Philippa Kaur

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    The World Must Not Forget Yemen

    In 2020, 24.3 million people, or 80% of the population in Yemen, were at risk of hunger and disease, with 14.4 million in acute need of assistance. A political solution is necessary to end the war and achieve lasting peace. This may take time. The international community must provide the necessary funding for the various UN agencies, the World Bank and NGOs on the ground. In the long term, Yemen will need continued funding and support to rebuild its infrastructure that has been devastated by the war. In addition to addressing the humanitarian crisis, investing in Yemen is important to the stability of the region.

    Cautiously Optimistic: The Biden Administration’s Options in Yemen

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    Yemen has suffered the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis since 2017. Nearly a quarter of a million people have died, over half from indirect causes such as a lack of food, health services or necessary infrastructure. As Abeer Fowzi, the deputy nutrition coordinator at the International Rescue Committee, has put it, “Never before have Yemenis faced so little support from the international community — or so many simultaneous challenges.” The conflict, which began in 2014, has devastated Yemen’s economy. The Yemeni rial has depreciated to an all-time low, making essential goods unaffordable. Foreign reserves, necessary to maintain the stability of a currency, have dried up.

    Funding Draught

    In addition to dealing with the economic costs of war, external factors like the COVID-19 crisis and increases in oil prices have created further barriers. Remittances are down 70%, largely due to decreased wages abroad caused by the pandemic. At the same time, a spike in international oil prices has created fuel shortages, particularly in the northern governorates. Decreased mobility has created a barrier to delivering goods and services while constraining access to income opportunities. Overall, reducing the ease of transport has limited basic commerce and increased the difficulty of delivering humanitarian aid while reducing access to critical hospital care.

    The war between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels sparked a humanitarian crisis, and the economic crisis has made the situation more desperate. Yemen was already the poorest country in the Arab world before the war broke out in 2014. Deteriorating economic conditions could leave Yemen the poorest country in the world this year if a peace deal is not reached and critical humanitarian aid is not delivered.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The economic effects of war combined with a strong dependency on imports have forced the country to be highly reliant on international humanitarian aid. This has proved to be a challenge in 2020. Of the $3.4 billion required by the UN, $1.5 billion — less than half — has been delivered as of December 2020. Donor country budget constrictions due to the pandemic are largely to blame.

    “This is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, yet we don’t have the resources we need to save the people who are suffering and will die if we don’t help. The consequences of underfunding are immediate, enormous and devastating. Nearly every humanitarian worker has had to tell a hungry family or someone who is ill that we can’t help them because we don’t have funding,” said Lise Grande, humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, in a statement in September.

    Until the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels reach peace, Yemen will continue to rely on external actors to prevent further loss of life. Donor countries should continue their financial commitments in order for immediate humanitarian aid to be delivered. The World Bank plays a crucial role in Yemen, providing $1.8 billion in emergency interventions. Support for these projects is vital: If the current trajectory continues, the number of food-insecure people could reach 17 million, or nearly two-thirds of the population.

    Immigration restrictions provide yet another obstacle. Remittances from abroad play a considerable role in the country’s economy. As the rial continues to weaken, foreign currency sent by Yemenis abroad is essential for basic necessities. As the newly sworn-in Biden administration lifts the “Muslim ban,” it will make it easier for Yemenis to establish themselves in the United States and provide remittances for their families at home, in addition to providing another lifeline to the 3.6 million Yemeni refugees.

    Until the Violence Stops

    Full economic recovery is not possible until the violence stops. However, foreign exchange injections are critical to stabilizing the rial in the meantime. If Yemen can increase its foreign exchange reserves, inflation will decrease, making basic goods and services affordable. In the long term, Yemen, like many war-torn countries, will need more than humanitarian aid to achieve stability. Funding should be used toward rebuilding hospitals; nearly one in five districts currently lack doctors. Rebuilding the broken education system is also a critical infrastructure project. Almost 2 million children are out of school, and three-quarters of public-school teachers across 11 governorates have gone without pay for two years.

    A vital step to economic stability is a stable central bank. Because the Houthi rebels were able to seize the capital Sanaa, the Yemeni government relocated the central bank to the port city of Aden, essentially dividing the bank in two. The new location is under constant attack. Earlier this year, southern separatists seized a consignment of $20 million intended for the central bank. Unifying the divided banks will not be likely until peace is achieved.

