The Atlantic: Solving the Mystery of an Ancient Roman Plague

The Plague of Cyprian, named after the man who by AD 248 found himself Bishop of Carthage, struck in a period of history when basic facts are sometimes known barely or not at all. Yet the one fact that virtually all of our sources do agree upon is that a great pestilence defined the age between AD 249 and AD 262.  [...]

What is starkly lacking, however, is a Galen. The previous century’s dumb luck of having a great and prolific doctor to guide us has run out. But, now, for the first time, we have Christian testimony. The church experienced a growth spurt during the generation of the plague, and the mortality left a deep impression in Christian memory. The pagan and Christian sources not only confirm one another. Their different tone and timbre give us a richer sense of the plague than we would otherwise possess. [...]

The Plague of Cyprian was not just another turn through the periodic cycle of epidemic mortality. It was something qualitatively new—and the evocation of its “bloody” destruction may not be empty rhetoric, if hemorrhagic symptoms are implied.

The disease was of exotic origin and moved from southeast to northwest. It spread, over the course of two or three years, from Alexandria to other major coastal centers. The pandemic struck far and wide, in settlements large and small, deep into the interior of empire. It seemed “unusually relentless.” It reversed the ordinary seasonality of death in the Roman Empire, starting in the autumn and abating in the following summer. The pestilence was indiscriminate; it struck regardless of age, sex, or station. The disease invaded “every house.” [...]

The reckoning implies that the city’s population had declined by about 62 percent (from something like 500,000 to 190,000). Not all of these need be dead of plague. Some may have fled in the chaos. And we can always suspect overheated rhetoric. But the number of citizens on the public grain dole is a tantalizingly credible detail, and all other witnesses agreed on the scale of the mortality. An Athenian historian claimed that 5,000 died each day. Witness after witness—dramatically if imprecisely—testified that depopulation was invariably the sequel of the pestilence. “The human race is wasted by the desolation of pestilence.” [...]

Retrospective diagnosis from anguished reports of nonmedical personnel across nearly 2,000 years is never going to offer great confidence. But the hemorrhagic symptoms, the shocked sensibilities, and the insistence on the novelty of the disease all fit a filovirus. An agent like Ebola virus could diffuse as quickly as the Plague of Cyprian, but because of its reliance on body fluids for transmission, it could exhibit the slow-burning, “unusually relentless” dynamics that so struck contemporary observers. The obsession with deadly corpses in the third-century pandemic strikes a profound chord, given the recent experience of the Ebola virus. The uncertainty lies in our profound ignorance about the deep history of pathogens like Ebola that never became endemic in human populations.

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openDemocracy: Why Catalonia does not deserve to be independent

To start with, the Catalan claim rests on the separate history and identity of the Catalans which entitles them to a separate path from the rest of Spain. But Spain as a whole, as, indeed, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, United Kingdom (this is why it’s called ‘united’), let alone Poland and Romania, are the products of different regions, states or a part of states opting in at some historical moment when borders have been put into question – 1918, 1945, 1989-1990 – in order to combine their destinies into modern multinational states. Some of them opted for unitary states, others for federal ones, but none of the European nation states are based on collective identities where the region is based on a specific ethnicity. [...]

Therefore, the insistence of the Catalan Parliament on being allowed a unilateral right to secede is anything but democratic. There is no iron law of democracy allowing the right to unilaterally vote to leave a nation state that one has subscribed to before without coercion. Catalonia was no colony. Therefore, the citizens of the rest of a Spanish state based on the 1978 democratic Constitution have as much right to vote on the future of their joint project as do those who reside temporarily in the autonomous Catalonia (of which many are Spanish). [...]

In Catalonia students are only taught in Catalan in their first years of schooling, English is more promoted than Spanish as a foreign language (although the majority of Catalans have long indicated that Spanish was the number one mother tongue, before this statistical item was dropped). The obligatory use of Catalan as the sole medium of instruction for all school subjects has been championed by Catalan nationalists over the past decades with little contestation, although in no other region of Europe has a group which does not have the linguistic majority managed to promote a monolingual model[2]. [...]

