterical politics Griffith let loose on the Republic, the kind of politics that needs a constant stream of new villains–if the new villains are old friends, so much the better, it increases the tension of the melodrama.

Lift the hood from one of the Klan nightriders in Birth of a Nation and you’ll find the face of John (Jack) Ford, who in a couple of years would start making his own revisionist films about the history of conquest and colonization in the American West: Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, Hondo and The Searchers.

Even more intriguing is the way Griffith’s work was embraced by the early Soviet film-makers, like Vsevold Pudovkin (Storm Over Asia) and Lev Kuleshov (The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks) who saw in Birth of a Nation and Intolerance a method of making historical melodramas that also served political purposes. It was, however, Sergei Eisenstein who absorbed Griffith’s lessons about how film can be used to remake popular history the most deeply. In 1925, Eisenstein made his masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin. It was commissioned by the Soviet government to commemorate the 1905 revolution. Billed as the cinematic chronicle of a mutiny against the repressive Tsarist navy, the most powerful scene in Eisenstein’s film, the massacre on the Odesa Steps, was entirely invented for its dramatic and propaganda effect, which proved so overwhelming that the screening of the film was banned for prolonged periods in the UK, France, the US and eventually the Soviet Union itself. Most governments–regardless of their political brand–would tremble at the rebellious sentiments those scenes aroused in the audience.

Still, Battleship Potemkin found one official admirer in Joseph Goebbels, who raved about Potemkin as “a marvelous film without equal in the cinema. Anyone who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film. When it came time to assemble the final print of October, his film on the Bolshevik Revolution, for Stalin’s approval, Eisenstein left all traces of Trotsky and Zinoviev on the cutting room floor. Two years later, Eisenstein was in Hollywood pitching a screenplay about an all-glass city, whose inhabitants are under 24-hour surveillance. Wonder where he got that idea?

Odessa Steps massacre scene in Battleship Potemkin.

Birth of a Nation was the first blockbuster. It played to packed movie houses across the country and Europe. People cried, screamed at the rape scenes, jeered the white actors in blackface and cheered as the Klan rode to the rescue, their white sheets unfurling like banners of triumph across the screen. From Atlanta to Chicago, crowds gave the film standing ovations and returned to be inflamed by its reactionary thrills again and again. And the film also did exactly what the NAACP predicted, it revived the KKK from its zombie-like repose with the imprimatur of the nascent Hollywood and a Democratic president. There were 700 hundred lynchings in the year following its release. They haven’t stopped yet, although most are now done by police and filmed by their own bodycams.

Birth of a Nation was also a story of the commodification of racism. The film built fortunes. In fact, it many ways it built Hollywood. Thomas Dixon, the writer of the novel, earned 25% of the profits of the film, which was enormous. By one account, Birth of a Nation amassed a global box office of $50 million in 1915 ($1.3 billion in today’s dollars), as Europe was at war with itself. And Louis B. Mayer, then the owner of movie theaters in Boston, somehow wrangled the distribution rights for all of New England. He pocketed a million from the deal and soon moved to Hollywood himself and became one of the first moguls. By 1927, Mayer was earning a higher salary ($800,000 a year) than any other executive in the country, even the CEOs of Standard Oil and US Steel. But he never forgot the themes and tropes of the picture that made him rich.

Fortunes are to be made in the promotion of racism, which is probably the lesson that will be taught in economics classes across the New (i.e., no longer restricted by the Mason-Dixon Line) South. Of course, they’ve been teaching the same thing using different terms at the University of Chicago for decades.

Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3. 

Chess wrongly perceived as a ‘brilliance’ game, leaving girls out: NYU study

EMILY ROSECRANS - CLEMSON UNIVERSITY

•NOVEMBER 24, 2023
The College Fix

Researchers say coaches, parents don’t recognize own biases against girls

Fewer girls play chess competitively because their own parents and coaches hold biases about skills such as “brilliance” that they connect to male players, according to a new study out of New York University.

The researchers said their study, published last month in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, provides “the first large-scale evidence of bias against youth female players” and holds “implications” for the roles parents and mentors play in women entering other male-dominated fields, such as science and technology.

“These beliefs are more likely to be harmful both to girls who already play chess and to those who could want to: Would you be interested in participating in a sport where your potential is downgraded by your parents and by your coaches before you have even started?” the researchers wrote.

