57th edition – Delusions – Pike & Hurricane

The Other Pandemic

Oliver Ösmark — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 22:06:45 +0000

***Trigger warning: Contains explicit language on the subject of child sexual abuse***

At times one stands before a great abyss. A great expanse ordained by dark materials to which one has to decide to gaze into or turn away from. Why should we feel the urge to brand ourselves with the horrors emanating from worst of what is distressingly familiar: the human condition. “If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.” The slime dredged from the ugliest depths of human depravity invokes literal and spiritual trauma, and corrupts hope for redemption.

The doctrines of good versus evil are riddled with complacency and glib intellectuals would claim that the problem of evil is that we are inextricably bound by it. We are either bound to evil’s mast, driven momentarily insane by its song, or we shut it out, plug our ears and go about staying our course. But the problem of evil runs deeper.

Preachers provide no satisfactory answer for evil’s prevalence. Theodicies sideline evil’s sinister human face, yet ones that embed it chime like sermons of a sententious apologist. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Yes, but the real and visceral evil disfigures the heart with a thousand cuts. It is the narcosis of which a deep spiritual disorientation follows. Some will never find their way out of its depths. Some don’t want to. Others belong there.

The Damned

Meet Benjamin Faulkner. Born in 1991 in North Bay, Ontario in Canada—approximately 350 kilometers north of Toronto. According to his parents, he was well-liked and not a “partier by any means” but more of a gamer and obsessed with computers. He worked as a lifeguard and swim instructor at the local YMCA and held a merit of distinction at his post—praised and appreciated by colleagues and the children he instructed alike. In his mid-twenties he’d shared an apartment with a roommate who described him as pleasant to live with. Not noisy and kept to himself. Mainly because he was on his laptop all the time. In 2016, he was arrested and charged with the rape of a four-year-old girl and for hosting the largest website on the darknet for child sexual abuse content: Childs play.

At Faulkner’s sentencing hearing he delivers a grand speech: “For the first time in my life I am speaking in front of the people that I love about the wrongs I’ve committed. Living with pedophilic disorder is a life of perpetual anxiety, fear, and debilitating depression. […] I know that people were hurt and I am sincerely sorry. I’m sorry for who I’ve hurt and I’m sorry for the lives I’ve altered. I’m sorry for how things turned out. If I could go back, things would be different.” The sentencing proceeds with rather benign testimonies from his parents attesting to the character—”patient and kind”—of Faulkner.

Later, a chief investigator is called on to lay out the facts. Faulkner had built and run Childs Play, administrated another major child exploitation site The GiftBox Exchange, as well as a site called Private Pedo Club with access reserved strictly for content creators with access to minors. He has been the “tech guy” for Peter Scully’s international child sexual abuse ring offering pay-per-view video streams of the most heinous content imaginable—content where minors are abused, tortured, and killed.

While the investigator reads out the list of Faulkner’s activities on the darknet, Faulkner’s hand is covering his face, his shoulders shaking… but he’s not crying. He’s chuckling. Laughing quietly to himself. The grin takes a while to fade from his face.

Faulkner ran what was most likely the largest online network of child abuse material in the world. Yet, at the time of the arrest, none of this got much attention in the media.

The Problem

The awful truth about child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is that it covers everything. The abuse of babies, even newborn babies. Toddlers. Schoolchildren through to teenagers up to the age of 18. It includes children being raped by adults, or adults directing a child to be abused in another country. It also covers grooming—which involves an adult establishing an emotional connection with a child, sometimes the child’s family, to lower the child’s inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse—and live streaming of abuse. About one-third of this material is so-called self-generated material, involving either children believing that they are sharing a private moment unaware that they are being recorded and that material being shared, or even children being frightened or coerced to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam.

The scale of CSAM online is enormous, and it appears to be growing. Approximately 132,000 webpages were removed in 2019 by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) which accounts for millions of images and videos. Of them around 95% were girls. And 47% were images of children aged under 10. 1%, a large amount in terms of absolute numbers, of children aged under two. Simon Bailey of the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) Lead for Child Protection and Abuse Investigations notes that the worse level of abuse happens the younger the child. “So naught to two is generally the worst level of abuse.”

The Damage

Calling this abuse child pornography is misleading and conceals the scope of the crime being committed. Pornography is commonly associated with the adult industry where consent is given and the actors know what they are engaging in. In no way can that be applied in the case of a child. A child cannot consent to being raped. Nobody can consent to being raped. What you’re seeing in an image with a child is a child being sexually abused. Using the word “pornography” gives a sense of legitimacy to a criminal act. Child sexual abuse is a serious crime and it is important not to minimize the effect that this has on the child.

Because child sexual abuse is extremely harmful. Especially if you look at the long-term consequences. A survey by the Canadian Center for Child Protection shows that 70% of people whose abuse had been shared over the internet lived in constant fear of being recognized. For good reason. 30% of them had been recognized by someone who had seen images of their abuse. In addition to high rates of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, problems sleeping, relationship issues, 60% of respondents had attempted suicide.

The Abusers

Abusers come in kinds. The worst of these are the ones who don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with engaging in child sexual abuse. These people can be impossible to treat. According to Michael Bourke of the U.S. Marshals, the task with these people is to motivate them and get them to the place where they can at least recognize that what they’ve done was potentially harmful and had negative consequences. Most sex offenders that come in through the prison system are eventually going to leave—85-90% will eventually serve their sentences and return to communities.

