Heritage beyond saving: Laurie Taylor talks to Caitlin DeSilvey, associate professor of cultural geography & author of a new book which journeys from Cold War test sites to post industrial ruins. Do we need to challenge cherished assumptions about the conservation of cultural heritage? Might we embrace rather than resist natural processes of decay and decline? They're joined by Haidy Geismar, reader in anthropology at University College, London & Tiffany Jenkins, sociologist & cultural commentator.
28 June 2017
Reveal: Home is where the hate is
From January 2008 to the end of 2016, we identified 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism, meaning incidents motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State. The vast majority of these (76 percent) were foiled plots, meaning no attack took place.
During the same period, we found that right-wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents: 115. Just over a third of these incidents (35 percent) were foiled plots. The majority were acts of terrorist violence that involved deaths, injuries or damaged property.
Right-wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 79 deaths, while 13 percent of Islamist cases caused fatalities. (The total deaths associated with Islamist incidents were higher, however, reaching 90, largely due to the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas.) [...]
More than a million violent crimes are committed each year in the United States, while annual domestic terrorism incidents number in the dozens. Yet acts of terrorism have a special significance, said former FBI agent Michael German, because each one not only targets particular victims, but also “is an attack on civil society itself.” [...]
While a majority of the incidents were perpetrated by right-wing extremists (57 percent), the database indicates that federal law enforcement agencies focused their energies on pre-empting and prosecuting Islamist attacks, which constituted 31 percent of all incidents, a finding confirmed by counterterror experts. [...]
Yet even though most Islamists were charged only in connection with plots, they often were sentenced as harshly as or more harshly than right-wing extremists, who mostly succeeded in committing acts of terror. Among the Islamist cases, 8 percent got life sentences, 2 percent got death sentences, and the average sentence for the other cases was 21 years in prison. Among far-right cases, 12 percent got life sentences, 5 percent got death sentences, and the average sentence for the rest was eight years.
openDemocracy: Disconnected society: how the war in the Donbas has affected Ukraine
The stigmatisation of people from the Donbas often happens precisely on the everyday level, with everyday people, in everyday life. People take the example set by politicians, who have never said publicly: “We are all residents of one country and we are all needed here, every person who has a Ukrainian passport is worth the attention and care of our state, whichever part of the world they might be in.” [...]
But it wouldn’t be quite accurate to call this protest “pro-Ukrainian”. For the people on Lenin Square, the most important motivating factor wasn’t the Ukrainian national idea (although that was also present), but resisting the spontaneous violence that had begun to spread not only through the city’s streets, but its institutions too, thus alienating the city’s residents. It was precisely opposition to violence that became an important element for people trying to assert humanist ideals and democratic principles in April 2014. All of this helped reinvigorate Donetsk’s local community for a time, its importance and faith in the idea that city residents could defend their city. [...]
The subject of internally displaced people is one of the most divisive in the western and Ukrainian press. At the beginning of the conflict, displaced people encountered constant discrimination. In conditions of war, the power of stereotypes has only grown stronger. Despite the fact that many articles on tolerance appeared in the Ukrainian press, people displaced from the Donbas were still represented negatively in mass consciousness — poor, uneducated, politically naive and so on. On a personal level, I have encountered similar claims: “You’re an exception. But there are others, the majority. After all, it was your region that chose [Viktor] Yanukovych, and now we’re going through all of this.” [...]
The emergence of a negative image of the Donbas is connected to the fact that no one outside the region knew much about it, its character, its life, or the people who lived there. People only remember the fact that the Donbas was the heart of Soviet industrialisation, and that people from across the Soviet Union (including some with a criminal past) traveled there to build and restore it after the Second World War. The myth about the down-at-heel Donbas was fed further by gang wars in the early 1990s, as well as the background of its political elite — the majority of them (for example, Rinat Akhmetov or Viktor Yanukovych) had criminal backgrounds. The fact that the region remained conservative and nostalgic for the Soviet past didn’t help either.
Broadly: ‘We Exist’: Inside India’s Secretive Gay Nightlife Scene
Being gay isn't technically a crime in India, but it is illegal to engage in "carnal intercourse against the order of nature," according to Section 377, a controversial part of India's penal code that specifically lists anal and oral sex. This colonial-era law was reinstated by India's top court in 2013, and threatens up to 10 years in jail for those who breach it. Unsurprisingly, it was poorly received by India's LGBTQ community, as well as large numbers of the country's young heterosexual people. [...]
Although there are no exclusively gay bars or clubs in India yet, most straight bars in metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai regularly host gay nights. Websites and groups such as Gay Bombay, Salvation, and Gaysie Family are amongst the top online resources involved in both organizing and promoting queer friendly events, as these remain some of the few "legal" ways for the gay community to interact with each other in the open. [...]
But to Sridhar Rangayan, a filmmaker whose work has highlighted queer issues, there still isn't enough visibility when it comes to LGBTQ events. "Despite the huge gay clientele that come to these parties, the community and the party circuit are still very invisible," he says. "If you are new to the city, you wouldn't know [the scene] even exists. It all depends on how connected you are." This is because most of LGBTQ events cannot be advertised openly due to the fear of being misinterpreted as dating events. Invites are therefore usually word of mouth or shared through closed Facebook groups. [...]
