Politics

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    [post_content] => 'When there’s ambiguity, some governments will take advantage of that and try to use it to clamp down on speech.' —Human Rights Watch

Cybercrime is on the global agenda as a United Nations committee appointed to develop a treaty on the topic plans for its first meeting amid pandemic-related delays. The process is slated to take at least two years, but experts warn that such a treaty–initially proposed by Russia–could hand new tools to authorities looking to punish those who report the news.

The issue stems from competing definitions of cybercrime—one narrowed on malicious hacking of networks and data, the other encompassing any crime facilitated by a computer. It matters because many authorities around the world already invoke cybercrime or cybersecurity laws to punish journalists— not for secretly hacking into networks or systems, but for openly using their own to publicize wrongdoing.

“When there’s ambiguity, some governments will take advantage of that and try to use it to clamp down on speech,” Deborah Brown, senior researcher for digital rights at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Brown has written about a global surge in national cybercrime laws undermining human rights. “It’s important to look not just at what’s being proposed at the global level, but at how national governments are interpreting their own laws,” she told CPJ.

Cybercrime laws criminalize topics like false news in Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Sudan, among other countries. Journalists have been arrested on cybercrime charges in Iran for reporting on the economy; in Pakistan for investigative and political commentary; and in Benin, for alleged defamation.

In 2011, CPJ warned about Russia’s push, along with China and a handful of other UN member states, to propose an “information security” code to combat online information that could incite terrorism or undermine national stability, charges both countries have levied against journalists.

“This has been part of Russia’s agenda for a while, and China has also been pushing for a treaty that would achieve similar goals—simply to extend more state control over the internet,” said Sheetal Kumar, head of global engagement and advocacy at Global Partners Digital, a London-based organization advocating digital rights.

CPJ emailed the Russian and Chinese permanent missions to the UN in New York to request comment but received no response.

Cybercrime measures can affect the press even if they don’t explicitly criminalize speech. According to Kumar, some seek to undermine encryption, a privacy feature that helps journalists protect files and communicate privately with sources and colleagues. CPJ has reported on journalists facing trumped-up hacking charges in retaliation for reporting, like Egypt’s Nora Younis. Journalists in the U.S. have told CPJ that the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act criminalizes data-gathering and verification activities that ought to be considered a routine part of reporting the news. In one recent local U.S. case, Missouri governor Mike Parsons said on December 29 that he expected prosecutors to charge St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud under a state anti-hacking statute for publicizing a local government website vulnerability that had exposed teachers’ Social Security numbers.

But journalists could be even more vulnerable if a global convention entrenches a broader definition of computer-enabled cybercrime, according to Brown at HRW. “The [UN] treaty has the potential to criminalize certain behavior and content online,” she said.

“Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, China, and others want to see a much broader scope [for the treaty] with so-called morality crimes, disinformation – more content-based crimes,” Kumar said, citing national statements submitted ahead of the convention. CPJ has documented journalists imprisoned under both Jordan’s Cybercrime Law and Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions Law in the past.

Three journalists who have been arrested under cybercrime laws:

[caption id="attachment_3752" align="alignleft" width="400"] Maria Ressa at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, April 4, 2019.[/caption]

    
 	
  • Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, is battling a spate of spurious libel charges under the Philippines’ 2012 Cybercrime Prevention Act in connection with reporting by her news website, Rappler, and could face a six-year prison sentence if one conviction from 2020 is not overturned on appeal.
    • 
 	
  • Bangladeshi reporter Ruhul Amin Gazi has been jailed for over a year without trial because a 2019 report about an executed opposition leader published by his employer, the Bangla-language Daily Sangram newspaper, was available on the internet, triggering a criminal complaint under the Digital Security Act, Rezaur Rahman Lenin, an independent academic and activist based in Dhaka who has followed the case, told CPJ. Local courts deny bail to those charged under the law so often that the prosecution itself is a punishment, Lenin said.
    • 
 	
  • Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act criminalizes using computers to transmit information that could cause annoyance or that the sender knows to be false; Luka Binniyat, a Nigerian journalist who contributes to the U.S.-based outlet The Epoch Times, was arrested under the Cybercrimes Act in November 2021 and continues to be held in advance of a February 3 court hearing.
    • 


Many UN member states are calling for increased international cooperation in cybercrime investigations, which could see more information about alleged criminals shared across borders, according to Kumar.

“What’s good is that a number of states have said they want a rights-respecting approach,” she said. “But the devil is in the detail. You’re asking for increased [law enforcement] powers, you’re also saying human rights need to be protected. That’s where the issues will lie.”

This article was originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists. 
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The UN’s push for a cybercrime treaty could endanger the security of journalists

by Madeline Earp

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    [post_content] => The trials of the women, though on vastly different charges, demonstrate clearly that there are two classes of victims: those for whom the wheels of justice grind slowly; and those for whom they move quickly.

On the first weekday of the new year a California jury handed down a verdict in United States vs. Elizabeth Holmes, finding the Theranos founder guilty of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud against investors. Just a few days earlier, a New York City jury found Ghislaine Maxwell, the disgraced British socialite who procured girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse sexually, guilty of sex-trafficking. The timing of the two decisions aimed at powerful women made them collectively feel like a good omen, as if 2022 was shaping up to be the Year of Accountability. 

According to the evidence presented by prosecutors in both cases, the verdicts seemed fair and the juries thoughtful. (John Carreyrou, the former Wall Street Journal reporter whose investigative series on Theranos brought down the company, said in the final episode of Bad Blood, his podcast series about the Elizabeth Holmes trial, that the jury had been “unusually thoughtful.”) Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors but cleared of the charges against patients. Maxwell, for her part, was convicted of five of the six counts with which she was charged for aiding and abetting Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors in the 1990s. 

As different as the charges were, both trials raised uncomfortable questions about gender, underscoring how seriously our legal system takes protecting the interests of rich white men. Remember that Maxwell is the only person to have faced federal prosecution for her involvement in Epstein’s vast criminal enterprise—besides Epstein, who died in prison in what was ruled a suicide. Holmes is a “unicorn”—the first Silicon Valley CEO to be convicted of white collar crime, who also happens to also be a female founder, an under-represented demographic that receives just 11 percent of VC funding. “I wonder if [Holmes would] be going to prison if she didn’t have ovaries,” mused NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway on his podcast, Pivot. 

Like the last prominent female CEO convicted of white collar crime—Martha Stewart, who in 2004 was found guilty of obstruction of justice and sentenced to five months in prison—Holmes became a cautionary tale about a woman who flew too close to the sun, inspiring both a media frenzy and a content extravaganza. The rise and fall of Holmes, a billionaire (on paper) entrepreneur who was once heralded as the next Steve Jobs, has generated two prominent podcasts, a best-selling book, a documentary, a TV series on Hulu debuting March 3 that stars Amanda Seyfried, and a recently announced Apple Original Films adaptation of Carreyrou’s book, Bad Blood, starring Jennifer Lawrence. (Martha Stewart’s case, which took place before the podcast revolution, also inspired best-selling books—including a how-to guide written by Stewart herself while she was under house arrest—and a made-for-TV movie starring Cybill Shepherd.)    

Things get a bit more complicated—both with the Stewart comparisons and the idea that Holmes’s case contains broader lessons for the tech industry—when you consider the specifics of what she promised, and what Theranos actually delivered. As I have noted before, Theranos wasn’t a tech company, despite how it was pitched to investors. Holmes wasn’t trying to hawk a ride-sharing app or a social network or a coworking space. She was pitching a medical device that purported to diagnose diseases from a drop of blood with greater accuracy than traditional laboratory tests requiring larger samples. And unlike Martha Stewart, whose crime was relatively minor—she lied to investigators about a suspiciously well-timed sale of stock—Holmes lied to patients and investors, with life-altering implications.  

Theranos’s product never worked, which set Holmes apart from her Silicon Valley peers. Holmes told investors that Theranos’s “minilab” device could run thousands of blood tests, even though it never could run more than 12. She implied that it was being deployed on the battlefield and in Medevac helicopters, when she never had a deal with the Department of Defense beyond an exploratory conversation. One patient, Erin Tompkins, testified that she ordered a Theranos test at Walgreens, and was misdiagnosed as having HIV. “I was quite emotional about it,” she said, adding that she tried to call the company but never got beyond a customer service representative. Another patient, Brittany Gould, took the stand to say that a Theranos test result indicated that she was miscarrying, which would have been her fourth miscarriage in a row. Thankfully, a nurse practitioner encouraged her to get a second test, which confirmed that Gould’s baby was healthy. 

[caption id="attachment_3721" align="alignleft" width="640"] (l to r): Bill Clinton,
Elizabeth Holmes, and Jack Ma at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 29, 2015.[/caption]

As disturbing as that all sounds, it was the charges that stemmed from lying to the investors—not to the patients—that caused the jury to return a guilty verdict. To be sure, the defense successfully blocked testimony about the emotional impact of getting false test results, so it may have been harder to convince the jury to convict on those counts. Juror number six, a man named Wayne Katz, explained to ABC News that the jury ultimately felt that the CEO was “one step removed” from patient victims, so they weren’t directly defrauded in the same way as investors like the billionaire DeVos family, which put $100 million into Theranos; Daniel Mosley, a lawyer who invested $6 million; or PFM Health Sciences LP, a hedge fund that invested $96 million. For whistleblower Tyler Shultz—grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, who was on the company’s board—the verdict was mostly cause for celebration. But, as he told John Carreyrou on his Bad Blood podcast, he and his former colleague Erika Cheung were not motivated to put their “necks out on the line” so they could avenge aggrieved billionaires. They were trying “to save patients from potentially getting bad medical results.”  

It would be a travesty if Elizabeth Holmes were to wind up being the only Silicon Valley hype artist called to account for lying to investors or a range of other crimes. Elon Musk, for example, got a slap on the wrist for tweeting that he was taking Tesla public—a lie that sent the stock soaring—settling with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $40 million and agreeing to make some performative changes at the company. Travis Kalanick never faced criminal charges for any of the multiple scandals at Uber, which included price gouging, a culture of rampant sexual harassment and a failure to vet drivers, which led to high profile incidents of drivers committing sexual assault on female passengers. Neither has Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, even though his platform’s algorithm has weaponized disinformation, leading to disastrous outcomes ranging from a genocide in Myanmar, manipulation of the 2016 U.S. presidential election by a Russian troll farm, and the coordination of the assault on the Capitol by white nationalists on January 6, 2021.  

Holmes has yet to be sentenced. Each of her four fraud counts carries a 20-year maximum, but those sentences are likely to be served concurrently. She will probably get off with a much lighter sentence, as the judge takes into consideration factors such as her being the mother of an infant. Maxwell, who faces up to 65 years in prison, is awaiting sentencing, though her lawyers are currently trying to throw the whole verdict out on a technicality after a juror told a media outlet that he was a victim of sexual abuse. 


It has long been said that “the wheels of justice turn slowly,” but by looking at these two cases it’s clear that the relative slowness of that turning seems to depend on who the victims are. In the Maxwell case, where the victims were sexually abused underage girls, the crimes went uninvestigated for decades, until Julie K. Brown, a journalist with the Miami Herald, wrote a series that led to Epstein’s second arrest in 2019. (In 2008, Epstein famously cut a deal with prosecutors in Palm Beach, in which he pleaded guilty to soliciting a prostitute and served just 13 months in jail with extensive “work release.”) By contrast, Holmes was indicted for fraud more quickly–about three years after the first of John Carreyrou’s troubling reports were published in the Wall Street Journal. 

