WE CANNOT TRANSCEND MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM

By Anuhya Bobba  Sep 24, 2020

HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS IN THE UNITED STATES PLACE THE ONUS OF HEALING ON INDIVIDUALS AND FOCUS ON SELF-OPTIMIZATION IN SERVICE OF INHERENTLY VIOLENT CAPITALISM.

TW: mentions of suicide, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and forced institutionalization

Every suicide prevention day, week, or month, I once conveyed the same message, regurgitating advice that, at the height of my battle with depression, had been readily proffered: “Reach out.” On Facebook and Instagram, on a domain that I purchased for my writing, to friends and family. Reach out.

I would share a highly personalized experience of my depression and later PTSD, my attempted suicide, and reassurance that it does become better. That if people were to embark on a journey of self-care, through counseling, therapy, or medication, their efforts would reach fruition.

But, when I adhered to my own advice, I always seemed to fail. And fail again. I reached out. I attended therapy. I started medication. I attempted to disclose my diagnosis to workplace after workplace, in hope that I would be accommodated in my debilitating anxiety and panic. I continued to commit to X or Y task, because external measures of productivity demanded that I do so, and then I would fail to meet said commitment. At each turn, I only felt overwhelmed, rarely did I feel assured in my capacity to transcend mental illness.

Central to neoliberalism is individualism. Testimonials are inherently individualistic; they speak to an individual’s experience. At first, my testimonials (from social media posts to essays) acted as a means to recover a sense of control and to place trust in my subjectivity after extensive childhood trauma. But, I also understood that testimonials like mine — which utilized a depoliticized “I” and proffered triggering detail, exclusively through the lens of unexamined anger, rage, and self-destruction — existed comfortably in the confines of the capitalist system. Especially because my narrative would culminate in a journey of healing and recovery independent of histories of oppressions and the material realities that they create for people diagnosed with mental illness.

My narrative(s) would be grounded in self-care and would end in my return to “self-optimization” or readiness to function again — this time, properly — in capitalism.

In Radical Care: Survival Strategies for Uncertain Times, Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart and Tamara Kneese write, “Self-care is thus popularly associated with self-optimization, or a way of preparing individuals for increased productivity in demanding workplaces, when, in reality, things like chronic illness are incompatible with capitalist productivity and even visible forms of activism: it is difficult to join street protests if you are a caretaker, suffer from depression or anxiety, or cannot get out [of] bed.”

Plainly, I did not have the capacity to see beyond myself, in my experience of mental illness. I wallowed in self-alienation. I could not see that the struggle for many (including myself) is not “reaching out,” but the struggle is inextricably tied to the system that we occupy — a system that pathologizes our condition, and a system that is not designed to serve the common good.

When I was diagnosed with depression and later PTSD, I was introduced to a system of care that placed the responsibility of my healing in my hands, and my hands only — as if I am the arbiter of all the circumstances that would unfold in and influence my life.

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Integral to this system of care is therapy. My first experiences of western therapy acted as if I existed in a vacuum, separable from the circumstances that I inhabited. The objective of each session had been self-optimization. Not for myself, but to function better in the neoliberal university or the future workplace. My sense of alienation only strengthened after therapy. I could not explain why it did not work; but I knew that it did not.

In On Mental Health and Psychotherapy in Late Capitalism, Richard Lichtman describes therapy as a “mode of conformity to the prevailing system of corporate and state domination.”

“There is no designation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for the incapacity of individuals to recognize the malevolence of the system that exploits their labor, then turns it back upon themselves as alienated but ‘natural’ domination,” he explains.

Lichtman continues, “Therapy reinforces the basic assumptions of capitalist culture in regard to its definition of the self and its boundaries, the system of its needs and the material relations it establishes among social members. Its gravitational pull is insular, ‘deeper’ within the individual, personal relationship, or family. These considerations explain one of the major functional paradoxes of therapy; its capacity to ameliorate the conditions of individuals or of small groups while simultaneously strengthening the larger system of social control.”

My attempted suicide — the one that resulted in my institutionalization — took place three years after my first session of therapy. My institutionalization demonstrated the carceral response to mental health undertaken by psychiatric care facilities.

I was transferred to an emergency unit, where I was told that “the State of Colorado” is responsible for my forced institutionalization. Once I arrived at the psychiatric ward, my phone was confiscated. I could not leave the ward, and outdoor time consisted of 30 minutes on a heavily fenced balcony. The speakers that visited to motivate us — us, the pathologies of late capitalism — were people who could function (i.e. work) after the onset of X or Y illness. After one such speaker, my body started to twitch. I hurriedly left the room, only to faint and slam my head onto the door handle. As the nurses inserted IV or attempted to take a blood test, I protested. I knew that each pill, each injection only cost more money. The bill amounted to $6,000 for a four-day stay, itemized by pill, injection, and meal.

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My present understanding of my mental health in relation to capitalism only occurred once I left the United States for Europe.

Before Europe, I relocated to New York City, where I worked a desk job at a local nonprofit. I decided that I would disclose my mental health to my employer because I am not the “normal” worker. One week after signing my contract, I disclosed my PTSD. They feigned understanding, but eventually, they grew increasingly frustrated at my inability to fulfill the eight-hour workday. Their sole accommodation remained a two-hour lunch break each Thursday when I would rush to the Upper East Side to see a therapist for 45 minutes. I would have triggering conversations and revelations, only to return again to my desk, to function like “normal.”

But, there had been an unspoken caveat: if I am provided two hours to attend therapy on Thursday (two hours that I would work to cover past 5 PM), then I could not show signs of neurodivergence elsewhere. The exasperation that I would see on my supervisor’s face, if I observed an onset of a panic attack and notified her, caused panic in return — I dreaded work.

I left New York City to live in France, in order to move closer to my then partner and also because I had burned out. I waitressed and took French lessons at the local university, but even as I occupied a service position, I became introduced to affordable health care. Buying my medicine or attending psychiatry, as a non-citizen, did not break my bank. I was provided a housing allowance that reduced my rent in half because I had been a student. I was offered subsidized lunches, again as a student, where I paid 3 euros for an entree, a main meal, and a dessert as well as coffee. I paid 15 euros for unlimited, monthly transportation (in comparison to $120 in New York City). Out of the 800 euros that I made monthly, the fear of more and more debt did not loom as it had in the United States.