Bourke likens the behavior to substance abuse. There’s no cure for alcoholism or opioid addiction. There’s no cure for sex offenders either. No way to change their fantasies. “We never take anything away in psychology without replacing it with something healthy. Their crimes are how offenders got their needs met. They were the means through which they coped with stress, sadness, anger, and all the other negative emotions. If you are to take away this coping mechanism—maladaptive and harmful as it is—what do we replace that with?” If there are no readily available ways to assuage the offender’s response when confronted with stressors, they will go back to their tried and true means of relief—the website, playground, water park, whatever it may be.

By conservative measures, about 1% of the adult population has some form of pedophilic attraction—representing mostly males. Against the total global male population that makes 35 million people. It may be that a small fraction of these are going to act against a real child, but even when excluding the non-participants, this encompasses an enormous amount of people across the world who might find pleasure in viewing child sexual abuse content. Arresting and consigning all these people to life behind bars is a naïve initiative if investments and labor are wholly delegated to essentially chasing the horizon. So, what can be done?

The Platforms

In 2018, tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)—more than double what they found the previous year. In 2019, it had reached 70 million, and for the first time there were more videos of abuse than photos. And this year, child abuse reports have spiked during COVID-19.

“For the last 10-20 years the industry has been saying that it’s been doing everything they can to combat the proliferation of CSAM online. They clearly aren’t. If tens of millions of pieces of content are going through your services every year, there’s clearly a problem with the way you are approaching this problem,” says Hany Farid, a professor of Electrical engineering and computer science at University of California in Berkley a leading expert in the analysis of digital images.

At Microsoft, Farid helped develop PhotoDNA which has been widely successful in combating CSAM made freely available for other tech companies. It is used to create a digital fingerprint of known images of CSA which is then used to find duplicates and stop them being shared. Google has also used analytics to introduce a ban on certain search terms—a list that is constantly changing in response to how offenders are trying to keep ahead. Facebook were one of the earliest adapters of PhotoDNA and they use it across all their platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and the unencrypted spaces of WhatsApp.

Yet, it is important to note that the tools described are effective in unencrypted space. The groundwork for encrypting online services—implementing so-called DNS over HTTPS (DoH)—has already been lain. The aim is to increase privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of data by encrypting that data. “There are really good reasons to have end-to-end encryption, but we have to acknowledge it comes with trade-offs,” says Farid. Some consequences of encryption are that things like parental controls and filters used by the IWF and other internet block lists that allow the means of companies to block millions of images from ever reaching the public eye would be bypassed. As a result, potentially millions of internet users would be exposed to CSAM.

Among imagery reported from tech companies Facebook overshadows the rest. In 2019, Messenger was responsible for over 80% of all reports made. The numbers are, however, a reflection of companies that have put more effort into finding and removing the material from their platforms. In 2018, the company was responsible for more than 90% of reports that year according to law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, many people have expressed concerns over Facebook’s plan to encrypt its Messenger service which will mean that many of the detecting tools which have been so successful in finding CSAM and getting it removed won’t work.

Facebook says that it will provide better security and privacy for Facebook users. Antigone Davis, the Global Head of Safety at Facebook, says this, “One of the things that we really see on Facebook is that more people are using our services to have very personal and private conversations […] and one of the things that we want to do is to fundamentally ensure the data security and privacy for those kind of interactions. That’s where the market is headed and I think one thing to keep in mind is that 85% of the market—the messaging market—is already end-to-end encrypted.”

Fernando Ruiz Pérez, head of operations for cyber crimes at Europol, said Facebook was responsible for a “very high percentage” of reports to the European Union. He said that if Facebook moved to encrypt messaging, the “possibility to flag child sexual abuse content will disappear.”

Hany Farid argues that there are two options. “One such option is that we’re going to encrypt your messages so that we can’t see it, the government can’t see it, nobody can see it. The cost of that will be the hundreds of millions of pieces of sexual abuse of children, roughly from the age of two months old to 12 years old, can, without any possible chance of being caught, come through the services. Which one of those would you like?”

Encryption will create a blind spot. Baroness Joanna Shields, who served as the UK Minister for Internet Safety and Security and previously worked as EMEA VP & managing director at Facebook, says that she does not understand the decision to encrypt Messenger. “It doesn’t make any rational, logical, or business sense. The micro-targeting that is done on these platforms relies on information that people share and if you go to an encrypted message between two people then you can no longer leverage the business model of the companies. So, it makes you ask the question as to why? To me, the only answer […] is that the companies are [handling reports of child sexual abuse] and the problem is that once those are reported then it’s an acknowledgment that the problem is rampant on the platform. If you take away the ability to report it, then they can say that it’s increasing or decreasing and no one will know.”

The Way Forward

It seems as if the tech giants are each using their own services and not working together. Every company has its own engineering technology, business model, and intellectual property. There’s no one technical solution that you could build on that would work across every platform. Those are different technologies. You can set an outcome, a goal, for a company to remove or block the images we’re talking about but you can’t specify the technology that they should be using to deliver it because they are differently engineered companies. Part of that engineering is at the heart of that business model hence their business success. So, they can’t share the way they build their platform.

By insisting on total anonymity, we have created a platform through which total ideational anarchy thrives, and the taint this has wrought sometimes trickles through the cracks in society’s veneers. The rot runs deep and we are condemned to despair. This isn’t defeatist. In accepting despair, we resign ourselves to a promulgation of a welfare of antipathy. We must allow discourse that addresses the profusion of the worst crimes man can commit to enter the public sphere. The sewers are overflowing. How high will this pollution be allowed to rise before we save ourselves from drowning in it?

