Information technology (IT) investments are often valued favorably by the stock market because of their strategic nature and important role in influencing revenue and profit growth of firms. New research by professors Sunil Mithas and Michael Kimbrough at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, with Keongtae Kim, a Smith School PhD graduate and now assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shows that IT investments also matter to bond markets.

However, bond markets value IT investments differently than stock markets according to the strategic roles of IT in industries and the types of risks they create.

Bond markets are the single-largest source of financing for U.S. firms. In 2016, firms in the United States raised $1.49 trillion through corporate bonds, surpassing by a wide margin funds financed through stock markets. Technology firms such as Tesla, Amazon and Microsoft frequently use bond markets to access capital to buy back shares or for their strategic growth investments.

Mithas and his coauthors found that credit rating agencies and bond investors favor IT investments in industries where IT is used mostly to automate business process and to facilitate richer information flows, as opposed to industries where IT transforms products, services and business models. One reason for this may be that although IT investments create higher future cash flows, these cash flows are especially volatile in transform industries — creating a downside risk in such industries for bondholders.

A key insight from the study is that IT investments are both associated with a firm’s operational performance and related to financing costs such as costs of debt. Thus, “senior managers may need to look beyond measuring the improvement in organizational performance driven by IT assets and also consider the potential financial benefits of increased IT capabilities, such as the willingness of corporate bond investors to accept lower financing costs,” Mithas and his coauthors said.

Because bondholders view IT investments in transform industries as riskier than in other industries, firms should use bond markets strategically differently depending on which industries they operate in. Firms in transform industries may be able to lower their borrowing costs by sharing more information about IT investments with bond investors to alleviate their concerns about the risks of such investments. Likewise, firms in other industries may be able to lower their borrowing costs by making disclosures to bondholders that highlight the low risks and stable cash flows associated with their IT investments.

The findings are important as firms invest more in various emerging digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and Internet of Things. Investments in such technologies will provide huge growth potential but at the same time may pose serious risks in implementing them. Thus, understanding how such investments are viewed by shareholders and bondholders will be crucial for firms to get their digital stories right.

Everybody loves stories. The challenge is to make them compelling, memorable and easy to understand for everyone. Virtual 3D environments have great potential for exceptional immersive storytelling, as exemplified by the latest video games. However, creating complex 3D environments is a technical and time-consuming process that is out of reach for most would-be storytellers.

How could 3D storytelling be made available for everyone with a few clicks of a mouse? Enter MUSE (Machine Understanding for interactive StorytElling), an European FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) project based at the University of Leuven, Belgium that is developing an innovative text-to-virtual-world translation system capable of automatically converting written text in to 3D virtual worlds.

The research team is currently working on advancing technologies that allows natural language – the way we use words that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation – to be better understood and processed by computers. The algorithms under development are learning to make associations between natural language and 3D visual data so that a real-time ‘visual thesaurus’ can be created. Think of it as a ‘Google Translate for virtual drawings’, where you can input a sentence that describes a scene, such as “a man waiting for a train at the station”, and that scene would then be automatically rendered in a 3D environment.

Making language corpora that can be associated to a database of virtual tools for rendering 3D environments in an automated way is a monumental challenge. However, the project’s methodology is currently being tested and showcased in two scenarios: one for creating immersive children’s stories from text, and another that enables medical patients to interact with educational materials.

MUSE’s technology has the potential for countless applications. Visualising language could be a particularly useful to help people understand complex instructions or specific medical treatments. And besides games, people with limited mobility can explore scenarios and places that they never had the chance to encounter in real life.

The technology could power a whole new realm of creativity and business. Like the first graphic interfaces empowered those who were less computer-literate to get to grips with computing, individuals with little graphic ability may one day become creative designers or visual storytellers. As author and technology visualisation expert Tom Wujec put it: “We are visual creatures. When you doodle an image that captures the essence of an idea, you not only remember it, but you also help other people understand and act on it – which is generally the point of meetings in the first place.”

By Ritu Sharma

Indian Christians’ trust in the government has become shaky in the wake of increased attacks on Christians and members of the clergy, says Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

The cardinal was addressing the media in New Delhi Dec. 20 after visiting a central Indian city where Hindu activists attacked two Catholic priests and 30 seminarians accusing them of attempting religious conversion.

The Christians, who were in a village singing Christmas carols, were attacked and their car torched just outside a police station.

Police in Madhya Pradesh state kept them in custody for for a night. The administration acted under pressure from Hindu groups, Cardinal Cleemis claimed.

Modi’s pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs the government in 18 of 29 Indian states, including Madhya Pradesh, where Christians leaders say the administration is unwilling to act against Hindu fanatic groups.

“The anxiety of the religious minorities is increasing because of the lack of confidence in the administration. So the onus is on the government to bring back the confidence of religious minorities,” Cardinal Cleemis said.

Frequently, Christians are attacked on allegation that they violate laws that regulate religious conversion. These laws also make it a criminal offence to attempt to convert anyone using fraud, inducement or allurement.

Often Christian work in the fields of education and health care of villagers can be interpreted as inducement or allurement.

Cardinal Cleemis also met federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh Dec. 19 “to tell him about the pain and shock” of the Christian community at the latest incident in Madhya Pradesh.

Christians leaders say attacks have increased since BJP came to power in New Delhi in 2014. In 2017 alone, there were some 600 cases, according to their records.

By Jeoffrey Maitem and Richel V. Umel

At least 120 people were reported killed and dozens more missing in landslides and floods unleashed by torrential rains from Tropical Storm Tembin as it battered the southern Philippines, officials said Saturday.

As of Saturday night (local time), regional emergency response teams and tallies by BenarNews correspondents reporting from affected communities in Mindanao island – which bore the brunt of the storm – put the number of dead at as many as 128 people. Sixty-two deaths were reported in Lanao del Norte province, as well as 18 in Lanao del Sur province, 46 in Zamboanga del Norte province and two in Iligan city.

Nearly 73,000 people were affected by the storm (also known as Vinta), which made landfall in the southern Philippines on Thursday night, according to Harry Roque, the spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte.

Roque said it was unfortunate that another tropical storm had made its presence felt in the Philippines so close to Christmas.

“We in the national government shall continue to provide assistance to affected communities,” he said in a statement issued in Manila.

“Our DSWD [social work] field offices in the affected regions have activated their quick response teams and are coordinating closely with concerned local government units to immediately respond to the needs of the affected families,” he added.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council in Manila had yet not released officially updated figures on the storm.

Banana leaves, blankets

In Salvador, a hard-hit town in Lanao del Norte, Engineer Rodel Maghinay, the local municipal disaster officer, said rampaging floodwaters and mudslides had buried several villages a few days before Christmas.

In one area here, residents were seen using an improvised wooden raft after the storm destroyed a major bridge, cutting of 15 villages.

In the farming village of Dalama in Tubod town, also in Lanao del Norte, 19 bodies were recovered.

Residents and volunteers fished out bodies from the muddy banks of a river, and then solemnly took them to an open basketball court, covering the dead in blankets.

One bloated body was covered in banana leaves. Nearby, a man cleaned mud from a victim who had drowned, as a crowd of locals looked on in stunned silence.

Maria Cristina Atay, the vice governor of Lanao del Norte, said officials had placed the entire province under a state of calamity on Saturday afternoon so the local government could free up emergency funds.

In Sibuco town in Zamboanga del Norte province, five people were reportedly buried alive while dozens were carried away as a landslide cascaded down the slopes.

“It is possible that they disregarded the warning of the local government” about the flooding risks, Sibuco mayor Norbideiri Edding told a local radio station.

22nd storm

At least 20 tropical storms and typhoons batter the Philippines every year. Tembin was the twenty-second severe weather system to enter the country this year.

Tembin made landfall on Mindanao a few days after another storm, Kai-Tak, pounded most of the central Philippines and parts of the main Philippine island of Luzon Island last weekend, killing dozens of people.

On August 2011, more than 600 died and 800 went missing when typhoon Washi hit Mindanao.

Two years later, in November 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan left more than 6,300 people dead and thousands more missing.

That typhoon, known in the country as Yolanda, had sustained winds of 235 km per hour (147 mph) with gusts of 275 km per hour (170 mph) when it made landfall.

The weather disturbance was comparable to a Category 4 hurricane in the United States.

The verdict given by the special judge in the CBI court acquitting all accused in the 2G spectrum case of 2008 has certainly sent shock waves amongst anti-corruption crusaders and the general public all over India.

While the judge accused the prosecutors of giving “well choreographed charge sheet “ and virtually condemned what the judge viewed as shoddy prosecution, many people were shocked at the observation, since the Supreme Court which is the highest court in India observed in its February, 2012 judgement that the manner in which the exercise for providing letter of intent to the applications for Spectrum allocation was conducted in January,2008 left no room for doubt that entire decision was stage managed. Supreme Court further imposed cost of Rs. 5 crore each on a few companies involved in the scam.

After this observation of the Supreme Court , the country men believed that the 2G scam was real and corruption of massive proportion took place. Now that the special judge in the CBI Court has said that there is no proof of scam, people have started wondering as to whether the judicial judgements are reliable at all.

The special court was constituted by the Supreme Court to look into the matter in detail and give it’s verdict. Obviously, Supreme Court expected that the corrupt persons who were broadly identified by it would be punished. The special judge took several years to conduct the proceedings and then has now come with the shocking verdict.

The common man in the country is certainly not in a position to know about the intricacies of the case and about the technicalities of 2G spectrum matter.

However, several circumstantial evidence and earlier damning report of the Comptroller and Audit General of India (CAG) saying that the loss to government in spectrum allocation was Rs. 1.76 lakh crores, conclusively convinced the people that the corrupt people should be caught and punished severely. Now, they have all being acquitted and are claiming innocence.

Of course, the investigating agency CBI has decided to appeal against the judgement of the special judge in the High court and the verdict of the special judge is not the end of the matter. Obviously, High court will scrutinize not only the spectrum scam but also how the special judge came to this stunning conclusion of stating that there was no proof of scam.

Most Indians with no political links think that most of the political parties have gone into the control of people with suspicious and corrupt background and family control and such political parties winning elections and getting into power is the root cause for the extent of massive corruption in India in various spheres.

The anti corruption crusaders, who are keen to see a corruption free India ,now do not know as to what would be the way to fight corruption.

It is very clear that the special judge has not taken a holistic view of the entire spectrum case and ignored several aspects of the charge sheet , even while there is huge suspicion everywhere about the spectrum allotment and expectation that the special court would convict the accused.

With the credibility of the several politicians and bureaucrats remaining so low in the eyes of the people, common men have come to believe that the judiciary should be the ultimate forum to safeguard the probity in public life. People feel frustrated when judges give judgements which raise serious questions and the faith on the judiciary is bound to be eroded. This is not a good sign for anti corruption movement to succeed in India.

Of course, judgements need not reflect public opinion and judges should not allow themselves to be pressured by public perspectives on any matter. Still, the judgements should be good enough for the people to have faith in the judges..

Here is a famous anecdode

Judge: For want of evidence, I acquit you of the charge of stealing a goat.

Accused : In that case, your honour, am I allowed to retain the goat ?

By Ryan McMaken*

In the past, a few brave iconoclasts have taken exception to the treatment Ebenezer Scrooge of A Christmas Carol has received from his critics.

While a fictional character created by Charles Dickens, Scrooge has become, in the minds of many, a representative of the imagined miserly financiers who serve as caricatures of capitalists everywhere.

This has led some defenders of markets to step in and offer a defense of Scrooge.

Butler Shaffer writes that Scrooge is one of “the true heroes of the time of which [Dickens] wrote, namely, the industrialists and financiers who created that most liberating epoch in human history: the Industrial Revolution.”

And Michael Levin avers: “Dickens doesn’t mention Scrooge’s satisfied customers, but there must have been plenty of them for Scrooge to have gotten so rich.”

Levin sensibly points out that so long as Scrooge wasn’t in the business of using violence, everyone remained free to refuse to do business with him. Since Dickens gives us no reason to suspect that Scrooge did ever actually rob anyone, we can conclude that everyone who did business with him did so voluntarily.

However, if we’re going to look on every non-coercive act as morally neutral or as even laudable — and employ that standard to evaluate Scrooge’s actions — then we also ought to extend the same courtesy to all of Scrooge’s detractors. When Scrooge’s associates engage in non-violent attempts to convince Scrooge to be more charitable — if we are to be consistent — we can’t judge those actions to be any more unsavory than Scrooge’s many non-violent business dealings.

After all, no human being in A Christmas Carol forces Scrooge to do anything. Some people — such as Scrooge’s nephew Fred — engage him in conversations that Scrooge finds unpleasant. Scrooge tells those people to go away and they do. Some men ask him for a charitable donation. Scrooge refuses, and he is free to do so. While it is acknowledged that Scrooge pays taxes to the British state, no one in the story advocates for higher tax rates, or demands that Scrooge pay more in taxes. Taxation is not presented as the solution to the central problems of the story.