I was then accepted to attend university in Finland, where I currently receive subsidised housing, meals, and transportation. I have access to universal health care; I was reminded by a senior student that I did not have to worry about calling an ambulance because the service is free. When a concerned friend had called 911 on me in New York City, I received a bill of $1600 to compensate the emergency personnel that arrived and stayed for 45 minutes, which was reduced to $800 with insurance.

The university here accommodates me and my PTSD as well. Once I had a severe depressive episode around the time of an examination, and I was informed that I have three retakes per final exam. I also work as an intern, and I am paid a hefty salary for a three-month contract, which includes 6 days that I am required to take off for rest or leisure.

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My material reality shifted drastically from the United States to Europe. The system that I started to occupy was intended to support my basic needs — to a certain extent. The welfare systems of Europe are predicated on plundered wealth from colonization. And, my ability to relocate also could not have been possible, were it not for my U.S. passport and the financial stability that I come from. Even the safety guards that I now experience would not be so easily extended if I did not speak English, did not have degrees from American universities, or more generally, did not fit the criteria of a “skilled” laborer.

To be clear: I was able to leave the United States, so as to salvage my mental health. But, for many, the material reality created by late capitalism can not afford an escape; in order to renounce American citizenship, you have to pay $2,350. The United States increased the fee from $400 in March 2020.

The experience of the past two years, outside of the United States, thus also shifted my narrative of self-care to a narrative of radical care. I did not exist as a self disconnected from “particular histories and present situations of violence and vulnerability” but as a self grounded firmly in said histories and situations. So it is not enough to “reach out” in order to prevent suicide. The history and the present of the United States is violent, and it is not easy nor possible for the persons that exist outside of or violate “the structures of white, middle class respectability” to survive its capitalist demands.

DAWNING CLIMATE CATASTROPHE AND THE PARADOX OF GREEN CAPITALISM

By Jude Casimir  Sep 23, 2020

EVEN IN THE FACE OF PLANETARY DESTRUCTION, IT IS CAPITALISM AND CAPITALISTIC INTERESTS THAT DICTATE THE RESPONSE TO OUR CURRENT CLIMATE CATASTROPHE.

Flashback to September 2018: former California Governor Jerry Brown has a plan to save the world. He explains: “Plastic has helped advance innovation in our society, but our infatuation with single-use convenience has led to disastrous consequences […] Plastics, in all forms—straws, bottles, packaging, bags, etc.—are choking our planet.”

Who would have thought that climate change could be reversed by the simple behavior of consumers, discarding plastic, rather than the one hundred companies that account for the majority of pollution, including ExxonMobil and Shell. Thank God it’s that easy!

Wait.

It’s 2020. Jerry Brown is out of office. Starbucks is handing out paper straws. In California, the land is aflame. In Oregon, the sky is an apocalyptic red. In nearly every other state, the stench of smoke is filling our lungs, shepherded by gusts of transcontinental wind.

But what about the straws?

If this were a Hollywood film, a big-budget, end-of-the-world extravaganza, we’d be treated to billionaires and computer jockeys screaming at government officials, promising huge sums of money and brilliant, undiscovered solutions that could set the planet right. Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck would be taking a team of hard-working drillers with calloused hands to obliterate the fuck out of an asteroid. DJ Qualls would be slamming his knuckles down on early-2000s keyboards, promising to hack the planet before our core dies. If that sort of film was made today, we might even have Elon Musk building an armageddon-proof dome of stolen emeralds along with a magical machine that somehow rebuilds the ozone layer via dank memes. If it were directed by Jerry Brown, we might even have a beleaguered Kurt Russell running house to house, grabbing the guilty plastics in order to build an ark to save humanity.

Goddamn those straws.

But this is not a movie. There are no renegade scientific geniuses, no selfless astronauts, and no heroic billionaires to save us. Nor are there easy excuses that place the blame on people rather than the corporations and capitalistic interests that have brought us here.

We are here at the brink, looking off the edge of the world, as so many cling to a crumbling precipice, knowing that they will be the first swallowed. The capitalistic forces that once promised a better world are the same forces that are now boiling the planet alive while at the same time onanistically bragging about life-saving innovations, reinventing necessary infrastructure but more inept, more mercenary, and less accessible.

On the edge of oblivion, the richest among us have gilded their self-salvation and their complicity in the rhetoric of transformation. They won’t save us. In fact, we’re here, burning alive, specifically because of them.

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Our current understanding of climate change and the solutions to it is divided into the investment in two separate saviors: liberal politicians and so-called woke billionaires. Unfortunately, close inspection of the blunt truth laid out in the previous half-decade violently refutes both of these fantasies.

Consider recent Democratic messiah Barack Obama. Before ultimately denying the final permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline, a move that might’ve been more for the ego boost than anything else, the former president delivered a statement about how the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was making their voices heard, a statement that was no doubt lauded heavily by the media. But this was during the same year he would unleash the worst of what opposition had to offer on those same protesters. Law enforcement would readily and gleefully meet the protesters with tear gas and cannons of ice-cold water, releasing dogs and rubber bullets along the way.

Meanwhile, at the height of the 2020 election, as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi both spit in the face of the Green New Deal (which the latter has referred to as “the green dream, or whatever they call it,” after gleefully accepting campaign funding from the fossil fuel industry), the naked opportunism and hypocrisy of alarmist liberal rhetoric around climate is clearer than ever. Recent neoliberal martyr Ruth Bader Ginsburg stood with conservative justices in support of destructive pipeline projects. Current California Governor Gavin Newsom has been all too eager to tweet out warnings about the incredible dangers of climate crisis and pose for photoshoots in the wreckage of historic conflagrations with Kamala Harris despite approving 360 fracking permits as of July 6, 2020.

This performativity is both gut-wrenching and par for the course: emblematic of where these politicians’ allegiances lie. Even in the face of planetary destruction, it is capitalism and capitalistic interests that dictate the response to our current catastrophe.