    While millions of Yemenis anxiously await a resolution to the conflict, now in its seventh year, donor countries must do their part to mitigate the humanitarian catastrophe. If peace is reached, for Yemen to fully recover from the economic devastation of war, it will need help beyond humanitarian aid: rebuilding its schools, hospitals, roads, government infrastructure and cultural institutions — everything that is critical to future generations and a self-sufficient economy. Investing in Yemen is a commitment not only to ending the most devastating humanitarian crisis of our time, but also to the future stability of the Middle East.

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    in World Politics

    Donald Trump Proves That It’s the System, Stupid

    “It’s the economy, stupid,” a catchphrase coined in the 1990s by American political strategist James Carville, made George H. W. Bush — who won the First Gulf War for Americans — a one-term president, catapulting Bill Clinton into the White House. As Donald Trump’s one-term presidency winds down with an attempted insurrection, widespread social media …
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    What If America Doesn’t Recover From Trump?

    With two-thirds of Republicans still believing that President Joe Biden’s election was fraudulent, the Republican Party faces what could prove to be an existential fork in the road. Does it double down on Trump and Trumpism at this juncture or does it reject his divisive legacy root and branch much the same way that McCarthyism …
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    Mike Pompeo’s Dismal Legacy

    As the transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden takes place, pundits have begun offering political obituaries of prominent personalities associated with the outgoing administration. Mike Pompeo, for example. At 57, his career may not be over, but there is a sense in which, were it to be revived on the national stage, the nation …
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    in US Politics

    Post-inauguration, restoring the soul of Biden’s America must be truly inclusive

    Over the past few months, I’ve been editing a book about soulful beliefs, practices and feelings that overflow from their religious and spiritual origins into secular and profane spaces. I’ve also been wondering what Joe Biden means when he talks about restoring the soul of America.
    In a country fatigued by COVID-19, Zoom calls and a president who thought he was entitled to grab the bodies and attention of his fellow Americans, it appears that Biden wants to offer us some solace. A politics of kindness that permits intentional listening and introspection. Or at least a news cycle that is less taxing, chaotic and demanding.
    Such discussions of the American soul are often interpreted through the prism of Biden’s Catholicism and Irish ancestry. On occasion, they are also read as a sign that we will be returning to the tone and texture of the Barack Obama years and the calm authority of “no-drama Obama.” Yet they are rarely connected to what the African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois called the “souls of Black folk.”
    It remains difficult for Americans who live in a racially segregated country to consider how African American social and political thought might have informed the thinking of an “average Irish guy” about soul.

    Communicating with a post-soul generation
    Even though Biden was a moderate Irish American who was psychically distant from the activist fervour of the 1960s, he participated in an American culture transfixed by Martin Luther King Jr.’s soulful call for people to be judged on the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.
    He also lived through a period in which Black artists in music, performance, dance, fashion, food, film, literature and visual culture advanced a thrilling vision of soul power.
    Obama and Kamala Harris are too young to have participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and are, in age or temperament, part of a “post-soul generation” . Yet, because of their skin colour and Biden’s ability to work with segregationist senators in the 1970s and ‘80s, the American media remains more likely to associate them with the soulful, redemptive humanism of the 1960s than Biden.
    Kamala Harris is sworn in as U.S. Vice President. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
    The outcry over one of Biden’s gaffes during the 2008 presidential campaign is one revealing example of what Obama might call the “chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.” After describing Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden was thought to have perpetuated antiquated stereotypes about African American intelligence and cleanliness. Or, at the very least, was portrayed as a political dinosaur surprised by the existence of an African-American candidate who appeared articulate, bright and clean to mainstream America.
    ‘People like us’
    While Biden was criticized for his ham-fisted attempts to make it clear that he did not think “all Blacks look alike,” a younger generation of post-soul politicians were praised for strategically using the phrase “people who look like me.”
    After George Zimmerman deemed Trayvon Martin a suspicious young man wearing a hoodie and fatally shot him in 2012, Obama didn’t point out that Martin was vulnerable to such violence because of racialized ways of seeing and stereotypes about young Black men wearing hoodies. Instead, he chose to acknowledge the power of family metaphors in American popular culture and noted that, if he had a son, he would “look like” Trayvon Martin.
    When Harris became Vice-President-elect, we were similarly bombarded with articles about how she sent a message of hope to young women of colour who “looked like” her. Harris is also featured on the front cover of Leadership Looks Like Me, a colouring book containing affirmations meant to inspire children and adults alike.
    A mural depicting Kamala Harris and Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C. Getting individual people of colour into powerful positions should be a means to tackle structural inequalities, not a goal in and of itself. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
    For my book about the history of soulful resistance, I interviewed African Americans who participated in a civil rights movement or produced work that was deeply inspired by a 1960s protest ethic. Many noted their discomfort with the contemporary discourse of “people who look like me.”
    Some associated it with an image-based and superficial culture. Others connected it to profiteers and schemers who appropriate collective struggles for personal or career advancement. All were convinced that getting individual people of colour into powerful positions was a means to tackle structural inequalities, not a goal in and of itself.
    They were concerned that a smattering of new faces in slick, official forms of multiculturalism may distract or co-opt campaigns to challenge racial hierarchy and neo-colonialism wherever it may be in the world.
    If we are to include the substantive contributions of African Americans in our discussion of an American soul, we cannot presume that this is limited to the mere inclusion of African Americans in a Biden cabinet that “looks like America.” After all, such visual diversity may divert people away from a Black political identity that is defined by mental attitude and consciousness rather than skin tone.
    We may feel too fatigued to question who benefits from the discourse of “people who look like us.” But if we are to deepen and develop our understanding of the American soul, we can’t ignore the seriously soulful campaigns in the 1960s that talked about building solidarity with “people who feel like us” and participate in the struggle for freedom and justice with us. More

