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      Thoughts On Colonial History for Columbus Day

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      The 1619 Project, launched last year by The New York Times Magazine, injected the question of slavery into the core of the traditional narrative of US history. It raised the question not only of what counts in history but how history is taught. Implicitly, it calls into question the great dogma inculcated by schools and the media into generations of Americans: that they are citizens of the “greatest nation on earth.”

      The liberal Times editors knew what they were doing when they decided to promote the project and glean the rewards that come from putting forward an original and potentially provocative thesis consistent with the Democratic establishment’s commitment to identity politics and the party’s quest for black votes. In effect, the 1619 Project seeks to magnify aspects of US history that promote civil rights and black identity.

      The Uncertain Future of the Great Tradition of Propaganda

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      The 1619 Project turned out to be an immediate commercial success as “people lined up on the street in New York City to get copies.” It quickly earned several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times had clearly made the right bet. It even provoked the kind of reaction from conservative Republicans that the Times revels in, since its readership is 91% Democrat or leaning Democrat. 

      Republicans wasted no time coming to the defense of traditional history. Mike Pompeo, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz attacked the project for undermining what they deem to be the true vocation of history, whose purpose, as it is taught in schools, is to bolster Americans’ belief in their institutions. Senator Cotton even defended the institution of slavery as a “necessary evil,” passing it off as an innocent accident of history that was easily rectified by Abraham Lincoln (at the cost of 600,000 American lives). 

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      The New York Times then discovered an unanticipated problem. Some of its own editorialists are uncomfortable with the idea of giving such prominence to the question of slavery, not because it might dim the glory of past heroes, but possibly because it risks casting a shadow on the nature of the American economy itself, an institution The Times prefers to protect and promote.

      Times editorialist Bret Stephens, a lifelong Republican, underwent a conversion in 2017 in reaction both to President Donald Trump, whom he refused to vote for, and to his party’s support for the alleged pedophile Roy Moore in Alabama. He declared on that occasion that he “can never vote Republican again.” In an op-ed last week, Stephens felt impelled to announce and explain what nevertheless amounts to his alignment with Trump and other Republicans who have taken a stance against the 1619 Project. Trump himself has proposed to withhold federal funding from states that adopt the program.

      In an involved rhetorical exercise, Stephens begins by acknowledging that the ambitious project had “succeeded.” He congratulates its principal author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, on her “patriotic thought.” He then goes on to develop his subtle thought on the distinction between journalism and history, before citing everything that’s wrong with the 1619 Project. His main charge is that “it issued categorical and totalizing assertions that are difficult to defend on close examination.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Totalizing assertions:

      The usual content of all official history books used in education in most nations and most obviously in American textbooks printed in Texas and distributed throughout the United States

      Contextual Note

      “The Revisionaries,” a documentary released in 2013, revealed the disproportionate influence on the teaching of history of the Texas State Board of Education. It explains how the Texas Board “has the power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.” 

      More recently, Times correspondent Dana Goldstein highlighted the ideological contrasts between history textbooks produced in Texas and California. If Stephens is truly concerned by assertions that cannot be defended on close examination, he might want to examine the current textbooks children use. As Goldstein points out, “Conservatives have fought for schools to promote patriotism, highlight the influence of Christianity and celebrate the founding fathers.”

      Goldstein cites some examples. Concerning the issue of immigration, the Texas but not the California textbook contains a clearly “totalizing assertion” designed to please President Trump: “But if you open the border wide up, you’re going to invite political and social upheaval.” On climate change, the Texas textbook asserts “that American action on global warming may not make a difference if China, India, Russia and Brazil do not also act.” This is patently absurd, since anything that the “greatest consumer nation on earth” does will always make a difference.

      Stephens blames the 1619 Project for provoking a political reaction, something he apparently believes both journalism and education should avoid at all costs. “This was stepping into the political fray in a way that was guaranteed to invite not just right-wing blowback, but possible federal involvement,” he writes. But conservatives can always be counted on for blowback against anything that calls into question their dogmas.

      Historical Note

      In his essay, “The Missing Key to the Texas History Textbook Debate,” educator Kyle Ward reviews the history of US  history textbooks, a narrative that begins in 1826. That first textbook by Joseph Worcester launched the still persistent theme of the nation’s exceptional “greatness.” As an example, Ward cites Worcester’s totalizing assertion concerning Christopher Columbus — that “the discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever performed by man; and, considered in connection with its consequences, it is the greatest event of modern times.”

      For well into the 20th century, all the history textbooks that followed — at least until Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” — “told a similar story: that progress, democracy and the American people were all good; especially if said were white Protestants.” Schools “had one goal in mind when teaching history: to make every student a good, patriotic citizen.”