And that doesn’t even get us started on the racial implications of the problem.

Just as the violence of capitalism and white supremacy are intertwined in other issues, the treatment of global warming and general ecological destruction is intensely racialized. Whether it’s the fact that politicians have treated the Flint water crisis as a sort of trivial infrastructure issue unworthy of real attention, or the blatant FBI infiltration of and police violence against the indigenous resistance at Standing Rock, the reality that climate change will hit poor BIPOC communities the hardest (and that they will receive the least support) is inescapable. Starting with Hurricane Katrina and continuing through the destruction of Haiti via earthquake (and the subsequent disappearance of promised humanitarian funds), all the way up through the devastation of Puerto Rico, there’s an undeniably white supremacist bent to the capitalist nonsense that defines how we understand what is looking more and more like the end of the world as we know it.

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Capitalists don’t have any real incentive to curtail this mess, not when they can further take advantage of natural disasters, especially in those places that have little to no power to fight back. In the aftermath of the continued devastation of Puerto Rico, for instance, we saw energy companies like Whitefish jump in to save the day at a hefty cost, with less focus on people than profit. TigerSwan, the security firm that was a fundamental tool of insurrection against the Standing Rock movement, has undergone an eco-friendly rebrand, now offering its services for good, for security measures in unsafe instances in disaster-stricken areas.

But the insidiousness of this is not always so naked.

Even when people like Elon Musk and others in the Silicon Valley bubble say they have an investment in stopping environmental collapse, they’re also only ever looking for the most exploitative ways to deceive you. Electric cars are quiet, clean, and stylish, but never mind, of course, that buying them brand-new might end up causing more air and carbon pollution in the long run. Never mind that any potential cleanliness these products boast depends mainly on the cleanliness of the country’s leading power sources. Don’t pay attention to the fact that these vehicles don’t simply come out of the ether and need to be manufactured before they hit the streets.

Erase the fact that manufacturing doesn’t always have the greenest, most environmentally-minded roots. According to a 2016 Wired article, electric cars need to be light, which means they need to include a lot of high-performing metals, like lithium and other rare minerals. “Rare metals,” author Lizzie Wade writes, “only exist in tiny quantities and inconvenient places—so you have to move a lot of earth to get just a little bit.”

Elon Musk gets to sell you the easy comfort that comes with easy, largely symbolic gestures.

Even the aforementioned Green New Deal, the so-called progressive way out, serves only to give capitalism a greener face. Since it’s nonbinding, there’s technically no reason for any legislators to take action. And, since the resolution calls for “investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership,” and these investments are going to be allocated from banks and “other public financing,” it’ll ultimately be at the behest of corporations and other interested parties, instead of the other way around. Dedication to growth is an inherent feature of capitalism, so any policy “solution” put forth by leaders of a capitalist society is bound to fall short of the actual needs of the situation.

In his 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Elliott wrote about “the dead land…the cactus land,” before predicting that the world would end “not with a bang but with a whimper.” These words seem to hold horrifically true now: portending an empty, self-aggrandizing, and impotent phalanx in the face of armageddon, a wasteland created by the slow encroaching inaction of a world unwilling to face disaster as it throws itself, unceasingly, against the door.

Though Elliott was speaking about the insanity and trauma of the First World War, his frustration and pessimism feel equally potent nearly a century later, as we watch the world crumble under the weight of environmental malfeasance, capitalist vampirism, and the empty gestures that feign compassion yet embolden cruelty. While we might imagine a doomsday defined by super volcanoes and biblical tempests, that apocalyptic bang will, ultimately, be ushered in the whimpering, equivocating, self-sustaining bullshit of corporations all too eager to suck the life from the flesh of the earth, and then turn around with Steve Urkel “ain’t I a stinker” sheepishness as the chickens come home to roost.

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Because this is the way in which liberalism and capitalism point us: towards market solutions, towards the band-aid over the bullet wound, while these systems themselves are simultaneously producing the bandages and firing the gun. Sure, we could go a step further in putting our faith in ecological modernization. We could lean into this idea that new and developing technology will save us and the environment, and that salvation will come in the form of solar panels and electric cars because the future is now! However, this idea doesn’t consider how little impact these solutions will ultimately have as long as capitalism keeps wantonly pillaging, no matter the banner of “green” conscientiousness the system uses to shield itself from scrutiny. Putting our faith in such companies is arguably the primary reason we’re in this environmental mess in the first place, and allowing them to privatize the solution while dodging accountability for the majority stake they hold in causing the problem will leave us with little more than clean vehicles via which to outrun the total collapse of security, health, and environmental stability when this problem finally reaches its horrific climax.

We can sit, watching for whatever happens next, waiting for straw bans to finally take hold, for the solar panels and the electric cars. Still, as we put our faith in some sort of corporatist Deus Ex Machina, we have to come to terms with which god we’re hoping for, and which machine we think will produce Him.

The flames that are engulfing the world and the smoke that’s choking our lungs will likely be coming from that very same machine.

The world is on fire. Long live industry’s inferno.

LUCY PARSONS HAS SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT 2020
By Reina Sultan  Oct 7, 2020

DESCRIBED AS “MORE DANGEROUS THAN A THOUSAND RIOTERS”, LUCY PARSONS’ WRITINGS AND SPEECHES WERE REFLECTIVE OF HER TIME AND CONTINUE TO BE RELEVANT TODAY.

The summer of 2020 was ~eventful~ in terms of political focus on anarchists and anarchism. I rolled my eyes every time an American politician blamed anarchists for chaos, showing clearly how willfully ignorant they were about anarchism as a philosophy.

With all that in mind, I wanted to delve more deeply into the history and words of Lucy Parsons. Her life was also marked with American politicians blaming chaos on anarchists, though this was in the late 1800s. Reading Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary ended up hitting way too close to home, considering it was about events that happened more than a century ago. I took a lot away from the book, but the biggest takeaway is how applicable Parsons’ ideology remains in today’s political climate.

I would be wrong not to mention that Parsons was far from perfect. Her views on sex workers and sexual liberation were antiquated—causing strife between her and Emma Goldman. That being said, I personally believe Goldman was afforded privileges Parsons never got because of race. Parson’s treatment of her son, who she had committed to an asylum, was also abhorrent. Still, reading about her life and her ideologies has been illuminating.