However, the researchers also noted that parents, coaches, and chess organizations are making efforts to ensure girls have opportunities to play chess competitively if they want to.

Daniel Lucas, a spokesman for the U.S. Chess Federation, told The College Fix they see anecdotal evidence that supports the researchers’ conclusions.

Female participation in chess is low, but the federation has been taking steps to encourage more women and girls to play, Lucas said.

“We have been working hard for many years to increase our female membership to at least 50%. We are currently only at 13% so there is a lot of work to do,” Lucas told The Fix.

For the study, researchers interviewed 286 parents, chess coaches and mentors to explore potential biases against young female players. Through a series of questions, they found evidence that “parents and mentors thought female youth players have lower potential than male players.”

“This bias was stronger among those who thought that brilliance is required for success in chess,” according to the study.

Chess mentors, coaches, and parents who believe the game requires “brilliance” also “reported that female mentees were more likely to drop out of chess due to low ability,” according to the study, which received funding from the National Science Foundation.

Sophie Arnold, a doctoral student at NYU and lead author, said in a statement that women are underrepresented in competitive chess, and their research aimed to identify reasons why.

“Parents and coaches are biased against the female youth players in their own lives,” Arnold said.

The Fix reached out to Arnold several times asking about the motivation behind her research and what biases women face in chess, but she did not respond.

When contacted by The Fix, Andrei Cimpian, a psychology professor at NYU and senior author of the study, said he was traveling and would respond later. However, The Fix did not hear from him again.

Researchers said they found that the coaches and parents did not “recognize that their own presumptions may function as a barrier to girls succeeding in the game.”

“Specifically, coaches who thought brilliance was required to succeed in chess also thought their female mentees would be more likely to stop playing chess due to a lack of ability than their male mentees. And, in fact, parents and coaches did not believe that girls—relative to boys—encounter a less supportive environment in chess and might stop playing chess as a result,” the researchers said in a news release.

However, the researchers also found that parents and coaches are investing time and money into encouraging girls to play chess competitively.

And some girls are. There have been female winners of open chess competitions in recent years, such as Alice Shen who won the second-grade title of the K-12 championship in 2022.

The U.S. Chess Federation also runs a women’s program and holds female-only chess competitions. Conversely, it does not hold male-only chess competitions.

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters blockade Port of Auckland, call for boycott of Israel shipments

By APR editor -

 

November 24, 2023

Some of the protesters are flanked by police officers at the Port of Auckland yesterday. Image: RNZ/Sigrid Yiakmis

RNZ News

Six people have been arrested in a New Zealand a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the Port of Auckland, police say.

Dozens of people blocked the entry and exit into the port yesterday and one of the protesters said several were pepper-sprayed by the police.

The group were calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and want a boycott of shipments to and from Israel.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: Anticipation builds as Gaza truce to begin
• The details of the truce between Israel and Hamas?

Inspector David Christoffersen said initially pro-Palestinian supporters were protesting lawfully. However, they decided to block the roadway, entrance and exit to the port.

“The group was warned they were obstructing the roadway and port operations and asked to move, however, they refused to do so.

“Six arrests were made, five for obstruction and one for disorderly behaviour,” Christoffersen said

He said OC spray “was deployed on one occasion” and one officer was assaulted, suffering a split lip but not requiring medical attention.

‘Excessive force’ accusation
Some of the protesters have accused police of using excessive force to break up the demonstration.

Videos sent to RNZ show a man with raised arms tackled to the ground by an officer, while another shows police pushing back the protesters. Others said officers used headlocks and chokeholds, and one woman said a chunk of her hair was yanked out.

Protester Lillian Murray said about 40 officers were there. One protester, an elderly Muslim woman, was yanked up off the ground and shoved very excessively for any force that she could ever offer back”, Murray said.

“All of a sudden I feel a small but significant tuft of my own hair being yanked from the back of my head, and my leather bag with metal bindings was yanked backwards so hard that the bindings broke and the bag broke off my back.”

Police said the protesters were warned they were obstructing the port operations, but refused to move.

Murray said despite police warnings to move, she believed the protest was for the greater good.

“There’s perhaps the law and then there’s what’s well relationally, we’re small enough in Aotearoa for there to be a different track cut between police and protesters, a different way of being.

‘Reminiscent of Springbok tour protests’
“What I saw today was reminiscent on a smaller scale of videos that I’ve seen from the police brutality during the Springbok tour protests.”