The internet is a technology. It doesn’t make people do anything. People do things. What the Internet contributed to was two things: One, it allowed pedophiles with an interest in sexual images of children to contact each other and find a sense of community which lets them normalize their behavior. It spurred them on, and emboldened them. Two, it made these images available with apparent anonymity. People who might in other cases never have bothered to try to find these images, all of a sudden, they’re readily available.

To achieve meaningful change, everyone has to play their part. Not just the tech industry. There are some things which there is no defense against and where privacy is not a kind of balancing factor. Child abuse is one of those things. We need to find a way where there is a mixture of technical standards and policy and legal work to make it very clear that as technology changes, we don’t accidentally undermine the sort of protection that has been put into place to try and protect children. Behind every report there are children crying for help and without those reports they go without help. They are out there on their own with no one to even know that they’re being harmed.

Engage:

Sign a petition to pressure social media companies to report the spread of CSAM on their platforms

Find out more:

CBC podcast Hunting Warhead

New York Times podcast The Daily – A Criminal Underworld of Child Abuse

IWF’s podcast – Pixels from a Crime Scene

Internet Watch Foundation’s website

WePROTECT Global Alliance’s website and Global Threat Assessment Report 2019

Photo credits:

When Kids Are Silent by Zhenya Oliinyk (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Child Sexual Exploitation by Alina Tauseef (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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An Ideology of Selfishness — How Misinformation Propagates Inequality

Filip Zahariev — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:26:39 +0000

Since the 2010s, a sharp uptake in the levels of misinformation can be observed, in the push for so-called austerity, in the war on facts, in the bold attempts of different socio-political organizations to exchange fact for opinion.

The mechanisms of propaganda have mastered their most powerful array of tools yet––social media. That’s not to say misinformation hasn’t gone hand in hand with print media; it has walked hand in hand with factual information, since as long ago as the fifteenth century, when the printing press took off. In the intervening centuries, human society has, collectively, found ways to combat misinformation through methods of verification which, the hope was, the Internet would make foolproof. But rather than provide a higher standard, the rise of the Internet (and of social media, in particular) has seen the decline of hard journalism along with the printed press.

Nowadays, criticism is systematically dismissed as “fake news”––if not outright silenced––, no matter the source or topic it is aimed at. It would be easy to pin the blame on a name or on a score of them. Easy but misguided. The Trumps and Bolsaneros of the world are a symptom of an economic system at odds with itself, much like the ouroboros swallowing its own tail, at once hungry and suffering from agonising convulsions.

Marilynne Robinson, in a piece for the NYRB in June, “What Kind of Country Do We Want?” described this economic system as:

“…the snare in which humanity has been caught––great industry and commerce in service to great markets, with ethical restraint and respect for the distinctiveness of cultures…having fallen away in eager deference to profitability.This is not new, except for the way an unembarrassed opportunism has been enshrined among the laws of nature and has flourished destructively in the near absence of resistance or criticism.”

This is, Robinson writes, a “system now revealed as a tenuous set of arrangements that have been highly profitable for some people but gravely damaging to the world”. And not just the world––growing economic inequality is as high as it has ever been.

Inequality – A Cancer Eating Away at Society

Inequality affects “more than 70% of the global population,” according to a UN report, but nowhere is it more jarring, more on focus than in the richest, most powerful and prestigious countries in the world. To this end, it’s time to turn the reader’s attention to several recent developments, first in the USA and then in the UK.

Robinson describes the USA as “having been overtaken with a deep and general conviction of scarcity, a conviction that has become an expectation, then a kind of discipline, even an ethic. The sense of scarcity instantiates itself. It reinforces an anxiety that makes scarcity feel real and encroaching, and generosity, even investment, an imprudent risk.”

It is this sense of scarcity that drives society towards polarization, which Robinson in turn characterizes as “a virtual institutionalization in America of the ancient practice of denying working people the real or potential value of their work.” This institution couldn’t work without popular support. It is here that the mechanisms of branding––dare we call it by its non-politically correct name, propaganda?––enter into the scene. With them come their main beneficiaries, would-be demagogues whose interest lies in reinforcing the status quo.

Through the benefits of unified branding, large swathes of the population are persuaded to vote against their own interests. This branding rarely has a basis in fact, as is the case with perceptions of economic competence in the USA, for example. Every Republican administration from Reagan onward has overseen a recession, and every Democratic administration has overseen a strong recovery and an economic boom. Do Americans trust Democrats more to do a good job with the economy? On the contrary: the GOP enjoys a durable advantage, recently at eight points. The pandemic may agitate sentiments and approval numbers, but even in the chaotic era of President Trump, Americans irrationally trust in the GOP’s longstanding image as the party of practical, “fiscally conservative” businessmen who know how to run things efficiently and profitably. (Joseph O’Neill, “Brand New Dems?” for the NYRB)

This is no small feat of misinformation, but a wilful spread of what is equivalent to a mass delusion over decades. So, too, with migration; despite migrants performing jobs the vast majority of Americans do not want, their contribution to society is denied.

A Universal Problem

This is not a uniquely American issue, though the USA is perhaps the most extreme example––and the richest country in the world. If we turn to the UK, much the same can be seen, both in terms of a push for austerity and in the divorce from facts. For a decade now, British austerity has gutted the NHS (National Health Service)––in a time of a pandemic, the fault lines of this act couldn’t be more pronounced.

The “Leave” campaign was successful on the grounds of false claims, as well as racism and a perceived economic victimhood of the English (more so than any other group) at the hands of migrants. At the UK’s great economic loss over membership taxes to the EU, as well. Why is it, then, that British farmers were faced with the possibility of their harvest rotting, unpicked, on trees? This is an issue exacerbated by the coronavirus, certainly, but with its roots in the Eastern European migrant labour force that so offended English sensibilities, despite performing a job that no Britons are interested in.