If this were the case, of course, things would be different. We would then be forced to defend Scrooge from the grasping hand of the state and its cheerleaders. But A Christmas Carol is not a fable about the need for a social democratic paradise. The central problem of the story lies not in convincing Scrooge to give up the pursuits of a businessman. There are numerous businessmen in the story portrayed as good men. Scrooge’s nephew is a apparently a middle-class businessman, and is hardly a member of the proletariat. Scrooge’s former employer Fezziwig is portrayed as a hero. The reader is not led to believe that Scrooge ought to be forced by the state to disband his firm and open up a homeless shelter instead. On the contrary, the story’s narrative is driven by attempts to convince Scrooge to voluntarily embrace the spirit of Christmas, for his own sake as much as anyone else’s. Moreover, those who attempt to push Scrooge in this direction never employ anything other than non-violent social pressure.

Scrooge Doesn’t Understand How Wages Work

At the one point where Scrooge overtly claims he is being coerced — when he says Cratchit’s paid day off is akin to “picking a man’s pocket” — Scrooge is either lying or deluding himself. In no way whatsoever is Cratchit picking Scrooge’s pocket. Scrooge is free to terminate Cratchit at any time and pay him nothing at all. Scrooge is free to hire someone else to do Cratchit’s job.

Scrooge, however, voluntarily agrees to give Cratchit the day off. In spite of his whining about paying Cratchit too much, Scrooge’s actual actions suggest that Scrooge realizes that Cratchit is probably not all that easy to replace after all.

If Scrooge really believes that his pocket is being picked, then he is far less observant and intelligent than his defenders give him credit for.

The only characters in the story that might be described as forcing Scrooge to do anything are the supernatural creatures who reveal facts — facts that Scrooge never disputes as inaccurate — about Christmases, past, present, and future.

Supernatural creatures, however, don’t lend themselves to the social-science tools we have for analysis. It’s best here to just fall back on the reasoning of Scrooge himself who assures us that such beings are more likely the result of “a slight disorder of the stomach.” They’re “an undigested bit of beef … a fragment of an underdone potato.” There is “more of gravy than of grave” about these spirits.

Thus, if Scrooge imagines that he’s been coerced into traveling the netherworld to see “shadows” of other Christmases, we really ought to take Scrooge’s advice and assume these are more likely simply the figments of Scrooge’s imagination. Does not Scrooge wake up in his own bed after all these alleged adventures with spirits?

Thus, in the end, what we do find is that Scrooge has not been subjected to violence or coercion by those who encourage him to take a more favorable view toward Christmas.

Scrooge’s Bruised Ego

What does convince Scrooge to celebrate Christmas is his own active imagination — which is blamed on these spirits — which shows to Scrooge that he could effect positive changes in his world by voluntarily giving away some of his money. Secondly, Scrooge is disturbed by the realization that he is deeply unpopular and will not be missed when he dies. Whether it’s a dream or some sort or delirium, Scrooge imagines that unless he does something new, he will be quickly forgotten upon his death. His ego is deeply wounded when he “sees” his nephew’s Christmas party where the revelers have fun at Scrooge’s expense.

Scrooge is horrified by this realization, and contrary to his protests that he is above matters such as popular opinion, it turns out that Scrooge actually desires public acceptance and appreciation a great deal. His lofty attitude toward his fellow Londoners, it turns out, is just an act to hide his pitiable cravings for social approval.

When Scrooge does finally change his tune on Christmas, it’s not due to any new law, any new tax, or anything he has been forced to do. No, Scrooge is instead motivated by a desire for popularity, human companionship, and by the pricking of his conscience in regards to the poverty of families such as those of Bob Cratchit.

Other motivations are possible as well, of course. It could be that Scrooge realized the apparent silliness of a very old man with no heirs continuing to save a large percentage of his earnings as if he still had decades to live.

But whatever the reason, the fact remains that when Christmas morning arrived, Scrooge was perfectly free to carry on as he always had. He was still free to fire Bob Cratchit, make no charitable donations, and continue to save money at a rapid rate.

On the other hand, if Scrooge did change his mind based on the actions of others, we can only conclude these actions where the rhetorical efforts employed by Scrooge’s nephew Fred, by Bob Cratchit, and by the men from the widows-and-orphans fund. None of these men employed coercion or deception, and thus, we cannot say that Scrooge requires a “defense” from these people at all. As a taxpayer, he remains a victim of the state, of course. But that hardly sets him apart from countless other Englishmen of the time, many of whom were presumably still willing to make merry on Christmas.

About the author:
*Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Andre Ishii

Several media outlets recently carried a curious, eyebrow-raising story concerning a particular shawarma restaurant in Gaza. The owner of the eatery, which is located in the Jabaliya refugee camp, offered a whopping 80% discount to North Korean nationals as a sign solidarity with the Pyongyang regime which has taken a more confrontational stance against not only the United States since the beginning of the Trump presidency – likely to take advantage of Trump’s background as a businessman in attempt to negotiate a favorable security treaty – but against Israel as well, as seen in the exchange of strong words this past April. While it may be tempting for one to dismiss this interesting Gaza restaurant episode as merely stemming from more recent heightened geopolitical tensions both in the Middle East and Northeast Asia peripheries of Eurasia, the affection and strategic bond between the Palestinian liberation movement (the most publically known face of which is the Palestinian Liberation Organization – PLO) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) can be traced back decades to the dawn of international terrorism.  This restaurant episode offers a quick glimpse into a shadow nexus of terror midwifed in the Cold War geopolitical environment, with its keystone of former Soviet – and now Russian – strategic ambitions.

While the DPRK is often repeatedly described in the establishment media as a ‘hermit kingdom,’ the term was originally a descriptor for the highly centralized and reclusive Joseon Korean regime that reigned for five centuries until it met its end in the early 20^th century. Contrary to popular perception, the Stalinist Cold War reincarnation of the old despotic Neo-Confucian state is recognized as legitimate by the vast majority of governments across the world, despite only 24 states having established embassies in Pyongyang (as of October 2017). Conversely, 47 states officially host DPRK embassies. And indeed Pyongyang has in the decades past involved itself in various regional tensions around the world, more than it is commonly realized. The MENA region is no exception, with DPRK involvement often taking the form of arms transfers and training for the personnel of various underground terrorist groups, often themselves sponsored by the former Soviet Union, a mega-state entity that placed a high premium on the Middle East region with its wealth of resources and other vital interests.

Moscow had intelligence agents operating in Palestine immediately after the Russian Revolution.   However, Moscow’s interest in the region was heightened after the founding of the state of Israel in May 1948.  Soviet intelligence has lent support to the PLO since the late 1960s – after its’ founding by the Arab League in 1964 – via several capitals of its Eastern European satellites.  This operation – and support for the PLO was being funneled in from Arab states as well – was further amped up during the course of the Lebanese civil war, expanding the PLO into a major force within the geopolitical struggles for the Levant. In fact, recent disclosures suggest that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) founded in 1994 as the civil sector arm of the PLO, was a KGB agent in the 1980s, as well as Yasser Arafat.

(As a historical note, sending in intelligence assets and agents to sponsor local nationalist movements and to ignite political revolutions is a classic tactic within the strategy of modern empires. A widely under-recognized aspect of the history of early 19^th century South American independence movements is the role of the British empire in dismantling the Spanish colonial empire in the western hemisphere during the Napoleonic War. General William Miller, veteran of the Napoleonic War, assisted revolutionaries José San Martín and Simón Bolívar. Not only soldiers – many veterans like Miller – but merchants played significant part of the uprisings as well. Thus, the Soviet Union was fully engaging within the operational framework of modern empires.)

Like its Eastern European counterparts, the DPRK – essentially birthed by Soviet intervention (yet never received a single visit from a Soviet General Party Secretary) – has also sponsored the cause of Palestinian nationalist movements.

DPRK-PLO (and also, HAMAS) relationship goes back to the 1960s.  The DPRK and PLO began their diplomatic relationship in 1966.  Direct support via logistics and training began in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. As the newly established Israel was increasingly seen as extension of the West’s sphere of influence in the Middle East by Moscow – and Pyongyang held a similar view regarding Israel as an extension of the American Empire – the PLO increasingly became an instrument of Soviet penetration in the region.

Not only has Pyongyang – now redesignated as a state sponsor of terrorism – supported the Arab world since during the Cold War. DPRK arms have also been found in chaos-torn Libya as well, and the regime has supported Arab states specifically vis-à-vis Israel, such as aiding Egypt by dispatching of pilots (who piloted Egyptian MIG-21s) and other key staff during the aforementioned Yom Kippur War. Furthermore, in addition to ongoing logistical trafficking with Syria, the DPRK has working arms and information transfer operations (such as know-how regarding construction of tactical underground tunnels) to HAMAS. Additionally HAMAS in April 2017 expressed gratitude to Pyongyang for its unwavering stance against the United States. In October 2017, an Egypt-led security deal was reached between the rivals Fatah (formerly headed by Arafat and its chairmanship currently held by Abbas; it is the largest faction within the PLO) and HAMAS. However, stalemate seems to have ensued over several security issues since the agreement was reached, and HAMAS has yet to abandon its hostility toward the legitimacy of the state of Israel.

The renewed appreciation and affection by the Palestinian nationalist organizations for Pyongyang’s support for the Palestinian cause is notable especially in the current context of Moscow’s increasing influence in Eurasia, particularly three key regions outlined by the American strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski (worked as National Security Advisor under Carter administration from 1977 to 1981) in the post-Cold War era as pivotal to United States access to its status as a global hegemonic power: Eastern Europe (“West”) , Middle East (“South”), and Northeast Asia (“East”).

All of these critical regions – what Brzezinski called the Three Central Strategic Fronts in his work The Grand Chessboard, regions that should be incorporated at the fundamental level of US grand strategy – have been under intense flames of tension for years, and interestingly, near-simultaneously.

In Eastern Europe, Moscow has intervened in Ukraine to solidify its interests and aspiration as newly reconstituted empire (Brzezinski notes that “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire”). In Northeast Asia, Moscow has asserted itself as a prime arbiter to solve the DPRK crisis by attempting to establish a trans-Eurasian infrastructural network and leaving the United States out in the cold. Taking advantage of the situation that US hands are quite tied regarding the overt military option (striking DPRK even surgically against key targets will risk turning Seoul into a blazing ocean of fire, as retribution from Pyongyang. Aside from staggering loss of life, damage to international economy would be catastrophic), Moscow is posturing itself to lead an arbitration role in the broiling crisis.

Likewise, as Moscow has increasingly taken active part in stabilizing the Syrian civil war, President Trump’s Jerusalem declaration has as a consequence pushed the Palestinian nationalist movements into the arms of Moscow, which now is attempting to propose for itself a role and influence like never seen before in the Israel-Palestinian conflict: to broker peace deal by sidelining the United States. Abbas has dispatched delegates to both Moscow and Beijing to have these continental powers more intensely involved in the peace process.

Despite the presence of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and DPRK crisis in the foreground of this phenomenon of material and ideological fellowship, this is not merely a terrorism-related issue. It is fundamentally geopolitical. One can perceive it in essence as a ghost, or an echo of Cold War era geopolitics persisting to this day, in a world where Russia (the occupier of what Brzezinski called “Middle Space”), like its earlier Soviet manifestation, is attempting to secure a dominant position in 21^st century Eurasian affairs.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

Eka Kurniawan’s Comrade Kliwon as metaphor in Beauty is a Wound.

I propose this is an aspect of the novel that is worth exploring as an instance wherein the author crafts the philosophical underpinning of the story of the birth and growth of Indonesia (see Appendix for a brief summary), a country sold into prostitution by the forces that march history, and how the worldview of the nation is shaped primarily by the pathological condition metaphored by prostitution.

In the protagonist Dewi Ayu the portrait of the new nation as prostitute and in Conrad Kliwon (Chapter 7) the life force that tried to save the nation from being forever being a whore. I find this notion of ethos and pathos “worldview of the tragic-existentialism” recurring, in a story elegantly waved with elements of mystical magical Javanese symbolism, well-controlled plot yet presented in the genre of Time-Space-collapse, inspired by the complexity of the sub-plots of the Ramayana and Mahabharatta, the elements of the Theatre of the Absurd or French surrealistic/symbolic/Absurdist theatre, some elements of Javanese syncretist thinking, and most importantly in the tradition of the spirit of Raden Adjeng Kartini the legendary feminist-educator-liberator of the mind, the voice given to women, perhaps true to the idea of “motherland” or “ibu pertiwi” in which women hold more than half of the Earth at every epoch in history — these are the broad techniques and themes employed in crafting “Beauty is a Wound.”

Indeed, I believe, the title signifies the pathos associated with being beautiful, or even exotically and ecstatically and even more so, in this story the exhilaratingly erotically beautiful, as beautiful as the prostitute Dewi Ayu, who, like young and prideful Java and later Indonesia was relegated to become a prostitute to the Dutch, and later to the Japanese, and later to her own “nationalists” and much later by the military-regime-turned civilian-rule of General Suharto.

