The recent diabolical attack on the people of the Muslim community in New Zealand, who were there for offering Jumah Salah (Friday Prayers) in Christchurch, very clearly explains the popular apprehensions in the West about the non-western immigrant and non-western civilization as a threat to them.

But these types of unfoldings of events were earlier predicted by some world public intellectuals giving them a color of a fault line between the Christian West and the Islam. Popularized through some events and empirical turn, Samuel P. Huntington was a great one among them.

Huntington was among the most plentiful and influential political scientists of his generation. His legacy has become inextricably linked to a Foreign Affairs article published three decades ago. In his article The Clash of Civilizations (1993), Huntington put forward the idea about what the post-cold-war world might look like and the debate has not been abandoned since then.

Huntington believed that the center of the world was shifting and the conflict would be defined by culture rather than ideology or economic premises. Nation-state, argued Huntington, would remain as the main actor but the conflict would occur between the nation and group of different cultures, and “fault lines between the civilizations will be the battle line of future”.

The current attack on Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch is one of the most important testimonies of being true of Huntington prophecy. The choosing of particular place and community by the killer uncovered the nature of hatred and clash simmering in the mind of like-minded people. This denotes the sense of Islamophobia and cultural threat to their western community by Islam and also the fear of domination by Muslim immigrants.

Is so-called Islamization of the west a threat to the natives’ culture and religion? While in Newzeland just one percent is the total population of Muslims, is it another phase of the debate? Growth in migration since globalization booming during 90s, As a result westerners increasingly fear “ that they are now being invaded not by armies and tanks but by migrants who speak other languages, worship other gods, belong to other cultures, and, they fear, will take their jobs, occupy their land, live off the welfare system, and threaten their way of life”.

Huntington was wrestling through the challenges of what “culture” was to look like in a globalizing world. The challenges that Huntington was facing as he looked at the conflict that would occur in various instances between “us” and “them” was primarily about understanding better what “us” meant in the new world and clash thesis was a part of how he sought to work out to understand those relationships.

Why is it a touchstone for nearly all contemporary debates about the capacity of different groups to live together in relative amity, not enmity? Because it exposes the hope and fear of globalization and its perfect imagination of post-cold war world scenario of conflict. After the defeat of the USSR, it was also the trend that enabled the religion to resume its long-abandoned place in global politics.

Exiled to marginalization after 1648, the sudden demise of the cold war and the USSR and its secular ideology, opened the way for new focus on “culture”. Reciprocal response by the US after 9/11 was real proof of the clash of civilizations between the “Christian West” and the “Islamic world”.

Huntington viewed in 1993 Islam as the great threat because “they hate us”, in 2004 he saw Hispanic immigration as the great danger because they aren’t us. It was not about hate, it was about us. If civilizations were the main fault line of the international politics “we” would be just “us” at peace with ourselves in our own place and everyone else in theirs.

The author is a research scholar at the Department of Political Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

The post Revisiting Huntington’s Legacy in the Post-Christchurch times appeared first on Awaam India.

The recent massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand is the latest confirmation that white supremacy is a danger to democratic societies across the globe.

Despite President Donald Trump’s suggestion that white nationalist terrorism is not a major problem, recent data from the United Nations, University of Chicago and other sources show the opposite.

As more people embrace a xenophobic and anti-immigrant worldview, it is fueling hostility and violence toward those deemed “outsiders” – whether because of their religion, skin color or national origin.

Transnational violence

Most of the Western world – from Switzerland and Germany to the United States, Scandinavia and New Zealand – has witnessed a potent nationalist strain infecting society in recent years.

Driven by fear over the loss of white primacy, white nationalists believe that white identity should be the organizing principle of Western society.

“Every people in the world can have their own country except white people,” the American Freedom Party’s William Daniel Johnson told the Chicago Sun Times after the New Zealand attack. “We should have white ethno-states.”