The combination of nationalism with populism is not new in Europe and has been resurfacing in recent years. But the Catalan story is exemplary. If we accept such self-serving and irresponsible arguments in one case, the whole of Europe is gone. This is why both Vladimir Putin and Nigel Farage champion the Catalan cause, because it enfeebles Europe. Could something that propaganda channel Russia Today champions daily, the cause of Catalan independence, be good for the rest of us, Europeans?  Perhaps it is time to think more critically of charismatic Catalan national heroes, before they rally all the separatists of Europe. In the early 1990s, Italy also had similar problems, when the Northern League (Lega Nord) party enjoyed an electoral breakthrough in Veneto and Lombardy precisely by campaigning against Rome and the “centralist state” allegedly ripping off the hard-working North to redistribute resources in the parasitic South.

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Politico: Visegrad 4 cools on Europe, and each other

Tensions within the so-called Visegrad Group burst into the open last week over the question of Europe’s cross-border labor rules, as Poland and Hungary refused to follow Slovakia and the Czech Republic in endorsing a French-led compromise to tighten regulations on employees posted to work in the EU outside their home countries.

A bigger worry to those hoping to maintain a semblance of unity is that Prague could turn away from the alliance under populist oligarch Andrej Babiš, whose party won the parliamentary election on October 20-21. Though Babiš is not as ideological as Poland’s current right-wing leadership and doesn’t have a poisonous history with EU institutions like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, he’s given little indication of what his foreign policy will look like. [...]

“The attempt to turn this club into a counterweight failed,” said Milan Nič, an analyst with the German Council on Foreign Relations who previously worked for Slovakia’s foreign ministry. “They’re too divided on fundamental issues to push a common agenda, but they want to also prove that it’s not over. All four need the club.” [...]

Macron argues the current rules make it too easy for employers to avoid paying social security contributions in countries such as France, where the payments are much higher than in Central Europe. A number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, however, worry that the reform, which EU ministers approved by a qualified majority, undermines the single market and will hit their citizens particularly hard. In addition to Hungary and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia opposed the measure.  

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Vox: The New York attacker was from Uzbekistan. Here's why that matters.

Saipov also seems to have been radicalized after he came to the United States, and not back in Uzbekistan. But ISIS and other militant groups have been actively recruiting Uzbek migrant workers in the US, Russia, and Europe. A two-year federal terrorism investigation led to charges against five men from Uzbekistan, and another from neighboring Kazakhstan, for providing “material support” to ISIS. Uzbeks have also conducted attacks in Russia, Turkey, and Sweden over the past year, killing 57 people.

However, “it would be a terrible mistake to draw negative conclusions on Uzbekistan because of this one crazed individual,” Frederick Starr, a Central Asia expert at Johns Hopkins University, told the radio program 1A in an interview today. “In terms of Islamic extremism, [Uzbekistan is] quite quiet today — quieter than most of the region.” [...]

From then, the country suffered under the authoritarian rule of dictator Islam Karimov until his death in 2016. He held a tight grip on the state, controlled the media, and centralized the economy. The state’s brutal security service spread its authority throughout the country, even into small neighborhoods. And Karimov ran a secular government, even though the majority of the population is Muslim. [...]

“Patterns of radicalization for Uzbeks are somewhat similar to that of migrants from other countries, an inability to fit into the society where [they] live, an inability to live the American dream,” she said. “So they are looking for ways to belong and extremist narratives seem to be the most attractive.”

ISIS and other terrorist groups have taken advantage of that feeling of disenfranchisement to recruit Uzbeks and other Central Asians abroad, promising a more lavish and purposeful lifestyle for those who join their ranks. The Financial Times reports that around 80 to 90 percent of ISIS fighters from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan radicalized while they were working in Russia.