      Textbooks did evolve. In the latter half of the 20th century, the idea of becoming “a good, patriotic citizen” began to include the complementary idea that a good citizen was also a good consumer. Once history could go beyond recounting the deeds of great leaders and violent warriors, questions such as flight to the suburbs and consumerist culture could be included and treated both as social problems to be studied and specifically American achievements, on a par with the discovery of America. 

      The 1619 Project undoubtedly contains some factual errors and exaggerations. All histories do. Certain events it highlights may or may not merit the attention given to them as to their impact on the course of history. But every historical narrative does precisely that by selecting what best illustrates and accounts for specific factors of change at work at any given time. 

      Bret Stephens objects to his newspaper’s appeal to the idea of truth. “It is finally time to tell our story truthfully,” the Times Magazine proclaimed on its on its 1619 cover page. Stephens legitimately casts doubt on its truthfulness, citing historians who have critiqued its details. But no matter how well researched, history is inevitably a story, not a repository of scientific truth. Stories are never true in the scientific sense. The traditional narrative highlighting the founders’ foresight and America’s greatness is one story. But as a story, it depends on excluding other narratives, such as the 1619 Project.

      Stephens pleads the case for history that focuses on a guiding ideal — Thomas Jefferson’s “all men are created equal.” But history is rarely about imposing ideals. It is about establishing and consolidating power. 1776 was clearly about power. If we had access to Jefferson’s mind when he set out to challenge the English king, we would most likely discover that his idea was closer to all British men of means are created equal. He wasn’t thinking about humanity in general, but about a group of people who had created a community on the east coast of North America.

      Kyle Ward deserves the last word: “At the end of the day, it is not the history textbook that educates students about America’s past, but rather the teachers who develop the lesson plans, organize the instruction and assess students on what they know about history.” The meaning of history can never be found in the content of textbooks. It exists in the shared understanding developed between real people, whether members or a community or teachers working with students.

      *[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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      Government revive push to make apps like WhatsApp and iMessage weaken protections so they can read messages

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      End-to-end encryption lets users use messaging services without the owners of those services being able to access the conversations.Government representatives, including Home Secretary Priti Patel, US Attorney General Bill Barr, and others, said they are concerned that “encryption is applied in a way that wholly precludes any legal access to content”.The governments say they “support strong encryption, which plays a crucial role in protecting personal data, privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and cyber security.”However, with regards to certain crimes, such as child exploitation, the government should be allowed access to private channels.This access would:”Embed the safety of the public in system designs, thereby enabling companies to act against illegal content and activity effectively with no reduction to safety, and facilitating the investigation and prosecution of offences and safeguarding the vulnerable;”Enable law enforcement access to content in a readable and usable format where an authorisation is lawfully issued, is necessary and proportionate, and is subject to strong safeguards and oversight; and”Engage in consultation with governments and other stakeholders to facilitate legal access in a way that is substantive and genuinely influences design decisions.”WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are all end-to-end encrypted, while other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, and text messages are not.However if end-to-end encryption is ‘broken’, by allowing a backdoor for law enforcement agencies as these governments have suggested, it could allow malicious individuals the ability to access private conversations.Read moreMany large technology companies, advocacy groups, and the general public have criticised the use of backdoors.Earlier this year, when Zoom said that its free video calling service would not be end-to-end encrypted so it could work better with law enforcement, over 19,000 internet users signed a petition from Mozilla and the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) to Zoom in protest. Zoom eventually reversed the decision.“We reiterate that data protection, respect for privacy and the importance of encryption as technology changes and global Internet standards are developed remain at the forefront of each state’s legal framework”, the governments’ statement concludes.“However, we challenge the assertion that public safety cannot be protected without compromising privacy or cyber security”. More

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      A Ballot That Could Redefine the Rules of Chile’s Democracy

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      One recurring theme in Latin American politics is how regularly the rules of the constitutional game change. On average, Latin American countries rewrite their constitutions every 20 years. Until recently, Chile was an exception. The country’s transition to democracy in 1990 was based on rules dating from the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, but these were thrown into question by widespread social uprising in October 2019. This prompted leaders from across the political spectrum to back constitutional change as an exit route to the crisis.

      Will Chile Listen to Its People?

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      Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a referendum scheduled for April 2020 had to be postponed. But on October 25, Chileans will finally go to the ballot box to vote on whether they want a new constitution and, if so, how it should be drawn up. If the option of constitutional change wins, elections will be called for April 2021, with the goal of establishing an assembly that would write a new constitution within a maximum of 12 months.

      Other countries have faced similar challenges in their republican life. Chile’s political party system has hit an impasse, following in the footsteps of Colombia and Venezuela in the 1980s or Ecuador and Bolivia in the 1990s. As outlined in the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) 2020 report, “the Chilean party system has become increasingly fragmented and polarized in recent years, and is in a period of transition in which new actors are vying with powerful incumbents against a background of low public trust in political parties.”