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    in World Politics

    The British Far Right Has a New Voice of Unity

    In 45 years, by 2066, native white British people are set to become a minority in the UK. This is the claim, accompanied by census data dating back to 1801, made by the Patriotic Alternative, an organization launched in September 2019 that celebrates anti-Semitism and white nationalism in Britain. The Patriotic Alternative is run by …
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    Welcome to The Economist’s Technological Idealism

    Every publication has a worldview. Each cultivates a style of thought, ideology or philosophy designed to comfort the expectations of its readers and to confirm a shared way of perceiving the world around them. Even Fair Observer has a worldview, in which, thanks to the diversity of its contributors, every topic deserves to be made visible from multiple angles. Rather than emphasizing ideology, such a worldview places a quintessential value on human perception and experience.

    Traditional media companies profile their readership and pitch their offering to their target market’s preferences. This often becomes its central activity. Reporting the news and informing the public becomes secondary to using news reporting to validate a worldview that may not be explicitly declared. Some media outlets reveal their bias, while others masquerade it and claim to be objective. The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has frequently highlighted the bias of newspapers like The New York Times that claim to be objective but consistently impose their worldview. In contrast, The Economist, founded in 1843, has, throughout its history, prominently put its liberal — and now neoliberal — worldview on public display. 

    Zambia Is The Economist’s Damsel in Distress

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    Many of The Economist’s articles are designed to influence both public opinion and public policy. One that appeared at the end of last week exemplifies the practice, advertising its worldview. It could be labeled “liberal technological optimism.” The title of the article sets the tone: “The new era of innovation — Why a dawn of technological optimism is breaking.” The byline indicates the author: Admin. In other words, this is a direct expression of the journal’s worldview.

    The article begins by citing what it assesses as the trend of pessimism that has dominated the economy over the past decade. The text quickly focuses on the optimism announced in the title. And this isn’t just any optimism, but an extreme form of joyous optimism that reflects a Whiggish neoliberal worldview. The “dawn” cliché makes it clear that it is all about the hope of emerging from a dark, ominous night into the cheer of a bright morning with the promise of technological bliss. Central to the rhetoric is the idea of a break with the past, which takes form in sentences such as this one: “Eventually, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics could upend how almost everything is done.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Upend:

    As used by most people: knock over, impede progress, halt a person’s or an object’s stability.

    As used by The Economist: to move forward, to embody progress.

    Contextual Note

    In recent decades, the notion of “disruptive innovation” has been elevated to the status of the highest ideal of modern capitalism. Formerly, disruption had a purely negative connotation as a factor of risk. Now it has become the obligatory goal of dynamic entrepreneurs. Upending was something to be avoided. Now it is actively pursued as the key to success. Let “synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics” do their worst as they disrupt the habits and lifestyles of human beings, The Economist seems to be saying the more upending they entrepreneurs manage to do, the more their profits will grow.