Thus, the portrait of Indonesia as prostitute whose savior is Communism, the latter destroyed by the purge which saw the mass graves of hundreds of thousands of communists killed by the US-CIA backed General Suharto. So that colonialism can continue in newer but less visible form. In the novel, pride led to suicide of the communist leader, Comrade Kliwon.

In my close readings of this seminal chapter on the metaphoring and chronicling of the mega-change of Indonesia, albeit through the prostitutionalizing of the nation, I draw instances of Eka Kurniawan’s use of the philosophizing-chronolizing device, in chracterizing Comrad Kliwon, as literary device and subtext.

Reminiscence of the writing of the once 14-year-imprisoned-50s-writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer (“Prem”) in seminal works such as Keluarga Gerilya, Bumi Manusia, Cerita dari Blora — those that presented the point of view of the revolutionary fighters of Indonesia a.k.a the “communists” — Eka Kurniawan’s characterization of Conrad Kliwon is one of sympathy in tone of the Marxists and the Communists, as if continuing the legacy of “Prem” or Pramodeya.

Throughout, the classic arguments of the International Workers of the World and the Marxist-Leninist Third International is revisited, giving today’s readers a reminder of what was Indonesian history about and how the struggles between the natives, the nationalists, the communists, and even the Islamists, overseen like a panopticon and synopticon of imperialism (Dutch, Japanese American) continue to define the theme of emerging nation-states such as Indonesia. And like a cycle of human and social progress, there is the high and low tide of revolutionary waves of change in all its bloody and bloodless consequences. Eka Kurniawan attempted to present a history lesson of the birth of Indonesia, as how Salman Rushdie skillfully did with the birth of India and Pakistan in his novel Midnight’s Children.

In Eka Kurniawan’s work, to be beautiful is to be cursed and raped as to be Indonesia is to be exploited and ravaged and raped as well. To be raped then leads to be giving birth to deformities and monstrosities, as in the march of history and the inevitability of the perpetual birth of civilizational insanity.

“No one knew how Comrade Kliwon ended up becoming a communist youth, because even though he had never been rich, he’d always been a hedonist.” (pg. 161).

Herein lie the thesis of this chapter in Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty is a Wound that tells the story of Indonesia during the formative years of becoming a republic, of what I call “the portrait of modern Indonesia as prostitute” (with apologies to James Joyce’s “portrait of the artist as a young man” and the Filipino playwright Nick Joaquin’s “portrait of the artist as Filipino.”

He led a gang of marauding neighborhood kids, stealing whatever they could get their hands on for their own enjoyment: coconuts, logs, or a handful of cacao beans than could be eaten on the spot. One night before Eid, they would steal a chicken and roast it, and then the next day they would find the chicken’s owner to ask for forgiveness. (pg. 161)

There is a sense of foreshadowing of what the nature of transformation the young man, later Comrade Kliwon is to undergo, leading the way to his fascination with Marxism and later to be a member of the Indonesian Communist Party, the seeds of the metamorphosis could be shown in the idea that Kliwon is a thief yet with a conscience, in which perhaps in the idea of the march of socialism towards Communism via the global agenda of the Third International, the rationale of stealing from the rich and taking away their property is clear: destroy capitalism and say that it an inevitable historical progress or the march of history in order for the perfect Communist state to emerge as a “kingdom of god”, a modern supra-trans-millinearistic movement guided by the Hegelian-philosophy- inverted, served by the philosophy of history conjured by Marx (and Engels). (see historical and dialectical materialism as fundamental twin concepts of Marxism and Praxis.) Here the author, Eka Kurniawan is giving the readers a history lesson on the influence of Communist ideas in Indonesia, at the onset of Independence.

His mother, Mina– not wanting the same thing to happen to him as had has happened to his father– tried to distance him from crazy Marxist ideas and anything associated with them, and didn’t care what he did as long as he didn’t end up communist. She sends him to the movies and music concerts, and let him get drunk at the beer garden and buy records, and was perfectly happy with him hanging out with a lot of young girls. She knew that her son has slept with them but she didn’t care. From her point of view, that was better than someday having to see him stand in front of a firing squad, about to be executed. ‘Even if he does become a communist, I want him to be a happy communist,’ said the mother. (pgs. 162-163)

I like the passage above. It is both hilarious and serious. There is so much detail on the process of social transformation embedded, from a Freudian psychoanalytical-ideological perspective. Kliwon’s mother, needless to say, is well versed with “how not to turn a child into communist” and if one reads the underlying underpinning of the statements on the “hows” of cultural transformations, there are perspectives from Critical Theory in the tradition of the circa-Weimer-Republic Frankfurt School theorizing on society: of the work of Theodor Adorno on cultural industry. on the fetishness of enslaved-originated-arts-form of jazz serving the bourgeoisie class, and the study of the authoritarian personality, of Jurgen Habermas’s one-dimensional man, on Althusser’s deconstructing of state into “ideological apparatuses,” on the cultural analyses of Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams — and so on and so forth. These are the hidden theoretical-treasures of Marxist critique, the writer Eka Kurniawan is teasing the read of Beauty is a Wound with; a vast body of knowledge on the critique of capitalism and culture buried in that passage on saving Comrade Kliwon.

Kliwon was clever and sometimes his way of thinking could be surprising if not borderline insane. He once brought three of his friends to the whorehouse and they took turns sleeping with a prostitute. At first the whore encouraged them to climb up on the bed in pairs because as she said she had a hole in the front and in the back. But none of them wanted to share a hole with a piece of shit, so they just slept with her one by one. Kliwon showed himself to be a selfless leader, inviting his friends to sleep with the prostitute first, and taking the last turn. When the sex was over, the prostitute was met with the depressing sight of the three kids crashing through the door and vanishing without paying. … ‘I asked her if she liked having sex with us,’ Kliwon said recounting the story in the beer garden not long after, ‘and she said that she liked it. If she liked it and we liked it, then why should we have to pay?’ People often enjoyed hearing such stories from him. (pg.162)

Eka Kurniawan attempts to illustrate what the character morally stands for, even when doing business with a prostitute. Even in pleasure and the appeasement of lust and the commodification of passion and the turning of the body into commodity to be exchanged as utilities in a capitalist economy, there is the dimension of justice in distributing pleasure. This is a deep-play analysis in the (Clifford) Geertzian sense of (anthropological sensibility) what it means to still be human in a dehumanized world in which the voices of the oppressed — the slaves, the workers, the becak pullers, the padi farmers, the prostitutes — are loud and clear. That within the world of the silent reproduction of the human self as it passes down the conveyor belt of colonial and post-colonial capitalism lies a sense of humanism.

There is no moral argument here about prostitution and the patronaging of it but a higher moral standard presented by the character Kliwon. I am reminded by one of the greatest modern Indonesian poet WS Rendra’s poem “Prostitutes of Jakarta, Unite! / “Ayuh, bersatulah pelacur pelacur Jakarta, bersatulah” (echoing the Third International Marxist slogan of “workers of the world, unite) when we speak of the voice given to the voiceless. In larger context and a deeper analysis, herein is the idea, I propose, that the story of Dewi Ayu is the story of Indonesia as prostitute in all its glory and nobility.

In the seventeenth year … (t)he girls fell in love with him, and they showered him with gifts that piled up until the house began to resemble a junkyard. Thinking of nothing else, they held parties almost every night. His male friends also adored him, because he never kept the girls to himself. And that was how they lived. In those years, Kliwon and his friends probably had the happiest lives of anyone in the city. (pg. 163)

Herein lie the idea of hedonism and epicureanism emblematic of the decadent societies in which pluralism means the letting go of the masses to ravage each other sexually as long as the larger picture of exploitation is kept painted in newer colors of domination, and in this case, characteristic of the life of Kliwon before he met Communism. I am reminded of the Roman empire and Caligula, with his orgies and feasts of splendor, albeit in this novel the scene of seventeen-year-old fornicating and living in the pleasure dome is nowhere extravagant, nonetheless symbolic of a life of conspicuous consumption.

Conclusion

In this brief writing about the craft of inventing a metaphor, I have focused on Chapter 7 of the novel (pgs. 161-188) on how the character Comrade Kliwon is created to chronicle the spiritual-ideological evolution of Indonesia as a nation-state that was struggling to be free from the shackles of colonialism. Eka Kurniawan’s novel, Beauty is a Wound is about Indonesia the prostitute and how, even in her existence as a whore, there is a deeper beauty of Fate and Free Will at play, of a curse she had to live by, and in the end, it is the morality of living as a prostitute that brings the best out of the theme of the story. This statement may seem to be deeply contradictory at many levels if one does not analyze deeper what the author wishes to convey. Only in the last sentence of the 470-page novel that Kurniawan reveled the reason behind the love for the ugliest human being in the town (pg. 470), Beauty her name. In the end she is the only one who survived the epochal tragedy of epic proportion, paralleling the genealogical suffering of Indonesia as prostitute for the more than 300 years leading to Independence.

How did Eka Kurniawan craft the novel to tell the story of the power of curse: of the natives on the Dutch, the latter the rapist, the sodomizer, the enslaver, and the breeder of prostitutes (of young Javanese girls) taken from the villages? Herein lie the theme of deconstructionism, Absurdism, irony, dark humor, satire, and a Quentin-Tarantino-Bakhtinian-Grotesque-carnivalesque style of crafting of the characters as well as the narrative arc.

Reference

Kurniawan, Eka. (2015). Beauty is a Wound. Translated by Annie Tucker. (New York: New Directions)

Appendix

A Brief Note on Indonesian Literature

The evolution of Indonesia literature is more exciting than that of the Malaysian, let alone Singaporean from the “thick-descriptive-Geertzian-big emotions-intensity-of-narrative arcs – because ( if we are to contend that good literature needs to show depth-of-despair, dying, and death as catharsis as opiates and dramatic eruptions) of the former’s history of such bloody and profound transformations, beginning with the ancient kingdoms, the Hindu-Buddhist political-philosophical dominance (see the wealth of literature on statecraft in Java, for example), to the war between the maritime powers, the arrival of the Dutch primarily and the establishment of Batavia (Betawi) as a trading post of the Dutch East India Company, to the more than 300-year enslavement of the Javanese and others by the Dutch, to the arrival of the British in the area and the struggle of the colonial powers, to the demise of the kingdoms, and the arrival of the Japanese to the intent to build and Indonesia Raya with the passion and collaboration shown by Achmed Soekarno and Hatta via the Nipponization of Indonesia and of course Soekarno’s campaign of “Ganyang Malaysia “_Crush Malaysia), to the surrender of the Japanese surrender after the loss of the Axis Power of Germany-Italy-Japan, to the complex and bloody struggle for Indonesian independence and next, even bloodier, the CIA-backed Suharto massacre of more than half a million Indonesians in a purge against so-called “Communists” so that General Suharto the “Bapak Judistira”, fashioned after the story of the Five Pandawas, can help the Americans siphon oil money out of Indonesia with the advise of the “Berkeley-Mafia” economists of the Kennedy Era …. the rest is history, right till today, Indonesia is blessed with a Heavy-Metal Metallica-loving president Bapak Jokowi who plays the bass guitar for a Metallica-inspired band …. such exciting history of the Muslim-fundamentalist strong and perhaps South-East-Asia endangering country bent towards ISIS … such fine historical evolution of the dialectics of social change that Indonesia’s literary evolution, from the time of the enculturalization of the Ramayana to the age of the wayang and the “Islamization of the Ramayana” to the emergence of the poets and prose writers of Peojangga Baroe (Pujangga Baru) or the primacy of Takdir Ali Syahbana, Boeya Hamka, and the emergence next of the fiery writers of LEKRA (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat) of Prameodya Ananta Toer, of the 50s (which influenced the birth of Malaya’s ASAS 50 (Kassim Ahmad was one its pioneers), to the literary force provided by Chairil Anwar and next came the 60s Hippie-Days poetry of WS Rendra, prose of Putu Widjaya, the stories of urban life weaved by Muchtar Lubis, Sutarji Calzoum Bachri, and the emergence of the writers of the 80s such as Supardi Djoko Damono and as time and literary periods proceed, responding to the temper of the day we see more and more exciting writers who still, like their forefathers such as the Rimbaud-influenced-existentialist poet Chairil Anwar, these new modern writers, singing the rock songs of Achmed Akbar of the prog-rock band God Bless or the radical tunes of internationally-acclaimed public-rocker-intellectual Iwan Fals, these new and equally fiery writers so to speak, write as if they “write in blood, write naked, and write in exile” … about the things around them. And then we have Eka Kurniawan, an interesting new blood bringing a new perspective of radicalism.

A Melancholic Note:

I took a deep breath, after finishing my reading of Eka Kurniawan’s mystical-magical-historical-satirical fiction Beauty is a Wound (Cantik Itu Luka). Closed my eyes for a few minutes to first let a cognitive map of the style, form, and craft emerge, and next allow the memory of my childhood growing up in the village in which the Javanese culture (although I am partly Bugis whose ancestry goes back directly-seven-generations to Raja Haji the rebel rouser of Sulawesi) is a dominant feature of the inhabitants of my village in Majidee Johor Bahru.