In researching our upcoming book on extremism – our joint area of academic expertise – we found that hate crimes have risen alongside the global spread of white nationalism. Racist attacks on refugees, immigrants, Muslims and Jews are increasing worldwide at an alarming rate.

Scholars studying the internationalization of hate crimes call this dangerous phenomenon “violent transnationalism.”

In Europe, white violence appears to have been triggered by the sudden increase, in 2015, of refugees fleeing war in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ultra-nationalists across the continent – including politicians at the highest rungs of power – used the influx as evidence of the imminent “cultural genocide” of white people.

White nationalism is a US export

This disturbing international trend, in its modern incarnation, was born in the United States.

Since the 1970s, a small, vocal cadre of American white supremacists have sought to export their ideology of hate. Avowed racists like Ku Klux Klan wizard David Duke, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler and extremist author William Pierce believe the white race is under attack worldwide by a cultural invasion of immigrants and people of color.

The United States is diversifying, but it remains 77 percent white. White supremacists, however, have long contended that the country’s demographic changes will lead to an extermination of the white race and culture.

The “alt-right” – an umbrella term describing modern online white supremacist movement – uses the same language. And it has expanded this 20th-century xenophobic worldview to portray refugees, Muslims and progressives as a threat, too.

Alt-right leaders like Richard Spencer, extremist Jared Taylor and the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer editor Andrew Anglin also use social media to share their ideology and recruit members across borders.

They have found a global audience of white supremacists who, in turn, have also used the internet to share their ideas, encourage violence and broadcast their hate crimes worldwide.

“The hatred that led to violence in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville is finding new adherents around the world,” Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, a civil liberties watchdog, told USA Today after the New Zealand attack.

“Indeed, it appears that this attack was not just focused on New Zealand; it was intended to have a global impact.”

Rising racist violence

We know the alleged New Zealand mosque shooter’s hatred of Muslims was inspired by American white nationalism – he said so on Twitter.

His online “manifesto” includes references to cultural conflicts that the author believed would eventually lead the United States to separate along ethnic, political and racial lines.

The alleged attacker also wrote that he supports President Donald Trump “as a symbol of renewed white identity.”

Trump and other right-wing politicians like French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders have blamed the very real problems of modern life – growing economic instability, rising inequality and industrial decay – on immigrants and people of color.

That narrative has added further hostility into the existing undercurrent of intolerance in increasingly multicultural societies like the United States.

Hate crimes against Muslims, immigrants and people of color have been on the rise in the U.S. since 2014.

In 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 892 hate crimes. The next year, it counted 917 hate crimes. In 2017 – the year Trump took office stoking nationalist sentiment with promises to build walls, deport Mexicans and ban Muslims – the U.S. saw 954 white supremacist attacks.

One of them was a violent clash between counterprotesters and white nationalists over the removal of a confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. The 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, which killed one person and injured dozens, amplified the ideas of modern white nationalists nationally and worldwide.

Last year, white nationalists killed at least 50 people in the United States. Their victims included 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, two elderly black shoppers in a Kroger parking lot in Kentucky and two women practicing yoga in Florida.

The years 2015, 2016 and 2018 were the United States’ deadliest years for extremist violence since 1970, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

All perpetrators of deadly extremist violence in the U.S. in 2018 had links to white nationalist groups. That made 2018 “a particularly active year for right-wing extremist murders,” the Anti-Defamation League says.

Nationalist terror is a danger to the domestic security of the United States and, evidence shows, a global terror threat that endangers the very nature of global democratic society.

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton and Paul J. Becker, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

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

Photo Description: A protester holds a sign reading “White supremacy is terrorism” at a march in New York City, August 13, 2017. (Reuters / Joe Penney)

The post White nationalism, born in the USA, is now a global terror threat appeared first on Awaam India.

The truth is that it’s far easier to make a bomb than to educate 400 million people. (Arundhati Roy, The End of Imagination)

Arundhati Roy, famous as the Booker Prize-winning author for The God of Small Things, with her out of the box works has given India the true picture of what we call dissent. Roy’s recent fiction book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness has brought the everlasting critiques of socialization culture within our society.