The protest lasted for four hours, ending at 6pm.

Protesters were also asking workers to go on strike as a show of support for Palestinians.

Some port workers tooted their horns in support of the protesters. Others watched while the protesters tried to enlist their support.

A truck driver waiting in the carpark said he had been held up for three hours while trying to bring his truck into the port. He said many other trucks had also had their movements held up.

Christofferson said police had given the protesters some advice on holding their demonstration legally at a nearby site, however, this was ignored.

“This behaviour is unacceptable as it disrupts the operations of a busy workplace and puts those in the area at risk.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

 

War on Gaza: Israeli failures, US charades and a negotiated truce

By APR editor -

 

November 24, 2023

The Gaza temporary truce takes effect after 7 weeks of war and 14,850 killed Palestinians - the majority women and children. Image: AJ screenshot APR

ANALYSIS: By Mouin Rabbani

In the early hours of November 22, Qatar formally announced that an agreement had been reached for an Israeli-Palestinian exchange of captives — and it came into force today.

The available details suggest it largely reflects the proposal offered by Hamas several weeks ago that was initially rejected by Israel.

Тhe announcement was made just a week after Israeli tanks and soldiers stormed into the al-Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza City, causing international outrage.

Israel had claimed that there was a Hamas command centre there and repeatedly vowed to destroy it. As it happened, the only facility to be found within the compound was a hospital.

The United States fully supported Israel’s violation of al-Shifa’s sanctity and even claimed it had independent intelligence about a Palestinian Pentagon beneath it but produced no evidence in support of this assertion.

At the time, this led to speculation that these events may have been the product of an informal US-Israeli agreement: The Biden administration would support Israel’s seizure of al-Shifa and would cover for this war crime politically and diplomatically with lies of its own, thus allowing an Israeli military with few achievements since October 7 to have its “Iwo Jima moment” atop “Mount Shifa”.

But once it would become clear that there was nothing of military significance within the premises, the US would proceed to finalise a deal with Hamas and Israel would have to agree to its implementation.

Deal largely the Hamas offer
It does indeed appear to be the case that in exchange for US support for Israel’s systematic destruction of the health sector in the Gaza Strip, a deal with Hamas has been reached.

A Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid Bin Mohammed Al Ansari announces the Gaza temporary truce details. Image: AJ screenshot APR

The agreement is significant in several respects. Perhaps most importantly, the US and Israel, which repeatedly vowed to eradicate Hamas, are now negotiating with the Palestinian movement and reaching agreements with it.

Qatari-Egyptian mediation, while indispensable, is ultimately a formality. The US and Israel are not negotiating with Egypt and Qatar but with Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and architect of the October 7 attacks.

The tenor of Israeli press reports in recent days has been that Hamas is desperate for a respite, however brief and at almost any price, from the ferocious Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip.

Yet the available reports about the deal suggest otherwise:

• Israel has committed to releasing three times as many imprisoned women and children as the Palestinians;
• No Israeli soldiers are included in the exchange;
• Significantly more humanitarian supplies, including fuel, will reach the Gaza Strip;
• The exchange of captives will be implemented during a continuous four-day truce rather than one in which the slaughter is paused for a brief period each day; and
• Israeli jets and drones will be prohibited from using the airspace over the Gaza Strip for several hours each day.

Why are so many Palestinians imprisoned?

This is quite close to the deal initially offered by Hamas several weeks ago, and it appears the bulk of its demands have been conceded by Israel and the US.

If the adage that negotiations reflect reality on the ground rather than overturning it applies, Hamas — in contrast to the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, which has been Israel’s main target — seems far from desperate.

Instead, it appears sufficiently confident to stick to its priorities until these are accepted by the US and Israel.

The details of the Gaza temporary truce between Israel and Hamas mediated by Gaza, Egypt and the United States. Image: AJ screenshot APR

US, Israel forced to concede
“Pursuant to the agreement, Hamas has also forced the US and Israel to consent to the supply of large amounts of essential humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.

In other words, Hamas has in one fell swoop achieved exponentially more on the humanitarian front than the much-vaunted US diplomacy to secure humanitarian relief for Gaza’s Palestinian civilians during the past month.

This confirms that the entire US effort was in essence a circus — a diversionary charade to enable Israel to continue with its mass killings and transform the Gaza Strip into a wasteland and a killing field.