So, here are four Lucy Parsons quotes to turn to for the rest of this cursed year:
“If the Anarchists had thrown the bomb at the Haymarket they didn’t commit a crime nor violate any law. The Constitution gives the people the right to repel any unlawful invasion in any way they see fit.”

This just feels so pertinent when we look at the so-called violence and looting during protests this summer. I’ve written about it before, but fighting against oppressors is justified violence—it’s self-defense. Now I personally think the Constitution is relatively shitty considering who was included in drafting it, but I can’t argue with Lucy’s logic here.

“And some did rest their chins upon their clenched hands
And swear to help abolish the infamous system that could produce such abject misery…
And some did gnash their teeth and howl, swearing dire vengeance against all tyrants.”

To me, this so perfectly describes the organizers and revolutionaries who are working so hard to dismantle the systems that oppress us. We cannot forget that the uprisings of this summer came after years of organizing and struggling by mostly Black people, who have been working for liberation for centuries (and more recently, since Ferguson). The activation of people during this summer’s actions has hopefully produced a new group of people who “swear to abolish the infamous system,” whether that be capitalism, the carceral state, settler colonialism, or all of them (inshaAllah).

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“Will you deny that your jails are filled with the children of the poor, not the children of the rich? Will you deny that men steal because their bellies are empty?”

Prison and police abolition are undoubtedly having a moment right now. When we talk about abolition, the conversation isn’t only about what would be abolished, but also about what would be created. This quote by Parsons illuminates how so much crime in our country is caused by lack of resources and opportunity, where punishment by the carceral state does nothing but exacerbate the conditions that caused the crime in the first place. It feels as though more people are finally willing to accept that the system we’ve been told is meant to provide justice does no such thing. Rather, it is a symptom of a racialized capitalism, one that criminalizes poverty, especially when those who are poor are Black, brown, disabled, and/or sex-working.

“The present social system is rotten from top to bottom. You must see this and realize that the time has come to destroy it.”

This is the one that lights a fire under my ass (and enrages me). People have known that capitalism is untenable and immoral since the 1800s. We must resist the narrative that it’s the natural order of things and embrace the idea that no one person should control wealth in such a way that others are left without enough to live comfortably. It is far past time to destroy the systems that support cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, carcerality, and colonialism. So, let’s get to it.

Nagorno-Karabakh: 

An old conflict in a new geopolitical context
An interview with South Caucasus specialist Tom de Waal

Screenshot from a BBC video explaining the geography of the conflict



Global Voices
Oct 1 · 
By Filip Noubel

For over three decades, the war between Azerbaijan to Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has been mostly frozen, with long periods of stalemate punctuated by flares of armed confrontation, leading to death on both sides. The most recent of outbreak of violence began on September 27. This time, both combatants and analysts are predicting that the conflict will escalate, with unknown and potentially dangerous consequences.

To understand why, I spoke with Tom de Waal, a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and expert the geopolitics of the South Caucasus, Russia and Ukraine. De Waal has traveled extensively in the region, and wrote an authoritative book on Nagorno-Karabakh, “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War”.

Filip Noubel (FN) What is different this time in the escalation between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which started September 27?

Tom de Waal (TdW) We have seen violations of the 1994 ceasefire before, we’ve even seen small bouts of fighting, but we haven’t seen a sustained military offensive by Azerbaijan since the war ended in the 1990s. This is new, and so is the geopolitical context: Russia looks strangely impotent and seems unable or unwilling to impose a cease fire, while Turkey has dropped any pretense of neutrality and is now playing an active role. Finally, the US, which has had a strong role in this has been an extremely weak voice so far.

FN Both leaders are said to be both prisoners to the conflict, but also exploiting its narrative to fight opposition at home and ride a wave of populism. Would you agree?


TdW This is correct, but this is true of any leader: the whole nation is involved in this conflict, those two modern nations [following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991] were built starting in the 1990s around the claims on Karabakh, so a leader is bound to be a leader of this national idea around Karabakh as well. It is also useful in terms of domestic politics. This is more true on the Azerbaijani side, because it is an authoritarian society, so now the opposition has to go quiet. Indeed the opposition figures are supporting the army and being very patriotic and supportive. Azerbaijan had a lot of problems this year: falling oil prices, the COVID-19 pandemic, problems with political prisoners, yet now it unites behind this call. But this is also very tricky: if there is no success on the battle front, the nation can turn against its leader, and indeed two previous Azerbaijani leaders, Ayaz Mutalibov and Abdulfaz Elchibey lost power in large part because of failure on the Karabakh front.

FN During this escalation, Armenian authorities restated that they could recognize Nagorno-Karabakh. If this were to happen, what could be the consequences?


TdW In military terms, we are far from being in a full scale war. Most operations are concentrated in three regions around Karabakh, using long-range weaponry. To retake the territory lost is literally an uphill battle because Armenians control the mountainous terrain. This could mean heavy losses on the Azerbaijani side, which is not something the Azerbaijani leadership would want, nor their society tolerate. That is a restraining factor, but this [fight] could go on for a long time. Russia doesn’t seem to be able impose a ceasefire, thus there are many ways this could escalate. One is Armenia recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh. Then we would have more of a Cyprus situation, with no possibility to agree. Another one could be the use of heavy weapons to attack cities, which would be disastrous. Or if Turkey were to increase its involvement: for now it is not sending troops, it is helping at the edges. In the least bad scenario, the current fighting would continue for a few days, then both sides would be exhausted, claim some success, and agree to a ceasefire. But I am not holding my breath for that.

FN Turkey’s support is unprecedented. What do you make of the Turkey-Russia relationship, which has been swinging from sworn enemies to allies in past few years on several regional issues, including the Syria conflict.


Erdoğan and Putin are happy to have a fight using proxies, which is why I hope Turkey will avoid any incursion which would cross into Armenian territory, which Russia would have to respond to under its TdW military obligation with Armenia. So I don’t think they will come under direct conflict. Russia’s hands are really tied. They are the main mediator, they value their relation with Baku and Yerevan, so if they get too involved on one side, they would lose the other side. Russian can only provide support discreetly to Armenia, and there are reports of Moscow sending weapons via Iran.