Roy’s essay The End of Imagination is the most critically analysed, scanned, and scrutinized tale of the events held in May 1998 at Pokhran. It, in detail, criticises narrative of the test of a nuclear weapon conducted at Pokhran. She highlights the basic fundamental needs and wants of the people in her essay, which the government had ignored in light of gaining a political edge and power to call itself the powerful and developing country. She has put it staunchly where the government has blatantly ignored the education, nutrition, shelter, poverty of 400 million people:

If only, if the only nuclear war was just another kind of war. If only it was about the usual things – nations and territories, gods and histories. If only those of us who dread it are worthless moral cowards who are not prepared to die in defence of our beliefs. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries battle countries and men battle men. But it isn’t.

If there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself. Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There will be no day – only interminable night.

What shall we do then, those of us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?

The Head of the Health, Environment and Safety Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Bombay has a plan. He declared that India could survive a nuclear war. His advice is that in the event of nuclear war we take the same safety measures like the ones that scientists have recommended in the event of accidents at nuclear plants. Take iodine pills, he suggests.

And other steps such as remaining indoors, consuming only stored water and food and avoiding milk. Infants should be given powdered milk. ‘People in the danger zone should immediately go to the ground floor and if possible to the basement.’

What do you do with these levels of lunacy? What do you do if you’re trapped in an asylum and the doctors are all dangerously deranged?

Questioning the Governments

Roy’s essay completely unmasks the government’s obsession with the power, may it be any country in the world. There exists no country in the world, where people want war and massacre with their life. They only want peace and harmony with the development and progress of the society, but not at the cost of innocent deaths and massacring of innocent women and children. Roy puts it:

In any case who’s the ‘you’ and who’s the ‘enemy’? Both are only governments. Governments change. They wear masks within masks. They molt and re-invent themselves all the time. The one we have at the moment, for instance, does not even have enough seats to last a full term in office, but demands that we trust it to do pirouettes and party tricks with nuclear bombs even as it scrabbles around for a foothold to maintain a simple majority in Parliament.

Roy is arguing with very far-sighted consequences that the nations of the world will suffer when weapon creations will be justified to save the boundaries and territories of the nation, and then there will be a market which will sell ammunition, powerful chemical weapons to justify the policy of international relations and foreign policy.

The irony will be the ignorance of the interest of the common citizens. And then the planet earth will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will be a new world order. The dictatorship, their hypocritical policies to establish the fact, saving the nation with war but only for peace.

America’s Contribution

Roy gives the credit for creation of this horrific fear and traumatized policy of waging war to build its economy to the United States of America. She quotes in her essay:

But let us pause to give credit where it’s due. Who must we thank for all this? The men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life.

From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living. All I can say to every man, woman and sentient child in India, and over there, just a little way away in Pakistan, is: take it personally. Whoever you are –Hindu, Muslim, urban, agrarian – it doesn’t matter. The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had.

On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate. The bomb isn’t in your backyard. It’s in your body. And mine. Nobody, no nation, no government, no man, no god has the right to put it there. We’re radioactive already, and the war hasn’t even begun. So stand up and say something. Never mind if it’s been said before. Speak up on your own behalf. Take it very personally.

India’s Neophilia

When the nuclear test at Pokhran was successful, the news channels and the newspapers said it loud and clear the phenomenal job was done in the history of India to add one strongest pillar to safeguarding its defence system was the nuclear bomb. Even some went repeatedly calling this as” They are nationalism tests, not just nuclear “. Roy quotes this situation in her essay as:

This has been hammered home, over and over again. The bomb is India. India is the bomb. Not just India, Hindu India. Therefore, be warned, any criticism of it is not just anti-national but anti-Hindu. (Of course in Pakistan the bomb is Islamic. Other than that, politically, the same physics applies.) This is one of the unexpected perks of having a nuclear bomb. Not only can the government use it to threaten the Enemy, they can use it to declare war on their own people. Us.