      Recent protests came against a backdrop of a political elite that was entrenched in their positions of power, an increase in corruption scandals, falling popular trust in the system and a decrease in voter turnout.

      The social uprising in Chile was sparked by people’s high levels of personal debt and their sense of prevailing social injustice. An often-repeated rallying cry since 2019 has been that “Chile woke up,” although, in reality, progressive social activism dates from the mid-2000s.

      An Anti-Elite Uprising

      Inequality is not the only factor behind the recent protests in Chile. As in all of Latin America, socioeconomic inequality has been a constant variable for several decades. Protesters took aim at the powerful elites, voicing criticism at abuses of power in the spheres of politics, business, religion and the military. Over the past decade, price fixing among large private companies took place in pharmacies and supermarkets, altering the cost of toilet paper and a long list of other basic products.

      In addition, there was evidence of illegal financing of political campaigns, involving the majority of Chile’s political leaders. While crimes such as petty theft were punishable by jail, white collar crimes were punished with small fines or ridiculous penalties such as attending “ethics classes.”

      For decades, Chile, along with Uruguay and Costa Rica, stood out from the rest of Latin America because of the institutional strength of its government. But now, Chile is facing the progressive collapse of the traditional political party system.

      Widespread Calls for Reform

      In recent years, Chile’s political center has lost its hold. The left is highly fragmented, the right is more radical and there is a sharp drop in voter turnout, with less than 50% of eligible voters participating in presidential elections and less than 40% in municipal ones. The increased polarization of the elite has created a climate of confrontation. Political parties have stopped fulfilling their role as intermediaries, meaning that the protests are practically the only form of expressing social discontent.

      Faced with the crowds demonstrating on the streets, politicians kickstarted plans for the October referendum. Hopes for change are running high among many Chileans. A recent survey shows that 64% of the respondents are planning to vote and 74% support the idea of changing the constitution.

      Chile is likely to enter an intense period of change, encompassing the next presidential elections — in November 2021 — and the drafting of a new constitution. This offers scope for the elite to reconnect with citizens, who are tracking the process with both hope and suspicion. The next two years will likely involve uncertainty but also renewed politicization. As happened in Colombia in 1991, Chileans, facing a series of social crises, look set to opt to deepen democracy and to overturn their old constitutional guidelines.

      There is already evidence of change. After the October 2019 social uprising, for example, the political elite agreed to review fundamental aspects of the constitutional rule relating to indigenous people and social rights. If October’s ballot opens the door to a new constitution, it will likely include new rules on equality and reserved seats for indigenous peoples. For many Chileans, such a move is long overdue.

      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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      The Uncertain Future of the Great Tradition of Propaganda

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      The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, has lambasted the Trump administration for undermining a vestige of US foreign policy dating from the Cold War. In an extraordinarily sloppy article with the title “Trump cuts aid for pro-democracy groups in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran,” Borger excoriates the Trump administration for its radical decision to block the funding of political organizations working to destabilize certain foreign governments. He accuses the White House of putting “at increased risk” this vital work of supporting subversive movements in nations considered insufficiently deferential to the US.

      The victim Borger wants us to pity in the drama is the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a private non-profit technology company spawned by Radio Free Asia in 2012. In 2019, the OTF received a mandate for funding by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a global media agency of the US government. USAGM’s historic mission is “to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” In other words, though putatively independent, it is the US media propaganda arm, supervising Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio y Televisión Martí, Radio Free Asia and Alhurra, the historical pillars of what was once anti-Soviet, anti-communist propaganda.

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      Borger defines the OTF as “a small non-profit organization that develops technologies for evading cyber-surveillance and for circumventing internet and radio blackouts imposed by authoritarian regimes.” He avoids mentioning the fact, reported by Eli Lake for Bloomberg, that it was created at the initiative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It reflected her “vision heavily influenced by the Internet activism that helped organize the green revolution in Iran in 2009 and other revolutions in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011.”

      Borger presents OTF as a Silicon Valley-style innovative tech company seeking to do good in the world by providing “daily help to pro-democracy movements in installing and maintaining them, with the aim of staying at least one step ahead of the state.” These movements are, of course, agents of America’s expansive regime-change strategy that has effectively destabilized entire regions of the globe in the name of promoting democracy.

      Borger supposes that his readers will uncritically endorse the idea that promoting democratic ideals in places where people can’t vote is the honorable thing to do. He consciously hides from view the easily observable consequences of such campaigns in the past. These include the enduring chaos that typically follows the overthrow of regimes judged hostile to the US. It usually leads to installing and then supporting iron-fisted authoritarian regimes. And in the worst cases, the havoc spawns uncontrollable migration crises affecting entire regions.