Although the 470-page novel is a translation, I did not find the story a “lost-in-translation” piece of work. I am all too familiar with the setting and the context of how the characters operate albeit having to work harder in thinking about the culture of the Soekarno era.

Words such as “dukun”, “orkes Melayu”, “preman”, “becak” and a few others used in the translated version brought me back to the enriching and enchanting worldview of the Indonesian-Malays primarily of the Javanese, and more word-associations formed in my mental image vis-a-viz the story, momentarily taking me away from another culture — the American culture — that has become part of me after spending more than half of my life in it. The shifting of worldviews, of one culture to another was smooth and even poignant and nostalgic as I emerge out of the literary world build by the author. Nostalgic in the sense that the elements of Javanese and Malay magic — of divining, spirit possession, spiritual healing with mantras in old Javanese and Arabic combined, and of the rites, rituals, tools of work and play used by the “dukun” (spiritual healer), of the cultural practices of healing (or even voodoo-ing) — these brings back fond memories of those vicarious moments of learning as well as of immersing myself in the hidden and informal out-of-class curriculum of my life-long learning experience. In short, from a very young age, I was immersed, like a little postmodern flanuer, in my fascination with Malay-Javanese mysticism — elements that shape and color Eka Kurniawan’s novel.

In fact, I wanted to have the power of the “dukuns” and become invincible and powerful and cool and feared, as such as Si Buta Dari Gua Hantu, Si Gondrong, Mata Malaikat, and many of the movie characters of the Javanese magical-warrior class/Kshatriya class, imbued with superhuman powers. I wanted to fly invincibly and be shot with a hundred bullets of the Dutch (like my great great grandfather Raja Haji who died as such) and not die not hurt at all. I wanted to go into other people’s body and soul, and see the future, and also cast and break spells. If I were Javanese, I wanted to become the Arjuna-Krishna hybrid of the Nine Javanese saints or the Wali Songo or the Wali Sembilan: pure, pristine, and pirate-of-the-Caribbean-type of gung-ho-Shaolin masters. That type. I wanted to kill my enemies without even touching them. That cool of a warrior.

My dream as child of perhaps thirteen.

The dream of being “a beautiful warrior and wound others”! Ahaaa –beauty is a wound indeed.

Herein lie the aspect of Eka Kurniawan craft I will discuss further: crafting of the mystical into the real and into the story of vengeance whist portraying the actors as if in a Bakhtinian carnival — of the grotesque and the evil.

A five-month long cholera outbreak in Nigeria’s conflict-affected Borno state has been successfully contained, the United Nations health agency has announced.

According to the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the feat is a “major accomplishment” in the region hit hard by violence perpetrated by the Boko Haram terrorist group that has displaced millions and driven hundreds of thousands to severe food insecurity.

“No single measure would have worked on its own. This was a joint effort employing a range of tools by many partners under the leadership of the state Ministry of Health,” Wondimagegnehu Alemu, the head of WHO programmes in the country, said in a news release Saturday.

The end of the outbreak (which began in August) was formally announced by the Nigerian Government on Thursday after no new cases had been reported in two weeks.

A massive oral cholera vaccine campaign – the first of its kind in the country, providing some 1.8 million doses to immunize some 900,000 people between September and December – played a key role in containing the deadly disease.

In addition to the campaign, a WHO-supported early warning and surveillance system provided vital data on suspected cases in different locations, ensuring effective and targeted interventions.

Response efforts also included providing safe chlorinated water, setting up treatment centers and laboratory testing, community outreach on methods to disease prevention, and working with local media to spread awareness on cholera and its symptoms.

However, due to the ongoing conflict, many people across northeastern Nigeria remain cut off from basic healthcare and routine immunization services. Health conditions in many camps for internally displaced persons are sub-standard.

Future risks of disease outbreaks, therefore, cannot be ruled out, warned WHO.

“While the achievements of the cholera programme in Borno state are a significant milestone, cholera is endemic to northeastern Nigeria and future outbreaks remain likely,” said Dr. Alemu.

“We must be vigilant to the warning signs that could signal another outbreak of cholera or other epidemic-prone diseases.”

During a speech at Moncloa Palace in which he assessed the regional elections held on Thursday in Catalonia, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that he trusts this will lead to a period in the region which is based on cooperation and the recognition of plurality leading to certainty. Additionally, Rajoy stressed that he has no intention to call early general elections and that he will try to ensure that “the legislature concludes as and when scheduled, which will be in mid-2020”.

“A legislature lasts for four years because people cannot be constantly forced to vote over and over again,” Rajoy said.

In Rajoy’s opinion, “the Government of Spain is governing calmly, with the economic recovery consolidating itself and jobs being created”.

Rajoy stressed that the regional elections, “once the principle of legality had been restored”, were held with all the proper guarantees and the involvement of all political parties. Furthermore, the day unfolded “with normality and calm”, while the legal representatives and authorised officials were able to fulfil the duties allocated to them by law.

Rajoy also pointed to the high turnout, “a reflection of the civic response from the people of Catalonia to the existing political situation and the future challenges now facing Catalonia”.

As for the result, Rajoy congratulated Inés Arrimadas and her party, “which has won the elections in terms of both the number of seats and the number of votes”. He went on to add that the downside is that “those of us who wanted change have not obtained enough seats to implement those changes”.

Rajoy recalled that, in any case, the pro-independence supporters have continued to lose support: from 76 members of parliament and 48.76% of the votes at the 2010 elections to 70 members of parliament and 47.49% of the votes at Thursday’s elections.

Rajoy said he believes that the results show that “Catalonia is not monolithic but in fact plural, and we should all encourage this plurality as a virtue and source of wealth”. Repairing the cracks caused by radical attitudes in Catalan society will take time and “should be the first obligation for all political stakeholders”, he said. This “reconciliation” should be sought “hand-in-hand with the law and a respect for the rights of all, both majorities and minorities.”

Rajoy called on the political parties of Catalonia to offer “solutions which provide governability”. He also trusts that this marks the beginning of a period in Catalonia “based on dialogue and not confrontation, on cooperation and not on imposition, on plurality and not on unilaterality.”

Rajoy said that Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution was applied in Catalonia reasonably, prudently and intelligently, in consensus with a majority of the Upper House of Parliament, majority support from the political parties and European backing.

Rajoy argued that it was triggered in light of “an exceptional situation, and that exceptional situations in a democracy should be short-lived”. In this regard, he justified the calling of snap elections “with the fundamental goal, which was indeed achieved, of restoring legality”.

When asked about the withdrawal of these measures, Rajoy replied that they will cease to apply on the date set by the Upper House of Parliament; in other words, when there is a new regional government in place in Catalonia.”

He stressed that the Government of Spain offers “its full collaboration and greatest willingness to engage in constructive, open and realistic dialogue, provided that this falls within the framework of the law, to whatever regional government is formed now in Catalonia with a view to resolving the problems of the Catalan people and building a framework of certainty and security”. He said that this will be the only possible way to maintain growth and job creation in Catalonia, recover the investments and companies lost, and improve “the wellbeing and wealth of the people, which, at the end of the day, must be the goal for any government worth its salt”.

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena said that in 2018 priority should be given for the projects which focused on uplifting of the economic status of underprivileged people while developing their livelihoods.

He made these remarks participating at the progress review meeting of the “Pibidemu Polonnaruwa (Awakening of Polonnaruwa)” District Development Programme held at the Polonnaruwa District Secretariat.

President Sirisena said that during the last three years too, the Government has given priority for the development projects implemented to support and uplift economic standard of low-income families, than the mega development projects.

The President also stressed the need of proper financial discipline and financial management when planning the development projects and said that it is the responsibility of officials to give maximum benefits to the public without wasting their money.

During this meeting, the President inquired the officials about information he received regarding several development projects carried out wasting public funds and highlighted the need of officials paying more attention to take appropriate actions in a suitable way when planning of development projects.

The President also instructed the officials to look into the needs of rural people, not only concerning the development of public places including the schools hospitals and temples in the city and the both sides of the road. He also informed the District Secretaries to implement a special programme in this regard.

Already, 50 percent work of the project has been completed and, it was discussed in detail regarding successful implementation of the project in next year with the experiences of previous years.

Expressing his views regarding this project, the President said that this project will enable the Polonnaruwa district to be named as a fully develop district in the period of 2018-2019.

It was discussed in detail regarding the programs implemented to develop the schools in the district and the President requested to give priority for the rural schools development in the year 2018.

The President also pointed out the importance of giving priority for the programs implemented for the development of agriculture as well as livestock development as the year 2018 declared as National Food Production year. He also inquired the officials regarding the plans for the New Year for the field of livestock.

The President emphasized the importance of strengthening the local dairy industry, and paid his attention regarding providing facilities in this regard.

Discussions were also held at this meeting on the progress of the projects being carried out for the development of the regional hospitals in the district, drinking water supply projects, infrastructure development including the road development, irrigation development, conservation of archaeological sites, development of religious places and regarding all the projects including the sports. The public servants including the District Secretary and People’s representatives in the district participated on this progress review meeting.

By Stephan Uttom and Rock Ronald Rozario

Naveed Hassan is the public relations manager at Dhaka’s Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel and his busiest period is from mid-December to the first week of January.

On Dec. 20, Hassan, a Muslim, briefed his colleagues on how to best cater for guests during Christmas and New Year celebrations.

“Every year, we have special arrangements during Christmas and they are increasingly popular among Christian and non-Christian visitors,” Hassan told ucanews.com. “This year, we have buffet dinner, a Christmas pool party for children, magic show, puppet show and a Santa Claus,” he said.

“Christmas programs run through Dec. 21-25 and then we prepare for New Year programs,” he said.

His five-star hotel in the Bangladeshi capital’s center is a prime location for upmarket Christmas parties and festivities attended by local and foreign guests including civil society, dignitaries, government officials and diplomatic corps.

“People from all faiths and ethnicities come here to attend various programs, so not only Christians are our target group,” said Hassan.

“Each day we have 2,000 tickets for guests but they are usually sold out quickly,” he said.

“Christians might be a minority in Bangladesh but Christmas has huge appeal to people of all faiths. Personally, I think the birthday of Jesus is a cause of celebration for all irrespective of caste and creed, and thus it’s a truly universal festival,” he added.

Christmas decorations at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka on Dec. 20. (Photo by Stephan Uttom/ucanews.com)

Sumon Chowdhury, 30, is a Hindu and a cosmetic retailer in the Farmgate area of central Dhaka, to whom Christmas is a time for booming business as well as festivities.

He works at Chowdhury Varieties Store which is located near the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Tejgaon, a Christian stronghold in central Dhaka.

“My father is the owner of the shop but I also help him time to time. Over the past years, I realized so many Christians live in the area although I have some Christian friends as well,” Chowdhury told ucanews.com.

“Before Christmas they come to our shop and we have good sales. So, before Christmas to stock up various products including Christmas trees, decorative materials, gifts and toiletries for them,” he said.

To Chowdhury the Christmas period has a similar appeal to that of the Hindu Puja festivals.

“Christmas is a universal festival, although in Bangladesh it is perhaps felt a bit less because Christians are minority,” he said.

“Personally, I really like Christmas festivities including prayer services and carols, which are very similar to our religious rituals and practices.”

Tanmoy Barua, 26, a Buddhist student from the Bandarban Hill district said Bangladesh is land of interreligious harmony, and Christmas is a major festival, which promotes harmony and tolerance.

“During Christmas I go back to my town where I have Christian friends. As I invite them during Buddhist Full Moon festival, they also invite my family and me during Christmas,” Barua told ucanews.com. “It shows how religious feasts bring us close to each other and promote harmony,” he said.

“It does not matter what faith we adhere to but it does matter that we care for and respect each other and their religions.”

In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Christians account for less than half percent of a population of 160 million. About 90 percent Bangladeshis are Sunni Muslims, nine percent Hindus and the rest belongs to other faiths including Buddhism and Christianity.

Of an estimated 600,000 Christians, Catholics make the majority with 375,000 members spread in eight Catholic dioceses across the country. Half of the Christians are from majority Bengali groups and the rest hail from various ethnic indigenous groups.

Christmas is the most popular and well-known Christian feast in Bangladesh, largely because it is also the only Christian festival that enjoys a public holiday.

This Christmas holiday, the US’s top envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, the self-described “new sheriff in town,” will be busy taking down names, like a harsh principal out to get the unruly pupils, with the long whip of threats and retributions against the countries that endorsed the UN General Assembly resolution on the status of Jerusalem, the whole 128 of them. “For those who don’t have our backs, we ‘re taking names,” she had warned prior to the vote that was widely interpreted in the international community as a solid rebuke of Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the US embassy there. Haley’s own name, however, might be numbered, by the consequential embarrassment and damages to US’s global prestige inflicted by Haley’s dictatorial style foreign to UN diplomacy.

The question, then, is how long can the US afford to be represented by someone so out of tune with the protocols of world diplomacy requiring tactfulness and nuance? Haley’s supporters will no doubt rush to her defense by arguing that she represents the defiant spirit of her boss, President Trump, who has trashed the UN repeatedly in his speeches, reducing it to a talk shop, even though the US Congress continues to appropriate funds for the UN, based on a simple understanding that the UN is vital for US’s global leadership.