And in February, Business Insider estimated that by the end of 2020, the British government will have spent £200 billion to leave the UK, more than all its payments to the Union over forty-seven years of membership. One cannot help but wonder what these funds might’ve accomplished, were they aimed at reducing economic inequality within the UK, rather than spent on a divorce bill.

What becomes clear through these examples––and many more like them––is that the drive towards ever greater profitability at the core of our economic system is not only flawed, it is a pandemic more deadly, more divisive than COVID-19 could ever be. Its tools seek to propagate an ideology of selfishness. And it is easy to drink its bitter message in. What’s required is only passive consent, a wilful lethargy, an unwillingness to look away from the screen.

Or… a different choice can be made. We can examine humanity through a prism not of its greed or rugged individualism, but through an outrage for the injustices embedded in our society, and most of all, through a shared human experience and selflessness.

Related articles:

A Stark Case of Propaganda

The Social Network of Ethnic Conflict

Photo credits:

Astroturf by hanne jatho, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

INEQUALITY by Teeraphat Kansomngam, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Paul Harrop / Poster site, New Bridge Road, Newcastle / CC BY-SA 2.0

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“Gender ideology”: The case of Colombia

Tanya Rahozina — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:12:13 +0000

In this interview, I talked to my former classmate Diana Rocío Rodríguez Benítez who specializes in the evolution of ‘gender ideology’ as a phenomenon pertinent to the Americas and Europe. In particular, Diana’s academic interest lies in discovering the role which anti-‘gender ideology^[1] has played in Colombia since 2016. This was the year when the landmark peace deal between the government and FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was signed but did not come into force, as the referendum on the deal turned out to be the victory of the no-vote. However, after the revision of the agreement, which removed gender focus from the document, it was ratified by both Houses of Congress. As Diana researched the subject in-depth, I wanted to hear her opinion on the role of ‘gender ideology’ misperception within the scope of the entire nation and whether one might expect the situation to change in the foreseeable future.

Tanya: Could you please say a few words about your master’s thesis?

Diana: I wrote about ‘gender ideology’. It was a discourse analysis based on four actors because all these actors were against this so-called ‘gender ideology’. This created the political agenda against diversity. Everything that seems different is something that you cannot accept within what is considered to be right.

T: Could you make some examples of how the actors that you talk about use ‘gender ideology’?

D: The first thing I would say is that the whole gender ideology is a fake construct. It is not something that is legit in academic terms. Today everybody knows its meaning, but before 2015 it was something nobody knew about. It was created by the Catholic church, and then it evolved into the whole movement.

Secondly, here in Colombia it is linked to the decision by the Constitutional Court that every school had to review their Code of Conduct keeping in mind that every school should have an inclusive environment. To which they (anti-gender agents) said that this was the violation of the schools’ and parents’ autonomy to teach kids about sexuality and diversity.

It was a decision based on the precedent. There was a very sad case of the teenage boy Sergio Urrego. At the school he studied the director and the psychologists found a photo of him and another male student kissing. They then forced the two of them to come out publicly, which they hadn’t done before. And because of that Sergio killed himself.

In Colombia we have this legal mechanism: when your fundamental rights are violated you can write a piece of paper and then send it to the Supreme Court. Sergio’s mom did that, and then the Constitutional Court issued a ruling which guaranteed the rights that were violated. Based on this ruling they created different orders, and one of them was the one I mentioned regarding the Code of Conduct^[2]. All of this happened during the referendum and peace agreement negotiations, and the referendum had this strong gender focus. The four actors whom I then analysed in my dissertation also said that peace agreement was going to turn our kids gay, and was filled with gender ideology, which was not true––it was fake.

T: How unpopular was the decision and how big was the anti-gender ideology movement?

D: A lot of people went out to protest it. The leaders were far-right politicians, and the Catholic church together with other Evangelical church. And it was huge. I remember reading and watching the news, and there were a lot of angry people protesting. At that time the Minister of education was a lesbian woman. The protesters went around saying that she is lesbian who is trying to mess our kids. It was quite huge not only in Bogota, but all over the country.

T: Did they achieve anything?

D: There is no causal relationship, as there is not enough evidence to link one event to the other, but this topic was without a doubt something that people talked about and feared. I don’t know if they achieved their goal, but, for sure, the no-vote won, and this ruling is not being executed. I am doing volunteer work with the mom of Sergio. She created an NGO^[3]. And nothing has changed during these four years. The decision is not on hold, but there is a lack of the political will.

T: Are there a lot of similar cases?

D: Not a lot, but this case was huge because there was the decision of the Constitutional Court. Not a lot, but a few. Not only in school environments, but also other contexts when people are the victims of discrimination, which is a crime.

T: Can people seek any legal help in such situations?

D: Of course. If there is a judicial proof that someone was discriminated based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, religion, ethnicity, then yes, the offender can face jail time.

T: Are there any legal instruments that can support them?

D: There are. We actually have a lot of legal instruments and institutions, which on paper look very good and progressive and guarantee rights. But I would say we are not there yet. We are not a progressive society. You have all of these mechanisms, legal and disciplinary, but when the time comes for you to validate your rights, it is hard. If you go to a state institution, most of the people there have no clue about gender focus or what LGBTQ stands for. It is hard, but the instruments and mechanisms are there.

T: Would you call it a problem of a conservative mindset and the lack of awareness?