It bears repeating that Hamas has forced the US and Israel to allow significant quantities of food, water, medicine and fuel to reach the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

A UN-run school in Gaza was bombed by Israeli forces shortly before the truce began today. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot APR

Yet Hamas is the anointed terrorist organisation in this equation while Israel is the light unto nations with the world’s most “moral army” and the US is the world’s greatest democracy dedicated to spreading freedom and human rights to the rest of the planet.

What happens next is difficult to assess. According to reports, only Israeli and dual nationals are to be released, presumably to help the Israeli leadership swallow this very bitter pill and to allay Israeli concerns that the release of foreign nationals would be privileged in negotiations with Hamas.

Yet by insisting on this formula, Israel has ensured that further negotiations to release foreign citizens would continue, potentially leading to an extension of the truce.

War in Israeli PM’s interests
At the same time, it is difficult to believe that the Israeli leadership can accept a temporary truce that metamorphoses into an indefinite one. It is clearly in the Israeli premier’s personal and political interest to keep this conflict going while the security establishment is also desperate to wipe away the stain of October 7.

Other members of Israel’s governing coalition partners see this war as a golden opportunity to unleash the apocalypse and want it to escalate further rather than wind down.

Although the Gaza Strip has been substantially destroyed, Hamas has yet to be significantly degraded, and the Israeli army has yet to kill more Hamas commanders than United Nations staff.

If Israel is confident it can once again flout US policy without consequences, it will. This could take the form of sabotaging the truce or resuming hostilities to ensure it is not extended. Farther afield, the Israeli-Lebanese front also seems to be rapidly heating up.

So further escalation is likely, but it is also possible that the implementation of this deal could cause Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to collapse under a combination of public pressure and internal conflicts among leaders who mutually detest and distrust each other.

The US leadership is also a question mark. With respect to the impact of this crisis on US interests in the region and beyond and particularly the question of regional escalation, US President Joe Biden appears not to care, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appears not to know while CIA Director William Burns and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin look mortified.

Which faction gains the upper hand remains an open question.

The one conclusion that can already be drawn is that the various “day after” scenarios produced by the Washington echo chamber can be safely discarded because they uniformly require the eradication of Hamas and not negotiated agreements with it.

Mouin Rabbani is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha, Qatar.

Europe reels as far-right Wilders tops Dutch election poll

Ella Joyner

DW

The surprise victory of the Dutch far-right PVV party, which was trailing at fourth in the polls last week, is sending shockwaves around Europe. But what does it mean for the future?

If he becomes prime minister, Geert Wilders would be among Europe's most far-right leaders

Image: Remko de Waal/ANP/IMAGO

Geert Wilders is already known to many Europeans beyond Dutch borders for his radical anti-immigration and Islamophobic politics, his staunch Euroskepticism and of course his unmistakable blonde bouffant hairstyle.

But after Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) emerged victorious from national elections on Wednesday off the back of a shock last-minute surge in opinion polls, Europeans will be hearing a lot more from him in the months to come as a new Dutch government is built.

PVV won by far the most seats in parliament with a projected 37 out of 150, though Wilders' is not certain to end up in government. The Netherlands is always governed by multi-party coalitions. A center-left alliance came second with 25 seats, followed by the center-right VVD party of outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte with 24, and then the newcomer centrist New Social Contract (NSC) party with 20.

Disagreements over immigration policy toppled the previous VVD-led coalition

Image: Carl Court/Getty Images

The way ahead is not self-evident, but a right-wing coalition of PVV, VVD and NSC would be possible if the more centrist parties are willing to stomach it. On Thursday morning, after the shock poll result, 60-year-old Wilders said he wanted to be the prime minister of the Netherlands, news agency Reuters reported.
Wilders' wish list: 'Nexit' vote, ban on Mosques, no more asylum

In the EU capital Brussels, Wilders' platform will undoubtedly cause concern. Some of it goes against not only Dutch but EU law. Ben Coates, an author of a book on the Netherlands, summed up the more extreme points of PVV's manifesto on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.

A "Nexit” referendum on the Netherlands' EU membership, a complete end to asylum for refugees, an end to blanket freedom of movement for EU workers, a ban on Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques, and on headscarves in government buildings, an end to military support for Ukraine and kicking Turkey out of NATO – just some of the policies Coates listed off.