When I told my friends that I was writing this piece, they cautioned me. ‘Go ahead,’ they said, ‘but first make sure you’re not vulnerable. Make sure your papers are in order. Make sure your taxes are paid.’ My papers are in order. My taxes are paid. But how can one not be vulnerable in a climate like this? Everyone is vulnerable. Accidents happen. There’s safety only in acquiescence. As I write, I am filled with foreboding. In this country, I have truly known what it means for a writer to feel loved (and, to some degree, hated too). Last year I was one of the items being paraded in the media’s end-of the- year National Pride Parade. Among the others, much to my mortification, were a bomb-maker and an international beauty queen. Each time a beaming person stopped me on the street and said ‘You have made India proud’ (referring to the prize I won, not the book I wrote), I felt a little uneasy. It frightened me then and it terrifies me now, because I know how easily that swell, that tide of emotion, can turn against me. Perhaps the time for that has come. I’m going to step out from under the fairy lights and say what’s on my mind.

It’s this;

If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I am a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag. I’m female but have nothing against eunuchs. My policies are simple. I’m willing to sign any nuclear non-proliferation treaty or nuclear test ban treaty that’s going. Immigrants are welcome. You can help me design our flag. My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing.

India’s nuclear tests, the manner in which they were conducted, the euphoria with which they have been greeted (by us) is indefensible. To me, it signifies dreadful things. The end of imagination.

Politics and Political Gains

Roy opens up in her essay saying the major steps taken in the functioning of government in India was the need for politics and its later form- the political gain. She in her essay critically analyses the immediate need of the political class which triggered two major political steps of devastation in the country i.e the nuclear bomb and demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man’s challenge to God. It’s worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you’re not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four billion, six hundred million years old. It could end in an afternoon.

 She explains the whole theory of the use of power and politics. Is this why it becomes an important essay?

The post Arundhati Roy’s essay “The End of Imagination” and the need for Nukes. appeared first on Awaam India.

Kumuda Simpson, La Trobe University

After one year in office, President Donald Trump has not made America great again. Instead, he has presided over a country that is more deeply divided along partisan lines, proposed staggeringly racist reforms to the immigration system, supported a tax bill that will see economic inequality grow, pulled the US out of the Paris Accord, upset allies, emboldened adversaries, and reminded the world just how dangerous nuclear weapons are.

And in the background throughout all of this, the FBI investigation continues to piece together the links between Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

It’s quite a list of extraordinary events, any one of which in a normal year would have dominated commentary for months. But this has not been a normal year. The above represents merely a fraction of the near weekly, sometimes daily, shocks to the system in which the occupants of the White House remind us they are not playing by the rules.

It’s a good moment to step back and take stock of the impact Trump’s presidency has had in America, and how it is changing the international system.

Then there was the recent publication of Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, and the sensation it caused. But even when taken with several generous pinches of salt, the book confirmed that Trump is ignorant about most of the major issues facing the country, and doesn’t really seem to care.

The scandalous revelations also seemed to confirm that Trump’s base is unlikely to abandon him, no matter what.

Read more: White House under siege as scandal follows scandal – and it won’t end any time soon

Immigration continues to be one of the nastiest and most divisive issues. His recent comment about immigrants and refugees from “shithole countries” confirmed his racist attitudes about immigration and race.

The looming government shutdown centred around the fight to resolve the fate of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and demonstrated just how much this issue divides Congress and the Republican Party itself.

Beyond the tax bill and his efforts at imposing punitive immigration reforms, Trump has achieved very little of his campaign promises. The most important of these, to his supporters, is the scrapping of Obamacare.

Reforming access to, and provision of affordable health care in America is urgent. Yet the recent announcement that Kentucky will require Medicaid recipients to participate in a work scheme, which has been approved by Trump, suggests that future reforms will not expand the social safety net for Americans, but see it shrink further.