Also largely absent from the gay social scene are lesbian women, who often choose not to attend. Since a majority of the public events are open to everyone, including the heterosexual crowd, most women attending these parties are straight and simply there because they feel comfortable in the company of gay men. This is an obvious deal breaker for women looking to meet other women, who now only show up at private house parties. "I don't go to most open LGBTQ events because they largely cater to gay men or straight women looking to have a good time without being hit on," says Akanksha. "I've met almost each one of my exes at a friend's party or online. It's disappointing to see one portion of the community getting so much attention while lesbian women are just ignored."
Haaretz: Ultra-Orthodox Judaism Is Taking Over Israel. Netanyahu Just Made Sure
The two initiatives by the ultra-Orthodox are both designed as roadblocks to Supreme Court decisions which would harm their control over matters of religion and state. Both involve subjects that have been fiercely debated for decades: the ability to dictate the nature of prayer at Western Wall, and who can perform recognized conversion to Judaism in Israel. On both measures, the two ultra-Orthodox parties on which Netanyahu’s governing coalition depends, Shas and United Torah Judaism, have indicated a willingness to cripple Netanyahu’s government by pulling out if they don’t get their way.
Netanyahu’s concession in both cases is, first and foremost, a cold calculation of political survival. But the consequences of his actions are far less acute than they would have been a year ago. The government’s acquiescence to ultra-Orthodox hardball represents a slap in the face to liberal American Jews, in what may reflect the changed political map in the United States. Under President Obama and his Democratic allies, U.S. Jews committed to Reform and Conservative movements held far greater political sway than President Donald Trump, whose Jewish ties – familial, political and professional – are with Orthodox Jewry. Netanyahu has significantly less to lose now in the White House and other U.S. corridors of power by angering non-Orthodox Diaspora Jewish leaders than he did over the past eight years.
First, the government announced Sunday it was suspending the plan to establish an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall that had taken years to negotiate and which Netanyahu has repeatedly assured Diaspora Jewish leaders would come to pass, even as he refused to take action on it for fear of angering the ultra-Orthodox. But ultimately, the fear of losing support from the ultra-Orthodox parties took precedence and political survival trumped his promises. [...]
The second blow to pluralism came in a bill – pushed by the ultra-Orthodox onto the agenda of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, and passed – that guarantees a monopoly for the Chief Rabbinate on conversions to Judaism. The legislation invalidates conversions performed in Israel outside the Orthodox-sanctioned state system, denying citizenship under the Law of Return to Jews converted in Israel by Conservative, Reform or privately-run Orthodox rabbinical courts.
Haaretz: The Biggest Enemies of ISIS Are the Iranians. So Why Did They Leave Them Alone Until Now?
Even Iraqi Arab Shi’ites, whom Islamic State views as loathed enemies that must be annihilated, aren’t its principal enemies. Its principal enemies are the Persian Shi’ites, whom it calls Safavids, after the Safavid dynasty that forcibly imposed Shi’ite Islam on Iran in the early 16th century. After all, the political and strategic leadership of the global Shi’ite community is located in Iran, not Iraq, so logic demands that Iran be attacked first and foremost. But that isn’t what happened.
Islamic State’s hatred of Shi’ite Islam stems from two complementary sources. The first is religious and theological. The organization is a Salafi Sunni movement that is close to Wahhabi Islam, which comes from Saudi Arabia, and to this day, the Wahhabi movement sees Shi’ites as people who left the fold of Islam. [...]
The second source of hatred is modern politics. Islamic State is above all an Iraqi Sunni movement with a dual leadership — religious and semisecular — whose main shared goal is restoring the Sunni Arab community to power in Iraq. This isn’t to discount the radical Salafi wing’s dream of imposing Islam on the entire world, but the common denominator of the two wings is a clear order of priorities topped by restoring Iraq to Sunni rule. [...]
What can we expect in the future? The Iranians blame the Saudis for the terror attacks, but neither country is beating the war drums. A Saudi-Iranian war would drag in the entire Gulf. The various emirates, aside from Qatar and Oman, would side with the Saudis, and most likely Jordan and Egypt would too. Iraq would presumably aspire to remain neutral, but Iran could force it to take its side, and the United States would be drawn into the turmoil against its will. This is a nightmare scenario that nobody wants.
Politico: Britain just can’t shake the ECJ
The U.K. Conservative Party’s base won’t rest until all traces of the European Court of Justice are erased from British life. High profile Brexiteer and former minister Iain Duncan Smith referred to it ahead of the Brexit referendum vote last year, for example, as an “illegitimate challenge to our sovereignty.” [...]
The first is that anyone living or doing business in the EU, including any government body, is subject to ECJ jurisdiction. To be free of it would be to reject the rule of law. So unless the U.K. proposes to stop doing business with Europe altogether it cannot escape the ECJ.
More significantly, the Brexiteers reserve a special hatred for the ECJ while forgetting those other supranational judicial bodies the U.K. is signed up to. Britain is a member of many international law bodies, most prominently as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (Britain is hardly about to give up its Security Council seat on sovereignty grounds).
The U.K. is also a member of the World Trade Organization, a body whose rules it will rely upon in case it fails to strike a Brexit deal with the EU. The irony there is that if the U.K.’s hard-line stance on the ECJ derails Brexit talks, it will force the U.K. into the arms of another international body with the power to dictate its affairs.
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