There is, as a result, a certain disconnect between the rhetoric and action of the US with respect to the UN, seeing how the US continues to manipulate the Security Council, e.g., vis-à-vis North Korea. To his small credit, last September in his first UN speech, Trump refrained from his usual diatribe against the UN, enjoying the podium to broadcast his quintessentially Trumpesque, and one might say perverted, view of the world affairs, depicting the US a global moral good that can do no harm!

But, having survived year one of Trump’s presidency, the world can now have a small sigh of relief, wondering what comes next? North Korea, slapped with new UN sanctions, may retaliate by more ‘rogue’ behavior that could spell trouble for world peace, and on January 13th, Trump has to decide what to do with the Iran nuclear accord, that he has vilified as one the worst deals in history? Concerning the latter, after his early October refusal to certify the deal, which is not technically speaking the same thing as ‘decertification,’ Trump hurled the matter to the bosom of US Congress, to “fix it or nix it,” yet Congress, as rightly predicted by this author, has done neither, avoiding any rash move to tamper with the Iran nuclear agreement, which most experts agree is in US’s own national security interests, a view echoed by several top Trump officials including the secretaries of defense and state, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson.

In line with a new “Iran policy” after much internal debate, Trump is geared to adopt a more aggressive anti-Iran posture, which is somewhat problematic because of the range of shared US-Iran interests, with respect to ISIS terrorism, Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s stability, narco-traffic, etc. In other words, the Manichean rhetoric against Iran is dysfunctional and hides the non-zero sum nature of US-Iran competition that, as in the case of Iraq, has put the US’s and Iranian forces on parallel tracks for some three to four years now. Consequently, by catering to Saudi Arabia and its calls for a robust Iran-bashing US stance, the Trump administration would be in effect harming its own interests, a recipe for disaster, whereby a more nuanced US policy would seek to telescope the nuclear accord to non-nuclear issues such as regional security issues and, perhaps, even contemplate replicating the post-accord Europeans’ attitude of reaping the benefits of a post-sanctions Iran, instead of self-sanctioning US’s firms from doing business with Iran.

In a word, the White House’s new Iran policy leaves a lot to be desired and, logically-speaking, ought to be rescripted in favor of a more complex, multi-layered, nuanced approach that recognizes the uneasy coexistence of competing and shared interests with Iran. Should Trump in his year two at the White House evolve in this direction, then there is room for optimism that come January 13th, he will focus on other important things on his plate, instead of scuttling a deal that has brought a measure of stability to the volatile Middle East, in light of the constant threats of military action against Iran in the pre-accord era, which neither the region nor the world as a whole has the stomach to relive.

Fact of the matter is that after the horrifying experiences of the past few years in terrorism-infested Middle East, the region is beginning to recover slowly and, in fact, is in dire need of a WWII-style Marshal Plan, with so many dozens upon dozens of cities and towns devastated by war, some of which like the war in Yemen is still on-going, to the horror of world’s humanitarian officials. Hopefully, peace in Yemen will be a top priority in 2018 and US’s envoy Haley will step down and be replaced by someone with a pleasant demeanor who can advance US’s ‘soft power’.

Foreigners visiting Morocco are not attracted, in the least, by Casablancai and common Moroccans are always baffled by that attitude and want to know, why on earth, they do not like this modern and sophisticated city, but they, generally, do not get any satisfactory answer. In reality, foreigners seek traditional Moroccan culture, to get to know better the country, its soul and way of life and they are, also, after exotic experiences, which Casablanca is, alas, unable to offer at all.

For the locals, it is the biggest and the most modern city, for visitors it is the noisiest, dirtiest, most chaotic and most crazy place. It reminds them of their bustling big cities, but riddled, on top of that, with more woes, such as: pollution, heavy traffic, lack of transit transportation and complications of modern life, minus attractive traditional vestiges of magnificent millennial Morocco.

By camparison, Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, which is also very modern, is very clean, organized and very friendly. It has an excellent road network, an attractive and functional mass transit transportation system, a lot of greenery, many well-structured and designed malls, beautiful parks and countless cheap eating places, but most importantly it is safe day and night, with places and attractions open around the clock. Foreigners are almost considered as sacred visitors. The local government always makes sure that visitors are well treated, to ensure that they come back over and over. Not far from Kuala Lumpur, there is Singapore, this city-state with a mighty economy where visitors are treated like gods, to say the least, and they always get their money’s worth in accommodation, food, shopping, hospitality and quality of stay.

What Is Wrong With Casablanca?

What is wrong with Casablanca? Honestly, almost every thing. The city is basically two cities: the coastal part rich and affluent and the surrounding part poor and unruly. The poor work during the day for the rich in their homes, businesses or factories and retire at night in their insalubrious shanty towns to take drugs, watch tasteless TV programs, to while away the time, or just indulge in making babies to have some fun and forget about their daily misery and mistreatment. They are underpaid, looked down at and, often times, loathed by the rich, to say the least. So lots of them, in times of crisis, resort to petty crime to feed their families or just to take revenge on the selfish and hateful well-to-do citizens of the city.

In a word, Casablanca is a bizarre place, not to say a city suffering from schizophrenia and double identity. The national government is more interested in security, bearing in mind, mainly, that in the past it was the hotbed of leftist militantism and in 2003, it was rocked by Islamist terrorism originating from its own belt of poverty, Sidi Moumen’s bidonville. An excellent film was made by Nabil Ayouch on this particular event; It is entitled: “ Horses of God.”ii As for the local government, it is most of the time, embroiled in partisan feuds, a state of affairs that keeps the city development on its back burner, not to mention that often times members will initiate programs that might not be feasible or beneficial for the city, in the long run, but friendly to their own pockets and interests.

As such, the roads are very bad everywhere; full of potholes and the ugly sidewalks invaded by wild car-parking pushing the pedestrians to walk in the roads and, thus, are victims of terrible car accidents given that drivers are careless and have no respect for the walking public.

Greenery is almost inexistant because the blocks of cements of voracious urban developers have duly invaded every possible green space. During the day the city suffocates and asthma is very high among the population, especially the young of age and babies. Traveling during work days from one part of the city to another is almost impossible because of horrendous traffic jams and unpleasant bottlenecks. The city has not planned ahead of time for the increase of vehicles. Some business people make their business decisions while being chauffeured to their companies’ headquarters.

City Of Inhuman And Wild Capitalism

The city is gripped by this modern malady called inhuman capitalism: people want to make money fast at whatever price and in the process they lose their humanity, sense of compassion and the virtue of sharing and become fast- gain zealots: wild, inhuman and terribly dangerous.

Banks, insurance companies, holdings, companies, factories, malls make tons of money fast but spend zero dirham on the social welfare of the city and its people. Worse, they refuse to pay one miserable dirham to the self-appointed car park guardians, they chase beggars or haggle over the daily wage of poor women cleaners. For this and more, the city does not seem to have a soul, in the least. With more construction, it is getting bigger and bigger every day but also wilder, aggressive and uglier.

Most of the big businesses of the country are headquartered in this city: banks, insurances, holdings, companies, factories, etc. and has the biggest port of the country. In a word, Casablanca is the capital of business but also the capital of much poverty and despair.

In short, it is the capital of the Golden Triangleiii of Morocco where wealth is concentrated has as sample of the Morocco of Despairiv in its ranks, but it is, also, the noisiest, ugliest, dirtiest, richest in money but the poorest in compassion, solidarity and responsibility and nobody seems to care about its welfare, aesthetics and functionality. Business leaders, government officials, be they local or national and even some citizenry do not seem to be concerned, in the least, about improving their city’s lot.

Recently some association, surely sponsored by the government, started a bizarre publicity campaign calling the city WeCasablanca and aiming apparently to highlight or improve the image of this big urban center but only by semantics, not action or deeds. However, this campaign does not seem to have viable objectives and feasible programs of intervention, it is merely a campaign of self-glorification, empty in meaning and useless in content.

Humphrey Bogarts’ Casablanca

For many Western people the city rhymes with some sort of romanticism represented by the film of Michael Curitz “Casablanca“,v released in 1942, in which a cynical American expatriate Humphrey Bogart (whose famous quotations from the movie remain vivid and eternal quips: “Here is lookin’ at you, kid!” and “Play it again Sam,”) plays the role of the selfless American white male (Rick Blaine) sacrificing himself for his beloved Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa.)

Rick runs a nightclub in Casablanca (Rick’s Café) during the early stages of WWII. Despite the pressure he constantly receives from the local authorities, Rick’s Café has become a kind of haven for refugees seeking to obtain illicit letters that will help them escape to America. But when Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), a former lover of Rick’s, and her husband, show up to his cafe one day, Rick faces a tough challenge which will bring up unforeseen complications, heartbreak and ultimately an excruciating decision to make.
Humphrey Bogart says that he came to the city for the waters, but today the coastal waters of the city are polluted and so is the air and the city is a pale copy of the one encountered in Rick’s Bar.

In today’s Casablanca.it is all about making fast money even if it takes crossing the red lines of legality. The city is morally corrupt and corruption is the name of the game in its wheeling and dealings. So romantic Casablanca is very much a gross joke today, and the city’s image needs mending badly.

A Way Out

The city has the money but does not seem to have the intelligence, the will and the responsibility to restructure itself and organize its drive to become a bountiful and beautiful urban center of Morocco. Today it looks more like Cairo than Paris.

How things can change:

1. Elect a new local government with a real development plan, selfless spirit and willingness to work hard to improve things;
2. Evaluate the city needs in infrastructure, housing, employment, welfare and put pressure on businesses to sponsor development programs and not just care about making money;
3. Central government must come up with an emergency plan to help develop the city and control the local government’s work; and
4. Link various development programs to an external evaluation and audit scheme whose findings could be used to maintain a given program or drop it and keep a responsible official in place or fire him.

If this approach fails after ten years, the government has to put the city under the authority of general with a precise and clear development program like what happened with Djakarta, the capital city of Indonesia once upon a time.

Casablanca is a great city with great people, a great potential and needs urgently great decision makers, managers and planners to make it move ahead and not empty campaigns with messages of self-congratulation, like WeCasablanca.

Will this materialize? Only time will show.

You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatou on Twitter: @Ayurinu

Endnotes:
i. Casablanca (Arabic: الدار البيضاء‎, translit. ad-dār al-bayḍāʾ; Berber; local informal name: Kaẓa), located in the central-western part of Morocco bordering the Atlantic Ocean, is the largest city in Morocco. It is also the largest city in the Maghreb, as well as one of the largest and most important cities in Africa, both economically and demographically.

Casablanca is Morocco’s chief port and one of the largest financial centers on the continent. According to the 2014 population estimate, the city has a population of about 3.35 million in the urban area and over 6.8 million in the Casablanca-Settat region. Casablanca is considered the economic and business center of Morocco, although the national political capital is Rabat.

The leading Moroccan companies and international corporations doing business in the country have their headquarters and main industrial facilities in Casablanca. Recent industrial statistics show Casablanca retains its historical position as the main industrial zone of the country. The Port of Casablanca is one of the largest artificial ports in the world, and the second largest port of North Africa, after Tanger-Med 40 km east of Tangier. Casablanca also hosts the primary naval base for the Royal Moroccan Navy. (Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca)

ii. The residents of Sidi Moumen, a sprawling shantytown on the outskirts of Casablanca, Morocco, live in tin-roofed shacks without electricity, running water or modern sewage disposal. The area sits atop a garbage dump where boys run wild in packs and engage in fierce soccer matches that often explode into violence. Aerial shots depict this slum as a fetid, desiccated wasteland, in which the pickings are thin, even for scavengers. To sell oranges in a market for a pittance, you must fight for space.

The boys of Sidi Moumen are the subjects of Nabil Ayouch’s film “Horses of God,” a compelling contemplation of the roots of Islamic terrorism in poverty and hopelessness. On May 16, 2003, 12 suicide bombers from Sidi Moumen, ages 16 to 23, attacked multiple targets in Casablanca, killing 45 people (including themselves) and wounding more than 100.

The movie, inspired by Mahi Binebine’s novel “The Stars of Sidi Moumen,” is not about politics or religion but about poverty and a society steeped in a deadly machismo. In its demystification of these youthful slum dwellers, the film makes their embrace of terrorism frighteningly comprehensible. Because it follows its main characters over 10 years, from childhood into adulthood, it gives their fates a sense of tragic inevitability.

When first seen, Yachine (Abdelhakim Rachid) and his older brother, Hamid (Abdelilah Rachid), are 10 and 13. The volatile Hamid becomes a local hero by tossing a rock at a police car and ends up in prison. When he returns, he is a changed man, having discovered Islamic fundamentalism, with its emphasis on austerity and self-discipline in the service of a greater cause. Yachine, who has always looked up to Hamid as the man of the house, is easily converted.