After this first year, those Americans who voted for Trump still don’t have their wall, they don’t have better access to health care, they are more ideologically divided, and unless they already wealthy, they are likely to become economically more insecure. Yet they seem to be maintaining the faith.

Trump around the world

In terms of foreign policy, it’s harder to assess Trump’s impact and whether it will usher in lasting shifts in the international system or instead become an anomaly, after which things return to normal.

He has consistently upset traditional allies and called into question America’s commitment to security alliances that have underpinned the post-war order. But these relationships can probably be repaired once Trump is gone. It’s clear that no lasting damage has been done to the relationships with Germany or the UK, Japan or Australia.

What is more troubling has been Trump’s championing of authoritarian leaders while ignoring human rights abuses.

America is hardly a model citizen when it comes to upholding human rights; despite this, it often ensured that the discussion of human rights was front and centre of certain foreign policy discussions, a reminder that states did not have a license to abandon one of the most essential pillars of the global order.

In effect, Trump has given the green light to some of the world’s worst leaders to act with impunity in depriving citizens of their most basic rights and dignity.

Read more: Where will the global political hotspots be in 2018? (Spoiler alert: it’s not all about Donald Trump)

The periodic flareups with North Korea, and the increasingly antagonistic tone toward Iran, have made 2017 a little hair-raising at times. Together with the announcement by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the US military could remain in Syria indefinitely, global conflict and the idea of perpetual war seem to have become the norm.

Most concerning is the radical rewriting of the rules and norms around nuclear weapons. Trump’s Twitter posturing and pathetic manhood measuring would be alarming enough, without the cavalier attitude to the most destructive weapons being written into policy.

The draft Nuclear Posture Review proposes a range of scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be used in non-nuclear attacks, completely abandoning any pretence that the weapons are for deterrence, or that the US would hold to a “no-first-use” commitment.

Not that the US has ever really committed to the no-first-use principle. Again, it remains to be seen if this will result in a long-term transformation of the US nuclear strategy, but there are some worrying hints that Trump sees a greater utility for these weapons.

On climate change, there has perhaps been a silver lining to Trump’s belligerent denial of scientific fact: the rest of the world, led by the EU and China, has aggressively recommitted to meeting the Paris goals and moving ahead without the US. It has undermined the argument US leadership is essential in confronting such an urgent global problem.

China’s lead on moving to lower carbon emissions also hints at the shift in the global balance of power. While it is still far too early to assess, it does appear that China is slowly replacing the US as the most important economic and political partner for many states on a range of issues.

Global approval for US leadership has dropped to a new low of 30%. What implications this has for a system governed by “liberal” values remains to be seen, but allies like Australia are watching carefully to see how this power shift develops.

It has been a bizarre and sometimes alarming year. Trump’s impact on global political and cultural norms may be fleeting, or it may be the beginning of a substantively different role for America in the world. My hope is that 2018 will be, by comparison, decidedly uneventful.

Kumuda Simpson is Lecturer in International Relations at La Trobe University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

The post Trump’s first year in office: bizarre and sometimes alarming appeared first on Awaam India.

To the modern reader, this is perhaps one of the more striking descriptions the medieval Moroccan traveller, Ibn Battutah, offered of the places he visited. Not because it contains anything shocking, but because of the town it portrays: Gaza.

For the city, and the war-torn strip of coastal land with which it shares a name, are today defined principally by the walls around it. Gaza has been held under siege for the best part of the last decade, since Hamas came to power in the territory.

Recent political developments, in the form of a unity government, mean that there may be more future movement through the southern border, with Egypt. Still, Gaza remains fenced in to the north and east by the Israeli Army, which vastly outguns any enemies it has in the territory. To the west lies the Mediterranean. Some shores of that sea are famous for tourism; stretches of its eastern edge are more readily associated with armed conflict, human suffering and wasted potential. Gaza definitely falls, along with Syria, into the latter category.

Without the beaches, life in Gaza would surely be immeasurably worse. The currents there make swimming hazardous; winter storms can be surprisingly violent. Yet the sky and the waves offer some relief in the form of light and air to a place where life can seem suffocating.