FN What about the roles of Georgia and Iran, two other neighboring countries?


Georgia has a strong interest in this situation not escalating. It shares borders with both countries. It also has ethnic minorities of both Armenians and Azerbaijanis who have lived in peace for decades. But Georgia is very dependent on Azerbaijan economically. It has also expressed solidarity with Azerbaijan on the concept of territorial integrity [Georgia itself has parts of its territory that have declared self-proclaimed independence and are no longer under Georgian control: Abkhazia and South Ossetia]. Georgia has offered to be a mediator, but it would not be regarded as an honest broker by Armenia. And Russia certainly wouldn’t want Tbilisi to be involved [Russia and Georgia fought TdW a war in 2008]. Georgia could provide a neutral space for both sides to meet, and should be more involved but there are limits to their capacities.

Iran was a mediator in 1992, but then was shut out. But it has borders with both states as well. It has enormous stakes and any future negotiations in an international format must include Iran, despite US opposition.



Originally published at https://globalvoices.org on October 1, 2020.

ABOLITION FOR THE PEOPLE

Prisons Are a Public Health Crisis — and the Cure Is Right in Front of Us

The best way to curb pandemics like Covid-19 is to abolish the conditions that breed their spread

Kenyon Farrow

This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, which comprises 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems — and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

Aswe deal with the scourge of Covid-19, which has killed more than 210,000 people and rising, policy and public health experts are clamoring for strategies to stop the spread of the virus, in absence of credible and competent leadership at the federal level. Most of what works (without a vaccine or highly effective treatment that reduces transmission to others), is known — if unevenly practiced or implemented.

There is inspiring work happening in the U.S. and globally around how to reduce transmission of Covid-19 (or any future airborne pathogens) in settings like prisons, jails, and detention centers. Yet, much of what is being discussed seriously are meager reforms that would only slightly reduce the number of people in those settings or releasing people who have comorbidities such as old age, asthma, and heart disease that may make them more vulnerable to illness and death should they contract Covid-19. Some of the reforms, like the use of biometrics and regular temperature taking (despite knowing many people can carry and transmit Covid-19 even while asymptomatic), introduce more forms of surveillance into prison and jail settings.

Very few of these plans acknowledge that these spaces create opportunities for the spread of infectious diseases. If we know that to be the case, public health activists who are truly interested in social and racial justice should in fact be calling for the abolition of the prison industrial complex as part of a strategy to reduce the possibility of current and future epidemics.

On March 31, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons announced the next phase of a plan to help curb Covid-19 exposure in federal prisons. Those measures included a 14-day confinement in cells. The memo states that “to the extent practicable,” incarcerated people would be allowed to participate in some education and mental health services and provide labor in areas that required workers to keep the facilities running. The memo also noted that “asymptomatic inmates are placed in quarantine for a minimum of 14 days or until cleared by medical staff” and “symptomatic inmates are placed in isolation until they test negative for Covid-19 or are cleared by medical staff as meeting CDC criteria for release from isolation.”


It is forcing people into conditions of squalor — all intended to be part and parcel of the sentence itself. A sentence to violence, deprivation, illness, and sometimes premature death.

The original memo made no mention about providing masks or any other personal protective equipment to incarcerated people, nor medical treatment to those who tested positive for Covid-19, until several days after the CDC’s recommendation.

Di Hargrove in East Oak Lane, a neighborhood in the north part of Philadelphia. Hargrove was released from Riverside Correctional Facility in May through the help of the Philadelphia Bail Fund, a nonprofit, community organization that provides bail assistance to people unable to afford bail. Since the pandemic started in March, the Philadelphia Bail Fund has helped buy the freedom of 330 people awaiting trial behind bars. Photo: Sahar Coston-Hardy

Activist groups and some elected officials called for stronger measures to protect those in prison. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, advocated for the release of incarcerated people who are pregnant, older adults, or suffering from other conditions that would make them more vulnerable to Covid-19 complications and death. Attorney General William Barr subsequently issued such an order, but only focusing on federal facilities in Louisiana, Connecticut, and Ohio — all of which were already showing extremely high rates of Covid-19. (State facilities and local jails have all had their own protocols for testing, treatment, and early release.)

But these measures have not been enough. In mid-August, the New York Times reported that the top 10 Covid-19 transmission clusters in the country were in prisons, jails, and detention centers. To date, about 233,000 persons incarcerated and staff at these facilities have contracted the novel coronavirus, and about 1,372 of those have died. As alarming as those numbers are, they are incomplete: Several states have not reported key data including the breakdown of infection rates among incarcerated people and prison staff, or demographic data like the race of those diagnosed.

“There’s no way to social distance,” Adamu Chan, an incarcerated person inside California’s infamous San Quentin prison, told the New York Times. “We all eat together. We have a communal bathroom. There’s no way to address a public health issue in an overcrowded facility.”

The disproportionate impact of Covid-19 in carceral settings, the incomplete reporting of data, and the minimal public health and health care standards being uniformly implemented is no surprise to anyone who has been inside a facility, has a loved one who is or was imprisoned, or works as staff. Prisons, jails, and detention centers themselves are well known to be incubators of infectious disease outbreaks. This is not the fault of those confined in carceral settings, but rather is a result of how societies view people whom they send to such places of forced confinement. To condemn one to such a facility is to judge not just their actions, but their person.

So punishment is not just taking away freedom of movement. It is forcing people into conditions of squalor — places that are overcrowded, violent, and without access to adequate (let alone high quality) health care — all intended to be part and parcel of the sentence itself. It’s a sentence to violence, deprivation, illness — physical and psychological, and spiritual — and sometimes premature death. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 40% of all people in prison reported having a current chronic health condition, while over half said they have had a chronic medical condition at some point in their lives. And 21% of people in prison and 14% of people in jail reported ever having tuberculosis, hepatitis B or C, or other STDs. HIV rates in prisons are five to seven times higher than in the general population.