Suddenly, their lives have a noble purpose. They are expected to die for the glory of Allah, having embraced a cause larger than themselves. Unlike other movies about jihad, “Horses of God,” doesn’t concentrate on the terrorists’ grandiose indoctrination and the rituals of their final meals, prayers and preparations, which can attach a perverse glamour to suicide. Even after Yachine is chosen to lead one operation — the bombing of an Italian restaurant — he is shown shaking with fear, and his eyes do not burn with heavenly fantasies. (Cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/movies/horses-of-god-nabil-ayouchs-film-about-islamic-extremism.html)

iii. The Golden Triangle of Morocco starts in Agadir on a soth-north axis and from Casablanca to Fes, on a west-east axis, it comprises, the rich cities, fertile plains, and bountiful mines and othrr ressources. During the colonial period, the French divided Morocco in two Moroccos : Maroc Utile (Useful Morocco) and Maroc Inutile (Useless Morocco) which is merely the center versus the periphery. This in many ways coincided with the other French dichotomy, inherited from imperial Morocco political terminology: blad al-Makhzen (land under government control) and blas as-Siba (land of insurgency) .

iv. The Morocco of Despair is Morocco of poverty, lack of infrastructure and work opportunities, it is made of the Mountainous areas and arid lands inhabited mostly by Amazigh/Berber people. It is a big chunck of the country where illiteracy is very high especially among women and is peopled by peasants whose land is dependent on availability of rain.

vi. Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison’s unproduced stage play Everybody Comes to Rick’s. The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid; it also features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate who must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her husband, a Czech Resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.

Story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal B. Wallis to purchase the film rights to the play in January 1942. Brothers Juliusand Philip G. Epstein were initially assigned to write the script. However, despite studio resistance, they left to work on Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series early in 1942. Howard E. Koch was assigned to the screenplay until the Epsteins returned a month later. Principal photography began on May 25, 1942, ending on August 3; the film was shot entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California with the exception of one sequence at Van Nuys Airport in Van Nuys, Los Angeles.

Although Casablanca was an A-list film with established stars and first-rate writers, no one involved with its production expected it to be anything out of the ordinary, just one of the hundreds of pictures produced by Hollywood every year. Casablanca was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. It had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City and was released nationally in the United States on January 23, 1943. The film was a solid if unspectacular success in its initial run.

Exceeding expectations, Casablanca went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Curtiz was selected as Best Director and the Epsteins and Koch were honored for writing the Best Adapted Screenplay – and gradually its reputation grew.

Its lead characters, memorable lines, and pervasive theme song have all become iconic and the film consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films in history. (Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_(film))

By Cemre Yapici

There has been increasing acceptance that to understand importance of the nature of conflict and post conflict process with the effect of gender roles and masculinity in recent years all over the world (Cockburn,1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997). Meanwhile, gender issues have come into prominence within all base of society and concerning to prominence of conflict, their effect on situations of armed conflict and peace process are particularly marked in the academic literature(Moser and Clark, 2001). Some feminist scholars claim that considering and studying conflict without gender is incomplete and biased yet, the different roles and behaviors of women, men determine the way that how conflicts and peace process playout (Cockburn,1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997).

In other words, social expectations with the effect of stereotypes have impact upon the way that people play in efforts to armed conflict and peace process (Cockburn, 1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997). Furthermore, the notion of the victim has been characterized by masculinity dominated gender stereotypes (Cockburn, 1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997). Gender power is seen to create an assumption that women are only “victims of conflict”, whereas; men are “heroes” and “perpetrators” (Cockburn, 1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001)

Politicization of rape has been another conspicuous component of victimization of women in order to overshadow active participation and agency of female combatants and create a single –sided and subjective understanding of armed conflict (Cockburn, 1999; 2001, El- Bushra, 2007 Moser and Clark, 2001). On the other hand, stereotypical gender roles and politics of victimhood have played crucial role in terms of effectiveness of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process in conflict areas to keep stable peace and equality between male and female combatants (Carlson andMazurana,2004 MacKenzie, 2009). Female combatants are excluded from these policies because of stereotypical assumption that women are as only victims and symbol of peace and innocence (Carlson andMazurana,2004 MacKenzie, 2009).

Regarding these, it is significant to understand that how gender norms and stereotypes interact with armed conflict and post- conflict re-integration process (Cockburn, 1999; 2001, El- Bushra, 2017,) In this essay, I particularly focus on the notion of gender roles, its substituted components such as power, agency and politics of victimization in detail to challenge supposition that men are “perpetrators of conflict”; whereas, “women are victims and peace envoy” and to demonstrate that how stereotypical understanding of conflict impact upon both understanding of armed conflict and integration policies in post- conflict zones with case study and empirical qualitative analysis from Sierra Leone.

Gender Roles, Masculinity and Stereotypes

“Gender refers to socially politically constructed roles, behaviors and attributes that a society considers which one most appropriate and valuable for women and men”(Gender Analysis of Toolkit for Saferworld, 2013; pg.2) Nonetheless, “gender norms are sets of expectations about how people of each gender should participate in society from masculine or feminine perspective and are produced by culture, education, social construction and media” (Gender Analysis of Toolkit for Saferworld, 2013: pg.2). Masculinity refers to anything which is associated with men, just as femininity refers to anything which is associated with women (Gender Analysis of Toolkit, for Saferworld 2013). At the same time, with the effect of constructed gender roles women and femininity are associated with positivity, peace, emotional, innocence, victim, need for protection, nursing, affection, maternity, care and motherhood, whereas; men are associated with war, perpetrators, autonomy, aggression, heroism, rational and protection (Cockburn,1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997).

However, many feminist scholars have emphasized that “gender is not only way to differ women and men but it also is a system of power and agency which shapes to lives, relationship and access to resources within a society, conflict and post- conflict because both agency and power as concepts have applicability”(Cockburn,1999; 20001 El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997). In social sciences, agency is described as the capacity of individuals to act and make their own choices independently (Cockburn, 1999; 2001, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001, Yuval Davis, 1997).

According to feminist authors, it is important to distinguish between official power and informal power correspond to notions of male and female power to promote a distinct divide between men as powerful and women as powerless and needy respectively (Cockburn,1999; 20001 El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001).On the other hand, Cockburn, analyses “how the importance of gender differentiation and local constructions of masculinities and femininities is embedded in issues of agency and power”(Clark and Moser, 2001: pg.5) She identifies the significance of gendered power relations in order to indicate that stereotyping underestimates people’s role as social actors in different moments of conflict (Clark and Moser, 2001). In each stage, it is the contextually specific female and male stereotyping, positioning and agency in patriarchal gender systems (Clark and Moser, 2001). Also, Sharoni and Butalia challenge the relation between gender, power and agency with the assumption that “power is a male monopoly, whereas, women are perceived as powerless and lacking of agency in armed conflict and political violence” (Clark and Moser, 2001, pg: 8).

Therefore, stereotypical essentializing and labelling of women as ‘victims’ particularly of sexual abuse or rape and men as ‘perpetrators’ ‘heroes’ and ‘defender’ on the behalf of the nation and their wives, children and honors have universal phenomenon (Cockburn,1999; 20001 El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001). In other words, many versions of constructed gender roles with the effect of hegemonic masculinity are constituted in the practice of fighting: “to be a real man is to be ready to fight and, to kill and to die” on the behalf of honor of the nation, flag, women and children” (Cockburn,1999; 20001Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001).

Having said that, building upon the imaginary of familial symbolism as another significant result of stereotyping of patriarchy constructed gender roles, because label women as naturally positive, peace envoy, victim and needy for protection (Cockburn,1999; 20001 El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001)To illustrate, images of motherland tend to be symbolized as a woman who is biological reproducer of nation, victim, needy and lacking of agency, whereas enemies tend to be symbolized as a male who threatens, damages or embargos motherland (Cockburn,1999; 2001, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2001).

As a result, in this way, it is easy to leave aside women’s agency, roles and potentials in armed conflict, and gain them unacknowledged roles; whereas, to gain men activate roles as the most agent social actor responsible for both armed conflict and peace process (Cockburn, 2000, El- Bushra,2017, Jacobson et al..2000, Moser and Clark, 2000, Yuval Davis, 1997).

Politics of Victimization: Sexual Abuse, Rape and Violence Against Women

The notion of the ‘victim’ is always feminized by male power women and children are victims, whereas, men are aggressor (Clark and Moser, 2001, Turshen, 2001). The problem is even more complicated and problematic when ‘victim’ is related with ‘lack of agency’ because the notion of victim has become a socially constructed identity which adulterates women experiences and participation of armed conflict (Clark and Moser, 2001, Turshen 2001).

That is why, the concept of victim has been attached with sexual violence, and rape against women during armed conflict (Clark and Moser, 2001) Having said that, Caroline Moser outlines three categories of violence, citing political and economic violence in addition to the more common reported social or interpersonal violence (Moser, 2001). This informative definition has played significant and advanced role in terms of understanding of gender and armed conflict because it leads to understand the specific reasons of rape and sexual violence during armed conflict (Moser and Clark 2001, Turshen, 2001). On the other hand, sexual violence and conflict have been complicated and controversial themes in terms of armed conflict and political violence in accordance with women’s rights and agency (Clark and Moser, 2001; Cockburn, 2001; Turshen, 2001)

Moser’s analysis about different types of political violence interrogates the political of rape and sexual abuse as an aspect of political and economic violence during armed conflict(Moser, 2001). Moreover, Moser describes her analysis from the aspect of systematic rape and sexual abuse against women yet, both sexual abuse and rape are gendered and male dominated activities because of ideologically male power dominated gender roles, relations, agencies and identities stereotypically (Moser, 2001; Turshen, 2001).

In other words, the gendered continuum of rape has been significant role as a systematic strategy of armed conflict because rape during the armed conflict is a socially constructed and male power dominated (Moser, 2001; Turshen,2001). At the same time, it has a traditional sexist role as a result of stereotypical gender relations between men and women (Moser, 2001; Turshen,2001). Especially, systematic and militarized rape and sexual abuse are among the strategies of men to commodify women by disregarding women’s agency and active roles(Turshen, 2001) because militarized rape has been directly related role as a function of formal institutions such as the states’ national security, defense of military arm, and honor of the country(Turshen, 2001).

Meredith Turshen describes the relationship between systematic rape and commodification of women agency in detail. Turhsen claims that “concepts of virtue and family honor objectify women, as does to need to protect a woman’s virginity for the reputation of her family” (Turshen, 20001: pg. 65) in order not to acknowledge women’s individual rights as society’s inalienable property (Turshen, 2001). In this way, militarized and systematic rape have cultural significance role for commodification of women by being honor of the nation, family and state (Moser, 2000, Turshen,2001) because “behind the cultural significance of raping ‘enemy’ women lies at the institutionalization of attitudes and practices that regard and treat women as property and honors of the state” (Turshen,2001: pg. 60).

To add more, both biased gender roles and politics of victimization against women have negative impact upon both the understanding of active participation of female combatants in armed conflict and post conflict re- integration, rehabilitation policies(Carlson andMazurana,2004 Cockburn 2000, MacKenzie, 2009, Moser, 2000). In conjunction with these indications, the active role of female combatants in armed conflict has become a crucial theme in gender and conflict studies

Women as Actors in Armed Conflict in Sierra Leone: Stereotypes versus Evidence

Female combatants’ role, agency and active participation remain invisible during armed conflict because of male power dominated gender roles, whereas; women participate in armed conflict actively (Coulter, 2008, Mazurana and Carlson, 2004). The number of female combatants in armed forces have increasing in recent years despite armed forces have traditionally known asmale dominated institutions (Brett 2002, Coulter, 2008, Coulter et al.. 2008MacMullin and Loughry 2004, Mazurana et al. 2002). Especially, “in many of the African ‘independence wars’, often with a socialist agenda, women’s liberation was seen as sufficient and essential component of the overall struggle” (Nzomo,2002, Coulteret al.. 2008).

At the same time, particularly, in African armed conflict women have shown themselves as capable as men in terms of performing acts and what is worse, local populations and data prove that female fighters are even more brutal and cruel than male fighters (Coulter et al… 2008, Coulter, 2008, Carlson, 2004). That is why, it is significant to understand what women do in actual fact of armed conflict (Coulteret al .. 2008). However, there is a tendency even in studies of women, gender and war, women do not participate in armed conflict actively because of some stereotypical assumptions (Cohen, 2013, Coulter, 2008, Mazurana and Carlson 2004).