Flared, and died

As Donald Macintyre observes in his important new book, Gaza: Preparing for Dawn, the sea might also offer economic salvation. The discovery offshore of a gas field, Gaza Marine – estimated to hold a trillion cubic feet of natural gas – promised the solution to many of Gaza’s economic and energy woes.

Perhaps predictably, politics and conflict have conspired to stop that happening. Gaza Marine remains unexploited. Like the “telegenic background of a huge gas flame shooting into the air” – against which Macintyre describes the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, announcing unfulfilled plans to draw the wealth from beneath the waves – it has flared, and died.

It was into that sea that I watched for the final time a bright orange sun set in the spring of 2004. Since 2002, I had been the BBC’s correspondent in Gaza. At the time, I was the only international journalist permanently based in the territory. The kidnapping of my successor, Alan Johnston, in 2007 just as he was due to finish his posting, means that while correspondents continue to visit, they do not live there.

Johnston’s experience reporting “the descent into anarchy of which he himself was now a victim” (as Macintyre puts it) was a journalistic challenge which Johnston took on admirably. His fate – thankfully he was released after 16 weeks – ensures, however, that managing editors have since been rightly nervous about basing their journalists in Gaza ever since.

Watching the sunset that evening, I reflected on another theme which Macintyre rightly raises. I knew I was leaving. I knew I had always been there only as long as I felt like being there. With the exception of days when fighting made it too dangerous to approach the border crossing – and there were a few – I was free to come and go as I wished.

The people among whom I was living were not. Macintyre makes this point, in all its complexity, not only in the book’s shortest chapter – “They will always miss home” – but throughout. It is a complex point because while Gazans long for the opportunities which life outside can bring: study, work, and, in the case of a would-be Olympian, sport – they do not want to abandon their home.

To do so might make them feel that they were turning their backs on their people, and leaving them to their suffering. Gazans with jobs or university places outside are sometimes nervous about returning home for visits. A deterioration in the conflict could leave them trapped and, in consequence, unemployed. Some just leave for good, but the “unresolvable contradiction”, as Macintyre succinctly puts it, remains: “Gaza as a prison to escape from, but also forever home.”

It is in telling these individual stories that Macintyre really excels. Many journalists have been fascinated by Gaza on short visits; few have bothered to try so hard to understand the story beyond the bloodshed. Macintyre’s meetings with the jeans and juice manufacturers; the music students; and that marathon runner bring the people of Gaza to life in a way that daily news reporting rarely can.

Their deaths are recorded too, of course – and, even to news audiences grimly accustomed to reading about violent deaths in the Middle East, some will shock. The Gazan mother who keeps Israeli soldiers waiting at the door – only to open it just as they have decided to blow it apart with explosives – is one that is hard to forget.

All the individual stories are in turn directed by the larger political ones. Macintyre proves himself a well-informed chronicler of the intra-Palestinian conflict: principally between Fatah and Hamas, but also between the latter and newer Islamist rivals. Gaza: Preparing for Dawn also offers wise analysis of the conflict with Israel – and international attempts to address it.

Lest we forget

Macintyre is perceptive about the gap between what even the most senior diplomats say in public, and what they seem really to think. John Kerry, the last US secretary of state to try, and fail, to solve the conflict, is reported here as saying ironically of an Israeli bombardment that killed 55 civilians in six hours, “That’s a hell of a pinpoint operation”.

Diplomatic dispatches I saw when researching my last book, Headlines from the Holy Land accused Israel of “taking measures that would not be acceptable in most societies in the 21st century”. Such phrases rarely grace the more mealy-mouthed official statements. They are all the more revealing when they come to light.

Because for now, for the people of Gaza, there is little prospect of change. As 2018 approaches, one is reminded of the UN report of 2012 which asked whether the territory would be liveable in 2020. Despite that, there is no meaningful diplomatic process which might end Gaza’s misery. John Kerry failed. President Trump has shown little personal interest. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been touted as a possible player – but there are no signs of concrete progress so far.