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Pro-democracy movement:

      Any political organization dependent on resources and propaganda originating in the United States and dedicated to opposing a regime considered hostile to the US, whether or not the organization and its leaders have a real interest in, or respect for, democratic processes.

      Contextual Note

      The various “pro-democracy movements” the US has supported in the past have used the proclaimed commitment to democracy to mask what is essentially their intent of bolstering US political influence and paving the way for American and multinational business interests to control key features of state economies.

      The idea of democracy put forward by such movements has less to do with giving the people a voice than it does with imposing the “liberal” economic ideology that ensures social decisions will be delegated to the private sector. Instead of aiming at “the good of the people,” it puts in place policies focused on “the good of the economy,” which translates as the effective integration of a local economy into the global network of finance and trade.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Another key feature of the transformations effectuated by pro-democracy movements lies in the fact that they tend to be amenable to tolerating, if not encouraging, US military presence on or within their borders. In terms of the economy itself, following a pattern established in the US, what this means is that democracy has literally come to mean little more than a system of government open to control by the highest bidders. Such systems justify their claim to being a democracy by installing a constitution and organizing elections.

      The idea of democracy, even in the cultures of the developed nations of the West, has been reduced to a checklist with a single item: the holding of elections. The kinds of democratic regimes created by pro-democracy movements enable citizens to vote and even to organize political parties. But with an economy controlled essentially by external forces, any idea of independent rule quickly loses all meaning. Only those parties and those leaders that know how to comport with the major financial and industrial actors as well as comply with the requirements of an economy built around the dollar will have a chance of taking over the reins of government. And even that will be a game of appearances since the reins of the economy are in the hands of others.

      Historical Note

      Writing for the independent policy watchdog, Global Policy Forum, in 2008, Stephen Zunes described the observable patterns related to US support of pro-democracy movements in recent history. He emphasizes the largely negative effect that support has consistently produced across the globe, seriously tarnishing the nation’s image: “The United States has done for the cause of democracy what the Soviet Union did for the cause of socialism. Not only has the Bush administration given democracy a bad name in much of the world, but its high-profile and highly suspect ‘democracy promotion’ agenda has provided repressive regimes and their apologists an excuse to label any popular pro-democracy movement that challenges them as foreign agents, even when led by independent grassroots nonviolent activists.”

      The Guardian’s Julian Borger has no time to waste on helping his readers understand the broad historical context. That is not the business of newspapers like The Guardian, who see themselves as the voice of the reasonable left, like The New York Times and The Washington Post in the US. They prefer stories crafted as an attack on their perceived enemies on the right, even at the cost of obscuring understanding of the issues they expose. Borger’s story is newsworthy simply because it appears to reveal another of Trump’s many failings.

      No one can doubt that Trump has contributed singularly to compromising the international prestige and image of the United States. But as Zunes observed, the damage was already visible in 2008. President Barack Obama’s administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department maintained and sometimes amplified the existing trend. But Obama became famous for deploying his charm and rhetorical skills to create a much-needed veneer of comforting hyperreality. It changed little other than temporarily obscuring the perception of the real intentions for those who weren’t paying attention. 

      Borger doesn’t even bother to reveal to his readers the recent historical background of the conflict between OTF and USAGM, the details of which were compendiously reported by Axios on September 1. A paragraph labeled “Between the lines” provides the gist of the entire affair, based on “fresh evidence to support charges that the USAGM is trying to dismantle the OTF and other government-funded media agencies.”

      Even Axios fails to take the further step of exploring the deeper implications of this conflict. It helpfully reveals the suspicion some have that “the agency is withholding OTF funds in order to shift them to [a] new agency.” Though many of Trump’s actions have been in total contradiction with his stated aims, he has always expressed his desire to move US foreign policy away from the aggressive trends of the past and reduce overseas commitments. This latest move appears to be part of an attempt to dismantle some elements of the neo-imperial infrastructure.

      It would have been interesting to learn more about the “new agency” that USAGM intends to create: the Office of Internet Freedom. But neither article delves into that crucial question, though Axios at least mentions it and points to its importance. The journalistic result is that Axios provides some factual though inconclusive information on the story whereas Borger offers a what is little more than gossip and backbiting as part of a squabble, with the intention of confirming our impression that Trump is an irresponsible loser.

      *[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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      “Defund the Police”: A Simple Slogan for a Complex Problem

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      As Black Lives Matter protests continue to flare across the country and the presidential election looms, and with a Supreme Court seat suddenly in contention, law and order is front and center in American politics. The slogan “defund the police” in particular has become a lightning rod since gaining prominence following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor earlier this year.