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    In the neoliberal scheme of things, high profit margins resulting from the automatic monopoly of disruptive innovation will put more money in the hands of those who know how to use it — the entrepreneurs. Once they have settled the conditions for mooring their yachts in Monte Carlo, they may have time to think about creating new jobs, the one thing non-entrepreneurial humans continue to need and crave.

    For ordinary people, the new jobs may mean working alongside armies of artificially intelligent robots, though in what capacity nobody seems to know. In all likelihood, disruptive thinkers will eventually have to imagine a whole new set of “bullshit jobs” to replace the ones that have been upended. The language throughout the article radiates an astonishingly buoyant worldview at a moment of history in which humanity is struggling to survive the effects of an aggressive pandemic, to say nothing of the collapse of the planet’s biosphere, itself attributable to the unbridled assault of disruptive technology over the past 200 years.

    What The Economist wants us to believe is that the next round of disruption will be a positive one, mitigating the effects of the previous round that produced, alongside fabulous financial prosperity, a series of increasingly dire negative consequences.

    The article’s onslaught of rhetoric begins with the development of the cliché present in the title telling us that “a dawn of technological optimism is breaking.” The authors scatter an impressive series of positively resonating ideas through the body of the text: “speed,” “prominent breakthroughs,” “investment boom,” “new era of progress,” “optimists,” “giddily predict,” “advances,” “new era of innovation,” “lift living standards,” “new technologies to flourish,” “transformative potential,” “science continues to empower medicine,” “bend biology to their will,” “impressive progress,” “green investments,” “investors’ enthusiasm,” “easing the constraints,” “boost long-term growth,” “a fresh wave of innovation” and “economic dynamism.”

    The optimism sometimes takes a surprising twist. The authors forecast that in the race for technological disruption, “competition between America and China could spur further bold steps.” Political commentators in the US increasingly see conflict with China. Politicians are pressured to get tough on China. John Mearsheimer notably insists on the necessity of hegemonic domination by the US. Why? Because liberal capitalism must conquer, not cooperate. But in the rosy world foreseen by The Economist, friendship will take the day.

    Historical Note

    We at the Daily Devil’s Dictionary believe the world would be a better place if schools offered courses on how to decipher the media. That is unlikely to happen any time soon because today’s schools are institutions that function along the same lines as the media. They have been saddled with the task of disseminating an official worldview designed to support the political and economic system that supports them. 

    Official worldviews always begin with a particular reading of history. Some well-known examples show how nations design their history, the shared narrative of the past, to mold an attitude about the future. In the US, the narrative of the war that led to the founding of the nation established the cultural idea of the moral validity associated with declaring independence, establishing individual rights and justifying rebellion against unjust authority. Recent events in Washington, DC, demonstrate how that instilled belief, when assimilated uncritically, can lead to acts aiming at upending both society and government.

    In France, the ideas associated with the French Revolution, a traumatically upending event, spawned a different type of belief in individual rights. For the French, it must be expressed collectively through organized actions of protest on any issue. US individualism, founded on the frontier ideal of self-reliance, easily turns protestation into vigilante justice by the mob. In France, protests take the form of strikes and citizen movements.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The British retain the memory of multiple historical invasions of their island by Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans and more recent attempts by Napoleon and Hitler. The British people have always found ways of resisting. This habit led enough of them to see the European Union as an invader to vote for Brexit.

    The Italian Renaissance blossomed in the brilliant courts and local governments of its multiple city-states. Although Italy was unified in 1870, its citizens have never fully felt they belonged to a modern nation-state. The one serious but ultimately futile attempt was Mussolini’s fascism, which represented the opposite extreme of autonomous city-states.

    The article in The Economist contains some examples of its reading of economic history. At the core of its argument is this reminder: “In the history of capitalism rapid technological advance has been the norm.” While asserting neoliberal “truths,” like that “Governments need to make sure that regulation and lobbying do not slow down disruption,” it grudgingly acknowledges that government plays a role in technological innovation. Still, the focus remains on what private companies do, even though it is common knowledge that most consumer technology originated in taxpayer-funded military research. 