Ultimately, it is a good omen that Maxwell and Holmes, with their fleets of high-priced lawyers to match their unjustified entitlement, were both charged with crimes they obviously committed. But going forward, unless the complaints of teenage sex-trafficking victims and patients who got bad, potentially life-altering test results are treated with the same urgency as those of billionaire investors who lost money on a scam, the Year of Accountability will just have to wait. 
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The year started out well for justice, but less so for accountability

by Rachel Dodes

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    [post_content] => Officially, Dodik's secessionism is in reaction to a new law that bans genocide denial. But his true motives are more cynical and venal.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) appears to be coming apart at the seams. The Balkan state is currently embroiled in its worst political crisis since the 1992-1995 war, the bloodiest on European soil since the Second World War. The current tumult was triggered by Milorad Dodik, a Bosnian Serb nationalist politician and notorious demagogue, who has been leading calls for Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-majority region established after the war, to “pull out” of the country’s central institutions—its armed forces, intelligence agency, and tax authority. Most recently, he and his party, the SNSD, have expanded their secessionist rhetoric to include the state police, the border police, and even the country’s constitutional court.

Dodik and his party are paving the way for the RS entity to secede from BiH in all but name. His calls to quit the state’s central institutions are a violation of BiH’s constitution and of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which played a key role in ending the Bosnian War. According to that agreement, BiH is governed by a complex ethnic-based power system, which includes a tripartite presidency, wherein one Bosniak, one Serb, and one Croat simultaneously serve on the body and arrive at decisions via consensus. Or, at least, that is the theory. In practice, the system is marred by dysfunction and near constant obstruction, especially by Dodik and the SNSD.

What does he have to gain by pushing his war-scarred country dangerously close to the brink of another armed conflict? The answers are both cynical and predicated on a mix of political survival and ideology.

Officially, Dodik’s secessionist talk is based on his party’s rejection of a new law that criminalizes genocide denial. On July 23, 2020 the then High Representative, the Sarajevo-based international envoy who oversees the implementation of the 1995 peace agreement, Valentin Inzko, imposed a law banning the denial of all internationally recognized war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides (like the Holocaust). This means that anyone who denies that Serb nationalist forces committed genocide against Bosniaks during the 1992-95 war is now committing a crime.

For Serb nationalist leaders in BiH, this is an outrage. Genocide denial is a staple of their politics; Dodik’s regime has even funded bogus “commissions” to cast doubt on the well-established and forensically proven fact that Serb nationalist forces carried out widespread atrocities against Bosniak civilians while under the command of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both of whom were  convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Their convictions are largely concerned with the 1995 genocide in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where Serb nationalist forces forcibly separated over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from refugees nominally under the protection of the UN, transferred them to nearby fields and industrial buildings, and gunned them down. The New York Times report on the killings, quotes human rights officers and diplomatic officials who described it as “the worst crime since World War II.” Most experts and scholars, however, consider the totality of the Serb nationalist war effort in BiH to have been genocidal in nature, and not isolated merely to the events in Srebrenica.

Read Jasmin Mujanovic's review of "Quo Vadis, Aida," a "shattering, essential" film about the Srebrenica killings. 

The Bosnian parliament failed to pass its own legislation banning genocide denial because of obstruction by Dodik’s SNSD bloc and their coalition partners in the Croat nationalist HDZ. While the HDZ is not a secessionist party, they do want to further the ethnic fragmentation of BiH through the creation of a so-called “third entity,” a kind of Croat-dominated RS. Such an entity existed briefly during the war; its entire senior leadership was also convicted of crimes against humanity. Because Dodik sees the HDZ’s goals as a means of further undermining the central BiH state, he is happy to champion the HDZ’s interests.

In any case, Christian Schmidt, the new High Representative, has said the law imposed by his predecessor would remain in effect until parliament passed its own. Rather than engage in democratic niceties like parliamentary debate, Dodik has now shifted tactics to creating illegal parallel institutions. He has even threatened to recreate the “Army of the Republika Srpska” (VRS), the militia that committed the Srebrenica genocide.

Dodik has governed BiH’s RS as a virtual autocrat since 2006. Prior to the genocide, the areas of northern and eastern BiH that now constitute the entity were wholly multiethnic; today they are almost wholly Serb-dominated. Dodik is currently a member of BiH’s tripartite state presidency and has no official function within the RS, but the Serb enclave is his personal fiefdom in all but name. Once an American-backed reformist who helped eject Karadzic’s SDS party from power, Dodik has spent much of the last 16 years reinventing himself as a hardline nationalist. That has also meant violently cracking down on civil society, creating a regime-controlled media apparatus, and centering all real power in the entity of his own person.

Because of the Dodik regime’s near-authoritarian domination of the Serb entity, the SNSD is unlikely to lose power in the next BiH general elections, scheduled for October 2022. Moreover, because of the expansive power-sharing provisions of the Dayton constitution, Dodik and his Croat nationalist allies in the HDZ also (in)directly control large aspects of the state apparatus, a fact that has shielded leading figures in both parties from prosecution for a legion of criminal affairs and a smorgasbord of anti-constitutional activities. In October 2021, for instance, BiH’s BN TV reported that the SNSD government had allowed industrial grade oxygen tanks, unfit for human consumption, to be used in hospitals in the region. In December 2020, Dodik’s appointee on BiH’s central judicial oversight body was forced to resign in disgrace after he was caught on tape directing payoffs to underlings, and openly discussing how to sway justices.

It is this trinity—sectarian ultranationalism, autocracy, and kleptocracy—that is the nucleus of Dodik the person, and the regime he has constructed in RS. He wants to dismantle the Bosnian state because he needs all three to survive politically and because of venal, financial self-interest.

Dodik and his party have made the glorification of genocide denial one of their central ideological and electoral pillars. Without it, their political survival is in grave danger. The law banning genocide denial also creates politically and emotionally legitimate grounds for the High Representative to remove Dodik, which in turn would decimate his expansive criminal patronage networks. As noted in a January 5 U.S. Treasury Department brief, outlining the reasons for a new round of U.S. sanctions against him:

“Dodik…has established a patronage network in BiH from which he and his associates benefit. As one example of his corrupt actions, Dodik has provided government contracts and monopolies in the RS directly to close business associates. With his corrupt proceeds, Dodik has engaged in bribery and additional corrupt activities to further his personal interests at the expense of citizens in the RS.”

To be clear, the High Representative had grounds to remove Dodik already, but the SSND is hardly the only political party in BiH guilty of corruption, self-dealing, and abuse of office. Systematic genocide denial, however, packs a more robust, normative punch.

This also explains why Dodik has resisted implementing the “5+2 Agenda,” the formula set out in 2008 for the phasing out of the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The two most important pieces of that checklist are: the dispute over state properties on RS territory, the most sensitive of which are military installations that belong to the Bosnian Armed Forces; and “the entrenchment of the rule of law.” Both items strike at the heart of Dodik’s authoritarian autonomy in BiH. If Dodik agreed to respect the presence of Bosnian military bases on RS territory and to abide by the rule of law, including an appropriate genocide-denial law, he could secure the OHR’s departure. But he would also be undermining his own authority by accepting the state’s primacy over his fiefdom. That is why he is trying to get rid of the OHR without implementing the 5+2 Agenda.

Dodik ’s extremist gambit, however, reveals the true nature of his broader political project. He is not concerned about the anti-genocide law per se. He is worried because the OHR has shown that it is willing and still able to activate the Bonn Powers—i.e., its authority to use extra-constitutional powers to protect the integrity of the Dayton Accords—and this threatens Dodik’s own political survival.


What gives Dodik’s current efforts additional weight is not only that his party has begun using the RS assembly to formalize his purported “withdrawal” from state institutions, or his dismissing the legitimacy of Schmidt’s tenure at the OHR. That, in and of itself, does not make such acts legal. A sub-national assembly cannot unilaterally override the acts of a state parliament or the contents of international agreements—which is what the SNSD is doing—in any country on Earth, not even in BiH. But these actions indicate a degree of actual political courage Dodik’s regime has not hitherto displayed.

Dodik feels he can afford to be bold because he enjoys the support not only of Moscow and Belgrade, but also of Hungary, which is a member of the EU and NATO;  he recently claimed to have the support of several additional EU member states. While the Russians had Schmidt barred from the UN Security Council—the first time a BiH High Representative was prevented from addressing the body—Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has said explicitly that he would prevent the EU from imposing sanctions against Dodik’s regime, even as his country pledged financial aid to the RS. Orbán, whose Fidesz party is notoriously racist, antisemitic, and anti-democratic, has also peddled thinly veiled Islamophobic conspiracy theories to buttress Dodik’s brinksmanship.

Where BiH goes in the months ahead remains to be seen. Dodik and his partners in the HDZ might try to scuttle the country’s next elections, in order to further the narrative that BiH is a “failed state” that should be partitioned among neighboring powers, in line with the contents of a recent non-paper written by the cabinet of Slovenia’s Prime Minister, Janez Jansa, another Dodik ally. The U.S. has imposed new rounds of sanctions on Dodik; on Alternativa Television, a regime-controlled TV station that broadcasts pro-Dodik propaganda; and on Dodik’s former appointee to BiH’s judicial oversight body. The U.S. is expected to add more names to the list in coming weeks. The UK and Germany have also threatened their own measures, though they have not yet initiated them. In the interim, Zeljko Komsic, the Chairman of BiH’s presidency, has warned that unless the international community works with local authorities to stop Dodik, “force will have to be the response.”

Komsic is not wrong. Whether because of his extremist politics or his criminal interests, Dodik is clearly replicating the 1992 march to war under presided over by Radovan Karadzic, the convicted genocidaire. For all his bravado, though, Dodik knows he does not have the necessary hard power to go up against the BiH security apparatus, as fragmented as it is. The fear, however, is that he is still gambling on the idea that if he concocts a serious enough crisis, Serbia and Russia will come to his aid—little green men and all. Such a scenario would create a vortex of instability and conflict in the strategic center of the Western Balkans that, as in the 1990s, would suck in neighboring states. With Russia threatening further aggression against Ukraine, the West can ill afford another security crisis in the volatile southeast of Europe.
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    [post_excerpt] => Once a US-backed anti-nationalist reformist, Milorad Dodik has spent much of the last 16 years reinventing himself as a hardline nationalist politician.
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A genocide-denying autocrat is threatening to throw a lit match into Bosnia’s tinderbox

by Jasmin Mujanović 

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    [post_content] => On the sad anniversary of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, The Conversationalist's Executive Director has assembled a list of the best analysis she's read in the U.S.'s mainstream media. 

On the one-year anniversary of the January 6 coup attempt, I've assembled some of the best reporting and analysis reflecting on how the United States got to this point, and what comes next. The articles cover a range of topics and points of view, from Osita Nwanevu's systemic analysis to Margaret Sullivan's media criticism. Rebecca Solnit and Barton Gellman offer eloquent explainers on authoritarian lies, with Solnit's essay looking backwards to Birtherism, and Gellman looking ahead to 2024. Jennifer Rubin has an interesting read on how to fight her former party's extremism, and Vice has disturbing updates on Proud Boys embedding themselves in local community organizing. 

Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump’s Lies

Rebecca Solnit’s New York Times essay on truth, lies, and authoritarian control is brilliant; George Orwell would have been proud. She begins by tracing the series of GOP lies leading from the Tea Party to Trumpism. Delving into notions of gullibility, cynicism and true belief, Solnit paraphrases Hannah Arendt: "among those gulling the public, cynicism is a stronger force; among those being gulled, gullibility is, but the two are not so separate as they might seem." Lucky for us, Solnit is comfortable with grey areas. Where many writers might be tempted to let the deluded off the hook, especially anti-vaxers now dying from COVID, Solnit digs into their complicity, "gullibility means you believe something because someone else wants you to. You’re buying what they’re selling." 

'Trump's next coup has already begun'

Barton Gellman’s piece for The Atlantic is a strong summary of the ongoing threat to the 2024 election; he explains why and how January 6 was a practice run for future GOP violence. This is a clear and cogent breakdown of how the Big Lie incites the GOP base to violently overthrow democracy. It is an urgent call to action, but also self-conscious about not entering crisis-mode sooner. Take, for example, the source with a "judicious temperament" who "cautioned against hyperbole" last year but is now on board with U.S. democracy's death throes. The extended illness isn't examined. 

“Virtually no one a year ago, certainly not I, predicted that Trump could compel the whole party’s genuflection to the Big Lie and the recasting of insurgents as martyrs," writes Gellman. But he shouldn’t take pride in being a latecomer to an obvious crisis. There are entire fields dedicated to studying authoritarianism, extremism, propaganda, and personality cults. Those scholars haven't been silent. If being wrong is reasonable, I was a hysterical alarmist, because when Trump first ran I said he would never leave office peacefully, that it was the end of elections as we know them, and that his party-cult base would back him. 

If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post, addresses the mainstream media's failure to make the threat to democracy THE story. Why aren't more outlets openly pro-democracy? Quoting Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Thomas Zimmer, both prominent scholars of authoritarianism, Sullivan argues that the piecemeal approach to covering democratic decline is failing. While the media is finally taking note (she provides plenty of links to further reading) as we approach the one-year anniversary of the insurrection, most are still failing to center the most important political story in decades. Sullivan encourages publications and editors to take a stand for democracy. "Don’t be afraid to stand for something as basic to our mission as voting rights, governmental checks and balances, and democratic standards. In other words, shout it from the rooftops. Before it’s too late."

Trump isn't the only one to blame for the Capitol Riot

In an essay for The New York Times, Osita Nwanevu argues persuasively that the American political system is to blame for the structural advantages that bred Republican entitlement to power. Yes, January 6 was an attack on our democratic institutions, but "our institutions also helped produce that violent outburst by building a sense of entitlement to power within America’s conservative minority." Citing a laundry list of undemocratic institutions and rules, including the Electoral College, stacked courts, and the Senate filibuster, Nwanevu takes issue with the outsized political power of rural voters in sparsely populated states. Structural advantages insulate Republican demagoguery from criticism, radicalizing the party faster in the name of patriotism. Meanwhile, Democrats are still reluctant to consider systemic reforms that would help address the imbalance. 

Opinion: Polling on Jan. 6 shows the vast majority of Americans aren’t crazy

Jennifer Rubin, a formerly conservative columnist for The Washington Post, wants to look on the bright side of the fact that the majority of Republicans believe the election was stolen and that Democrats are illegitimately in control. She encourages Biden and the Department of Justice to be more outspoken, and connects Christian nationalism to the insurrection, noting the Christian symbols at the insurrection, a topic The Conversationalist has covered extensively. Being Jennifer Rubin, she also wants to build out the law enforcement capacity to deal with the threat, but fails to mention rising extremism within those institutions.

The Proud Boys Changed Tactics After Jan. 6. We Tracked Their Activity.

Vice reports on how the extremist Proud Boys retreated from the national stage after January 6 to focus on local organizing. There was some speculation that the Proud Boys were going to collapse after two major events—nearly 50 of them faced federal charges, and a report showed that their "chairman" was an informant for the feds. But they did not collapse. Instead, they took a three month break and then began embedding themselves further in local communities across the country. Since then they've joined anti-vax, anti-CRT groups showing up at school board and city council meetings, and made an effort to blend in with local far-right activism. As a result, their base of support has grown. 
    [post_title] => Media roundup: how should we analyze the impact of last year's attempted coup?
    [post_excerpt] => On the sad anniversary of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, Anna Lind-Guzik has assembled a list of the best analysis she's read in the U.S.'s mainstream media. 
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Media roundup: how should we analyze the impact of last year’s attempted coup?

by Anna Lind-Guzik

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    [post_content] => The current situation for journalists in Belarus is horrific enough, but will probably worsen. 

On May 23, Belarusian authorities caused a global outcry when they diverted a Lithuania-bound commercial flight to the Belarus capital of Minsk so they could arrest two passengers on the plane: self-exiled journalist Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. This shocking tactic was seen as emblematic of just how far President Aleksandr Lukashenko is willing to go to capture and punish his critics.

The dramatic arrest should not have surprised anyone familiar with the vindictive nature of the Lukashenko regime. The Belarusian leader, who has run the country since 1994, launched an especially brutal crackdown against the media around the August 9, 2020, presidential election, which was widely seen as rigged.

Dozens of reporters were detained for reporting on mass anti-government protests after Lukashenko claimed victory in the contested vote; Belarus now has at least 19 reporters behind bars —up from 10 in 2020 —according to CPJ’s 2021 prison census. 

CPJ has documented the beatings of journalists in detention as well as the authorities’ attempts to close media outlets, block the internet, raid newsrooms, harass journalists, and keep bringing new charges against those in jail. Many journalists have been detained multiple times.

By late 2020, CPJ noted another change in the Belarusian authorities’ tactics: they started bringing criminal charges against journalists rather than just holding them in 15-day administrative detentions. In February, two journalists of the Poland-based online broadcaster Belsat TV were sentenced to two years in jail. The two were detained in November 2020 while livestreaming from a protest in Minsk. Katsiaryna Barysevich, a correspondent for Tut.by, one of Belarus’ largest media outlets, was also detained in November 2020 and sentenced in March this year to six months in jail on absurd charges of reporting on the death of protester Raman Bandarenka.

When Barysevich, whom CPJ honored with its International Press Freedom Award this year, was released from prison on May 19, she found out that her media outlet was shuttered, more than a dozen of her colleagues, including chief editor Maryna Zolatava, journalists Elena Tolkacheva and Volha Loika were in custody on tax evasion charges. Barysevich was unable to enter the Tut.by office. “I can’t get a document that proves my past employment with Tut.by because the office is sealed off, and there’s nobody in there. I cannot prove that I am unemployed now,” she told CPJ in June. (Several other Tut.by staff remain in detention and face serious charges. They are not listed in CPJ’s prison census because they did not work as journalists.)

Days after the authorities raided the Tut.by and Belsat offices in May, the arrest of Pratasevich reinforced the full extent of the brutal nature of the Lukashenko regime.

Pratasevich, who was made to appear on state TV and at press conferences after a publicized “confession,” is now under house arrest in Minsk, banned from seeing anybody and going outside. Agents from the KGB, Belarus’ national security agency, reportedly live with him in his room. Pratasevich’s parents, Dmitry and Nataliya, say they do not know what charges their son is facing and told CPJ they are concerned about him.


By late 2021, Belarusian authorities had closed down most prominent independent media outlets and popular social media channels, branding them “extremist.” The authorities also targeted organization that help journalists. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group that is a partner of CPJ, was ordered to close after 26 years of operations. Its leaders continue monitoring press freedom violations from inside Belarus.

The Press Club Belarus, which assisted journalists with training, education and capacity building, was shuttered; its head Yulia Slutkskaya and other employees ended up behind bars. They were released only after asking for presidential pardon and paying large fines to cover the taxes they were accused of evading.

In addition, Belarusian authorities took extra measures to ensure that the information about detainees does not get to local and international media. They forced many lawyers to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking on cases, and stripped some lawyers of their licenses.

Belarus prison conditions are harsh. Journalists usually share cells with a dozen of other inmates, some with diseases, including COVID-19, or lice. Many have health issues but are not getting the medical treatment they need. Ksenia Lutskina, detained in December 2020 and facing seven years in jail in retaliation for her work as a journalist, has a brain tumor that is growing and causing bad headaches, her father, Aleh Lutksin, told CPJ. She’s been given painkillers but is not allowed to receive tests or medication she needs. (Belarus authorities have not responded to CPJ’s requests for information about any detainees.)

The current number of journalists behind bars is the highest for Belarus in the three decades since CPJ launched its prison census. Many are facing lengthy prison sentences on retaliatory and anti-state charges, such as treason.

The situation for journalists in Belarusian jails is likely to worsen. Every day, there are fewer media outlets and press freedom advocates to report on the journalists’ conditions, upcoming trials, and sentences. Those who continue to do so, like reporters at BAJ, are at risk of imprisonment. Lukashenko’s track record shows he can be expected to use every available tool to continue gagging dissident voices.

*This article was originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). 
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    [post_excerpt] => The current number of journalists behind bars is the highest for Belarus in three decades. 
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In Belarus, Lukashenko’s vindictiveness reaches new heights

by Gulnoza Said

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    [post_content] => The historic election marks the final stage in the transition away from Pinochet's dictatorship.

Hundreds of thousands of people flocked onto the streets of Chile’s cities on Sunday night to celebrate a history-making presidential election. The sounds of cheers and honking car horns were everywhere as, with 97 percent of the votes counted, Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old former student leader who headed the leftist coalition Frente Amplio, became the country’s youngest president. The final polls heading into the election predicted a very close result, with the far-right Jose Antonio Kast, 55, slightly ahead of the much younger, progressive Boric. But the final tally was not even close: Boric won with 55.9 percent of the vote—12 percentage points ahead of Kast, who called Boric to concede at 7.10 p.m., after only 30 percent of the ballots had been counted.

[caption id="attachment_3644" align="aligncenter" width="740"] Jubilant Boric supporters poured onto the streets of Santiago on December 19, 2021.[/caption]

On Election Day I was in Concepcion, in south-central Chile, feeling anxious but also hopeful that the Chilean people would elect Gabriel Boric, the humane, democratic and environmentally conscious candidate. I was at a polling station as ballot counting began, watching as the numbers showed a consistent advantage for Boric. When the announcement was made that Gabriel Boric had been elected, becoming Chile's youngest president, I was euphoric.



The two candidates campaigned on polarized visions for their country.

Kast, a conservative Catholic with nine children, is a Pinochet supporter. He ran a right-wing populist campaign that promoted a continuation of neoliberal economic policies and climate change denial. He vociferously opposed gender equality and abortion rights and incited against impoverished Venezuelans and Haitians who sought a better life in Chile.

Read more: Chile faces its most consequential election since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship

Boric is a former leader of the 2011-13 student movement, which sought better and more affordable education for all; as a young politician, he was one of the architects of the 2019 Agreement for Social Peace, which led to the 2020 referendum for a new, more equitable constitution to replace the Pinochet-era one. His platform calls for an overhaul of the economy, ending the neoliberal policies that have made the country deeply unequal; Boric campaigned on making Chile a more unified society—one fully transitioned away from the legacy of the Pinochet regime.

The campaign

Sunday’s election marked the end of a long process that began with the July primaries. Boric surprised everyone by winning the leadership of the leftist coalition over the Communist candidate, Daniel Jadue. The polls had projected a win for Jadue, but he made some serious missteps with various gaffes, including antisemitic statements; Boric, meanwhile, came off as inclusive, charismatic, and knowledgeable during the debates. With his moderate yet innovative positions, like the importance of finding a balance between economic growth and a response to the climate crisis, he attracted the millennial voters who played a decisive role in his becoming the leftist coalition's candidate. A high turnout for the primaries, with more than 1.7 million voters casting a ballot, created a solid electoral base for the first round of the presidential election.

