Argentine President Alberto Fernandez added another event to a
highly politicized Winter Olympics when he met in Beijing last week with
Chinese President Xi Jinping and agreed to join China’s Belt and Road
Initiative.
Argentina becomes the 20th of 33 countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean to sign up for the Belt & Road, putting an official seal
on what was already an extensive and growing economic relationship.
In addition to expanding trade and investment opportunities with
China, joining the Belt & Road should make it easier for Argentina
to obtain funding from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS New Development Bank.
And this should reduce its dependence on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a top priority for Fernandez.
Prior to the February 6 meeting in Beijing, Fernandez dropped by
Moscow, where he told Russian President Vladimir Putin:“I am determined
that Argentina has to stop being dependent on the Fund and the United
States, and here I believe that Russia has an important place.”
Coming in the midst of the Ukraine crisis, this was the first of two
diplomatic slaps in the face of the US government, which is boycotting
the games in Beijing. Fernandez attended the opening ceremony.
The UK had a slap of its own when China took the opportunity to
support Argentina’s position on the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas).
That is another story, but it does underline the Global South versus
Imperial North nature of the dispute.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of
diplomatic relations between Argentina and China. More recently,
relations between the two countries have advanced considerably during
and after the presidency of leftist Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who led Argentina from 2007 to 2015.
“Hindu bigots are openly urging Indians to murder Muslims. And the ruling party does nothing to stop them.” PHOTO/Lanka News WebPrime Minister Narendra Modi along with RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, UP Governor Anandiben Patel and others performs Bhoomi Pujan at ‘Shree Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir’, in Ayodhya, Wednesday, August 5, 2020. “In an unusual move that has left everyone bemused, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to play an all-encompassing role during the bhoomi pujan in Ayodhya on August 5. He was not only the chief guest but also the master of ceremonies and the official yajmaan (patron of a religious ritual) during the ceremony.” PHOTO: PTI/The Wire
To Shri Narendra Modi Prime Minister Government of India South Block, Raisina Hill New Delhi-110 011.
Dear Prime Minister,
I
write to you, the Leader of our great Democratic,Secular, Socialist
Republic of India, governed by a Constitution which enshrines the
fundamental rights and freedoms of Indian citizens, irrespective of
caste, colour, race or creed, as a senior concerned citizen who has
served my country for 50 years in various capacities.
You are a
leader respected nationally and internationally. You travel around the
world, calling on world leaders, including His Holiness the Pope, in
Rome, proclaiming that India is a free democratic secular state. Your
speeches and statements have been praised and extensively reported on,
by the global media. Unfortunately, the reality on the ground here,
presents a stark contrast to the image you project of India to the
global community, especially in the context of minority rights and
secularism.
Mr. Prime Minister, across India, highly organised and
militant right wing extremist groups are terrorising, attacking and
killing innocent citizens in the name of religion. I am appalled at the
recent, widely reported statements, made by some religious leaders
calling for genocide of non-Hindus, in order to create a Hindu Rashtra.
What is even more shocking, is that there is no response or action
either by your Central Government, or the State Government that’s
controlled by the BJP, of which you are the undisputed leader, or the
local administration, to crack down firmly on this virulent, toxic, hate
speech, designed to create insecurity and fear amongst millions of
minorities, who live here in the country.
From the early days of
our freedom struggle, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians and indeed those
from many other religious sects and denominations have fought shoulder
to shoulder with our Hindu brothers and sisters, to win our freedom and
defend our motherland. My parents-in-law the late Joachim and Violet
Alva, were freedom fighters who went to jail and became the first couple
in India’s Parliament, she also becoming Parliament’s first woman
Presiding officer. There are today thousands of minorities serving the
nation in all walks of life, in all parts of the country. Are we now to
be treated as second class citizens?
Mr. Prime Minister, how can
you close your eyes and remain silent when atrocities on India’s
minorities are mounting? Your silence Mr. Prime Minister, is misread as
tacit approval and encouragement to the ever increasing violence and
intimidation India’s minorities are being subjected to. When will you
speak up and put a stop to this madness and violence?
File photo: Girls from Pakistani Christian community decorate their home for the upcoming Christmas holiday in Islamabad, PHOTO/AP Photo/B.K. Bangash
Christmas is hardly a big occasion in Pakistan. More than two million
Pakistani Christians celebrate it guardedly, with few from the Muslim
majority joining them. Government officials issue cut-and-paste
statements and put up a Christmas tree or two in public places, and then
return to the business of lending legitimacy to majoritarianism.
Indeed, Christians in this country usually make their way into the
public consciousness when they are victims of lynch mobs or young girls
from the community are forcibly converted and married off to Muslim men.