Israel’s approach of recent years has concentrated on “mowing the grass” – a phrase designed to explain the policy of launching military operations every so often to strike at armed Palestinian groups. The euphemism also ignores the fact that the majority of deaths in major operations are civilian ones. As Macintyre points out, even if leaflets are dropped telling civilians to leave, they don’t instruct them “where to find safety after fleeing their homes”.

Journalists covering conflict will sometimes agonise over whether their work makes a difference. If airtime and column inches alone could bring peace, then the sheer scale of coverage would have guaranteed a settlement long ago. It cannot, of course – but books such as Gaza: Preparing for Dawn do a vital job in reminding the world what goes on there. One day that knowledge may just be part of a solution.

James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of London

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The post A prison called Gaza: new book offers a startling insight into everyday life in the territory appeared first on Awaam India.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, an advocacy group that has worked to draw attention to their “catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”

Every year, the winners of the Nobel Prizes are announced to great fanfare. And none receives more scrutiny than the Nobel Peace Prize.

With good reason. The other Nobel Prizes are given to people who have already changed our world – for their remarkable accomplishments. But, in the case of the Nobel Peace Prize, the hope of the Nobel Committee is to change the world through its very conferral. It, therefore, rewards aspiration more than achievement.

Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 1991-1999, once noted with pride the Nobel Peace Prize’s political ambitions:

“The Committee also takes the possible positive effects of its choices into account [because] … Nobel wanted the Prize to have political effects. Awarding a Peace Prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.”

So, has the Nobel Peace Prize changed the world?

Expecting the prize to bring world peace would be an unfair standard to apply. However, my research shows that the winners and their causes have rarely profited from the award. Even worse, the prize has at times made it harder from them to make the leap from aspiration to achievement.

History of the peace award

The Nobel Peace Prize was first awarded in 1901, five years after Alfred Nobel’s death. Nobel’s will defined peace narrowly and focused on candidates’ accomplishments: The prize was to be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

The committee initially remained true to Nobel’s charge. Between 1901 and 1945, over three-quarters of the prizes (33 of 43) went to those who promoted interstate peace and disarmament.

Since the Second World War, however, less than one-quarter of the prizes have gone to promoting interstate peace and disarmament. Just seven of the 37 winners since 1989 fall into this category. Another 11 awards have sought to encourage ongoing peace processes.

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

---

Follow @AwaamIndia

But many of these processes had borne little fruit at the time or still had a long road ahead. Consider that three of the most prominent winners in this category were then Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Nonetheless, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is today in a coma.

Perhaps for this reason, in the last decade, the committee has given just two awards to encourage peace processes. In 2008 Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his various achievements in Namibia, Kosovo and Aceh. In 2016, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos was honored with the Nobel in the hope that the prize would help push through his peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels, even though a popular referendum had just rejected it, and thereby end his country’s half-century-long civil war.

The striking change since the 1970s, and especially since the end of the Cold War, has been the Nobel Peace Prize’s growing focus on promoting domestic political change.

Between 1946 and 1970, the prize was awarded just twice to dissidents and activists like the South African leader Albert Luthuli, who led a nonviolent struggle against apartheid in the 1960s, and the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.. Between 1971 and 1988, such figures received the prize five times. Between 1989 and 2016, more than 40 percent of all winners fell into this category.

The rate has been even higher in the last decade: 57 percent of Nobel Peace Prize laureates since 2007 have been activists and advocates for equality, liberty and human development like educating women and stopping child labor.

These are admirable values. But their connection to interstate, and intrastate, conflict is indirect at best and tenuous at worst.

Does it bring global attention to issues?

The Nobel Peace Prize’s defenders insist that the prize works in subtle but perceptible ways to advance the winners’ causes. They say it attracts media attention, bolsters the winners and their supporters, and even focuses international pressure.

But there’s little evidence that the Nobel Peace Prize brings sustained global attention.