To illustrate, women have either supporting roles such as cooks, cleaners, and sexual slaves to male combatants or are victims of the armed conflict regardless of their death ratio and symbol of innocence, peace, peace envoy or stereophonic icons of war in conjunction with gender biased stereotypes and politics of victimization (Cohen, 2013, Coulter, 2008 Mazurana and Carlson, 2004). Hence, understanding the role of female fighters and combatants technicality in armed conflict has related with other subjects such as victimization, violence, gender and sexual abuse(Cohen 2013, Mazurana and Carlson, 2004). In this part of the essay, I critically analyze women’s role as perpetuators of conflict in order to challenge the general stereotypical understanding of armed conflict with case study about Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone

“The Sierra Leone civil war began on 23 March 1991, when a small rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front, entered southeaster part of the country from Liberia. The war continued in varying degrees of intensity throughout the 1990s, and pace was officially declared on 18 January 2002. The rebels were accused of committing widespread atrocities namely, cutting off people’s limbs, creating mass destruction. The war has been described as one of the more brutal in the late twentieth century, its levels of brutality compared to that of Rwanda or Cambodia in the 1970s. Approximately, 75.000 people were killed, and many more injured. Also, the war was particularly destructive in the rural areas, in particular the diamond rich east. Today, after two peaceful post- war elections the country enjoys a fragile stability.”(Coulter, 2008:pg.58)

Furthermore, Sierra Leone civil war is not only a case as one of the most brutal conflict, it is also a controversial issue in terms of female combatants because most of them were abducted from rebel forces. Coulter, 2008).Despite, some of them were abducted by rebel forces, they had active participation in formation of armed conflict (Coulter,2008, Mazurana and Carlson, 2004). That is why, the category of female fighters in Sierra Leone civil war (1991-2002) challenges the gendered stereotypes of women as ‘victim’ of armed conflict because of lacking of agency or women have essential services in armed conflict namely, carrying water, washing clothes, finding food, cooking or sexual slave, whereas” men are labelled as the perpetrator, power and heroes of the armed conflict (Coulter, 2008, Mazurana and Carlson, 2004).

During the discourse of the Sierra Leone civil war (1991-2002), it is estimated that between 10 and 30 percent of all fighters were women and girls (Richards, 1996;89; Mazurana and Carlson, 2004: McKay and Mazurana, 2004; 92, Save the Children, 2005). Also, during and after the civil war, stories of brutality of combatant women became a popular and interesting theme especially in terms of gender studies as an example to challenge stereotypical and male power dominated assumptions and to show that female fighters would be more cruel, cold- blooded than men (Coulter, 2004, Cohen, 2013). In Sierra Leone, many female combatants actively participate armed conflict as fighters who kill, and behave both civilians and enemies mercilessly (Coulter,2008, Cohen, 2013).

Also, being messengers between rebel camps, spices, communication technician or distributor of weapons to boy and girl fighters and to train them how to attack enemy forces are other decisive roles of female fighters during armed conflict (Coulter, 2008).Dara Kay Cohen and Chris Coulter analysis war time rape and female fighters in civil war with original evidences including interviews with ex-combatants and survey data, which prove that female combatants perpetrated rape and sexual abuse, violence against civilians (Cohen, 2013 Coulter, 2008). Particularly, interviews with ex- combatants in Sierra Leone reveal how gender roles mislead understanding of conflict. For instance, Aminata and Ramatu as ex- female combatants in armed conflict report that,

“If you are not trained and you meet your, enemy, how can you fight to rescue your life? Women were really fighting. If you saw us entering Waterloo on the 5th of January, to enter the city, (Freetown) you would not have been able to look at our faces. We were bloody. We were like slaves, very dirty. So to ask about women fighting! Some were even braver than men” (Interview with Aminata, female ex- fighter in Sierra Leone, January 2004, Coulter, 2008: pg,5).

“All members of the fighting party, including the women and the girls, would then drink the blood so they would not be afraid during the attack. They would then cut the person’s throat turn them upsdie down: and ‘squeeze them from toe to head’ to drain their blood into bucket”. (Interview with Ramatu T, female ex- combatants in Sierra Leone).

Furthermore, the results of empirical data display to what extent female combatants have active role and are cruel. Cohen analyses that, there is a hypothesized correlation between the large number of women fighters and high levels of civilian rape (Cohen,2013). In fact,

“data from Sierra Leone indicate that the proportion of women in an armed group is positively associated with the sexual violence committed by the group and the date contradict one of the central observable implications of the traditional perspective: groups with more women not only committed rape but actually committed more rape than did groups with fewer women” (Cohen 2013: pg.399).Allin all, empirical analyses, interviews and data from Sierra Leone indicate that female combatants commit an offense in armed conflict just as male combatants do.

Women’s and Girl’s Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) Policies in Sierra Leone

International policy makers classify Disarmament, Demobilization and Re- integration programs as one of the most crucial components for post- conflict areas to keep peace process and gender equality stable (Carlson and Mazurana, 2004). Indeed, DDR programs have played essentialrole in terms of peace- keeping process for The United Nations and other international peace operations because they build secure field in post conflict zones by improving human capacity (Carlson and Mazurana, 2004).

The World Bank has defined a successful DDR program as the key factor for an effective transition from war to peace (Carlson and Mazurana, 2004). The United Nations defines disarmament as “.. the collection of small and light and heavy weapons within a conflict zone” (Carlson andMazurana,2004: pg,8). Demobilization is described “as both the formal disbanding of military formations and the release of combatants from a ‘mobilized’ state”; (Carlson and Mazurana, 2004: pg,8) whereas, reintegration refers “initial reinsertion such as the short – term arrival of an ex- combatants into his| her former home or into a new community and long-term reintegration” (Carlson and Mazurana, 2004: pg,8).

However, the lack of recognition women’s active role and participation in armed conflict leads to doubled victimization of female combatants in reintegration and rehabilitation policies in post conflict areas (Carlson andMazurana, 2004 MacKenzie, 2009). Sierra Leone’s case study of female ex- combatants evidently demonstrates the negative impact of gender roles on post- conflict integration and rehabilitation programs in terms of particularly females (Carlson and Mazurana,2004 MacKenzie,2009).

“DDR programs started to be implemented in Sierra Leone from 1998 to 2003 and it has been supported from the United Nations, the World Bank. From the time of its implementation in 1998, 72,500 former combatants passed through the program, including 4,751 women (6.5 percent)” (Carlson, Mazurana, pg:6).

In theory, female combatants have been included in DDR processes but, as Mazurana and Carlson noted, “most programmes are more effective in reaching out to male fighters than female fighters who are constantly underserved” (Mazurana and Carlson 2004:pg 2). Also, DDR program in Sierra Leone was seen as a fundamental and indispensable element for the country’s transition out of civil conflict (Mazurana and Carlson, 2004). However, MacKenzie, Mazurana and Carlson critically examines the recommendations of DDR programs into the country. In her analysis, MacKenzie demonstrates that the extent to which females participated as combatants, in contrast to low numbers participated in DDR programs (MacKenzie, 2009).

On the other hand, Mazurana and Calrson’s study and analysis about DDR programs and female fighters in Sierra Leone strengthen MacKenzie’s analysis. Mazurana and Carlson state that majority of the women and girls as ex- combatants and fightersneither participated nor benefited from DDR programs in Sierra Leone (Mazurana and Carlson, 2004). That is why, ex-female combatants are excluded from the society in Sierra Leone (Mazurana and Carlson, 2004, MacKenzie, 2009). On the other hand, there are some specific reasons to understand exclusion of female fighters from DDR programs in Sierra Leone. MacKenzie, Carlson and Mazurana explain these specific reasons of exclusion of women combatants from DDR process in detail.

The one of the most important reasons is that the representative of the stereotypical and historical understanding of women roles such as “camp followers”, “sex slaves” or wives of male leaders (MacKenzie, 2009) to explain why DDR programs failed in terms of female fighters in the post conflict context in Sierra Leone. The second important reason is the requirement of weapon in order to be defined as combatant (MacKenzie, 2009). In Sierra Leone, Coulter found that half of the interviewed female ex-fighters claimed that they had actually wanted to disarmand re- integrate but only a handful could participate because out of those 22 percent stated that the reason for this was that they did not have access to a weapon (Coulter ,2004, MacKenzie, 2009).

In addition, MacKenzie, Carlson and Mazurana regard international and local communities responsible because of their stereotypical, male power dominated attitudes toward female combatants as another reason to explain the exclusion of female combatants from DDR programs (Mazurana and Carlson, 2004, MacKenzie, 2009).MacKenzie criticizes that the international organizations and media concentrate on just female victims (MacKenzie, 2009).”There are many examples of internationally supported programs directed at female victims of conflict; whereas, there are few programs (in fact almost none) that are directed at ex-female combatants” (MacKenzie, 2009; pg, 245)Finally, MacKenzie focuses on importance of leaving aside traditionally male dominated gender roles in order to keep stable peace and (gender equality) in Sierra Leone (MacKenzie, 2009). Briefly, Sierra Leone’s DDR process failed to attract women combatants compare to male combatants yet, females’ active experiences, roles, and agencies during the armed conflict were not acknowledged because of the assumption that women and girls are only victims, and symbol of innocence, peace, sex slaves and cooker in armed conflict (Carlson and Mazurana, 2004, MacKenzie, 2009).

Conclusion

Male power dominated gender roles and stereotypes have crucial impacts upon both understanding of armed conflict and post- conflict disarmament, reintegration policies in conflict zones because women are labelled as peace envoy, sign of innocence, sex slaves and victim; whereas, men are labelled heroes, and perpetrator of armed conflict.

At the same time, politics of victimisation toward just females to underestimate their agency and power in armed conflict have another impact upon shaping of armed conflict. However, in reality, females have active participation as combatants in armed conflict and commit an offence like male combatants do. Sierra Leone civil war has plays important role in order to challenge this male power dominated understanding of armed conflict because female combatants have participated actively in conflict and committed rape just like men combatants have done.

Results of both qualitative and quantitative research about Sierra Leone indicate that groups with more women not only committed rape but actually committed more rape than did groups with fewer women. Despite the fact that, female combatants have active participation in armed conflict, they are excluded from Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process in post- conflict context because of male dominated stereotypes and understanding of conflict in Sierra Leone. Also, attitudes of both international and domestic communities and NGOs toward female fighters as a victim of the conflict led to exclusion of female fighters from DDR process into the country. In other words, DDR process failed to integrate ex- female combatants into the society.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

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By Syed Salahuddin

Increased aerial attacks by the US have led to a marked reduction in terror attacks in Afghanistan, lawmakers in the country have said.

The US revision of Afghan war strategy has essentially unveiled a new weapon – increased aerial attacks to crush militants’ might on the ground. And contrary to its popular critics, including former President Hamid Karzai, a large number of Afghan lawmakers have acknowledged a notable reduction in terror attacks since August, when President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead for increased aerial strikes in Afghanistan.

Autumn in Afghanistan is usually a period when militants step up their attacks before the country’s harsh winters, when fighting traditionally subsides, only to erupt again in spring.

This fall, in spite of relatively mild weather, the country has witnessed far fewer terror activities and attacks by the Taliban-led insurgents in various areas despite a fractured political setup.

The Afghan legislators say the drop in attacks by militants, including affiliates of Daesh, has been because of the escalation in military operations, especially US aerial attacks, since Trump announced his new strategy for America’s longest and growingly unpopular war.

The US officials argue that use of air power is easy, far cheaper and safer for its troops in a country where militancy engaged the US for 16 years and persisted despite the presence of 140,000-strong US-led coalition forces.

Talking to Arab News, the Afghan officials and lawmakers said the strikes have limited the capability and mobility of insurgents to operate freely.

“Since the government is weak and our country has a mountainous terrain, the air strikes have been very productive in killings of Taliban, Daesh and Al-Qaeda commanders and footsoldiers,” said Sediqa Mubarez, a female lawmaker from the restive Maidan-Wardak province, which lies to the west of Kabul.

“People in Maidan-Wardak seem happy and have not reported or complained of civilian casualties. There is certainly a drop in terrorist attacks.”

However, she said good planning and coordination will make the strikes more efficient.
Elsewhere in the country where insurgents have been traditionally most active, especially in the southern parts, the strikes have not only eliminated insurgents, they have also destroyed their ammunition depots and small drug-processing small laboratories, which are a key source of their funding, officials said.

“The strikes have been very productive in Zabul province. The threat has been neutralized. We have not witnessed increase in terrorist activities and attacks in the past few months unlike previous autumn seasons,” General Jailani Farahi, deputy police chief for Zabul, told Arab News.

In Kabul, Defense Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Radmanesh said the air power, particularly the use of drones, “has hard hit the militants, especially in mountainous areas and caves which militants use as hideouts.

“We were recently able to safely move a convoy of 4,000 troops from one province to another without any ambush. Our capabilities have increased both as a result of training and coordination since Trump declared the new strategy.”

He confirmed the reports which suggested the Taliban had access to technology that could detect drones flying overhead in some of the battle arenas and their concentration areas, helping them to disperse and hide.

“But the hike in air strikes and security forces’ operations have either eliminated them or forced them to flee or join the peace process.”

The drastic use of air power has also led to civilian casualties, he conceded. According to a UN report released in October, civilian casualties resulting from local and US aerial attacks have jumped up 50 percent since 2016.

In September, US war planes dropped more bombs than in any single month since 2010, driven largely by Trump’s strategy, according to Afghan officials. Before that, Trump’s administration dropped the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb in eastern Afghanistan as part of what it said was its campaign against Daesh.

Mohammad Sarwar, a lawmaker from Farah province, said the US was not focused in its war in Afghanistan, otherwise it would have already ended the conflict.

Former President Hamid Karzai was also a strong critic of US operations, particularly the air strikes as he said they caused the civilian population to turn against the government and foreign forces.