So even if only in a symbolic fashion, let us acknowledge the humanity
of the otherwise beleaguered Christian population and rejoice alongside
them on the biggest day of their year.
Those who squirm at the thought of celebrating Christmas ought to
introspect about why. Many Pakistani Muslims come into contact with
Christians regularly, particularly in metropolitan centres. Those who
are relatively affluent employ Christian women as cleaners inside their
homes; while municipal authorities almost exclusively hire Christian men
and women as ‘sweepers’ who clear gutters, roads and pretty much all
public spaces of dirt on a daily basis.
Slightly further up the class ladder, Christians find work in
hospitals as nurses and janitors — the ‘cleaning’ motif dominates here
too. There are certainly Pakistani Christians involved in other
occupations, but the point should be clear; they are hugely
overrepresented in the ‘sweeper’ profession.
This has little to do with the Christian faith. It has to do with
caste, one of the great unspoken facts of Pakistani society. One often
hears the refrain that there is no such thing as caste in Pakistan
because caste is associated with Hindu social structures and Muslims
don’t ‘do’ caste. The rhetoric is completely out of touch with reality.
It was as a ten-year-old that Noam Chomsky first confronted the
perils of foreign aggression. “The first article that I wrote for the
elementary school newspaper was on the fall of Barcelona [in 1939],”
Chomsky recalled when we spoke recently via video call. It charted the
advance of the “grim cloud of fascism” across the world. “I haven’t
changed my opinion since, it’s just gotten worse,” he sardonically
remarked. Due to the climate crisis and the threat of nuclear war,
Chomsky told me, “we’re approaching the most dangerous point in human
history… We are now facing the prospect of destruction of organised
human life on Earth.”
At the age of 93, as perhaps the world’s most cited living scholar,
Chomsky could be forgiven for retreating from the public sphere. But in
an era of permanent crisis, he retains the moral fervour of a young
radical – more preoccupied with the world’s mortality than his own. He
is a walking advertisement for Dylan Thomas’s injunction – “Do not go
gentle into that good night” – or for what Chomsky calls “the bicycle
theory: if you keep going fast, you don’t fall off”.
The occasion for our conversation is the publication of Chronicles of Dissent,
a collection of interviews between Chomsky and the radical journalist
David Barsamian from 1984 to 1996. But the backdrop is the war in
Ukraine – a subject about which Chomsky is unsurprisingly voluble.
“It’s monstrous for Ukraine,” he said. In common with many Jews,
Chomsky has a family connection to the region: his father was born in
present-day Ukraine and emigrated to the US in 1913 to avoid serving in
the tsarist army; his mother was born in Belarus. Chomsky, who is often
accused by critics of refusing to condemn any anti-Western government,
unhesitatingly denounced Vladimir Putin’s “criminal aggression”.
But he added: “Why did he do it? There are two ways of looking at
this question. One way, the fashionable way in the West, is to plumb the
recesses of Putin’s twisted mind and try to determine what’s happening
in his deep psyche.
“The other way would be to look at the facts: for example, that in
September 2021 the United States came out with a strong policy
statement, calling for enhanced military cooperation with Ukraine,
further sending of advanced military weapons, all part of the
enhancement programme of Ukraine joining Nato. You can take your choice,
we don’t know which is right. What we do know is that Ukraine will be
further devastated. And we may move on to terminal nuclear war if we do
not pursue the opportunities that exist for a negotiated settlement.”
How does he respond to the argument that Putin’s greatest fear is not
encirclement by Nato but the spread of liberal democracy in Ukraine and
Russia’s “near abroad”?
“Putin is as concerned with democracy as we are. If it’s possible to
break out of the propaganda bubble for a few minutes, the US has a long
record of undermining and destroying democracy. Do I have to run through
it? Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, on and on… But we
are supposed to now honour and admire Washington’s enormous commitment
to sovereignty and democracy. What happened in history doesn’t matter.
That’s for other people.
“What about Nato expansion? There was an explicit, unambiguous
promise by [US secretary of state] James Baker and president George HW
Bush to Gorbachev that if he agreed to allow a unified Germany to rejoin
Nato, the US would ensure that there would be no move one inch to the
east. There’s a good deal of lying going on about this now.”
Chomsky, who observed in 1990 that “if the Nuremberg laws were
applied, then every postwar American president would have been hanged”,
spoke witheringly of Joe Biden.
“It’s certainly right to have moral outrage about Putin’s actions in
Ukraine,” he said of Biden’s recent declaration that the Russian
president “cannot remain in power”. “But it would be even more progress
to have moral outrage about other horrible atrocities… In Afghanistan,
literally millions of people are facing imminent starvation. Why?