D: Yes, this is a country which is very conservative. We don’t see us as a cohesive society, we don’t stand for our rights. We have never done this. We have this word in Spanish ‘’arribista” which means that you always want something for yourself, something that you don’t have. You want to go to the best school, you want to have the last iPhone, this superficial lifestyle, but it is not only about the iPhone. I do think that these things are connected to each other. We are a very unequal country. Going to school here is a privilege. Reading the news in English is an incredible privilege. Most people see what the local news show.

T: You stress the fact that Colombia is not a very wealthy country, however did you find any similarities between Colombian case and developed states?

D: I think that ontological security is the key. It is how people feel insecure when their basis is being disturbed. If your whole life you have had a certain mindset, and then all of a sudden, although it has been years of progress, but people think that it is all of a sudden, then they say something about gender, diversity and inclusion, different ways to do things and the structures. But definitely there are countries where institutions are not strong and people are not that educated, then things tend to stick more.

T: Are there any examples of people waking up and realizing that it is actually a delusion that is being promoted? Or are we in a hopeless position?

D: I don’t think people realize that it was a delusion. Here it was crazy because by the time of the referendum there was this person who was the press secretary of the whole no-campaign. After the vote, he gave an interview in which he literally said that people were tricked, and they used different discourses based on the socio-economic levels. Here we have numbers. Houses are ranked on the scale from one to five, one being the poorest and five being the richest. So, if you live in a house, but you don’t have access to education or social care, then you are one. If you are middle class, you are three. They created strategies depending on this division. He said to the poorest ones that the deal was going to spread the ‘gender ideology’ because they knew that people were afraid of it. There are people who believe that ‘gender ideology’ is true. It is something you have to be aware of. One of them being my aunt. You don’t have to look any further. Even in my family. I am quite hopeless.

T: You often underscore that you have a strong belief in the youth. Do you think with the change of generation it might be different?

D: I hope so, I really do. I am doing some volunteering work with the Truce Commission, and I am working with a couple of interns. Surely, they are privileged, but still they are pretty smart and aware of all of this. I also think that one thing is here in Bogota, women who are privileged, and a completely different thing if you go to the jungle, the Amazon region, or to other places where you don’t even have running water. So, I wouldn’t dare to have an answer to that as I am not in touch with the younger generation. We will see. I really hope so.

Notes:

[1] ‘Gender ideology’ is the phenomenon in which people defend the traditional family values, where female and male roles are established. The term is closely connected to the debates within the Catholic Church. Anti-’gender ideology’ is directed against gender, and counteracts questioning of the binary gender model.

[2] On the website of the Constitutional Court of Colombia they refer to the codes as “manuals of coexistence”

[3] Fundación Sergio Urrego

Related articles:

Gender Is Bending and We Should Embrace the Change

Photo Credits:

Bandera arcoiris, by Natalio Pinto, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

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The legality of abortion

Elena Wasserzier — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 14:50:09 +0000

On the 28th of September, the Amnesty International Student Association of Malmö University hosted a movie screening about the fight for safe abortion rights in Ireland, since the date also hallmarks the international day of safe abortions. The association made use of the occasion to remind people all over the world of women’s reproductive rights.

Additionally to the movie screening, a song written by Robin Atiken about “the legality of abortion” was performed. The song renders facts that can be found on the official website of Amnesty International and it constitutes a display of circumstances and reality for women across the globe.

The lyrics are presented below:

The legality of abortion is seen as somewhat crude

but listen as I sing, it will help you out dude

A quarter of pregnancies,

end in this procedure

So take that at your leisure.

If safety’s your worry then listen don’t hurry

25 million unsafe abortions,

Are done each year

This whole issue brings me a harsh tear

It it were safe,

Women would be saved

Are you hearing me quite clear?

A medical error called

the “chilling effect”

Where the line of abortion is not

scientifically checked

Post abortion care goes down

That makes all of us some clowns

If you shun the operation

A stigma will be the occasion

Our culture will be shamed

And we’ll all be to blame

CHORUS: x3

Why fight?

It’s a woman’s right.

If you disagree you can choose as you please.

People are delusional, when they think we have already achieved equality in regards to the sexes. This is not the case and the world still struggles to change old patriarchal patterns towards equity and equality for all. Even as recently as 2020, reproductive rights remain a major element in women’s fight for equality in multiple countries across the globe.

As depicted in the movie “When Women Won”, Ireland has just allowed the right for safe and legal abortions in 2018, which is only two years ago. Before that, women had to travel to England, literally cross a country border, to receive a safe abortion and be able to decide over their own body and their reproductive rights. The referendum which was adopted on the 28th of May 2018, granted the repeal of the almost constitutional abortion ban.

This illustrates that the world is very far from the progress women’s rights advocates aspire to see. Literal baby steps are taken in regard to women’s reproductive rights, because Ireland is not the only country which is late in history. The USA, for example has shown in the last couple of years that history can also go backwards in its timeline, when a couple of states, e.g. Virginia, decided to ban abortions and to deem it illegal. When this did not work out completely, the state aggravated its abortion laws, which made it a lot harder for women to seek an abortion when needed.

However, Virginia was eventually sued over their unfair abortion laws by Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. The lawsuit considered the following laws as “burdensome and medically unnecessary”:

Second trimester abortions must be performed in a hospital;

Abortions must only be performed by a physician;

Medical facilities providing more than four first trimester abortions per month must undergo strict licensing requirements;

Patients must undergo an ultrasound and counseling 24 hours before an abortion, requiring them to make two trips to a clinic; and

Abortion is a class 4 felony if the requirements are not followed

The plaintiffs claimed that “the Commonwealth of Virginia has spent over four decades enacting layer upon layer of unnecessary and onerous abortion statutes and regulations.”