At the state and local levels, public health officials most often have no legal authority to implement or enforce sanitation, medical care, food, water, and air quality inside facilities, despite what might be written into state law or the codes of operation for carceral settings. It usually takes lawsuits on behalf of incarcerated people to enforce medical care, basic sanitation, or other public health measures.

Federally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only provides guidelines for public health policies and procedures for carceral settings and have no enforcement authority over the Bureau of Prisons. These decisions about public health and health care mostly left to state departments of corrections — often down to the whims of the warden to implement or not. Medical staff are often part-time, and may not be qualified to provide care to people.

The recent scandal at an immigrant detention center in Southern Georgia demonstrates this. Dawn Wooten, the licensed practical nurse who worked at the center, is the whistleblower in the case against the facility where Mahendra Amin, MD, allegedly performed nonconsensual hysterectomies on scores of women. If true, not only is this a serious abuse of power, and in fact a violation of medical ethics and human rights, but Amin is not certified by any of the 24 member boards of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, according to news reports. While forced sterilization has a long history and has been fought primarily by reproductive and disability justice activists (mostly Black and Brown feminists), people in prisons, jails, and detention centers are often the most vulnerable still to these practices.

But this is not surprising. It is not uncommon for many facilities to employ doctors who do not have the training to perform certain kinds of medical care in carceral settings. Also, some doctors may take those jobs to abuse populations that have little power or access to systems of accountability. Wooten also alleged in her complaint that the conditions in the facility did not meet standards to best prevent the spread of Covid-19, nor did it even meet the standards for basic human decency. There is an unknowable number of cases of people who die in custody every year for being denied access to lifesaving care. In recent years several people with HIV in immigrant detention facilities were denied access to their antiretroviral medication, and subsequently died, most notably transgender activist Roxana Hernandez in 2018.

Di Hargrove in Mermaid Park in Wyndmoor, PA. Hargrove reflected on her time incarcerated at Riverside Correctional Facility, “A jail cell, that’s not a place for human beings, period. It doesn’t rehabilitate; it doesn’t correct — caging is a ritual of dehumanization, and with Covid-19, it could mean death. The only answer is freedom.” Di is an activist in her community for Black lives and LGBTQIAPK rights, as well as being an actor and comedian.


Whether it’s Covid-19, hepatitis, tuberculosis, or other infectious disease outbreaks that are regularly occurring inside carceral settings, we have to begin to think about these issues as constitutive of the prison industrial complex, not as aberrant. And the best strategy to help curb the spread of infectious diseases, and promote health among all people residing in the U.S., is to begin to put the same kind of energy, resources, and intellectual thought into what role a future without prisons can play in a future without Covid-19, or other pandemics. Bacteria and viruses will always exist and cause disease — but the conditions that breed pandemics are most often human-made.

Ending pandemics is going to take not only calls to defund the police or abolish the prison industrial complex, but to also plan for a new social contract. One that devises community-developed systems that provide for lives of dignity and joy, and minimize violence, greed, and deprivation. Our carceral system renders those who are locked in it as outside the parameters of citizens, of community members, and even outside notions of “the public.”

In order for public health to not ring as a meaningless phrase, we have to begin to tackle public health from an abolitionist framework, and not only expressed care or concern for the people on the outside who are not in prison now, or are not rendered as reasons for the carceral state to exist in the first place — Black, Latino, Native American, poor, homeless, queer, immigrant, transgender, sex worker, drug user, or dealer.

Our planning for future life should not end with our desire for the return of boozy brunches and taco Tuesdays. We should be planning for a future for human life. Prisons, jails, and detention centers are the antithesis of that by design.

Scottish Labour supports Daily Record's call for decriminalisation of drug use

Party bosses formally accept that drug addiction should be a health issue instead of a criminal one.

By Mark McGivern 16 OCT 2020

Needles strewn on the ground (Image: Tony Nicoletti Daily Record)


Scottish Labour has adopted the decriminalisation of drugs as official policy.

The moves by the party came after the Daily Record’s campaign to treat drug addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one.

Since our bold front page declaration in July last year, the SNP voted at its party conference to adopt a similar stance.

Scottish Labour’s slow pace of reform frustrated senior MSPs like health spokesperson Monica Lennon and Neil Findlay, who have constantly argued for the party to adopt a strategy that treats addiction better and takes the best components from approaches in other nations.

Monica Lennon has made many passionate appeals for reform of UK drug laws

Daily Record has demanded action on drugs crisis - but things only get worse

The Daily Record has campaigned for the decriminalisation of drugs.

In May last year, Record journalist Mark McGivern joined MP Alison Thewliss in a walk around the side streets, alleys and wastelands between Glasgow’s Barras market and the Calton.

He also witnessed Peter Krykant’s efforts to reach out to heroin and cocaine users on the same streets in recent days.

Mark’s view echoes that of activists and politicians in progressive places he’s visited, like Barcelona and Lisbon, who believe it’s insanity to block facilities that help drug users at a time of huge crisis.

He said: "The drug scene tour in 2020 threw up images that would shock most people in Glasgow or anywhere else.

"After the Record’s story, a steady stream of journalists turned up from BBC to the Channel 4 to the BBC and various international media.

"They’d all come to see the terrible drug devastation for themselves in the world’s worst nation for drug deaths.

"But the outrage hasn’t resulted in any significant changes.

"The Scottish Government continues to throw miserly sums at drugs initiatives, with none of the promised radical responses either emerging or being acted on.

"And the deaths are soaring, possibly faster than ever, although our ongoing toxicology shambles means we can’t say until December this year what was happening in 2019.

"A generation of drug users continue to mix their methadone scripts with the heroin it’s meant to replace.

"There is barely a user to be found that doesn’t top up with the “street Valium” that kills the benefit of the therapy - and brings death in ever increasing numbers.

"The Scottish Government seems incapable of doing anything about it.

"Drug Consumption Rooms won’t solve Scotland’s drug deaths crisis.

"But blocking them underlines that the UK Government don’t really care that much."

Health Canada adds 5 hand sanitizers to recall list, cites potential health risk

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes A man dispenses hand sanitizer in a shopping mall in the Montreal borough of Pointe-Claire, Saturday, March 14, 2020.