    Here is how The Economist defines the relationship: “Although the private sector will ultimately determine which innovations succeed or fail, governments also have an important role to play. They should shoulder the risks in more ‘moonshot’ projects.” The people assume the risks and the corporations skim off the profit. This is neoliberal ideology in a nutshell.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    America divided: never has the pursuit of happiness seemed so far off

    As Washington hosts a presidential inauguration under strict security lockdown, the US has rarely been more divided and unhappy. The shocking mob invasion of Capitol Hill is the most obvious manifestation of this – but in the background lurks the the COVID-19 pandemic. This has taken a horrific toll on human life and wellbeing – the US currently leads the world in confirmed cases and fatalities.
    According to the Johns Hopkins University database, by January 14 2021 more than 23 million Americans had contracted the disease and nearly 400,000 had died from it. The disease itself and government efforts to combat it have precipitated a major economic crash and huge social dislocations culminating in a riot in the nation’s capital. While this was sparked by Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the validity of the election, the pandemic has created an atmosphere of misery and discontent for many Americans.
    There have been serious negative psychological effects of the pandemic in the form of a significant erosion of feelings of life satisfaction. Our Cometrends pre-election survey of 2,500 people aged 18 and older across the US, which we conducted immediately before the November 3 presidential election, provides a grim snapshot of life in American as it chose new leadership.
    Using data gathered before the pandemic began, the 2020 World Happiness Report documented that the average level of life satisfaction in the US was 6.9 points on a scale of zero to ten, where zero means the respondent has the “worst life imaginable” and ten means the “best life imaginable”. But our new survey shows Americans’ average happiness score just before the election had dropped to 6.4 points.
    Life satisfaction before the election
    Average levels of life satisfaction among racial groups in the US before November 3 2020 election. 2019 Cometrends Pre-Election Survey., Author provided
    The new survey data also show levels of life satisfaction differ significantly in between ethnic and racial groups. While differences in life satisfaction between these groups in the US population are not new, our survey evidence testifies that the economic and psychological effects of the pandemic and efforts to mitigate it also vary significantly across ethnic and racial lines.
    As the graph below shows, significantly more people from ethnic minority groups said that they had encountered economic difficulties because of the pandemic. The story of psychological difficulties is similar. White people are much less likely to say they have experienced mental health problems than ethnic minorities.
    Economic and psychological problems due to COVID-19
    Percentages in racial/ethnic groups reporting economic and psychological problems caused by COVID-19. 2019 Cometrends Pre-Election Survey, Author provided
    When we looked at the effect of COVID on life satisfaction, taking into account other relevant factors such as income, age, confidence in political authorities, we found the virus has exerted significant negative effects on life satisfaction independently of these other factors.
    Political fallout
    Penned nearly 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence identifies “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” as “inalienable rights” for all. COVID-19 put these rights at serious risk. Although the massively negative economic impact of the pandemic and government attempts to contain it became apparent almost immediately, deleterious psychological effects were recognised more slowly.
    New survey evidence shows that the latter effects are widespread and have precipitated large decreases in life satisfaction. In the same way that COVID cases and fatalities have been concentrated in vulnerable groups, the less-well educated, individuals on lower incomes, and ethnic minorities have borne the brunt of the psychological harm, too.
    Life satisfaction has many important consequences, some of which are political. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our Cometrends post-election survey, consisting of 1,959 participants from the pre-election study, showed supporters of Joe Biden judged the electoral process very favourably, while most Trump voters were highly critical. But we also found that people who reported low levels of life satisfaction were more likely to think the election was rigged.
    Partisan views of the election
    How Biden and Trump voters judge the presidential election. 2020 Cometrends Post-Election Survey, Author provided
    In part these contrasting judgements are products of the deep partisan and ideological animosities that have animated American voters throughout the Trump years. But statistical controls for these factors reveal that life satisfaction had a sizeable independent impact on judgements about the fairness of the election.
    Views of the election affected by people’s feelings of wellbeing
    Judgements about the 2020 presidential election (by levels of life satisfaction). 2020 Cometrends Post-Election Survey, Author provided
    The storming of Washington’s Capitol Building is only the latest in a series of violent protests and destructive riots that have occurred over the past year. The shocking event symbolises the profound political and psychological malaise that gripped America in the Trump era. One important consequence is that levels of life satisfaction have declined, especially in less privileged segments of the population.
    The incoming president faces many daunting tasks. Restoring political civility and helping to increase wellbeing in a fragmented and fractious electorate will be among the most important. More