From calling Moroccans "scum,"to holding competitions for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Wilders has built a career from his self-appointed mission to stop an "Islamic invasion" of the West.

The view from Brussels

Mindful of the compromises likely required to get into government, Wilders had toned down his rhetoric – particularly on Islam – in the past few weeks, Stijn van Kessel from the Queen Mary University of London explained.

In return, the center-right VVD, now led by Dilan Yesilgoz, showed more willingness to work with the far-right PVV than her predecessors.

"Wilders is happy to let these issues go or to not make that big a point of them in coalition negotiations, because, he said, there are bigger priorities now, mainly cost-of-living problems," van Kessel told DW. "But immigration has always remained a very high priority for him."

Far-right populist Geert Wilders wins big in Dutch elections  01:53

Right-wing populists, like, for example, Giorgia Meloni of Italy, often tone down their anti-EU rhetoric once in office, according to van Kessel, an expert on populism in Europe. "They don't tend to prioritize the issue of European integration that much."

Even Wilders had watered things down since 2012, when he had called for a full departure from the EU, van Kessel noted. Now he was only calling for a referendum. Whether one would ever be held under a new coalition remains to be seen.

Nonetheless, if he were to become prime minister, Wilders could significantly disrupt EU policymaking on issues like climate policy, military support for Ukraine and migration, not to mention negotiations over the shared EU budget.

How did the PVV do it?

For van Kessel, a big part of Wilders' success story lies with the center-right VVD. By putting immigration – undoubtedly a top concern among voters along with housing and the cost of living – at the heart of its campaign, Yesilgoz may have shot herself in the foot.

"Research has indicated now that ultimately, on average, it's the mainstream right that loses out if they focus more on immigration. They only legitimize the far-right message," van Kessel said. "Ultimately it is to the benefit of the populist radical right. You shift the terms of the public debate very much towards these issues," he said.

Some observers have pointed the finger at VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz for cozying up to Wilders' party

Image: Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP/Getty Images

The surprise victory also likely has a lot to do with last-minute competition between parties, according to van Kessel. Only last week, Wilders' PVV was polling fourth at around 13%, but went on to score a projected 23% in Wednesday's final poll.

Initially, the rise of the NSC was tipped to be the big story for the election, but leader Pieter Omtzigt's vagueness on certain issues – including whether he wanted to be prime minister – may have turned the tide in PVV's favor. A surprising number of voters were still undecided last week, van Kessel noted.

Bellwether for European elections

For the political scientist, these elections may serve as "a bit of a bellwether for the sentiments in Western Europe in general" ahead of next June's EU-wide poll to elect the European Parliament, as well as Belgian national elections.

The far right has grown throughout much of Europe in the past decade. Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy rode to power last year, the National Rally led by Marine Le Pen came second in the 2022 French presidential election polls, and the Alternative for Germany party is currently polling second.

Far-right leaders including Hungary's Viktor Orban clearly felt vindicated on Thursday. "The winds of change are here," Orban wrote on X. His political advisor Balazs Orban, who is not a relative of the Hungarian prime minister but shares his surname, went further: "Europe is waking up! The Dutch right-wing victory put another conservative flag on the map."

In Belgium, the leader of the secessionist party for the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders welcomed the news. "While the elites are worrying about the end of the world, ordinary people are worried about the end of the month," Vlaams Belang leader Tom van Grieken told local broadcaster VRT. "Those who want change must opt to make anti-system parties like PVV or Vlaams Belang big."

For van Kessel at least, it is now up to mainstream parties, particularly those on the center-right, to stand up for liberal democracy in the face of politicians like Wilders who openly seek to exclude certain types of people. "There's no room for politicians who can claim that they alone speak in the name of the people. That is illiberal, and ultimately dangerous to democracy."

Iran's women defend themselves against state violence

Shabnam von Hein | Shora Azarnoush
DW

Violence and discrimination against women in Iran is rooted in the Islamic Republic's state structure. Those in power are now being challenged by a women's rights movement spurred by resistance to wearing headscarves.

Women in Iran who do not follow a strict dress code can face severe penalites

Image: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is observed every year on November 25. Launched by feminist activists in 1981, the day draws attention to the various forms of violence that women face.

In Iran, little is said officially about this day. When Iranian media takes up the topic of "violence against women," the focus is usually placed on violence against women in Western countries, where people supposedly live without the protection of religion.