Health Canada has added five new more products to its growing list of hand sanitizers deemed to be a potential health risk to the public.

Read more: As recall list grows, here are some hand sanitizer dos and don’ts

On Tuesday, the agency updated its list of recalled products. The following five hand sanitizers have been added:

Last Best Brewing and Distilling Hand Sanitizer

Nomad Hand Sanitizer (Lemongrass), produced by Rocky Mountain Soap Company

Prairie Potions Purify Hand Sanitizer and Antibacterial Spray

Sanix - Gel d'alcool pour les mains avec émollients, 70 per cent alcool éthylique 250 mL

Sanix - Gel d'alcool pour les mains avec émollients, 70 per cent alcool éthylique 4L

The recall was initially issued in June, after a number of hand sanitizers were deemed to be unsafe for use.

According to Health Canada, the products have been recalled because they contain products that are not permitted -- like technical-grade ethanol -- or because they have been improperly labelled or are missing important information.

Anyone who has the products is advised to stop using them immediately, and consult a health-care professional if they have any concerns.

Since June, the list has grown to include 108 hand sanitizers.

The full list of recalled products can be found on the Health Canada website.

According to the recall notice, those looking to dispose of the recalled products should follow municipal or regional guidelines on how to dispose of them, or return them to their local pharmacy.

Mitch McConnell's disturbing chuckle 
Opinion by Jill Filipovic

Mitch McConnell appears to think this is some kind of joke.

© WKYT

At a televised debate Monday night, Amy McGrath, who is running against McConnell for a US Senate seat from Kentucky, noted again and again that a pandemic has plunged the country into an unrelenting crisis and McConnell's Republican-controlled Senate is refusing to do anything to alleviate the pain. In response, McConnell laughed. And laughed. And laughed.


And then he blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

More than 210,000 Americans are dead. At least 26 million people are collecting unemployment benefits, and many more than that are unemployed, underemployed, or in danger of losing their jobs.

More than 600,000 women left the workforce in September alone (compared with 78,000 men), according to government data.

And while the Republican controlled Senate, where McConnell is the majority leader, can get it together to hold lightning-speed confirmation hearings aimed at thrusting Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court before the November 3 election, they have shown no such ability to advance a new relief package for those hundreds of millions of Americans struggling — many with jobs and lives in ruins — as a deadly disease continues its rampage through their communities.

A relief bill is sitting on Mitch "I know how to make deals" McConnell's desk, and he's pushed it aside.

And there's really no charitable reading possible for McConnell's chuckling at a debate over the question of Covid relief.

There's nothing funny about the utter, unconscionable failures over which this Senate Majority Leader has presided. There's nothing funny about more Americans dead from Covid-19 than died in World War I, Vietnam, the Korean War, and the Iraq war combined. Or that while the US contributes just 4% percent of the world's population, it makes up 20% of the world's Covid deaths.

But the point is not only that McConnell found something to laugh about in Covid deaths, although it was striking that chortling was the response he reached for. His laughter-as-answer to McGrath came off as something else, and a reaction that will be familiar to many women: Condescension and dismissiveness. You foolish girl ... You just don't understand how it works. (It's an illuminating bit of video, if you haven't yet watched.)

As for the actual metrics of chaos that McGrath laid at his feet — the unemployed Americans, the dead Americans — McConnell couldn't even pretend to care. The effect was one of arrogance — not to mention stunningly cold and even sexist.

"She mentions she was in the Marines about every other sentence," McConnell said, derisively. "I think her entire campaign is: she's a Marine, she's a mom, and I've been there (in Washington) too long." Translation: She's just a Marine and just a mom; she doesn't know what she's doing, which is why she's questioning what I've done.

The defense McConnell offered for his do-nothing party is that the other side won't negotiate — even though House Democrats did indeed pass a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill early this month, which McConnell has rejected. And McConnell can manage to rally his troops to, as McGrath put it, "ram through a Supreme Court nominee right now, instead of negotiating, which is what he should have been doing all summer long to make that happen."

Despite being a member of the party of personal responsibility, McConnell refuses to accept accountability for the Senate's dereliction of duty on additional Covid relief for Americans. Instead, he blames Pelosi, who gets the bulk of his ire, and he heaps condescension on another woman — his political opponent, McGrath — for having the temerity to even ask.

Kentucky is currently facing a backlog of some 75,000 unresolved unemployment claims — state residents who are out of a job but unable to collect much-needed benefits. Drug deaths, obesity rates and cancer rates are all stunningly high. About 1 in 4 children in Kentucky lives in poverty — and that was before Covid-19 wiped out tens of thousands of Kentucky jobs.

The state saw a remarkable drop in the percentage of uninsured residents, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), going from 66% uninsured in 2010 to a mere 5.5% uninsured by 2019.

But now, with his state, and the country, trapped in the teeth of a pandemic, McConnell has forced confirmation hearings for a conservative Supreme Court nominee who many believe would join in a decision to obliterate the ACA in a case set to come before the court in just a few weeks.

Now the question is: Will Kentucky voters agree that this is all a laughing matter?

Around the world in 11 days: Bar-tailed godwit breaks own record, flying from Alaska to New Zealand

A 12,000-kilometre non-stop round-the-world flight from Alaska to New Zealand would tire out even the most seasoned air traveller, without the help of a snack, a nap or some distracting entertainment. For the male bar-tailed godwit, on the other hand, it’s a piece of cake.

© Provided by National Post 

Scientists believe the bar-tailed godwit does not sleep on its long journeys, despite flapping its wings non-stop

Scientists say the bird has set a new world record for avian non-stop flight, after tracking its route over 11 days from southwest Alaska to a bay near Auckland, flying at speeds of up to 55 km/h.

“They are designed like a jet fighter. Long, pointed wings and a really sleek design which gives them a lot of aerodynamic potential,” Dr. Jesse Conklin told the Guardian of the bird’s feat. Conklin is a scientist with the Global Flyaway Network , a worldwide partnership between researchers who study epic migratory patterns.