The list goes on: El Salvador and Nicaragua, in Central America, still enforce discriminatory laws that ban abortions in almost all conditions. More than 40% of the world’s women in childbearing age live in countries where, abortion is medically either very restricted, not accessible at all or banned and illegal, with partly grave penalties as a result of violation of the law.

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Picture Credits:

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Victoria Pickering, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Witchcraft in Africa: Practice and belief

Leon Wafula — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 14:36:25 +0000

Growing up, I heard stories about extraordinary occurrences, that were created with the aid of supernatural powers and defied what was considered normal. These powers were either gifts or curses that were bestowed to a select few people, whom we casually referred to as witches or sorcerers. In Africa witchcraft or the belief of it has existed since people started living in communities. Witchcraft in Africa has been studied more extensively as a topic by many anthropological researchers.

In East Africa, the practice of magic has its origin in indigenous African religion. The practice involved the worship of ancestors and performing of rituals that people then believed would guarantee good fortune. With the introduction of exotic religions of Islam and Christianity, these religious practices were discouraged and later labeled as witchcraft. With colonialism, laws were introduced to criminalize these practices and harsh punishments were inflicted on the people that were suspected of engaging in these practices. However that did not stop people from believing and some from practicing it. These colonial era laws are still in force in many parts today.

Witchcraft today

Today witchcraft or magic is still practiced by some groups of people. The contentious issue surrounding it is whether it is real or just imagined. Skeptics argue that many people are quick to link anything that results from inexplicable events as being caused by supernatural powers, like witchcraft. Believers will try to give examples of events that they believe are the result of witchcraft.

The uses range from curing illnesses, creating good fortune, love, financial success, politics and protection from harm. On the negative side it has been linked to causing ill health, bad luck and misfortune to unsuspected people. It is also used as a form of punishment.

In medicine, herbs, incantations and animal sacrifice are some of the activities that are practiced by traditional healers known as witch doctors. Throughout Africa this is the most common type of use of witchcraft. People have testified of being cured from illnesses that modern medicine has failed to cure through the intervention of witch doctors. However, many people have fallen prey to unscrupulous people who pretend to cure only to take their money and fail to perform anything for the unsuspecting patient.

Love potions and spells are also an important part of witchcraft. The main reason women and men in their twenties and thirties visit witch doctors is to get lucky in love. These situations are typically depicted in many films and other works of literature because they form part of the general practice of people in Africa. In many Nollywood films, the main antagonist usually relies on witchcraft to secure their love interest and in most cases they succeed––at least at first. Witchcraft does not only win you love but it also helps you ward off potential rivals for your love interest.

In sports also as in other parts of human life witchcraft has a role to play. In football it is believed by many in sub-Saharan Africa that it affects the performance of players. In the 2002 African Cup of Nations, a former goalkeeper of Cameroon was caught burying bones under the turf and spraying a potion to cast a spell on the field before a crucial semi final game against Zambia. Many teams are also accompanied by witch doctors when going for competitions. Failure to win has often been attributed to the potency of the witch doctors magic against that of the rival team.

Also in politics the belief of witchcraft is rampant. Political leaders in many African nations are either believed to be practitioners of witchcraft or employ very powerful sorcerers who protect their lives, grant them charisma, and destroy their opponents chances of success. In most cases political competition is seen as a battle of who is better at witchcraft. In 2005 the Malawian President moved out of a 300 room presidential mansion claiming that it was haunted and his political opponents had something to do with it. This belief has stopped many upstanding and prospective leaders from engaging in politics for fear of being bewitched.

Tale or testimony?

In Tanzania, I heard stories of people who were subjected to a lot of weird forms of punishments just for doing something wrong to an elderly person suspected of practicing witchcraft. Healthy people would die under mysterious circumstances, some will be infected with diseases and some would have a cloud of bad luck hanging over their heads. Some stories are funny but some are so bizarre that only someone with very high levels of imaginations could make them up.

One such story was a young man who had a sexual relationship with a woman whose father was rumored to be a powerful witch. She got pregnant and her parents demanded the man to take responsibility over the pregnancy to which he refused and denied even knowing her. The father told him to tell everyone in the neighborhood or anyone else who he thinks might be the father of the unborn child to go and notify the woman’s parents and take responsibility for the pregnancy in one week or he should be ready to suffer the consequences.

A week later the young man started experiencing pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, fatigue, and abdominal pains. He visited a local clinic where he was tested and the results were just as shocking to the nurses as they were to him. He was told he exhibited all signs of a pregnant woman. He went home and told his family and neighbors about his mysterious illness. They all deduced that he must have been bewitched and the first suspect was the pregnant woman’s father.

He later went with his parents to visit her, carrying with him something to take to them as a token, demonstrating how sorry the young man was. The parents accepted their apology but the young man was forced to carry the pregnancy for six more months as punishment until in the later stages of the pregnancy it magically reverted back to the woman for her to give birth.

Other incidents have been reported in Kenya where thieves who steal livestock have started behaving like the animal they stole after the owner visited a witch who cast a spell on them.

Goat thieves start bleating and eating grass, cattle thieves start mooing and eating grass, and chicken thieves also start behaving like chicken. In some cases, people have been glued to items they have stolen and cannot remove them from their hands. Like in one occasion it was reported that a thief who stole a television set was unable to put it down and therefore he could only carry it everywhere he went until he decided to return it back to where he stole it from.