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The Atlantic: Most Campaign Outreach Has Zero Effect on Voters

A new paper by two California political scientists finds that the total effect of these efforts is zero, meaning that they have no impact on how voters vote. David Broockman, a Stanford University assistant professor, and Joshua Kalla, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from 49 field experiments—state, local, and federal campaigns that let political scientists access their data to evaluate their methods. For every flyer stuck in a mailbox, every door knocked by an earnest volunteer, and every candidate message left on an answering machine, there was no measurable change in voting outcomes. Even early outreach efforts, which are somewhat more successful at persuading voters, tend to fade from memory by Election Day. Broockman and Kalla also estimated that the effect of television and online ads is zero, although only a small portion of their data speaks directly to that point. [...]

Before they published this paper, Broockman and Kalla ran into minor social-science fame when they debunked a major study showing that voters can be persuaded to change their views on same-sex marriage if they meet a gay or lesbian person. A short while later, the pair published their own paper on a campaign to change minds about transgender people, finding that persuasion is, in fact, possible. This new study suggests that intentionally curated, issue-specific persuasion campaigns may shift people’s views more easily than partisan political campaigns. [...]

Kalla: All the money is being poured into the same time and the same place. It’s hard to imagine that the hundredth TV ad that a person views is really worth it from a monetary perspective, versus that same money spent in a different race or a lower race. There’s a case to be made that too much money is being spent in the same ways and on the same people.  But the takeaway from this paper should not be that campaigns should stop. Campaigns do a lot of work that is measurable in return on getting voters to vote, and persuading voters. It’s just a question of how the money is spent.

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The Atlantic: Guantanamo and the Myth of Swift Justice

That line is consistent with Trump’s remarks since before he became president. During the 2016 presidential campaign, for instance, Trump said he would consider sending U.S. citizens to Guantanamo, where the U.S. has attempted to try terrorism suspects captured on the battlefield following the attacks of September 11, 2001; no U.S. citizen has ever been sent there. His remarks Wednesday notwithstanding, the federal court system has been far more effective at trying and convicting terrorism suspects than the military courts at Guantanamo. Since the September 11 attacks, eight people have been convicted of terrorism at Guantanamo. Of those, three convictions were completely overturned; one was partially overturned. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind who has been at Guantanamo since he was captured in 2003, has yet to be tried. Federal courts, on the other hand, have convicted 620 terrorists, including such figures as Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, and Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda member. [...]

Then there is the legal question of whether the administration can take individuals from the U.S. and transfer them to Guantanamo. Raha Wala, director of national-security advocacy at Human Rights First, a civil-liberties group, told me that it’s prohibited to try U.S. citizens at Guantanamo and legally problematic to try green-card holders, like Saipov, who are permanent residents of the U.S. and enjoy most of the same rights as citizens. [...]

At its peak, Guantanamo held more than 750 prisoners, but President Obama released those that were deemed to be of little to no risk and persuaded other countries to take them. Some 55 detainees, the so-called “worst of the worst” suspects, are still at the facility. If Trump has his way, Saipov will join them. But, as Wala said: “I think you’ll see an outcry [if that happens] ... and you’ll see efforts to bring accountability in court, as well.”

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The Atlantic: Why Does Uzbekistan Export So Many Terrorists?

A beard would be considered a sign of religious extremism in Uzbekistan, which has a long and notorious record of restricting the religious practices of its majority Muslim population. All clerics are government vetted; all madrassas are government controlled and infiltrated by undercover informants. Pilgrims to Mecca have to go through a rigorous government vetting process and are then accompanied on the journey by government minders. The communal marking of the end of each day of fasting during the month of Ramadan is banned, as is the celebration of Eid al Fitr, the feast marking the end of Ramadan. Until recently, children under 18 were banned from attending mosques. The authoritarian regime of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet ruler who died last year, outlawed Islamist political parties and imprisoned and tortured dozens of religious activists. The government keeps a “black list” of people it has decided are religious extremists. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, “Those on the list are barred from obtaining various jobs and travel, and must report regularly for police interrogations.” Until the new president shortened the list in August, it contained some 18,000 names.