Kast, on the other hand, did not participate in the right-wing party’s primary elections; nor was he a favorite in the polls at the beginning of the election campaign. His candidacy emerged from a political pact between conservative Christians and the new far-right Republican Party; he then went on to perform well during the first debates against Sebastian Sichel, his rival for leadership of the right-wing coalition. Sichel positioned himself as a center-right candidate, a move that proved to be a mistake: He pushed right-wing voters toward Kast, whom they saw as an “authentic” right-wing candidate. For the far-right, who supported the Pinochet dictatorship and opposed a new constitution, Kast represented both their natural political home, and the man who was more likely to bring a right-wing government to power. The center-right moved toward Kast because they saw him as the man most likely to be elected and they wanted a right-wing government at all costs, even if that meant tacitly supporting xenophobic proposals such as the construction of ditches in Chile’s north to prevent impoverished and desperate Venezuelan migrants from entering the country.

The race

In the weeks before Election Day on December 19, polls consistently showed Kast just slightly ahead of Boric in a very tight race. International legacy media outlets painted a picture of Chilean society polarized between two extremist candidates, although Boric’s views are hardly extreme—they would put him somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. In Chile, the influential right-wing media outlets played an outsized role in promoting Kast’s campaign with fake news that incited against Boric. Kast, for example, claimed several times that the bearded, tattooed leader of the leftist coalition used illicit drugs, a baseless lie that the right-wing media amplified until it gained such wide credence that Boric felt compelled to respond. During the December 13 debate against Kast he released lab results that proved he had no cannabis, amphetamines, or cocaine in his bloodstream.

Besides creating a divisive and polarized atmosphere during the campaign, the far right’s aggressive rhetoric and fake news also disseminated fear of Boric’s purportedly “socialist” agenda. For example, Kast claimed that the Communist Party’s support for Boric was indicative of a dangerous, far-left agenda; evoking Venezuela’s socialist bogeyman, he said that Boric, if elected, would drag Chile into chaos. In fact, Boric is very much a moderate who has attracted broad support with a political platform that advocates policies similar to those of European social democratic parties.

Voter turnout in Chile hovers at 50 percent, which increased this time in the second round. Some analysts predicted that Boric would inspire a surge in the youth vote, propelled by their concerns about the climate crisis and rising authoritarianism. While there is no data yet about age groups, overall voter participation did increase by more than one million over the first round. This election saw the highest electoral turnout in Chilean history, with Gabriel Boric receiving more votes than any presidential candidate in previous elections.

A historic election

Kast’s extreme views on women’s rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights inspired a diverse political movement in support of Boric’s candidacy. One of his proposals, for example, was to allow police to detain suspects for five days in undefined “confinement centers.” The far-right candidate thus galvanized significant sectors of voters to find common cause in combating the threat of far-right populism. The close relationship between the far right and religious fundamentalists alarmed feminists and other progressive movements, mobilizing them to organize and get out the vote.


But Chileans remain divided about the causes and outcomes of the 2019 social movement that sparked nationwide protests, which in turn led to a political agreement for the establishment of a constitutional process. The far-right opposes any structural change to Pinochet’s system. Boric and his broad coalition represent Chile’s majority, who aspire to a stable social and political transformation. They support the constitutional process and want a more equitable economic system that will replace Pinochet’s neoliberal legacy with a welfare state and sound environmental policies. Boric’s administration will seek to introduce an ecological approach to governing, and to implement transformative policies to pensions and healthcare, two of the pillars of the unequal and segregated Chilean system. Boric represents hope for a nation that wants more dignity, a fact that puts positive pressure on the future government: it needs to be humane, fair, and efficient. I believe the newly elected President Boric is more than ready to take on this immense challenge.
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Gabriel Boric becomes Chile’s youngest president on a progressive mandate

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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    [post_content] => The dominant religion of Russian officials is money. There are many ways to exploit that, starting with a long list of individually targeted sanctions.

Russia appears to be preparing for a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Satellite images show the  Kremlin has been moving military materiel to the border since October, while intelligence analysis posits that as many as 175,000 troops are headed for border-region Russian army bases. These developments have alarmed both Europe and the United States, with President Biden warning President Putin on Tuesday of “strong economic and other measures” during a two-hour video summit between the two leaders. 

The ongoing conflict began more than seven years ago, after the November 2013 Euromaidan Uprising that led to the popular ousting of Viktor Yanukovich, a fantastically corrupt president who had largely been Putin’s ally. The Russian president responded in March 2014 by invading and annexing Crimea, and destabilizing parts of the Ukrainian east. Now, a simmering conflict is poised to get much worse. How should  Western powers respond, particularly given that Ukraine is not a member of the EU or NATO?

First, we must dispense with the idea that we can and should do nothing. As someone originally from Ukraine I am a biased observer; but even when I set aside my desire to prevent Putin from killing my relatives, I can see dire consequences for ostensibly disinterested parties. Western states would prefer to pretend that the headache called Vladimir Putin didn’t exist, given all the other headaches they have to deal with — like the global pandemic and rising inflation — but deal with him they must.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would cause instability throughout Europe and beyond, including a gas pipeline disruption and the loss of a buffer zone between NATO and an ever-belligerent Russia. Adventurism by leaders of other countries—such as Iran, for example—who would see the distraction and the dismay as an opportunity, would likely increase in scope. The current refugee crisis would grow exponentially, with disastrous repercussions. Markets would suffer, as would businesses and aviation.  

Russia’s other neighbors — including Central Asian regimes — could become increasingly unstable. Putin is using extreme measures in an attempt to bully Western powers into keeping Ukraine out of NATO; his fear is the prospect of seeing the Western alliance’s military forces right on his border, but this fear holds risks for the entire region. As long as there are no consequences to his actions, Putin will not stop. 

The Russian view of Ukraine, which was part of the czarist empire and the Soviet Union, is distorted by imperialist propaganda that describes it as both a nation of buffoons and a threat that Russia must pacify. Russia also sees Ukraine as the stage for another grievance—that of Western triumphalism following the end of the Cold War, which the United States described as a “victory.” To put the matter in crude but simple terms, America insulted Russia and Putin, the former KGB officer, wants revenge.

Putin seems to believe that demoralizing the United States, which has provided aid to Ukraine  since it became independent in 1992, would be a major win for Russia. Ukraine is poised to fight, even if their military is destined to lose an all-out war against Russia's, but images of carnage and violence don’t deter Putin easily. We must understand that the Russian president would be initially unmoved by the sight of Russian soldiers coming home in body bags. 

“Who the hell do Ukrainians think they are?” was something I often heard in elite Moscow circles— among businessmen, television personalities, politicians—after the ousting of Yanukovych and the launch of the 2014 war. Russia’s ruling elite disliked the idea of Ukrainians possibly enjoying a functioning democracy and a better standard of living than they had. Moscow sees a stable, prosperous Ukraine as hostile simply because its existence might cause ordinary Russians to ask questions about why they were comparatively worse off. 

Because Russia is an extremely unequal society, its elite sees ordinary citizens as less than human and thus not entitled to ask uncomfortable questions, which might lead to popular discontent. In order to maintain their position, the leadership is most likely to choose divide-and-conquer: Incite a bunch of ordinary Russians against Ukrainians, dial up anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda, and keep everyone distracted with a war. 

What’s to be done to prevent this looming nightmare that will involve both bloodshed and wider instability? 

First, the Western nations must stop behaving as though they are powerless. Putin sees Western consternation as a sign of weakness.

It’s important, furthermore, to understand that Putin is not an ideologue. He uses ideology as an effective shield, but in practice he’s just another kleptocrat—albeit one with nuclear weapons. Russia’s new elite is composed of his close friends and important functionaries, all of whom benefit financially from their relationship with the president; normal people loathe Putin’s friends because they are so overtly corrupt. That very justifiable hatred is one of Russia’s greatest vulnerabilities, and one of the saddest elements of modern Russian life, which is dominated by stress and suspicion. Putin is the single leadership figure that Russians look to today, but he cannot fix all their problems. Meanwhile, brewing discontent is ripe for exploitation.

Western powers must also draw clear red lines by naming consequences and then acting upon them if Putin refuses to back down. Cutting Russia off from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication)—the international system that allows banks to carry out trans-border transactions—should absolutely be on the table. This would rattle the Russian economy and have an immediate impact on Russian citizens. Notice how you can’t send money to an Iranian bank from the United States? That’s because Iran has been cut off from SWIFT; this affects everyone in Iran, from the leadership to ordinary people on the street. 

A move to cut Russia off from SWIFT would also, of course, impact U.S. banks and German banks, which use it to communicate with Russia. But these banks are more insulated from financial pain because their economies are far more robust and integrated than Russia’s.

The Russian elite loves opulence. It stashes its assets (and, frequently, its children) abroad — popular spots include London and Paris, Manhattan and Miami, the Cayman Islands, and Cyprus. The dominant religion of Russian officials is money. There are many ways to exploit that, starting with a potentially very long list of individually targeted sanctions, such as those already levelled at dangerous Kremlin lackeys like businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been indicted in the U.S. for the role he played in meddling in the 2016 election; and propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, the notorious state TV presenter who is Russia’s own Tucker Carlson, only virtually unopposed.

Another factor to consider is Moscow’s fragile relationship with Beijing, with the Kremlin particularly worried about China expanding its influence in Russia’s Far East, where there are real tensions between the local leadership and Putin’s central government. When you want to know what bothers the Russian government, look at what it is restricting or monitoring. The FSB, for example, controls the Russian census in order to cover up resentment of Moscow in different parts of Russia. I was in Moscow when the 2010 census was conducted, and saw how researchers noted that the number of people identifying as “Siberian” as opposed to “Russian” had spiked. Today, writing about these issues in Russia can easily land you on a watchlist. All of this demonstrates that Moscow is worried about Russian territorial integrity. 

Russian propagandists tend to yell at me when I make these observations; they are defensive because they know I am telling the truth. Moscow is wary of China’s ambitions in the Far East and elsewhere, how they might affect Russia’s position in areas ranging from the Arctic to outer space, and how an already resentful Russian society might react to their country’s declining position. Washington can leverage that fear in many ways, most saliently by playing up the fact that Moscow today is nothing but Beijing’s uneasy sidekick. Russia is poorer and more vulnerable than China. Its population is declining. In its desire for great power status, it is decidedly outmatched by Beijing. These facts already don’t sit well with Putin, but are particularly infuriating to Russia’s citizens. 

Engaging Russia directly would merely serve to create another vortex of violent instability. But Russian private military companies (PMCs) have their fingers in many pies — in countries like the Central African Republic and Venezuela, where they are interested in both resource extraction and political influence. Signaling that all of these ventures are fair game for hostile action might not have an immediate effect—Putin likes PMCs precisely because they are expendable—but many of the Russian leader’s friends have significant amounts of money tied up in these ventures; inflicting pain on them makes him vulnerable. 

Most importantly, we must not mythologize Putin. Nor should we adopt the approach of the notorious Fox TV commentator, Tucker Carlson, who claims that Putin is massing troops and materiel because he needs to “secure” his border with Ukraine. This is a cynical political move: Carlson’s ratings go up every time he trashes President Joe Biden. If Biden is opposed to Putin, Carlson will side with Putin, even at the cost of global stability and the international standing of the United States. If Putin came out and claimed he needed his “Lebensraum” now, Tucker would probably cheer him on, and that’s all you need to know about that. 