Some skeptics claim these stories are not true and are advertisements to supposed witches who are masquerading as gifted while they, in reality, are not. Others believe that these actions and beliefs whether true or imagined help act as deterrents for delinquent behavior.

The dark side of magic

In many societies the belief of witchcraft has played a major role in underdevelopment. People refuse to take part in activities fearing that someone will cause harm to them or a loved one. During the population census in Tanzania many clerks have expressed that people are unwilling to give correct information fearing that the data collected will be used to bewitch them. Therefore affecting the national planning process which relies on the data collected during the census. Some people also refuse to seek help believing that they have been bewitched and they are therefore beyond help.

Another negative effect of this belief is the killings that have been reported of people suspected of being witches. In most cases in Eastern Africa elderly women are accused falsely of practicing witchcraft and executed in public by angry leaching mobs. In recent years what has come to the world’s attention is the plight of people with albinism who have for years been killed and dismembered, whether against the belief that their body parts contain magical power or, quite the opposite, that they are cursed and bring misfortune. So-called “albino hunters” sell corpses for as much as US$ 75,000. Allegations against children are a novel, yet growing phenomenon, according to UNICEF. Children with unusual behavior, such as aggressive or solitary tendencies, run a risk to get accused of being possessed by evil spirits. Orphans taken in by family members or step children are found to be particularly vulnerable. The children face physical and mental abuse, are threatened to be killed, and often end up on the streets.

Despite its negative effects, witchcraft is still part of many Africans’ culture. Proponents of witchcraft claim that it is colonial stereotypes that have transformed an essential aspect of African identity to be viewed as evil. The belief in witchcraft has also been used in history to unite different groups of people to oppose colonial incursions in Africa. One such movement was the Majimaji Rebellion in Tanzania against German colonial rule which broke out in 1905 until 1907. A witch doctor by the name of Kinjikitile Ngwale raised an army from people of 10 different tribes. He gave them a potion with magic powers which they believed would turn the bullet fired by European guns into water. Therefore, rendering them useless. Unfortunately, the rebellion was defeated but the unity that this belief created still inspires many people today.

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Photo Credits:

File:Live Witches.jpg, by SALTN, CC BY-SA 4.0

Serie MAGIE NOIRE, by supermonkeyfly photos, CC BY-NC 2.0

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Delusive Donald

Franziska Fink — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 12:42:00 +0000

The next time people start talking about Donald Trump, I want you to conduct a little social experiment. As soon as you hear the name of the current US president, try to observe the change in the face of the person you are talking to. You will inevitably notice how they roll their eyes, how a condescending smirk scurries over their lips or how they give an amused shake of their head. Maybe someone will point out Trump’s latest ridiculous statement or how particularly orange he looked the other day.

What started out as an absurd event as Trump won the 2016 election and moved into the White House, underwent a rough, yet somehow subtle adaptation period in which the world more or less came to terms with the former reality show star stepping into the role of the “leader of the free world”. Nonetheless, even after almost four years in the most powerful position that one can hold, Donald Trump remains nothing but a joke to many. So do the people who marked a cross next to Trump’s name in 2016. This is largely due to non-US media coverage in which the president is often depicted as a kid that happens to have its playground on the premises of the White House, and which correspondingly presents his supporters as irresponsible parents who, first of all, brought this child upon us and second, now fail to be strict and hold it accountable for its misbehaviour. Moreover, they even seem to be proud parents and actively encourage all of his actions.

A person consuming regular news outside of the United States is thus very likely to succumb to this image of Trump. Given the fact that US politics are seemingly far away from the average daily life of non-Americans, this person will probably be amused rather than concerned. This exact point is where it gets dangerous. When Donald Trump is seen as something to only laugh or sigh about, rather than as the most powerful man in the world, a critical space opens up between a perilous delusion and reality.

The Two Sides of the Medal

Within the medical field, delusions are a pathological state of mind, characterized by “fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence”. Unfortunately, politics are not as clear as psychological definitions when it comes to “evidence”. We tend to obey the fixed belief that Trump has failed as a president. This belief is fuelled by current news, which show the United States as a nation more polarized than ever; this became even more visible in the outbreaks of the “Black Lives Matter” protests and in Trump’s response of sending national troops to fight against their fellow citizens. Additionally, the coronavirus continues to rage across the country, having left more than 200 000 people dead. Yet there has still not been a clear strategy implemented on how to best fight COVID-19 under the Trump administration. All of this does not look too well on the president’s record, further reinforcing his image of
ineptitude for the office he holds.

Nonetheless, this is only one side of the coin. Its backside is characterized by a significant block of loyal Trump supporters who have the power to heave him into the Oval Office for yet another four years. It is not that they are uneducated or blind to the events which are tearing their country apart. They simply see other aspects as well. Even though political measurements like the “Trump-O-Meter,” which track the actual implementation of Trump’s election promises, show a fairly different image (49% of promises broken, 24% kept), in the eyes of the president’s supporters, Trump has delivered, nonetheless. His most famous promise, to build a wall at the border to Mexico (and make Mexico pay for it), actually never exceeded the construction of 170 km out of the 800 km promised, as Mexico did not pay a penny and Congress did not agree to its funding.

Most of the immigrants who try to enter the US illegally come from the very poor countries of Central America. Trump hence declared states like Honduras “safe countries of origin” and made Mexico oblige to secure its borders more strictly. Within a year, the number of illegally picked up immigrants saw a decline of more than 80%. A big success for Trump, and not the only one.