Researchers at the Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre, southeast of Auckland, had caught and tagged the bird and 20 others in late 2019. The bird, labelled as 4BBRW due to the blue, blue, red and then white rings on its legs, had been fitted with a satellite tag on its back. Scientists say the bird, along with four others, left from the Alaskan mudflats on Sept. 16, where they had feasted for two months on clams and worms.

The birds, according to the scientists, headed south over the Aleutian Islands and then onto the Pacific Ocean, passing over Hawaii and Fiji. Scientists believe strong easterly winds along the way prolonged the birds’ journey and pushed them towards Australia.

© Getty Images The bar-tailed godwit has broken its own world record for avian flight after flying 12,200 km from Alaska to New Zealand.

“They are flying over open ocean for days and days in the mid-Pacific; there is no land at all. Then they get to New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea where there are quite a few islands and, we might be anthropomorphising, but it really looks like they start spotting land and sort of think: ‘Oh, I need to start veering or I will miss New Zealand’,” Conklin told the Guardian.

The satellite recorded a point-to-point flight of 12,854 kilometres, but scientists have estimated that the distance travelled will have been around 12,200 kilometres once rounding errors are accounted for. The previous longest non-stop flight on record was by a bird that flew 11,680 kilometres. That effort was recorded in 2007, and it was also by a bar-tailed godwit (on that occasion female).

While the male bird, which weighs between 190 grams and 400 grams, can double in size before a long flight, scientists say it’s also able to shrink its internal organs to lessen the carried load.

Scientists believe, but have not yet proven, that the birds do not sleep on their journey, despite flapping their wings non-stop. “They have an incredibly efficient fuel-to-energy rate,” Conklin said.

“There are other birds that make similar-scale flights of say 10,000 (kilometres) but there are not a whole load of places in the world where it is necessary,” Conklin said. “So it is not necessarily that this is the only bird capable of it – but it is the only bird that needs to do it.”

The route along the Pacific functions as an ‘ecological corridor,’ scientists suggest, mostly because it is relatively free of disease and predators. However, climate change could soon render it an unsuitable route, as the frequencies and strengths of the winds along the passage change.

Dissidents of the Turkish government are living in fear in Canada

Mehmet Bastug, Lecturer, Criminology, Lakehead University and Davut Akca, Researcher, Forensic Behavioural Science and Justice Studies, University of Saskatchewan 1 day ago

Turkey’s long arm and espionage activities against dissidents living in exile in Canada has become a growing concern. As revealed in a startling recent news report, 15 Turkish-Canadians have been targeted by the Turkish government within the scope of a “terrorism” investigation.

© (Turkish Presidency via AP) Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan applauds during a conference in Istanbul in July 2020 as lawmakers made speeches before voting on a bill that would give the government greater powers to regulate social media.

Needless to say, the term “terrorist” has become a commonly applied label in Turkey describing almost all opponents of the Turkish government, in and out of the country. Turkey’s operations in Canada have an impact that goes beyond its immediate targets. Such planned and organized espionage activities could pose a danger to public safety.

In the last several years, the Turkish state engaged in a three-phase campaign abroad to silence its own citizens who are critical of the government:

Propaganda activities through Turkish state entities and pro-government civil society organizations to discredit opposition groups;

Intelligence-gathering and espionage activities;

Intimidation, threats and abduction.

Defaming dissidents

Turkish authorities have been organizing defamatory propaganda activities against the dissidents.

The Telegraph in the U.K., for example, recently reported that mosques and community centres with links to Turkey in Britain are used to disperse anti-Kurdish propaganda. Similarly, as posted on the Facebook page of the Turkish Canadian Religious Foundation, the religious affairs office of the Turkish Consulate General in Toronto organized a mosque visit and delivered booklets against opposition groups, apparently to demonize them in the eyes of other Islamic groups in greater Toronto area.

In the last several years, Turkey has been aggressively gathering intelligence about its citizens living in exile. It’s also been using certain organizations and communities as its eyes and ears to spy on dissidents.

An example of this is DITIB, a state-funded Turkish-Islamic union that runs more than 900 mosques in Germany. Imams of DITIB were accused by German authorities of gathering intelligence about regime critics on behalf of the Turkish government.

© (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) People walk along a street in front of the DITIB mosque in Cologne, Germany, in March 2020.

Such activities are being watched by authorities with concern and are believed to pose “a danger to the internal peace.”

Threats, disappearances, torture

Many opponents have been the victims of enforced disappearance. As reported by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, dissidents on Turkey have been forcibly disappeared and tortured by government agents. There are also cases where they were abducted abroad, particularly in countries ruled by corrupt and authoritarian regimes.

Haaretz reported that the current Turkish government snatched over 100 dissidents from other countries and brought them back to Turkey. The recent revelations from an imprisoned Turkish mob leader in Argentina on how some Turkish government officials had recruited him to kill American pastor Andrew Brunson demonstrated that mafia-type government operations aren’t rare.

Intimidation is another tactic used to spy on opponents. Turkish agents threatened regime critics to convince them to provide information about targeted groups and organizations abroad. Those whose immediate family members are still in Turkey are particularly targeted.

According to a recording obtained by Radio Sweden, the chairman of a lobby organization with ties to the Turkish state told a member of the Gulen movement — a group that has become a target of the government — that his wife, who was in Turkey at the time, would be arrested if he does not co-operate with Turkish authorities.
Fear of abduction

In a recent research project with two colleagues, we examined how the activities of Turkish authorities in Canada influenced the daily lives and social interactions of dissidents.

The research revealed their fear of the Turkish state. Our findings indicate they’ve made significant changes in their lives to protect themselves. These changes include moving to another neighbourhood or city, changing daily routines and avoiding being in certain places and attending group activities.

They are also subjected to hate speech by their fellow nationals who have emotional or material ties with Turkish government. As a result of their experiences, they prefer not to connect with other Turkish people because they fear they’ll be spied on, abducted or forcibly returned Turkey.

For some dissidents, the fear of being oppressed by the Turkish government persists even in Canada. However, many of them view Canada as a safe country where they can raise their voices through democratic channels. They also hope that Turkey will ultimately abandon its aggressive policies against opposing voices and respect human rights in the future.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.