      How to Defund the Police in Canada

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      In North Carolina, the Republican speaker of the House recently tried to tie state Democrats to proposals to defund the police. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott proposed legislation to freeze tax revenues for cities that vote to defund. And both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have accused each other of supporting defunding. Police reform has already come up in the first presidential and vice-presidential debates, and it will surely remain in the public eye between now and the election.

      Simple Slogan

      Politicians using the idea of defunding the police against their opponents is hardly surprising, especially given the emotional charge surrounding the slogan and the events that brought it to mainstream attention. But it’s also a gross misrepresentation of the slogan and the movement, which is inexcusable for anyone claiming to support police reform. Anyone who wants to be involved with an issue should at least make a good-faith effort to understand it. In the case of defunding the police, anyone motivated to learn more can turn to dozens of explainers in respected journalistic and academic outlets about the meaning of the phrase, its history and its implications.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Arguments for defunding the police are complicated and, in some cases, contradictory. But despite gaining recent notoriety, they are neither novel nor unusual. “Defund the police” did not magically appear this year. Discussions of abolishing law enforcement are more than a century old and build on the work of respected scholars, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Bertrand Russell. Police abolition gained steam alongside prison abolition movements in the 1960s under the guidance of activists and scholars such as Angela Davis. The defund the police movement built on those earlier campaigns.

      There is also data. Some cities defunded their police years ago and have information about the results. Unsurprisingly, the results are complicated. They depend on local circumstances as much as scholarly research. They represent varied implementations and are hard to compare. In short, they don’t easily conform to a given political perspective. The point, however, is that anyone who wants to understand what defunding the police entails has plenty of accessible resources.

      Not everyone needs to know a social movement’s complexities, of course, but even this brief history illustrates that “defund the police” has complex influences and evolving objectives despite the oversimplification of the slogan. Dismissing a movement because of its slogan may be good politics, but it’s bad policy. Slogans are powerful because they are simple, and they attract attention and motivate supporters. But simplification complicates meaning and leaves slogans open to critique.

      This has been a significant problem for “defund the police,” even among people who support the movement’s broader goals. The biggest misunderstandings of the slogan include the suggestions that it means that “there should be no police to protect the innocent,” that calls for defunding distract from meaningful reform or that defunding “invites anarchy.” It doesn’t mean any of these things.

      Good Controversy

      Oversimplification is a problem with all slogans. No matter how simple, however, they don’t erase an issue’s complexity. Simple slogans like “defund the police” still represent complicated contexts, histories and goals. And the complexity behind the “defund the police” slogan is a mere shadow of the complexity of the larger issues under discussion. Real efforts at police reform — reducing militarization, reducing shootings, funding social services, providing training and introducing accountability measures — are wrapped up with complicated municipal funding models, deeply-ingrained attitudes and beliefs, and entrenched incentive structures.

      In short, law enforcement reform is intensely complicated. It demands research, careful study and tough decisions. And the people who want to be involved in meaningful reform — politicians, law enforcement groups and citizens — need to be willing to evaluate the complications and make tough decisions. And here, people’s reactions to the slogan give us some insight.

      If a person can’t be trusted to learn about the “defund” slogan, how can they be trusted with the exceedingly complicated task of reforming law enforcement? Or if a person understands the slogan and still refuses to represent its complexities because it is politically or personally expedient, how can citizens, activists and voters trust their motives? Refusing to learn about the slogan or weigh its complications carefully is a warning sign that a person cannot be counted on to invest the time and energy necessary to address the actual problems at hand.

      To be sure, “defund the police” is a controversial slogan, and for good reason. It blatantly contradicts what many Americans believe about law and order. And it is certainly possible that defunding law enforcement is a flawed idea. Nevertheless, police reform has gained momentum around the country. Many cities and states are already pursuing it in different ways. No doubt it will be complicated. But since law enforcement reform affects every American, we should all be deeply invested in ensuring that the people involved in it are well-equipped to do the hard work and willing to do it in good faith.

      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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      The Abraham Accords: A Chance to Rethink the Arab-Israeli Conflict

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      German facilitation of the first meeting between the Israeli and Emirati foreign ministers on October 6 is a welcome change in the European attitude toward the Abraham Accords, which are viewed very differently in Europe than in the Middle East. In the region, supporters and antagonists alike view the accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as a meaningful development that revises the rules of engagement for Arabs and Israelis.

      However, in Europe, the agreement is often downplayed as being yet another PR stunt designed for the mutual electoral interests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump. Others dismiss this step as symbolic — a mere formalization of the relations that have existed below the surface between the parties for years now.  

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      Improving Netanyahu’s declining approval ratings and boosting Trump’s image as a statesman before the US election on November 3 are among the main motivations behind this initiative. Nevertheless, they do not reduce the potential impact of the accords as a challenge to the status quo.