President Ashraf Ghani, however, has remained silent over civilian casualties resulting from US strikes. He appreciated the increase in US attacks during the recent visit of US Vice President Mike Pence to Afghanistan.

By Abdulrahman Al-Rashed*

The most important recent development on the battlefield in Yemen is a war among the rebels themselves. The Houthis are racing to control the camp of their ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, after they killed him. Human suffering has been exacerbated, after being relatively stable in the areas under Houthi control. Recently, the circle of confrontation grew wider and the situation became worse. It is also bad in other conflict areas and the areas under the control of the Houthis, who are an extremist religious and political group.

I read an article in the Washington Post by David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, about the human suffering in Yemen arising from the conflict. I agree with him that civilians pay the heaviest price in wars, such as the one in Yemen. However, I disagree with him in presenting the Houthis as a group with whom we can be reconciled without paying a dangerous price that we would all come to regret.

The rebels tried to control the main facilities, including airports, seaports and roads, and they turned these facilities into a financial resource. Estimates are that more than $5 billion goes to the Houthis from taxing transit and the passage of individuals and goods, and reselling those goods.

Miliband suggested three steps he considered necessary: Ending the coalition’s siege of the ports; a cease-fire, even if one-sided, i.e. by the coalition, since the Houthis would reject it; and starting a peaceful solution. These three suggestions actually mean the surrender of the ports to the Houthis, consolidating their power over the areas under their control and, consequently, handing them victory.

The coalition may have to accept Miliband’s suggestions simply to avoid accusations, but the main goal of ending the human suffering by delivering human and medical aid would not be achieved. Most of the tragedies are in the conflict areas, and in the rebels’ areas, and most of the aid supplies would be subject to the whims of the Houthis who use the control of supplies as one of their main weapons.

The second challenge, which is important for the coalition and Saudi Arabia in particular, is that if Miliband’s steps were to be accepted, who would guarantee that missiles would stop reaching the Houthis?

Who would hold Iran and Qatar, which finances the regional smuggling market, accountable for delivering missiles to the Houthis? Would Saudi Arabia accept the firing of ballistic missiles at its cities? Of course not, and, consequently the cease-fire would fail and the war would restart, bringing greater tragedies if the Houthis had exploited the cease-fire to expand.

Miliband also talked about activating cargo inspection. There used to be international inspection, based in Djibouti, to inspect the cargoes of ferries and ships before allowing them to sail to ports such as Hodeidah. It appeared later on that Iran was still able to smuggle its prohibited materials by sea because of the weakness of the inspection system and the knowledge that the international community would hesitate to hold it accountable. This brings the effectiveness of the inspection system into question. So how would Miliband respond to this dangerous deficiency?

He had asked the coalition countries to allow Hodeidah port to be placed under international supervision, and they agreed. However, the Houthis rejected the suggestion — and yet the coalition was still blamed for it. Now, Miliband is calling for capitulation and handing the management of the port to the Houthis because he had failed in convincing them.

Saudi Arabia agreed because of its awareness of the human tragedy. It even offered to donate four cranes to speed up the unloading and delivery process. Miliband says the procedures in the port take about 90 days!

The most important point which I would like to talk about is that the world is facing a tragedy in Yemen because it has failed to understand the nature of the conflict. The Houthis are not a rebel group that wants to defeat its adversaries and gain control of the government, as is the case in other conflicts. Rather, the Houthi militia is an armed religious extremist group, just like Al-Qaeda. And just as the international community realized that confronting Daesh was the only solution to defeat it and expel it by force from Mosul in Iraq, it has to understand that the same applies to the Houthis in Yemen.

And just as the international coalition refused to negotiate with Daesh in the Syrian city of Raqqa and expelled it from there and from other towns in Syria, instead of looking for a peaceful solution, the situation in Yemen is similar.

The truth is that there is no peaceful solution with the Houthi group. The evidence is that it made a deal with the group of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh because it was a political opposition group, but the negotiations with the Houthis failed because it is an expansionist group that wants to impose its religious views, considers jihad as an end in itself, and believes in fighting outside Yemen as well.

• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel, and former editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article is also published. Twitter: @aalrashed

By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Macedonia’s opposition right-wing VMRO DPMNE party elected Hristijan Mickoski as its new leader on Saturday. He will succeed embattled former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who assumed party leadership in 2003.

Mickoski, who previously held the post of secretary general in the party, won 376 votes out of a possible 428 from delegates present at the party congress in the southeastern town of Valandovo. He was the only candidate standing.

Some 130 delegates, including former and current high-ranking party members and MPs were absent, highlighting a hidden split inside the party which run Macedonia’s government for the past 11 years until May.

They previously complained that the election of a new leader was rushed and rigged in favor of Mickoski, who they saw as no more than Gruevski’s puppet.

“To the inept briefings [coming] from ‘unnamed’ party sources, that I will be a puppet, I will respond with my work and I am sure I will prove the opposite,” Mickoski said at the congress, calling party members to unite against “harmful policies” being put forward by the current Social Democrat-led government, SDSM.

Mickoski is a relative newcomer to the political scene, and the wider public first hear about him when he was appointed party secretary general in July this year. This was part of a broader leadership shuffle that happened just after the party was ousted from government in May, amid widespread concerns about corruption and authoritarianism.

Ever since then, rumours started circulating that he would succeed the long-standing party leader Gruevski, should Gruevski opt to resign. He did so last month after a crushing party defeat in local elections in October.

“I am aware of all the doubts about me which are somewhat justified due to the fact that I have never made any important stately decisions,” Mickoski added.

VMRO-DPMNE is facing one of the hardest periods in its recent existence. It is presently suffering a sharp decline in popularity, internal power struggles and calls for democratisation which would cut the Macedonian president’s almost limitless power of decision, which was originally instated by Gruevski.

The party is also largely isolated or sidelined by Macedonia’s western partners, owing to sporadic flirting with Russia and Gruevski’s past tendencies towards confrontational attitudes with the west, which he accused of masterminding his downfall.

In his speech at congress, Gruevski accused his opponents inside the party for its local election defeat. Delegates elected him honourary party president – an accolade bestowed upon former leaders.

In the past few years, Gruevski and his lallies have stood accused of widespread corruption and authoritarian rule. Many former high-ranking officials, including Gruevski himself, currently face investigations and trials. They deny any guilt.

However, most of them resigned from their party post or quietly withdrew from political life.

By Hannah Brockhaus

Newly-appointed American Ambassador to the Holy See, Callista Gingrich, presented her letters of credential to Pope Francis in a meeting Friday morning, officially marking the beginning of her duties.

U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Gingrich to serve as the 11th ambassador to the Vatican in May, and she was approved Oct. 16 by the U.S. Senate, in a vote 70-23.

She follows Kenneth F. Hackett, the former head of Catholic Relief Services, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See during Barack Obama’s second term as president.

Gingrich arrived in Rome with husband Newt Gingrich Nov. 6. Since arriving, she has participated in several events around Rome, including the North American College Thanksgiving dinner and a charity event hosted by St. Patrick’s American Community.

Callista Gingrich is the president of both Gingrich Productions in Arlington, Va. and the charitable non-profit Gingrich Foundation, and is a former Congressional aide.

She is also a long-time member of the choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Newt and Callista married in 2000, after having a six-year affair while Newt was married to his previous wife. Newt converted to Catholicism in 2009 and explained, in an interview that year with Deal Hudson at InsideCatholic.com, how Callista’s witness as a Catholic brought him towards the faith.

He noted that he had attended Masses at the National Shrine where Callista sang in the choir, and she “created an environment where I could gradually think and evolve on the issue of faith.”

At the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in 2011, he also cited Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 visit to the U.S. as a “moment of confirmation” for him. At vespers with the Pope, where Callista sang in the Shrine choir, Newt recalled thinking that “here is where I belong.”

The couple worked on a documentary together that was released in 2010, “Nine Days That Changed the World,” that focused on Pope St. John Paul II’s 1979 pilgrimage to Poland when the former Soviet bloc country was under a communist government.

The documentary explained how the Pope invigorated the faith of the Polish people in Jesus Christ during his pilgrimage there, and how the visit precipitated the fall of Communism.

In a statement on Friday, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See said that Gingrich “looks forward to working with the Holy See to defend human rights, advance religious freedom, combat human trafficking, and to seek peaceful solutions to crises around the world.”

India’s economy surges, but inequality threatens democracy, culture and security with 80 percent of wealth in the hands of 10 percent.

By Riaz Hassan*

Spectacular economic growth over the past three decades has made India a global economic powerhouse. Between 1990 and 2016, India’s economy grew at a compound rate of around 7 percent in current dollars. The Indian economy is now the third largest in the world by purchasing power parity after China and the United States.

The surging economic growth has improved living conditions of its citizens, but these improvements were not uniformly distributed among India’s diverse population.  Despite being among the richest countries in the world, India has attracted negative attention in recent years as the second most unequal country in the world, after Russia. According to the Credit Suisse Research Institute, the top 1 percent of India’s population owns nearly 60 percent of its wealth, trailing Russia, where the top 1 percent owns 74 percent.  Like the Gini index which measures income/wealth distribution in society, the Credit Suisse Index estimates concentration of wealth among top wealth and income holders. The factors affecting wealth/income concentration include economic growth rate, demographic trends, savings rates, globalization, inheritance and government policies.

Since 1990, the per capita gross domestic product has increased almost six times – from US$1,130 to US$6,572. Life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, sanitation, mean years of schooling and female literacy registered significant improvements for the population of more than 1.3 billion. In all these areas, improvements were better than in its two large South Asian neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In India, the upper classes were the main beneficiary of the nation’s surging economic development, and poverty rates are also significantly lower among the upper caste Hindus rather than the Hindu other backward classes, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and Muslims. One third of Muslim and Hindu scheduled castes and tribes are in poverty compared to 10 percent of the upper castes Hindu. Altogether 28 percent, or around 360 million Indians, are living in conditions of severe poverty.

While economic growth is absolutely crucial in raising living standards of India’s vast population, the distributional effects of economic growth, as measured by income distribution, play a significant role in determining the long-term development trends and socioeconomic well-being of the citizens. India is one the richest countries in the world, and yet, the average Indian is relatively poor as a result of highly-skewed income distribution.

According to the latest data from Credit Suisse and Oxfam, the richest 10 percent of Indians own 80 percent of the country’s wealth. At the other end, the poorer half jostles for a mere 4.1 percent of national wealth. Even more strikingly, during the period of India’s rapid economic growth, the rich have been the greatest beneficiaries. Between 2000 and 2016, the share of India’s richest 1 percent increased from 36.8 percent to over 50 percent. The rising income inequality has developmental implications – leading to slower poverty reduction and undermining sustainability of economic growth.

Increasing wealth concentration is also reflected in income growth. Between 1988 and 2011, the incomes of the poorest 10 percent of Indians rose by US$29, or around ₹2,000, at an increase of 1 percent per year. In the same period, the income of the richest 10 percent increased by almost ₹40,000 (US$ 615), at the rate of 25 percent per year. The reasons for this inequality include crony capitalism and corporations that exploit employees at lower rungs to maximize salaries and dividends for executives and shareholders. As the French economist Thomas Piketty shows in his seminal book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the surest way to grow wealth is to possess it.

The rapid rise of income inequality is reflected in changes in the more traditional Gini Index. Between 1990 and 2013, the increase in the Gini coefficient was one of the highest not only in Asia, but also in the world. Interestingly, in the period when India’s Gini coefficient was rising, it was declining in other highly unequal regions such as Latin America and Africa.

Higher income inequality impedes class formation and poverty reduction. In particular, the growth of the middle class plays a significant role in strengthening democratic structures and cultures. But rising income inequality in India is hampering the formation and growth of the middle class. If one were to take an income of US$10-20 per day in 2011 purchasing power parity as an indicator of the middle class, then India has not done as well as Malaysia, Indonesia and China in growing its middle class. According to the International Monetary Fund, the higher income inequality has lowered the effectiveness of growth to combat poverty and significantly slowed the building of a sizeable middle class in India.

Rising income inequality has developmental implications. The super-rich can avoid taxes by using innovative schemes to shelter their wealth and manipulate the political system without repercussions. This impedes the government’s ability to raise revenues that contribute to slower poverty reduction and also adversely impacts social spending to reduce social inequalities of health, education and employment. India already fairs poorly in this area. Currently, 3 percent of GDP goes towards education and only 1.3 per cent towards health. By comparison in China percentage of GDP allocated to education and health is 4.3 and 5.4, respectively.

Economic inequality can adversely exacerbate a range of social problems, including intergroup relations and conflict, social cohesion and violent crime. Inequality hurts not only the poor but everyone with increased crime and increased workplace accidents. India ranks 125 out of 159 countries in the Gender Inequality Index. In a range of indictors including mean years of schooling, gross national income per capital and labor force participation rates, Indian women lag significantly behind Indian men. Cumulative effects of entrenched inequality will worsen their deprivations. Inequality is also affecting India’s urban landscape. Recent studies show that class, ethnicity and caste inequalities represent the growing axis of residential segregation in contemporary urban India.

*Riaz Hassan is visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and director of the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Flinders University.