The ostensible point of all these restrictions was to fight the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, a jihadist movement that emerged just after the collapse of the Soviet Union—Uzbekistan was, until 1991, a Soviet republic. The IMU wanted to impose Islamic law in Uzbekistan, and was quickly banned by the new Karimov government. IMU fighters scattered throughout the region—to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and, after the U.S.-led invasion of  Afghanistan in 2001, to the tribal areas of Pakistan—from where they have launched multiple raids into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2014, the IMU pledged its allegiance to ISIS. [...]

In 2014, seemingly acknowledging that government restrictions on the practice of Islam weren’t working, Karimov asked Russia’s Vladimir Putin for help in dealing with his extremist problem. Putin shared Karimov’s concerns, but he was in the process of exporting his own Islamist threat to Syria, turning a blind eye to thousands of Russian citizens going to join the fighting as long as they stayed out of the way during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. This year, Russia has overtaken Saudi Arabia and Tunisia to become the largest supplier of foreign fighters to ISIS. Men from Russia’s Muslim republic of Dagestan told me in April that when they ventured into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria, they found a Russian-language subculture on the streets of cities like Tabqa, where fighters and families from all over Central Asia were united by that region’s Soviet lingua franca. On the Syrian border with Turkey, they encountered busloads of Central Asian women—mothers going to wrest their children from the clutches of the Islamic State.

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Social Europe: Macron’s Challenge For Europe

Macron’s speech was a welcome call to arms for a European Union that is confronting many crises and threats. But on the crucial and controversial question of fixing the eurozone, his proposals were disappointing. And he will have a hard time winning over his more cautious European counterparts, not least German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose room for manoeuvre was crimped by her party’s poor showing in last weekend’s federal election. [...]

The ball is now in Germany’s court. Europe could very well succumb to nationalism if Macron’s plan fails. That would be devastating for Germany, a country whose economic success, political identity, and security are based on a strong, functioning EU.

Macron is the most pro-German French president imaginable, and he has boosted his credibility by pursuing difficult labor-market reforms and unveiling a Teutonically prudent budget. Germany would be committing a monumental strategic blunder if it did not engage seriously with his proposals. [...]

The danger now is that Macron will achieve only a token eurozone budget in exchange for even tighter controls on national budgets, which would prove economically harmful and politically poisonous. He would also miss his chance to enact the reforms that the eurozone actually needs. These include deeper financial-market integration; an easier process for writing down bank and government debts; greater fiscal flexibility; and more balanced economic-adjustment mechanisms.  

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Politico: Madrid on Catalonia: We got this

More than 150 Catalan officials have been fired, most notably President Carles Puigdemont and his entire cabinet. Defying Madrid, Puigdemont went ahead with an October 1 referendum on independence that was declared illegal by Spanish courts, and used its contested results to support a unilateral declaration of independence last Friday. Madrid later that day moved to take over the region. [...]

Catalonia’s motley coalition of pro-independence factions swerved in recent days from negotiations with Madrid to a hasty declaration of independence that they lacked the levers to enforce and that was not recognized by any country. For its part, Madrid has asserted its authority in Catalonia, at least for the time being, almost effortlessly — dispelling fears, including among some members of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Cabinet, according to a senior government official, that it would be met with active resistance.[...]

There are numerous risks lurking in the weeks ahead for Madrid, including the likely possibility that the same or larger pro-independence majority regains control over the regional legislature. But government officials these days point to missteps by the Catalan leadership to justify their optimism. [...]

The main pro-independence Catalan political parties have vowed that they will take part in the ballot, implicitly accepting Madrid’s direct rule. The question remains if they will form a common front and under what motto they will run their campaign — with some separatists arguing they should frame the ballot as some sort of ratification for the new Catalan Republic. [...]

The prospect of economic trouble — with nearly 1,900 companies fleeing Catalonia since the disputed independence referendum on October 1 — and the cold welcome of the international community to the newly declared republic, said the official, should’ve convinced the separatist that the path of confrontation leads nowhere.

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