      The Abraham Accords set in motion new regional dynamics at a time of new regional needs. The lesson learned from previous rounds of conflict and peace in the Middle East — from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977 to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000 — is that when the timing is right, symbolic steps can become the catalyst for major political developments.

      The accords break a long-standing taboo in the Arab world. The prevailing formula — as outlined by the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 — was that normalization would be granted to Israel in return for making meaningful political compromises vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The accords have shattered this formula, as they replace the equation of “peace for land” with the Netanyahu-coined “peace for peace” approach, in which normalization is given almost unconditionally. Moreover, the accords reframe the role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the framework of Arab-Israeli relations.

      The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been downgraded to yet another topic alongside other standing issues. The need to counter Iran’s regional ambitions or utilize economic opportunities have all become alternative frames of reference to Israeli-Arab relations. Prevention of annexation notwithstanding, Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian Territories have hardly served as main motives for the UAE and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel. This process of disassociating Arab-Israeli relations from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may create a domino effect, in which other Arab nations that are not involved in direct confrontation with Israel will follow suit.

      Shifting Regional Priorities

      The potential of the Abraham Accords to change regional realities relies on its extraordinary timing. As the COVID-19 crisis takes its toll, national priorities — from Khartoum to Kuwait City — are partially shifting from traditional political considerations to urgent economic needs. The decline in oil prices and the expected decline in growth of more than 7% in Gulf Cooperation Council countries in 2020 have turned general goals such as diversifying the Gulf economies and utilizing new global business opportunities into immediate necessities.

      In this nexus, normalization with Israel provides an undeniable opportunity. Israel’s status as a leading hi-tech hub presents a viable platform for joint cooperation in multiple fields, from agriculture to health. For other regional actors, such as Sudan, US endorsement of the normalization process offers the opportunity to mend relations in the hope of lifting sanctions and receiving financial aid.

      From an international perspective, the potential of the accords to influence the Israeli–Palestinian political stalemate remains a key question. On the one hand, the accords serve as yet another disincentive for Israel to reengage with the Palestinian issue. They demonstrate that Israel’s acceptance in the region does not necessitate paying the price of tough compromises on the Palestinian front.

      The Israeli public’s sense of urgency for dealing with topics such as the Israeli occupation or Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories will decrease even further, as the accords enhance the comfortable illusion that the events shaping Israel’s future in the Middle East are taking place in Abu Dhabi and Muscat instead of in Gaza and Kalandia.

      Nevertheless, the accords reintroduced the terms “peace” and “normalization” into Israeli public discourse after a decade of absence. The violence affiliated with the Arab Spring in 2011 enhanced the Israelis’ self-perception of their country as a “villa in the jungle.” These events had turned their perception of normalization with the Arab world from a token concern into an outdated distraction. Now, and for the first time in decades, public polls indicate a change in the Israeli public mindset regarding normalization, both on the political and economic levels, reinstating it as a matter of value.

      Reengage With the Palestinian Issue

      The Abraham Accords invite European leaders to rethink their policy approach regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the last two decades, the European Union’s approach has been to compartmentalize the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians from the regional context and focus on bilateral relations. The accords offer new opportunities to leverage the broader regional context as a basis to reengage with the core Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

      Europe’s involvement in enhancing Israel’s regional normalization is not a withdrawal from the two-state solution. On the contrary, it should become a factor in reconnecting the normalization process with efforts to influence Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza. The converging interests between the moderate regional forces and Europe have already been demonstrated in the campaign against annexation.

      At present, leveraging the accords to constructively influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sounds highly unlikely, as the actors involved either aim to cement the separation between the topics (Netanyahu) or under-prioritize the need to engage with it (Trump). Nevertheless, possible changes to the political leadership in the near future in Israel, the United States and the Palestinian Authority — combined with growing Arab public pressure on the normalizing countries to address the Palestinian issue — might present an opportunity to harness regional influence to impact Israeli policies.

      Instead of observing from afar, Europe should be at the forefront of the effort to promote this regional dynamic as a conciliatory vector. After all, who can speak better for regionalism as a basis for peace than the EU?

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security 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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      A Year On, the Clean India Mission Falls Short

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      Research amidst the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the virus is transmitted through wastewater. This makes it crucial to revisit the goals of India’s ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission, or SBM) that came to a close almost exactly a year ago. While there were substantial improvements made in toilet coverage, a lack of data clarity muddies an understanding of exactly how large these improvements were across the country. According to government estimates, national sanitation coverage was 51% in 2014 when SBM began and reached 78% in 2018, less than a year prior to the end of the program. While this certainly shows progress — the national average was just under 26% in 1999 — no one would think to take these numbers and simply round up to 100%.  