Instead of being like Tucker, we should simply see the depressing system Putin created in all of its stark, granular detail — and understand that it won’t stop after it devours Ukraine. The time to oppose it is now.
    [post_title] => To stop Putin, grab him by his wallet
    [post_excerpt] => Western leaders are conducting their foreign policy as though nothing can be done to stop Putin. This is a mistake: he's weaker and more vulnerable than he appears.  
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To stop Putin, grab him by his wallet

by Natalia Antonova

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    [post_content] => Future COPs will bring about successful results only if organizers make the conferences more democratic, fair, and equal.

There were high hopes for COP26.  After years of disappointing climate conferences, many observers hoped that this one, held in Glasgow from October 31-November 13, would end with ambitious pledges and meaningful actions—particularly after both China and the US raised hopes with significant announcements going into the global event. China pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060, while the US pledged to double its financing to poorer countries for combating climate change. However, in the end COP26 fell short. Once again, the decisions taken at the UN Climate Change Conference brought a few advances, but mainly perpetuated the dangerous stagnation that we cannot afford at this critical time of rapid global warming.

I was an observer at COP26 under the auspices of the University of Edinburgh and Nuestra América Verde, a Latin American NGO. Although I studied climate law for both my LLM and now my doctorate, this was my first COP—and a totally novel experience, as can be seen in my description and analysis of events in this article.

Deeply unequal

Equity constitutes an essential element, in both procedural and substantive ambits, for achieving a successful UN climate change conference. Unfortunately, neither the conference organizers nor the state actors who attended COP26 took equity into account. Civil society organizations that came to observe were met with restricted  access to negotiations due to a combination of circumstances that included  the UK’s onerous and restrictive visa requirements; the high cost of accommodation in Glasgow; and vaccine apartheid. The absence of thousands of observers and climate activists from poorer countries in the global south, which are disproportionately affected by climate change made this extremely important global event that deeply unequal. State representatives engaged in important negotiations on critical climate issues with insufficient transparency, and in the absence of observers from civil society groups. The lack of equity and fairness had a strong impact on the substantive outcomes of the COP26, particularly on climate finance.

[caption id="attachment_3535" align="aligncenter" width="640"] COP26 Climate Change Conference on November 4, 2021.[/caption]

COP (Conference of the Parties) is the decision-making body for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Signed in 1992, the Convention tasks COP with realizing the UNFCCC’s agenda as it responds to the evolving challenges of climate change. COP1 took place in Berlin in 1995. Since then, the climate conferences have been held every one or two years; their purpose is to define the global path toward confronting the climate crisis.

Some of the best-known COPs include:

The success of each meeting is measured by the ambition and equity of its goals and their implementation. In this sense, many experts have pointed to the Paris Agreement as the perfect balance between ambition and equity, illustrated by its broad support among states. Lavanya Rajamani, a professor of environmental law at the University of Oxford Law School, said that the Paris Agreement “contains ambitious goals” and “is firmly anchored in the common but differentiated responsibilities principle” that are an expression of equity between states.

The importance of civil society groups

In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the Sixth Assessment Report, with climate scientists issuing dire warnings about imminent climate collapse resulting from faster-than-predicted global warming. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the report “a code red for humanity.”  In September, the NDCs Report of the United Nations further warned that the signatories of the Paris Accords were not meeting emissions control goals fast enough to stave off catastrophic global warming.  Both reports stipulated that there was a narrow window of opportunity for strong, efficient actions to reduce emissions and implement adaptation. As if to illustrate the warnings from scientists, 2021 saw several climate-related disasters—devastating floods, forest fires, unprecedented high summer temperatures—in Europe, India, China, and the US. Climate activists and civil society groups came to COP 26 hoping that the dire events of 2021 would inspire constructive and ambitious agreements to slow global warming and stave off climate catastrophe.


Civil society groups play a decisive role in creating truly cohesive and ambitious agreements at the COPs. The Paris Agreement, for example, is based on the preliminary work of civil society organizations that raised issues such as transparency, adaptation, mitigation and finance. The Climate Action Network was a key actor in achieving an agreement on global stocktake and transparency.  NGOs and grassroots movements can play a crucial role in pressuring their governments to improve climate commitments and actions domestically whereby reaching agreements that are more powerful. Every COP receives official delegations, observers, and what are known as “overflow parties”; these last two are usually representatives of NGOs or organizations that fight climate change.

The reality of advocacy within COP is more complex. The limited time and restricted opportunities for civil society to engage with officials makes it difficult to exert real influence. In addition, observers and civil society have a very limited voice at the negotiating table, where only those presiding at the discussion can invite NGOs to talk which is extremely rare. In sum, civil society and NGOs must act as spectators at talks defined almost entirely by governments.

COP26 was heavily criticized for unfair access to negotiations. It was the most attended COP in history, but non-state observers were not given proper access to negotiations. The Climate Action Network represents more than 1,500 organisations, but were given only two tickets to enter the negotiating area for the first two days of COP26, which was considerably fewer than the number they had received for previous COPs.  Organizers blamed pandemic restrictions, which limited the number of people who could gather in a single room. I saw dozens of observers barred from entering negotiation rooms, purportedly to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. But the COP presidency could have pre-empted this situation by providing larger conference rooms with proper ventilation so that civil society members could participate fully.  Limiting access to negotiations is particularly unfair in the case of the vulnerable communities that assisted in organizing and consulting to COP26, only to find themselves barred from observing the negotiations. Restricted access to negotiations aggravates the structural exclusion that is already an issue for vulnerable communities and indigenous people.

But these limitations did not stop civil society from exerting much-needed pressure on the negotiations. On Friday, November 12, hundreds gathered inside the COP26 venue to express their dissatisfaction with the draft decisions that had been published. The weak and unclear wording regarding support for developing countries was at the core of climate justice claims inside and outside the COP venue. Access restrictions were somewhat lifted toward the end of the conference due to pressure from civil society.  The next COP presidency must do more to ensure broader access to the negotiations. The UNFCCC must work on new guidelines to ensure an effective method for including the participation of civil society organizations at global climate negotiations.

Poor countries gonna get what's theirs

Unequal climate burdens provide the context for every COP gathering and Glasgow was no exception. Since the Paris Agreement, COPs have tried to make further progress on the implementation of past agreements, but so far have failed. Issues like “climate finance,” article 6 of the Paris Agreement, and “loss and damage” are among the most complicated ambits the COP must grapple with; equity is an important element of those debates.

Wealthy industrialized nations arrived at COP this year having failed to comply with a commitment they made in 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen, to transfer $100 billion annually to poorer nations for finance mitigation and adaptation actions. Through funds such as the “Adaptation Fund,” the “Global Environment Facility,” or the “Green Climate Fund,” climate finance can support projects to increase the resilience of vulnerable coastal lands, or for coping with severe droughts in sub-Saharan Africa. Enhancing the adaptive capacity of the poorest communities across the globe is essential for climate justice; that is why developing nations at COP26 pushed for an acknowledgement in the final statement that wealthy nations had reneged on their financial commitment. Climate mitigation and adaptation actions are costly and developing countries simply do not have enough money. This scarcity of resources creates a vicious circle, whereby poorer nations cannot afford to make more ambitious commitments until the wealthier nations accept their historical responsibility by sharing the necessary financing with those who need it.

[caption id="attachment_3534" align="alignleft" width="640"] Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at at COP26 on November 2, 2021.[/caption]

India’s last-minute demand for a change to the wording of the conference resolution caused an enormous uproar. The original wording called upon signatories to “accelerate (…) efforts towards the phase-out of unabated coal power”; India said it wanted it changed to “phasedown of unabated coal power.” COP decisions require consensus, so the president was forced to capitulate. But while wealthy countries were vociferous in their criticism of this move and the media blamed India for playing an obstructive role, there is more to India’s position than simple obstruction or lack of purpose. The country’s negotiators were responding to a lack of commitment from rich countries to supporting the needs of poorer ones. From India’s perspective, the richer nations were historically for climate change and were therefore ethically obligated to cooperate with those who were poorer, carried far less responsibility for climate change, and were more vulnerable to its impact. Ambition and equity mark a delicate balance in every climate negotiation, a fact that Glasgow demonstrated once again.

Future COPs must better consider how to navigate this precarious balancing act.  The urgency of the situation precludes further setbacks.
It will be very difficult for anyone who attended COP26 to forget the sight of Alok Sharma, the president of COP,  struggling to hold back tears at the final plenary as he acknowledged that the conference had failed to produce the climate commitments needed to avert global climate collapse.


COP26 fell short because it failed to integrate the principle of equity into its decisions. To bring about the ambitious change we desperately need, civil society must play an equal role to state actors in negotiations. Future climate agreements need to push harder for more significant cooperation and concessions from wealthier nations. This is not about charity; it is a matter of justice and responsibility that should be shouldered by those who created this climate emergency. If future COP climate agreements follow these steps and ensure true global equity, it may still be possible to attain the goal of keeping global warming at 1.5 degrees.
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    [post_excerpt] => Conference organizers failed to include the civil society activists who do the hard work on the ground, but they still managed to have an impact.
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COP26 fell short, but ended with a ray of hope

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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    [post_content] => There is a delicate balance when protesting inside the country: too much, and you attract police attention; too little, and you don’t make an impact.

In the summer of 2021, about 40 people sat squashed around a long table in the corner of a pizza restaurant in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. But this was not a birthday party; it was a gathering of a local opposition collective. The people seated around the table were there to reaffirm their support for the movement against the Lukashenko regime and to maintain the friendships and connections they developed during the last year of protests. 

None of the people at the pizza restaurant wore red and white, the colors of the flag of the first independent Belarusian state, as they had at the protests the year before. All expressions of solidarity with the opposition are now dangerous. But despite the regime’s brutal crackdown on dissent, grassroots opposition groups all over the country are finding novel ways to challenge the system, an undertaking that carries enormous risk. 

Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko managed to cling to power despite 10 months of massive, country-wide protests that followed the rigged national election of August 2020. But now the demonstrations—with thousands of Belarusians on the streets, workers marching out of state-owned factories, and red and white ribbon filled courtyards—are a thing of the past. Even the iconic Symbal.by, which sold products emblazoned with Belarusian traditional national symbols popular with the opposition, has been replaced with a shop selling kitchenware. The regime has crushed almost all visible dissent with mass arrests, imprisonment, and killings, instilling fear in the protest movement. 

Belarus stayed in the news cycle throughout 2021, even after the opposition was largely in jail, silenced, or in exile. Lukashenko grabbed international headlines by threatening an Olympic athlete, force-landing a Ryanair flight in order to arrest a dissident journalist, threatening to obstruct Europe’s gas supply, and manufacturing a migrant crisis in the heart of Europe. In another incident, the body of Vitaly Shishov, a Belarusian activist who headed an NGO to help fellow exiles, was found hanging from a tree in a Kyiv park after he failed to return home from a jog. Ukrainian police have opened a murder investigation. The message to exiled activists, explained Igor Mitchnik, project leader at Libereco, an NGO focused on human rights in Belarus and Ukraine, is that “nowhere is safe”—the regime can get to them anywhere.