There’s food in the markets. But people who have little money have to
watch their children starve because they can’t go to the market to buy
food. Why? Because the United States, with the backing of Britain, has
kept Afghanistan’s funds in New York banks and will not release them.”
Chomsky’s contempt for the hypocrisies and contradictions of US
foreign policy will be familiar to anyone who has read one of his many
books and pamphlets (his first political work, American Power and the New Mandarins,
published in 1969, foretold the US’s defeat in Vietnam). But he is now
perhaps most animated when discussing Donald Trump’s possible return and
the climate crisis.
“I’m old enough to remember the early 1930s. And memories come to mind,” he said in a haunting recollection. “I can remember listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio. I didn’t understand the words, I was six years old. But I understood the mood. And it was frightening and terrifying. And when you watch one of Trump’s rallies that can’t fail to come to mind. That’s what we’re facing.”
If Africa wants to tap into the benefits of the digital economy to
address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), at
least 5,000 PhD scholars in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI)
and machine learning must be cultivated over the next five years,
according to Professor Tom Ogada, executive director of the African
Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS).
AI enables the creation of tools that can help different sectors predict
future challenges and create solutions through research, and the world
is rallying behind the application of AI to find and improve solutions
in sectors such as health, agriculture and climate action.
“Our institution has done a situational analysis to identify the skills
that will be needed to grow the digital economy and we established that
there is an existing skills gap in Africa at all levels, from secondary
school, through university up to doctoral level,” Ogada said.
According to the findings of the technology and innovation think tank
(ACTS), progress in AI research and development has been slowed, in part
by limited funding opportunities for academics, as well as by a lack of
adequate data resources and infrastructure at universities across the
region.
An opportunity for PhD students
Through a new initiative, early-career academics and post-doctoral
researchers across the continent can apply for grants to conduct their
research.
The project, called The Artificial Intelligence for Development in Africa (AI4D)
scholarship programme, is funded by the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC), the Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and other partners.
Are isolated men driving American women up the wall? A recent sketch on “Saturday Night Live”, which refers to studies concluding that males in America are increasingly friendless, suggests that they are. A young woman, frustrated by her boyfriend’s inability to open up to anyone else, takes him by the hand and leads him to a “man park” (like the dog version) where, after a shy start, he finds fellow males to make friends with. Some viewers disliked the likening of men to dogs, but the sketch, which went viral online, illustrates fresh concerns about an old worry: the loneliness of American men.
As people in rich countries work longer
hours, marry later and spend more time with their children, not friends,
research suggests loneliness is increasing. A study by the University
of Pennsylvania found a direct link between social-media usage and
loneliness. More time spent online means less time building friendships.
The problem may be particularly severe in
America. A large international study by British academics found that
people in individualistic countries (a measure on which America scores
highest) reported greater loneliness. America also has one of the
highest divorce rates; men may be more likely to lose mutual friends
after a split. A strong work ethic and geographical mobility (meaning
friendships are liable to be lost or weakened as people relocate) is
likely to exacerbate the problem.
A survey published in 2021 by the Survey
Centre on American Life, part of the American Enterprise Institute, a
think-tank, found that friendship groups have shrunk in the past three
decades. The decline has been particularly marked among men. In 1990,
55% of American men reported having at least six close friends; today
only 27% do. The survey found that 15% of men have no close friendships
at all, a fivefold increase since 1990
Ethiopian troops have been receiving weaponry support from China. PHOTO/Facebook
Chinese foreign ministers have traditionally marked the new year by
visiting the African continent. Wang Yi’s 2022 African tour begins with
Eritrea against the backdrop of the US strategy in the Horn of Africa to
gain control of the strategically vital Red Sea that connects the
Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal.
Eritrea and China are close friends. China was a supporter of the
Eritrean liberation movement since the 1970s. Eritrean President Isaias
Afwerki, the veteran revolutionary who led the independence movement,
received military training in China.
More recently, Eritrea was one of the 54 countries backing Beijing’s
Hong Kong policy (against 39 voicing concern in a rival Western bloc) at
the UN General Assembly in October 2020.
Last November, Eritrea signed a memorandum of understanding with
China to join the Belt and Road Initiative. Neighboring Djibouti is
already a major participant in the BRI. So is Sudan along the Red Sea
coastline.
Central to regional cohesion in the Horn of Africa is the
relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has been a
conflict-ridden, troubled relationship, but China, which also has close
ties with Ethiopia, is well placed to mediate reconciliation.
One common view is that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pulled
off a stunning victory in the conflict with the US-backed Tigray
People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) with the help of armed drones supplied
by the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran.
But civil wars are won on the ground. And the politico-military axis
between Ethiopia and Eritrea to take on the TPLF proved to be the
decisive factor. China encouraged the rapprochement between Addis Ababa
and Asmara.