They refer to statistics that ostensibly indicate a much higher level of violence against women than in Iran.

However, statistics on violence against women in Iran are difficult to find and are often incomplete. Many forms of violence against women in Iran are not even recorded, for example, the forms of violence experienced daily by women at the hands of the Iranian state.

Iran's power apparatus the biggest danger facing women

"The greatest danger for women in Iran comes from the state," Iranian legal and religious scholar Sedigheh Vasmaghi told DW.

The 62-year-old lawyer from Tehran is one of the most prominent critics of the Islamic Republic. For many years, she was the only woman to teach at the Faculty of Theology at Tehran University. Her critical attiude is a thorn in the side of those in power in Tehran.

Iranian women defy laws limiting their freedom 03:22

Vasmaghi particularly criticizes regulations that are based on a strict interpretation of Sharia law. "These laws legitimize the use of violence against women and thus give it a legal basis," she said.

The lawyer cites an example of this in a new draft law on compulsory headscarves, along with all other strict measures regarding a dress code for women, "which are enforced with naked violence on a large scale in public."

Vasmaghi, who lived in Germany between 2011 and 2017, and worked as a visiting professor at the University of Göttingen, wrote an open letter to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, in April 2023.

In the letter, she questions the hijab from a theological perspective. According to her, the Islamic Republic's hijab laws have no basis in the Quran.

Punishing women who break these rules, Vasmaghi warned, has social, political and psychological consequences. Such punishments have violated the dignity of women and exacerbated social polarization.

At the end of September, Iran's Parliament passed a controversial dress code reform for women, which stipulates drastic penalties for violations, especially of the headscarf requirement.

Repeated violations could even result in prison sentences of up to 15 years. In addition, the publication of photos of women without headscarves on the internet is punishable, for example, by being barred from leaving the country. The judiciary has threatened to close shopping malls, restaurants and museums if violations are found.

Iranian women who disobey dress code live in fear

For many women who are tired of conforming and constantly wearing the headscarf, this means they live their daily lives in constant fear of being attacked or even beaten to death.

Since the tragic death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022, and the subsequent nationwide protests, many women have nevertheless refused to wear the headscarf in public.

Iran: Family torn apart by Iranian security forces  02:34

Hossein Jalali, a member of the parliamentary culture committee, has said the headscarf represents the "flag of the Islamic Republic" for women. This symbolizes the state's discrimination against women, which is also reflected in laws and jurisdiction, inheritance law, contract law, freedom of travel and much more.

"In Iran, violence against women is a continuum," Iranian sociologist Azadeh Kian told DW. Kian lives in Paris and is director of the Center for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University of Paris.

Kian has studied the women's movement in Iran for a long time. "State violence in public is continued in domestic violence," said Kian. "If a woman in Germany or France is a victim of violence at home, she turns to the police. In Iran, the police use violence against women," she added.

In confidential conversations with DW, Iranian women who have appeared in public without their headscarves spoke about the stress they are exposed to.

A 50-year-old woman from the capital Tehran described her experience when she was caught on camera without a headscarf.

"I dropped my headscarf in my car. The surveillance cameras caught me, and my car was confiscated. But the worst thing was how rudely the vice squad spoke to me and allowed themselves to shout at me," referring to the Guidance Patrol or "morality police" which enforces Sharia-Islamic law in Iran.

Other women spoke of similar experiences, emphasizing that the "morality police" often turn up unexpectedly and try to intimidate women with violence and brutality.
Small changes in Iran towards women's rights

"This violence will not intimidate women," says Iranian legal and religious scholar Vasmaghi.

"As a member of this society, I am observing a profound change. Belief in the hijab and the headscarf is dwindling even among many religious people, both women and men. I see more and more religious women who no longer wear the headscarf in their own circles and are supported by their husbands," she added.

Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi wins Nobel Peace Prize  02:38

Sociologist Kian also sees signs of change in Iranian society. "When women experience violence on the street, sometimes men now step in front of them and protect them."

She finds it remarkable that these changes can be seen not only happening in the traditionally more liberal capital Tehran, but also throughout the country.

There are now also restaurant and store owners who would rather close their businesses than implement the ban on serving unveiled women.

"These men and women are part of a resistance that is creating women's rights not in the law, but in the public sphere."

This article has been translated from German