In this superb November 19 interview, Lukashenko tells the BBC's Steven Rosenberg that he "may have helped" migrants enter the EU; he also says that Belarus would "massacre all the scum you've been financing"—referring to the 270 NGOs his regime has forcibly shut down this year.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, 39, the presumptive winner of the 2020 presidential election, who now lives in exile, has worked to keep the opposition in the news. Over the past year she has become an international figure, giving speeches, sitting for interviews with major media outlets, and meeting with world leaders like President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Chancellor Angela Merkel. Meanwhile, the quiet work of activists inside Belarus goes mostly unnoticed. This is intentional; attention brings risk. But their persistence signals a determined strength to achieve a peaceful and sustainable transition to democracy.

The Partisans

There are many active cells of anti-regime partisans working underground inside Belarus, although the exact number of people involved is unknown. One group of partisans is a team of hackers that conducts frequent cyber attacks against the regime. Their successful hacks include: stealing the personal details of regime informants who reported on neighbors or colleagues; downloading recorded personal phone calls between members of the security apparatus; and publishing the personal information of senior KGB agents. 

Tanya*, a 28 year old IT worker in Minsk, is a member of a cell that focuses primarily, in her own words, on samizdat: “We bring the truth to people, we print and distribute newspapers and leaflets.” This is in response to the regime's attempts to re-monopolize the information sphere. In restricting access to independent information, the regime has declared neighborhood social media chats “extremist,” shut down independent media outlets, and arrested numerous journalists and bloggers.  Even subscribing to an independent channel on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app, can be cause for arrest and a sentence of up to seven years in prison. 

The partisan protest actions are small-scale and brief, designed to ensure images are shared widely on social media long after the activists have left the scene. There is a delicate balance when protesting inside the country: too much, and you attract police attention; too little, and you don’t make an impact. Last spring, for example, in the midst of the crackdown, activists planted small patches of white and red flowers around Minsk. Tanya shared photographs of districts that decorated their public areas with flowers and printed information on local marches and actions.

The partisans also employ tactics to hurt the regime economically by, for example, encouraging consumers to boycott state-owned enterprises. In Belarus a wide range of foodstuffs and products are produced by the state, or by businesses closely connected with the regime. Products under boycott range from sausages and sugar, to cigarettes. A neighbouring cell has been raising the pressure by placing items on railway tracks to disable signals and delay trains carrying items for export, threatening the Europe-Asia transit route, a source of income for the regime. 

Tanya was devastated to learn in August that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had decided to send the regime $1 billion. The money was ostensibly earmarked to help the government fight Covid-19, but for opposition activists and outside observers, it would simply prop up Lukashenko’s illegitimate regime. 

Timothy Ash, the London-based economist, asked in a rhetorical tweet if the IMF acronym SDR (Special Drawing Rights) actually stood for “support dodgy regimes.” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader, tweeted that she had sent letters to the IMF and the US government asking them to freeze the funds, which she had earlier asserted would be misused by the regime for nefarious purposes. A Washington Post editorial headline was blunt: “Biden should not let the IMF throw a lifeline to Belarus’ dictator.” Tanya said: “I felt that all my efforts, all the sleepless nights and the suffering of friends behind bars—it was all in vain.” 

A few months later, as Belarus began registering record levels of Covid-19 infections, Lukashenko scrapped a short-lived mask mandate and ordered signs calling for them to be worn removed from public transport and shops, confirming the opposition’s fears that the IMF’s funds would be misappropriated. 

Membership in the partisans is dangerous and many members have been arrested. But Tanya remains committed precisely because the regime treats prisoners inhumanely and humiliates their supporters. She recounted that on a recent visit to a local prison the guards refused to accept rolls of toilet paper for an inmate unless the tissue was separated along the perforated lines into individual squares. “The whole queue of family and friends were just standing there, ripping toilet paper into pieces,” she recalled. The guards eventually accepted the toilet paper, but didn’t give it to the prisoners until they were released. 

KOTOS

Alina, an economist in her 50s, is focused on organizing local self-government bodies, known in Belarus as KOTOS, across her city. The main idea behind KOTOS, which have functioned since 2014, is to build a collective of active neighbours who deal with local issues and improve the community’s quality of life. They decide what murals will be painted on local buildings, where to place a new bench in a courtyard, or how to improve playgrounds for children. For Alina, the aim is to maintain and build on the newfound momentum for civic engagement developed over the past year, laying the foundations for an eventual democratic state. 

The KOTOS is supposed to be made up of locally elected representatives with a chairperson as the leader; but, as Alina and local residents discovered, to no one’s surprise, the regional administration appointed the representatives. KOTOS’s work is unpaid, and some of the appointed chairpersons in the region, explains Alina, did not want the position; but in a dictatorship, where the key currency is loyalty to the regime, they “could not refuse.” Chairpersons are reluctant to meet with the locals they represent; Alina recounts how in one neighbourhood “she [the chairman] still hides from the residents, coming up with different excuses to avoid them.”

With the ongoing crackdown against any form of civic engagement, the regime is unlikely to tolerate the involvement of local citizens in KOTOS. This, however, does not discourage Alina. She is looking for different ways to work within the system, from engaging with the local chairperson, to seeking out areas where a KOTOS does not yet exist and distributing information to local residents on how to organize their own system from scratch. Her goal is to find “people who sincerely want to improve life in their neighbourhood” and build grassroots communal solidarity.

This work is challenging. A year ago, there were people in the country who were happy to host discussions with locals on the rules and system of KOTOS; conduct seminars and consultations; and provide legal assistance. But, as Alina notes, who would want to  “stand out from the crowd today?”

New civil society initiatives

Volha, a businesswoman in Minsk, is developing a digital platform to educate people about democratic values. It provides a forum for experts from around the world to present information on different democratic systems to the next generation of Belarusians. 

Volha describes Belarus today as “scorched earth,” noting that nearly all the people who had been developing civil society have left the country. In July 2021 Lukashenko announced a “clean-up” of civil society; since then, 270 independent NGOs have been closed down, with many activists facing trumped up criminal charges. But Volha believes some people need to remain in Belarus, despite the danger. If civil society was possible before the 2020 uprising against Lukashenko’s regime, she argues, some form “could become possible again.” She stresses that now is not the time to give up developing initiatives inside the country. And while she worries about being arrested and imprisoned, Volha says that her greatest fear is being prevented from carrying on her work, because “from prison you can’t influence anything anymore.”

Activists who have remained in the country also run the risk of being labelled a GONGO— a “government-organized NGO.” For the opposition in exile, anyone who cooperates with the regime is de facto lending it legitimization. But Volha is undeterred. She knows that if she wants to develop her initiatives inside Belarus some cooperation with local authorities is unavoidable. Her approach is to integrate local authorities into her activities in order “to show them how things can work in normal countries, how it could be in Belarus.” Viewing all local authorities as representatives of Lukashenko, she says, is the wrong approach and “destroys all bridges.” 

Igor Mitchnik stressed the danger of this approach. The regime, he says, “has lost any credibility as a reliable partner for civic or democratic initiatives.” But he values the work of any organization that promotes “a vision of democratic alternatives for their society.” 

Volha’s approach to sustainable change in Belarus is, in her own words, “evolution, not revolution.” Yes, she acknowledges, the regime is oppressive, but “we [Belarusians] have allowed [it] to exist.” She argues that the only way to ensure Belarusians throw off the dictatorship, permanently, is through systemic change; otherwise it is only a matter of time before Belarusians will once again live under such a regime. 

Conclusion

These three activists represent very different approaches to regime change from inside Belarus, but they all believe Lukashenko is on borrowed time. While Tanya and the partisans fight the regime from the outside, Alina and Volha highlight a more nuanced grey area of opposition activism inside Belarus, one that requires some degree of cooperation with the regime. Whether their approach has merit remains to be seen; as Audre Lorde famously argued, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”  

The future of the opposition inside Belarus is, of course, unclear. Local elections have been postponed indefinitely, and the cruelty of the ongoing crackdown means the March 22 country-wide referendum on constitutional reform is unlikely to lead to fresh protests. 

One thing that is clear, however, is that the official Belarusian opposition depends on this network of activists inside the country to keep domestic pressure on the regime, and they are showing no signs of abating. As Tanya vowed: “as long as Belarus is not free, I will not stop.”  

*All the names of the activists inside Belarus have been changed to protect them. 
    [post_title] => Risking arrest, prison & death, Belarus's underground activists fight for democracy
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Risking arrest, prison & death, Belarus’s underground activists fight for democracy

by Alexandra St John Murphy

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    [post_content] => Will voters choose fear or hope?

Chile is experiencing one of its most powerful historical moments since the end of the dictatorship in 1990. The results of the November 21 presidential election will decide the fate of the social movements sparked by the 2019 “Chilean awakening' and of the constitutional process begun in 2020. Of the six candidates competing for the presidency two men who represent starkly opposing visions for Chile’s future are leading in the polls.

Gabriel Boric, 35, is a left-wing candidate who seeks to implement the social changes that Chilean people have been demanding over the last decade; his platform calls for ending the neoliberal economic-political model brutally imposed under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

On the far right is José Antonio Kast, 55, who wants to perpetuate the extreme neoliberal model that is the legacy of Pinochet’s rule. One of the many worrying aspects of Kast’s platform is a jingoistic anti-immigrant position, which includes a plan to construct ditches along Chile’s borders to prevent migrants—primarily from Haiti and Venezuela—from entering the country.

The volatile situation in which Chile finds itself—polls show Kast at 27.3 percent, ahead of Boric with 23.7 percent—makes this election an exceptional one, likely the most important since the return of democracy in 1989.

[caption id="attachment_3469" align="alignleft" width="640"] José Antonio Kast at a press conference on August 30, 2021.[/caption]

This election campaign takes place in the context of a process to rewrite the national constitution, which came out of the massive protest movement that swept across the country in 2019. The factors that led to the protests, the issues that are driving this election campaign, and the future of Chile’s democracy are the subject of this article.

1. The ‘Chilean Spring’

On October 14, 2019, high school students in Santiago responded to a government announcement of a public transportation fare hike of 30 pesos, or $0.04, by calling for widespread fare evasion; they amplified their call on social media with the hashtag #EvasionMasiva. Over the next few days, the chant "evadir, no pagar, otra forma de luchar" (“evade, don’t pay, there’s another way to fight”) was heard in almost every subway station. The student protests spread, sparking a mass movement for social change that reflected growing discontent over Chile’s enormous wealth gap, stagnant wages, and insufficient social services.

The proposed subway fare hike, though small, came to symbolize the broader injustices and inequalities of Chile’s economic and political system, as enshrined in the Pinochet Constitution. Chile is the most unequal member of the OECD, with 50 percent of the population earning just $550 per month, even as the cost of living continues to rise while wages remain stagnant. The government suspended the proposed transit fare hike, but the move came too late: the spark of protest had already been already lit; people began to ask questions about years of increasingly inadequate pensions, education, and health care.

During the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-90), while the military regime was prosecuting, torturing, and killing political opponents, the “Chicago Boys,” a group of right-wing Chilean economists who had studied with Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, were busy implementing a right-wing economic model. Pinochet’s repressive dictatorship was the ideal environment for unilateral imposition of reforms in pensions, health care, and labor law—and for the privatization of state companies.

In 1980, the Pinochet Constitution was enacted through a very dubious referendum, aligning the neoliberal economic reforms with the legal regime defined by the constitution.

The system changed little after the dictatorship ended in 1990. Constant opposition by the country’s right wing to any mention of deeper reform, as well as a certain comfort from the center-left political elite with the existing system, provided a further obstacle to more far-reaching change. During this period, Western governments held Chile up as an example of political stability and economic growth in South America.