In effect, the two leaderships understood that they have a congruence
of interests in thwarting the TPLF, which is an American proxy to
destabilize their countries and trigger regime changes.
Washington is mighty displeased that China’s influence in Djibouti is
on the rise and resents that the Marxist Eritrean regime of Isaias
Afwerki keeps the US at arm’s length.
“The scientific method originated with Aristotle‘s idea that knowledge came from careful observation, and was brought into modern form by Galileo‘s collection of empirical evidence.” IMAGE/Wikipedia
Science is special. Its central
idea – collecting data about the real world, using it to formulate
theories and hypotheses about how things work, and then testing them
against observations or experiments in precise and quantified ways – has
been shown again and again to be a remarkably powerful means of
developing understanding that can be relied on and applied in useful
ways.
The Covid-19 pandemic has supplied one of the starkest demonstrations
of the value of this approach, not least in the development of vaccines
that evidently work to protect us against the coronavirus.
While in practice this “scientific method” is messier and more ad hoc
than is typically acknowledged, nonetheless it is a precious discovery
in itself, and one that scientists are rightly keen to defend. When they
hear accusations that scientific knowledge is shaped by social and
political processes, that it is just one way of understanding the world,
and that the process by which it is attained should be subject to
constraints dictated by prevailing social mores, they may fear that the
phenomenal benefits we have derived from science, and indeed the sheer
intellectual value that inheres in it, are being threatened and
undermined.
Such fears are, I believe, at the root of some recent commentaries
deploring a perceived assault on science and rationality itself from
demands that it adapt its practices and lexicon to current
sociopolitical trends, in particular to calls for greater equality,
social justice and respect for differences of race, sexuality and
identity.
It is one thing to ask us as
individuals to accommodate such things in our speech and actions – to
recognize, for example, that our institutions are afflicted by
deep-rooted prejudices and biases, and that such things are habitual in
our personal behavior. But (the argument goes) science as an enterprise
and methodology is special in this regard, too. Scientific ideas that
have been shown to be reliable become no less so because their
originators were products of their time, with all the prejudices that
might entail. Science (it is asserted) is the paradigmatic meritocracy:
it judges an individual’s contribution, and rewards it accordingly,
purely on the basis of how well it helps us to understand the world,
irrespective of gender, nationality, or skin color.
A recent report published on instances of extrajudicial killings in
blasphemy cases has found that most of the incidents — 73% — took place
in Punjab. Since 1947, at least 70 such murders have been reported in
Punjab alone – averaging almost one per year.
According to the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in
Islamabad, since 1947 a total of 89 people accused of blasphemy have
been extrajudicially killed before they were tried in court.
Although minority communities make up just 5 per cent of the
population, they are accused in nearly one-third of all blasphemy cases.
Out of the total 484 minority community members accused of blasphemy,
over 50 per cent have been Christians (264), nearly 40 per cent were
Ahmadi (188), the remaining were Hindus (21), Pervaizis (7), Ismailies
(1), Sikh (1), and Budhists (2).
Bushra Taseer from Sindh was the first woman recorded to have been
accused of blasphemy in the country, after a tailor alleged that she had
given him cloth to stitch, which had a religious inscription on it in
1996. Since then, 115 women have been accused of blasphemy, 16 of which
were extrajudicially murdered.
Of female victims of extrajudicial killings on blasphemy charges,
about 70 per cent belong to these minority communities; the majority of
the murdered have been Christian women.
The first person ever accused of blasphemy in Pakistan was an Ahmadi
man, Major Mahmud, who was stabbed and stoned to death in Quetta on
August 11, 1948.
In a report on the Punjab Disturbances of 1953, Justice Muhammad Munir wrote of the incident:
“The Muslim Railway Employees Association had organized a meeting
which was held on the evening of 11th August 1948. Some maulvis
addressed the gathering and, the subject of their speech was
khatm-i-nubuwwat (the finality of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)). In these
speeches, references were made to the Qadianis’ (Ahmadis’) kufr
(disbelief) and the consequences thereof.
“While the meeting was still in progress, Major Mahmud passed by
the place where the meeting was being held. His car accidentally stopped
near the place of the meeting and an effort to re-start it failed. Just
then a mob came towards the car and pulled Major Mahmud out of it. He
attempted to flee but was chased and literally stoned and stabbed to
death, his entire gut having come out.”
Between 1987 and 2021, blasphemy accusations have gone up a reported
1,3000 per cent. From 1948 to 1978, only 11 cases of blasphemy were
recorded, of them three were extra-judicially killed. From 1987 to March
2021, the number of cases reported jumped to 1,428 including 81
instances where the accused were extrajudicially murdered.