      But at the close of the SBM last fall, this is exactly what Prime Minister Narendra Modi did. Speaking to a crowd, Modi proclaimed that India was now completely open defecation free (ODF), with sanitation coverage reported by the SBM portal as 100% in rural areas and, inexplicably, 105% in urban areas. From the start of the 2014 campaign, the central government maintained that in just five short years, India would be ODF. Despite the gains made, a singular focus on meeting steep targets in a very short amount of time seems to have put Modi in a tight spot by the time October 2019 rolled around. 

      Caste Politics Overshadow Sanitation Issues in India

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      The gaps have been, at times, glaring. News reports from established outlets all over the country reported open defecation in areas that were already recorded as ODF. A 2018 study by the Rice Institute estimated an open defecation rate of 44%, meaning nearly half of the sampled population was still engaging in the practice hardly a year before SBM ended. In urban areas the picture looks a bit better: 95% of urban households access an improved toilet. But this includes community toilets, which may be used by hundreds of other families and are often plagued with maintenance, hygiene and safety issues. Furthermore, one survey from 18 states identified over 48,000 manual scavengers still cleaning “dry” toilets which do not discharge into sewer lines.

      Social Pressure-Cooker

      What explains these inconsistencies? The use of shame-based tactics to stop open defecation, alongside a rush to meet ODF goals, have built up a pressure-cooker environment. The SBM has continued prior national efforts that deemphasized technical solutions and focused heavily on strategies to encourage behavior change at the local level. One such strategy is Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), which hinges on “triggering” disgust and extreme emotions among community members to spur the abandonment of open defecation. Despite some concerns about shame-based approaches, the SBM continued with the CLTS Foundation and others as implementation partners.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But open defecation is an issue that needs more than short-term emotional reactions. The longstanding practice is mired in cultural tradition, casteist taboos and environmental factors, among others. Some reasons people give for it is that they do not wish to empty a pit themselves, that it is considered more hygienic to defecate further away from the home — certainly reasonable considering how few poor Indian homes have running water — or that community toilets are dirty and unsafe, so squatting in a quiet area nearby is actually preferable.

      In the SBM environment, people who have not built a toilet, for whatever reason, are highly likely to experience retaliation for continuing to defecate in the open. Because Indian culture is quite collective — the actions of one person are seen to have radiating effects on the family and community — sometimes social pressure can play a role in nudging behavior change. However, this is a slippery slope. In India’s highly unequal society, characterized by stark gender and caste-based hierarchies amidst a wide array of languages and ethnicities, such strategies have the potential to be misused, with large social costs.

      There is ample evidence to show this. In June 2017, Zafar Hussein, a local community leader agitating against the eviction of his settlement in Rajasthan, was allegedly beaten to death by local officials for trying to stop officials from taking photographs of women defecating in the open. His death was reported by multiple outlets. In other areas of Maharashtra, people have been followed by a loud band, jailed or fined for defecating in the open.

      Walls of shame have been instituted by local village councils onto which the names and photographs of people defecating openly are be pasted. These individuals were often removed from eligibility for local government programs. The previously mentioned Rice Institute study also recorded coercion and threats of the loss of government rations as a way to bring down open defecation rates. Notably, the study found that Dalits and Adivasis were the most likely to face such behaviors. India’s Health Ministry has publicly denounced the results of the Rice survey. But in September last year, weeks before Modi’s ODF declaration, two young Dalit children were beaten to death in their village in Madhya Pradesh for defecating in the open.

      Numbers, Strategies and Health Equity

      These debates over sanitation data are not merely academic exercises. They have real, material impacts on people. In some ways, the above tragedies are not surprising. If a hasty approach is taken toward declaring areas ODF, it follows that any activity hinting that this claim is not matched by reality will be quashed. Despite this, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation bestowed the Global Goalkeeper Award upon Modi last year. It is surprising that one of the largest, most influential health organizations in the world, committed to facts and data, accepted without question the Indian prime minister’s claims, failing to consider all the evidence to the contrary.

      So what is the solution? Certainly, the answer is not to give up on sanitation programming as the need remains great. There are several organizations on the ground that have successfully integrated mobilization with communities, technical expertise and a sustained presence through which people are not merely pressured to stop a practice but meaningfully guided toward an alternative and given the facts and tools to integrate that alternative into their lives.

      However, this takes a more long-term presence, a less single-minded focus on quick targets, a commitment toward waste management infrastructure besides just toilets, and a willingness to meet people where they are. Further, the same people who have fallen through the gaps in the SBM are those with a lot to lose during the current pandemic: the rural poor, slum-dwellers, sanitation workers, manual laborers and migrants. Brutal crackdowns against those who kept working amidst India’s COVID-19 lockdown illustrate that retaliation cannot continue to be a solution when reality does not match the official word. Amidst the pandemic, sanitation infrastructure and the transparency of data surrounding it are necessities that cannot afford to wait.