But Chile’s perceived prosperity and stability were based on an economic and political system that was creating a huge wealth gap, with the richest one percent of the population earning 33 percent of the country’s wealth while the lower middle and working classes were barely able to make ends meet. For far too long, those in power ignored the growing resentment of Chile’s economically marginalized citizens—until it exploded.

On October 18, tens of thousands of citizens poured onto the streets to protest the brutal police response to student demonstrators, which included mass arrests and the use of live ammunition. That night protesters ambushed 70 Santiago subway stations; students flooded in to vault the turnstiles, vandalize equipment, and pull the emergency brakes on trains. Police responded with beatings, tear gas, and arrests. These events were the tipping point: over the next three weeks a full-scale social movement erupted, with up to a million people pouring into the streets, clamoring for a new social and economic order that would bring dignity to the Chilean people.

[caption id="attachment_3477" align="alignleft" width="640"] Protesters in Santiago on November 19, 2019.[/caption]

The government responded with a repressive crackdown that included the deployment of soldiers on urban streets, the imposition of curfews in several cities, and President Sebastian Piñera’s “declaration of war” against the protesters. For untold thousands of Chileans, the sight of soldiers on their streets triggered barely repressed memories of the Pinochet dictatorship. Their fears were reflected in the horrific reports of police shooting protesters with live ammunition, often aiming at their eyes from close range. As a result, at least 300 people were injured in the eye, more than half of them partially blinded. Despite documented reports of these incidents compiled by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International , Piñera's government denied all the accusations of human rights violations.

In this polarized context the government and the opposition reached a political agreement. On November 15, 2019, they announced a national referendum to decide whether and how a new constitution should be drafted to replace the 1980 Pinochet Constitution. The announcement helped quell the social unrest. The Chilean people had stood up for and won their right to draft a new, democratic constitution with the help of popularly elected representatives. The referendum was held October 20, 2020 and the result was a landslide: 78 percent of Chileans voted in favor of a new constitution.

2. The impact of the global rise in authoritarianism on the Chilean constitutional process

The events of 2019-20 loom heavily over the presidential election. Two issues could affect the outcome. First, there is the need for social transformation. Massive support for a new constitution drafted by elected representatives reflects the popular will for democratically implemented change to reduce inequalities.

The second factor looming over this election is a fear of instability. The same people who want political and social reforms also fear the cost associated with economic and political upheaval.

The euphoria of the 2019 social uprising was followed by the global pandemic, which has hurt the economy and had a chilling effect on Chilean society's social, political, and economic ambits. Unfortunately, the right and the far right-have taken advantage of this period of global instability to promote the idea that a new constitution and a left-wing president would bring about an economic and political “disaster.”

The Chilean far right knows they don’t have a winning argument for maintaining the dictatorship’s constitution, so instead they are spreading fear with fake news and nationalism. In several important ways, the rising power of Chile’s far right and the threat of authoritarianism reflect the issues that dominated the last two US presidential elections.

First, there is the debacle of the center right. Before Trump was elected as the Republican candidate in 2016, the moderate right in the US found itself rudderless, with no clear leaders, no discourse, and no obvious political agenda. Meanwhile, the center left failed to tackle inequality and other social ills. These two factors paved the way for Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP, and his victory in the 2016 presidential election. Similarly, in Chile, the right-wing government of Sebastian Piñera, who is deeply unpopular, has been described as the worst in the history of Chile’s democracy. The traditional right-wing parties’ lack of credibility and the political isolation of right-wing voters contributed to the creation of a viable far right.

Second, nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment are growing rapidly. Kast, the far-right candidate, is following the “Trumpist” or “Bolsonarist” blueprint of blaming migrants for the country’s social and economic problems. His dangerous rhetoric has provoked violent attacks on migrant communities, such as the September 24 police-led eviction of Venezuelan migrants, including small children, from a camp in the port city of Iquique.

Third, conservative and fundamentalist religious groups, including the Political Network for Values, make up an important constituency in the Chilean far right. Their growing political clout threatens any progress on rights for women and the LGBTQ+ community.

Fourth, there is a strong move toward protectionist foreign policy, alongside opposition to multilateralism. One of the main political refrains of the far right is to decry the uselessness of global forums and international agreements—particularly those that deal with human rights, the environment, and migration.

Kast, for example, has declared his refusal to abide by the Escazú Agreement, a regional environmental treaty that guarantees access to information, public participation, and transparency in environmental matters. The agreement also provides special protection to environmental activists against threats and violence from polluting industries. Kast’s refusal to honor this treaty is reminiscent of Trump’s 2017 executive order to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. The victory of the Chilean far right would almost certainly result in the country’s political isolation on the international stage.

Fortunately, there is a political alternative to Kast. Gabriel Boric, a former law student, wants to move away from the country’s neoliberal past while curbing the rise of authoritarianism through a progressive and rights-based approach to policymaking. Boric’s platform builds on the social demands that a large segment of the Chilean people has pushed for over the past two decades. He rose to prominence as a leader of the 2011-13 mass student movements, which called for universal free high quality education, and launched his political career from that experience. Now his close relationship to social movements provides Boric and his allies with a real grasp of the current political reality of most Chileans. The leftist candidate's political platform calls for the total transformation of the privatized pension and inadequate health care system left over from the dictatorship, as well as an ecological agenda that recognizes the climate crisis as the catastrophic threat that it is, while offering solutions for social change and fair economic growth.

The global rise of populist authoritarianism, including in the UK and the US, has not escaped the notice of Chileans. Their country’s constitutional transition should take place under the watch of a government that believes in the process and will thus facilitate it rather than impede it.

3. An essential step toward achieving social progress

Considering what’s at stake with the ratification of the new constitution, the health and progress of the Chilean political system depends in many ways on this electoral race. For instance, feminism has been an important social component in making the constitutional process more democratic. In 2019 the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis amplified the women’s movement with their exuberant protest song, “A rapist in your path.”  It became a global feminist anthem and Chile’s feminist protests led to the inclusion of gender parity among constitutional representatives. Now Kast, the far-right candidate, wants to abolish the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, which would mean a complete reversal of all the demands the feminist movement fought for.


The far right’s position on climate change is also very worrying. Kast’s platform casts doubt on the very existence of climate change, referring to it as a “stance” instead of a “scientific certainty.” On the other hand, several weeks ago the constitutional convention issued a declaration of climate emergency and defined an “ecological approach” as one of its guiding principles for the new constitutional text. Kast is an authoritarian threat to all the potential progress on social rights and ecological agenda that the constitutional process can bring. He led the political campaign against the new constitution and his political positions oppose any structural reform. If elected he will probably try all the mechanisms to obstruct and discredit the legitimate and legal constitutional process.

Kast and Boric’s polarized positions on women’s equality and the environment reflect the opposing directions that the constitutional discussion could take, as the threat of authoritarianism from the far-right looms over Chile. The health of the country’s political and economic future hangs in the balance as Chileans await the results of both the constitutional process and the presidential election. Hopefully, the candidate who is elected president on Sunday will assist and collaborate with the constitutional assembly. For Chile, this would mean a stable and transformative constitutional transition toward a more just, democratic and sustainable country that is finally rid of Pinochet’s authoritarian politics and crippling neoliberal economic agenda.
    [post_title] => Chile faces its most consequential election since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship
    [post_excerpt] => A sharply divided electorate will choose between a young candidate for social change, and a far right middle aged candidate who embraces a radical neoliberal agenda and praises the Pinochet dictatorship. 
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Chile faces its most consequential election since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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    [post_content] => Women shouldn’t need a 'good' reason to end a pregnancy.

Texas’s shockingly cruel new abortion law bars abortion once cardiac activity can be detected in the embryo, typically around the sixth week of pregnancy. Notably, it also allows any US citizen to sue any person who performs or otherwise “aids and abets” a prohibited abortion. The law has few defenders in the mainstream press. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post noted its “viciousness.” The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg described its “sinister brilliance.” Rebecca Traister of New York Magazine decried its “ugliness.”

By deploying private citizens to subjugate the vulnerable, the law evokes the worst of the United States’ not-so-distant past. In the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, doctors and police officers demanded that women dying of botched abortions name the provider. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mercenaries made their living by hunting down escaped slaves and returning them to bondage in exchange for a bounty. Some Americans have always been willing to work for or in lieu of law enforcement to catch, punish, and profit from those they or the state deem criminals based on deeply ingrained notions, rooted in systemic racism and sexism, of who is and isn’t a rational, capable human being.

Abortion was common in the United States throughout the nineteenth century. It was only in the latter half of the century, when medicine became a respected profession and the American Medical Association was established, that physicians lobbied to have abortion banned. Their concern was not about abortion’s morality, but about the financial and professional implications of being forced to compete with midwives and purveyors of home abortion remedies.

As ugly as the Texas law is on its own, many of its opponents are attempting to fight it by invoking the worst-case scenarios. A number of commentators have cited the case of a 13-year-old Texas girl who became pregnant after her grandfather raped her; the law grants no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Few would argue that a 13-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry and give birth to her grandfather’s baby; that is why, even in Texas, the girl in question was able to end her pregnancy, albeit only after traveling hours from her small town to a clinic in Houston (this was a few months before the new law went into effect). People in extreme circumstances related to pregnancy—victims of rape and incest, women carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities, those who might die if they give birth—deserve support, compassion, and access to modern medicine, including abortion. But only a small minority of women seek abortion for those reasons.

The most common reasons women give for seeking abortions in the United States are the least shocking. According to data gathered from 2008 to 2010, 40 percent said they were “not financially prepared” to have a child. Thirty-six percent cited “bad timing,” “unplanned,” or “not ready.” Nearly a third (31 percent) cited reasons related to the person who caused the pregnancy—e.g., he was unsupportive, abusive, and/or didn’t want to be involved. Twenty-nine percent of abortion patients said they needed to focus on caring for the children they already had. Most gave not just one but several reasons for ending their pregnancy. By evoking only the extremes, activists risk creating a sense that some women are more or less “deserving” than others of abortion access.

Americans, including those who believe abortion should remain legal, are accustomed to weighing the relative moral acceptability of these reasons. They might sympathize with a terrified 15-year-old who gets pregnant the first time she has sex, but think a 36-year-old woman who didn’t use birth control and got pregnant from a one-night stand should have known better. Most rights are not absolute; they can be and often are restricted. But once a society recognizes that a right exists, it is not contingent on whether others approve of how it is exercised. That’s why proponents of free speech, particularly in the United States, often cite biographer Evelyn Hall’s summary of Voltaire’s philosophy: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Katie Watson, a lawyer and bioethicist who teaches at Northwestern University, sympathizes with advocates who focus on extraordinary cases. “Legally, you always pick the most sympathetic plaintiff for your case, and rhetorically, we often want to lead with our strongest examples,” she explained over the phone. “That’s narrative structure and that’s storytelling and that's litigation.” What concerns her is “the repetition damage…when those become the only stories that we tell, they skew our vision and our understanding of what life is really like. And starting with bad facts leads to bad policy.”

The result, said Watson, is that “the cases we discuss the most are the cases that happen the least.” She added: “When we focus exclusively on those—we unwittingly contribute to that dichotomy between good abortions and bad abortions—or deserved abortions and shameful abortions.”