First of all, in many instances it is hard to tell whether the prize has made any difference, because the media glare was already intense. For example, in 2005, when the committee honored the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director general, Mohammed El Baradei, nuclear proliferation was already of great concern. In other cases – such as South Africa’s transition from apartheid, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the troubles in Northern Ireland – the prize made little noticeable difference to international media coverage.

It is true that in those few cases where coverage was not already strong, there have been occasional successes. For instance, I found that the committee’s decision to hand the award to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 did draw attention to the plight of Myanmar.

But, in general, my research found little evidence that winning the Nobel Peace Prize boosts international media coverage of the winner’s cause beyond the short run.

Putting activists in peril

Of greater concern is that, when the Nobel Peace Prize goes to promote political and social change – as it has so often in recent decades – it can have very real and detrimental effects on the movements and causes it celebrates.

Powerful authoritarian regimes will not liberalize just because the Nobel Committee has chosen to honor a dissident. This is not because regimes dismiss it as a silly award given out by international do-gooders. In fact, they take it very seriously. Fearing that domestic activists would take heart, they have ramped up repression, shrunk the space for political opposition and cracked down harder than ever.

This is what happened in Tibet and Myanmar after the Dalai Lama and after Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Similarly, the Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi has been forced to lived in exile in Britain since 2009. In China, the peace award did not make the release of the dissident Liu Xiaobo from prison more likely.

The same is true when it comes to social change. Patriarchal societies, with their deeply entrenched gender roles, will not change just because some people in the West think they should and to that end name a women’s rights activist a Nobel laureate.

What’s at stake?

The Nobel Committee’s intentions are honorable, but the results, I argue, can be tragic. The award raises the spirits of reformers, but it also mobilizes forces that are far greater in opposition.

Every October, many the world over hail the Nobel Committee for its brave and inspired choice. But it is the truly brave activists on the ground who are left to bear the consequences when anxious leaders bring the state’s terrible power down on them.

And what happens when the Nobel Peace Prize actually helps to promote political change? As state counsellor (prime minister) of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has presided over the bloody persecution of the Rohingya and a swiftly mounting international refugee crisis. The admired dissident has, in power, turned out not to be so great a promoter of peace and tolerance.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s choices have been noble – but, as my research suggests, also sometimes naïve.

Ronald R. Krebs is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The post Why the Nobel Peace Prize brings little peace appeared first on Awaam India.

The post [Read] Full Judgement of SC (Pakistan) in Panamagate appeared first on Awaam India.

भारत समेत दुनिया के दूसरे लोकतान्त्रिक देशों की आज ये सच्चाई है. यह सन्दर्भ लोकतान्त्रिक संस्थानों पर भी एक सवाल उठाता है कि उन्होंने लोकतंत्र को मानवीय मूल्यों के विरुद्ध  कैसे जाने दिया. एक अवधारणा के तौर पर भी आज लोकतंत्र के ऊपर सवाल उठ चुका है.

कैनेडी अंतर्राष्ट्रीय हवाई अड्डा | तस्वीर: सी.एन.एन.

The post अमेरिका में राज्य से लड़ता एक राष्ट्र | उवेस सुल्तान ख़ान appeared first on Awaam India.

The post A Letter From the US Media to Trump that the Indian Press Can Learn From appeared first on Awaam India.

The fact that just 9% of the population voted for either Trump or Clinton in the primaries and caucuses sums up the rampant disaffection and alienation. The pressure to support the lesser evil will only grow as we get closer to Election Day. The trouble is, many people can’t decide which candidate represents the greater evil! We live in an epoch of sharp and sudden changes, and if Brexit can happen, Trump can be elected President of the United States. Voters, as pointed out recently by Washington Post, are “embarrassed and ashamed that Clinton and Trump are the best the country has to offer.”

Published on: Sep 2, 2016 @ 17:40

The post US Election 2016: America’s Most Unwanted | John Peterson appeared first on Awaam India.