      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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      Donald Trump, COVID-19 and America’s Love of Conspiracy

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      US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania tested positive for COVID-19 on the evening of Thursday, October 1. In retrospect, the diagnosis should not have become as a complete surprise. For months, Trump and most of his entourage ignored the advice of public health specialists, in his own administration, to wear masks in public settings and maintain social distance between the president, his key advisers and other White House personnel.

      QAnon: A Conspiracy for Our Time

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      Despite warnings from infectious disease specialists inside and outside the administration, Trump persisted to hold public rallies, often in confined indoor settings, as part of his reelection campaign. These events appeared to gratify the president’s need for attention and unqualified adoration, irrespective of their partisan political benefits. Based on this behavior, extended over the course of the pandemic, it was almost inevitable that the infection caught up with Trump.

      Alternative Facts

      This interpretation seems perfectly reasonable. But it is unlikely to satisfy voices on the far right of the American political spectrum despite the House of Representatives’ bipartisan vote on October 2 to condemn the QAnon conspiracy. It requires some speculation, but not all that much, to expect QAnon believers and such deranged media figures as Alex Jones to produce a set of “alternative facts.” 

      These “facts” are likely to involve the discovery of still another “deep state” conspiracy within the federal government. According to such a conspiratorial view, Trump’s attempts to achieve his “pro-American” white nationalist objective are being sabotaged by a secret conspiracy formed among federal bureaucrats to thwart his policy goals. “Deep state” conspirators will stop at nothing to bring down Trump and his “conservative” administration. We should not be surprised if, over the remaining weeks leading to the November 3 presidential election, various versions of such a “deep state” conspiracy appear across the internet. It remains to be seen how much will be taken up by Fox News and other outlets.

      Multiple “deep state” conspiracy assertions and interpretations have surfaced in American political life over the decades. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the journalist John T. Flynn and other right-wing isolationists, including “Colonel” Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, claimed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had deliberately goaded the Japanese into attacking the United States to make gullible Americans abandon their “America First” ideals and support the country’s entry into the war against the Axis powers.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Flynn and others believed that Roosevelt knew of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor but deliberately did not alert US commanders in Hawaii, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, so that the attack could proceed with maximum effect. According to this scenario, the blood of the sailors on the USS Arizona was on Roosevelt’s hands.

      During President Dwight Eisenhower’s second term, when fears of communism became a national obsession, Robert Welch, a retired Massachusetts candy manufacturer, formed the John Birch Society. (Birch was an American missionary in China who had been killed by Mao’s Communists in 1946.)  Welch went on to publish a widely publicized “Blue Book,” which, among other things, included a list of domestic “communists” and communist sympathizers who were scheming to bring down America. The president’s brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, then the chancellor of the University of Minnesota, was allegedly his superior in the communist conspiracy. The president himself was simply a dupe instrumentalized by powers that be inside the communist movement.

      The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963 yielded a bonanza of conspiracy theories. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had defected to the Soviet Union, returned to the US and became a member of the “Fair Play for Cuba” committee while living in New Orleans. Those who espoused this conspiratorial interpretation claimed either the USSR — the assassination occurred after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — or Fidel Castro, who had been targeted for assassination by the CIA, were behind the murder.

      Left-Wing Conspiracies

      At the time, competing left-wing conspiracy theories flourished as well, according to which Kennedy had been the victim of right-wing generals and businessmen who wanted the United States to abandon plans for a peaceful end to the Cold War. Film director and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Stone made a movie depicting the dynamics of this conspiracy, featuring an imaginary New Orleans district attorney uncovering the “truth.”

      The New World Order (NWO) conspiracy arose at the end of the Cold War. Following the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 by an international coalition led by the United States, President George H. W. Bush referred to the emergence of a new world order dominated by America as the world’s only “hyper-power.” His celebration of American dominance was understood by members of various active well-armed “patriot” groups around the country as the government’s attempt to compromise American sovereignty.

      Bush’s aim, according to this conspiracy, was to turn the United States over to the United Nations and other dark international evil-doers. In parts of the West and Midwest, NWO believers spotted black helicopters hovering above farms and ranches. Others detected the movement of black trains carrying Chinese communist troops to obscure destinations. Suspicions were aroused in the Northwest that detachments of China’s People’s Liberation Army were massing on the Canadian border, preparing to invade the US. Reverend Pat Robertson, a prominent televangelist, even wrote a book entitled “The New World Order,” warning  of the NWO threat and encouraging  followers to be prepared.

      If Donald Trump’s COVID-19 infection is blamed on the “deep state,” it will surely become part of a line of right-wing conspiracies involving American presidents, either as victims or, in the case of Roosevelt, perpetrators.  

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

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