Shifting attitudes toward divorce and the liberalization of divorce laws are a useful comparison. Divorce was once a very controversial issue in the United States. Until “no fault” divorce became the norm in the 1970s, the laws of most states required a woman petitioning for a legal end to her marriage to prove that her husband had committed adultery, abused her, or abandoned her. As of 2017 most Americans (73 percent), including a slim majority (51 percent) of the “very religious,” considered divorce morally acceptable. This, despite the fact that between 22 and 50 percent of people who obtain a divorce, regret having done so.  By comparison, 84 percent of women polled five years after having an abortion report feeling either positive or neutral about their decision. Few Americans, however, would advocate forcing people to stay married.

Despite the popular stereotype of those who get abortions as young, immature, and/or careless, most people who undergo terminations in the United States are not only adults, but parents. In 2014, 59 percent of abortions were obtained by women who already had at least one child. Only 12 percent were teenagers; those younger than 15 accounted for only 0.2 percent. The vast majority of people who undergo an abortion procedure are neither tricked nor pressured into ending their pregnancies. Only about 1 percent reported seeking a termination because somebody else, usually a parent or a partner, wanted them to. Most people who seek abortions know their own needs, desires, and limitations, and can imagine—or are already well aware of—the physical, psychological, and literal cost of bringing a child into being.

If a woman can choose to join the military, get married, or end a marriage—all potentially life-changing decisions—she can decide to end a pregnancy. As Watson argued in her 2018 book Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion, “We should be able to acknowledge the complexity of private decision making without threatening the right of private decision making.”

According to Watson, it’s no surprise, and no problem, for members of a large, diverse, and pluralistic society to have a range of views on abortion. That’s why, in defending abortion rights, she thinks it’s crucial to rely on the politics of respect rather than the politics of sympathy. “The politics of sympathy say, ‘You get to have that abortion because I feel sympathetic to you,’” she explained. “It puts the listener or the voter in the position of judge.” By contrast, “the politics of respect say, ‘I may or may not agree with her decision or like it, but she is a moral agent with a brain and a heart and she is the one who's going to live with the consequences of whatever decision she makes, whether to have a child or not…I respect her decision-making rights and her decision-making capacity and her decision-making authority, even if her moral frameworks are different than mine.’” The latter, Watson said, focuses on the pregnant person, whereas the former focuses on “the person offering the opinion or the vote.”

There are places in the world where abortion is not only safe, legal, and unremarkable, but also considered a basic human right. Five years ago, when my mother was on a group tour of Iceland, another American woman on the tour referred to then President Obama as a “baby killer.” My mother defended Obama and asked the Icelandic tour guide what she thought. “In this country,” the guide replied carefully, “Women are considered equal citizens, so abortion is not really an issue.”

That attitude is not limited to Nordic countries. People in many industrialized nations around the world see abortion rights as inseparable from the human right to self-determination. In Ireland, which legalized abortion by a wide margin following a 2018 referendum, the government heralded the right to abortion as a welcome sign that the country had finally joined modern society. “The people have spoken,” declared then Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. “They have said we need a modern constitution for a modern country.”

Meanwhile, when the Polish government implemented draconian abortion restrictions last year, they sparked the country’s largest protests since the fall of communism. As one protester told Reuters, “I want us to have our basic rights…the right to decide what we want to do and if we want to bear children and in what circumstances to have children.”

Melissa Upreti, a human rights lawyer tasked by the United Nations Human Rights Council with fighting to end discrimination against women and girls, characterized Texas’s law as “sex and gender-based discrimination at its worst” and a clear violation of international law, adding that it has “not only taken Texas backward, but in the eyes of the international community, it has taken the entire country backward.”

Based on the means many abortion opponents have employed to limit access to the procedure—e.g., picketing clinics and shaming women as they enter, murdering and threatening abortion providers, and now passing a law that empowers ordinary citizens to be vigilantes and bounty hunters—it seems obvious that their concerns are not about the sanctity of “life” but about controlling and humiliating pregnant people.

Abortion opponents detest the slogan, “My body, my choice.” So do I—not because it invokes bodily autonomy, but because the “choice” framework is trivializing, and falsely implies that all choices are equal. The choice to bring a human being into existence is far graver and more permanently life-altering than the decision not to. Forcing a woman to endure pregnancy and labor against her will is an act of brutality with lifelong consequences for her and any children for whom she is responsible. In defending the Texas law, Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance falsely asserted that it’s about “whether a child should be allowed to live” and “not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term.” But that’s precisely what it is. And that kind of torture cannot be justified by the victim’s capacity to bring into being a child who doesn’t yet exist.
    [post_title] => In defense of ordinary abortion
    [post_excerpt] => People in extreme circumstances related to pregnancy—victims of rape and incest, women carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities, those who might die if they give birth—deserve support, compassion, and access to modern medicine, including abortion. But only a small minority of women seek abortion for those reasons.
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In defense of ordinary abortion

by Raina Lipsitz

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    [post_content] => The government has recognized its error and resigned, but the women's lives are still in tatters. 

Franciska Manuputty’s ordeal with the Dutch tax authorities began in 2010, when she received notification to repay €30,000 (about US $35,000) in childcare tax benefits, to which the government alleged she had not been entitled. Manuputty, 49, is a low-income single mother of two. She was soon behind on the rent, couldn’t pay her electricity bills, and turned to a food bank to feed her family. Her daughter, now 20 years old, told her recently that as a child she had lived in constant fear of returning home from school to discover they had been evicted from their apartment. 

Manuputty is one of the victims of what the Dutch media calls the child benefits scandal. Over the course of around a decade the government falsely accused thousands of eligible families of having committed fraud and ordered them to repay childcare tax benefits to which they had, in fact, been entitled. 

A parliamentary investigation published in December 2020 found that the tax authorities had set up a child benefits system with bureaucratic rules so rigid that even the smallest administrative error in filling out forms caused the system to flag beneficiaries, who were then pursued by the courts and forced to repay all the money they had received—plus fines. The total number of victims is not yet clear; but based on a parliamentary investigation and the number of people who applied for the initial compensation of €30,000 (about $35,000), at least 35,000 people have been affected. 

The fallout from the scandal led to the government’s resignation in January 2021. 

Families that were forced to repay tens of thousands of euros faced bankruptcies, job losses, forced sale of houses, homelessness, divorce—even suicide. Several families saw their children removed by child protection authorities, on the basis that they were no longer able to care for them after losing their homes and financial stability. 

The €30,000 compensation doesn’t even begin to solve Manuputty’s problems. Because the tax authorities labelled her a cheat in 2009, her name is now in the system and her credit is ruined. Over the past decade all her applications for financial aid were rejected, which forced her to keep borrowing money and leave bills unpaid. She now owes €100,000 ($115,000) to various creditors. “I hold on to life for my children,” said Manuputty.

Investigative journalists discovered, via the parliamentary freedom of information act, that the algorithms had been designed to flag “cheats” based on the amount a parent received—i.e., the more benefits they received, the more likely they were to fall under suspicion. The result: the people targeted were those whose low-paid jobs made them most eligible for childcare benefits. 

A disproportionate number of people in that group were single mothers with foreign citizenship, so the algorithm de facto flagged poor women who were either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants, adding racism to the scandal.  The Ministry of Finance brought a discrimination suit against the tax authorities, but the  public prosecutor dismissed the case, saying the issue must be solved politically. Victims of the false accusations are appealing that decision. A parliamentary commission will be  appointed to investigate the matter later this year or next year. 

Via a WhatsApp group for victims of the scandal, Franciska Manuputty met Batya Brown, 35,  a part-time employee at a daycare center who is now pregnant with her fifth child. When the two were asked to address an anti-racism demonstration about their experiences they decided to collaborate on their speeches and provide one another with moral support. They were joined by Kristie Rongen, 45, a small truck driver, who had recently  confronted Prime Minister Rutte during a widely viewed live broadcast of a political TV show. 

While Rongen holds only Dutch citizenship, Batya Brown was born in Ethiopia. Manuputty’s parents are from the Maluku Islands, formerly a Dutch colony—now occupied by Indonesia. For the latter two women, their relationship with the Dutch state is informed by their ethnic identities, which is further compounded by the role that racism played in the tax scandal.

Brown was adopted as a child from Ethiopia, arriving in the Netherlands when she was six years old. Because of a bureaucratic error that she is fighting to correct, she is still ineligible for a Dutch passport. Meanwhile, in 2007 the tax authorities began demanding that she repay her benefits . The resulting financial problems forced her to move often and, while the tax authorities recently annulled her remaining debts, her struggle with the immigration authorities continues. In other words, she has been battling with both the tax authorities and the immigration office for her entire adult life.

Manuputty suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and transgenerational trauma. Her grandfather is a South Mollucan, a member of an Indonesian indigenous group that fought in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) alongside colonial forces in the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-9), then were brought to the Netherlands after the Dutch reneged on a promise to grant them territorial sovereignty. The Mollucan community feels humiliated to this day by their treatment at the hands of the Dutch. “As a victim of the child benefit scandal, I have been neglected and robbed of my dignity again,” said Manuputty, adding that she felt as though history were repeating itself.

Rongen acknowledged that she presents in her media appearances as a strong woman, which she is; but behind the scenes she is emotionally devastated. “I cry a lot, every day,” she said. Her ordeal with the tax authorities began in 2010, with her debt topping out at €92,000 ($123,000). After four years of debt counselling, the government annulled what was left of that amount and granted her compensation in December 2020. Her battle with psychological trauma is ongoing. She has dedicated herself to helping reunite parents with children they lost to foster care, a calling that provides her with a feeling of purpose. “When a mother messages me for help, I dry my eyes and get going again,” she said. In a matter-of-fact tone she added, “I would prefer not to live anymore. But what would happen to my children if I were no longer here?”

In addition to their media appearances and participation in anti-racism demonstrations earlier this year, the three women have initiated demonstrations of their own, to garner public support and amplify their demands. These include: cancellation of all the victims’ debts by the end of 2021; financial compensation of at least €1 million ($1.16 million) to each victim; and the immediate reunification of parents with children who were taken from them and put into foster care. They also want psychological support. And they want those responsible for the scandal to be brought to justice.

When the government resigned in January the women hoped the new administration would deal with the matter quickly, but they now understand the process will take years. One egregious reason for the slow pace: the commission tasked with defining the amount of compensation that each victim should receive is severely understaffed; at the current rate they will need 975 years to complete their work.

 “Applying for everything costs so much time and energy, which I would prefer to dedicate to my children,” said Batya Brown. Kristie Rongen added: “Instead of asking for more effort from the victims, they should just give every one of them half a million euros to settle the matter. Our lives have been destroyed.” 

Franciska Manuputty agrees. “I have been trying for years to regain my independence by setting up my own business,” she said, explaining that her applications for business loans have all been rejected because the “fraudster” label destroyed her credit rating. “I struggle for freedom, it’s in my genes, but I feel trapped in a prison without walls.”

The women have also reached out to other victims, organizing small events like picnics and activities for children, which they pay for via crowdfunding, just to relax and start healing together. Coming together has energized the women. “Our suffering has become visible,” said one. Then, with tears in her eyes and a voice choked with anger: “Years ago, when he was ten, eleven years old, I promised my oldest son that everything would be okay. He is 16 years old now! I am determined to keep my promise to him.” 
    [post_title] => 'I cry a lot, every day': victims of the Dutch child benefits scandal fight for compensation
    [post_excerpt] => Thousands of Dutch families were destroyed by financial hardship after the tax authorities falsely accused them of submitting fraudulent applications for childcare tax benefits, requiring them to pay back the allowances they had received in their entirety—plus fines.
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‘I cry a lot, every day’: victims of the Dutch child benefits scandal fight for compensation

by Fréderike Geerdink

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