His campaign motto “America First,” was underpinned by various actions, for example the withdrawal of American troops from Germany or Syria. Likewise, Trump pressured NATO member states to “pay their bills” and insisted on a fairer distribution of the alliance’s costs. Before Trump’s presidency in 2016, the US share of NATO budget amounted to 72%. Yet, while NATO’s total budget grew over the last few years, the US share declined to 70%. With these actions, Trump reacted to a popular feeling which the majority of US citizens share, namely being taken advantage of by the rest of the world.

Another crucial topic under Trump’s presidency is the economy. Under Trump, the country’s economy was thriving. He cut taxes and requirements and, in the end, even Democrats had to admit that they were profiting from Trump’s economic policies. Moreover, unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, the lowest value in 51 years.

An unexpected Twist – The Corona Virus

Many analysts claim that, if the Corona virus had not occurred, i.e. forcing the global economy to shut down and accounting for a decline of a stunning 4.8% of the US economy, then Donald Trump would certainly be re-elected. COVID-19 has added an unpredictable twist to that assertion, because all of a sudden, Trump has to prove himself as a determined leader in times of crisis. This worked out semi-optimally with Trump refusing to acknowledge the danger of the disease in the beginning, downplaying the pandemic, and doubting the effectiveness of wearing masks to help contain the spread of the virus. The situation got devastatingly worse, with Trump suffering from Corona himself. The realization of the Trump campaign that this pandemic could hinder the re-election of the incumbent led to a series of disturbing and, if actually implemented, dangerous threats to democracy.

To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, many Americans consider postal voting. Regarding Trump’s currently low approval ratings (42,6%) and the related expectation that many voters will thus vote for his opponent Joe Biden, Trump continuously insisted on how postal ballots will lead to voting fraud and even suggested a delay of the election. On top of that, he has not yet confirmed a peaceful transfer of power in case he loses. Since Trump has so far kept his word on his most important promises, chances are he will keep this one too.

All of these are worrying developments. The Democracy Report 2020, published by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, actually measures global democracy based on hundreds of variables and has found the United States to be undergoing “substantial autocratization” in the Trump era.

Next time people start talking about Donald Trump, keep in mind that this man has the substantial support of loyal followers who embrace everything he says and does. Even when these words and actions are slowly turning one of the oldest democracies of the world into an autocratic regime. Do not succumb to the delusion that he is nothing but an angry orange joke which does not have to be taken seriously, but rather accept that he is a powerful president that tends to keep his word.

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Photo credits:

Trump, by IoSonoUnaFotoCamera, CC BY-SA 2.0

Donald Trump with supporters, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

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Freedom in the Russian neighbourhood

Maya Diekmann — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 11:01:11 +0000

“Eastern Europe is free. The Soviet Union itself is no more. This is a victory for democracy and freedom.” When US President George H. W. Bush, declared victory over the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, after a Cold War that had nearly lasted half a century, he set the tone of what would become a given in Western understanding of history. The Soviet Union lost, communism lost, there is no longer any threat coming from the East. Just how wrong this framing of the end of the Cold War turned out to be, would slowly unveil itself over the years to come.

Of geopolitical disasters

Russia’s Vladimir Putin once called the dissolution of the Soviet Union “a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” What he referred to, was the fact that millions of ethnic Russians suddenly found themselves on foreign territory when the Union ceased to be in 1991. Time and time again this disaster turned out to be quite useful as an excuse for Russia to meddle with its neighbours’ politics. It even went so far as to inspire much of Putin’s speech to the Russian Federal Assembly that initiated the annexation of Crimea in 2014. No wonder that in other former members of the Soviet Union, where the integration of ethnic Russians has been rather draggish, fears of the big bad neighbour persist even almost thirty years after the Soviet Union disintegrated.

But would Russia really go as far as to annex a tiny peninsula home to roughly 1.5 million lands-people, despite being aware of the implications of such actions internationally? Of course not. The fact that Crimea’s inhabitants are mostly of Russian descent surely added a nice detail to the story, but ultimately Putin’s real asset on the peninsula were the deep, blue, and, most importantly, warm waters around it––the Russian naval base in Crimean Sevastopol, the only port that does not freeze over in the winter.

Which brings us to the real geopolitical disaster: Russia, like any other country in the world, is a slave to its own territory. There are some developments, which Russia is unlikely to ever accept. Losing the Ukraine would be one of them, and not just because of Sevastopol. Tim Marshall, author of the book “Prisoners of Geography,” writes that if Putin was the religious man he claims to be, he would pray for mountains in the Ukraine. Then, Russia wouldn’t have to worry about security threats from the West effortlessly cruising through the great corridor, the Northern European Plain, straight up to Moscow. Then, Russia wouldn’t have to worry about NATO at their doorstep.

Beware of NATO

And what a worry NATO is. Since its foundation, NATO has been a thorn in Russia’s (western) side. As an alliance created for the purpose of providing collective security against the Soviet Union, not even Mikhail Gorbachev, the ‘liberator’ of the East Bloc if you will, was particularly keen on having the pact’s forces anywhere near the Russian border. Moscow’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy declared that NATO expansion would make “the Baltic states and Ukraine… a zone of intense strategic rivalries.”

Fast forward three decades and we have an armed conflict in the Donbass region of the Ukraine. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has actually listened to the Kremlin’s threats in the 1990s. The case of the Ukraine is a difficult and complex one and it combines the worst of both worlds of Russia’s problems: A big share of its population consists of ethnic Russians and it is of immense strategic importance to Russian territorial security. This makes it virtually impossible for Russia not to act when it sees the Ukraine flirting with the West. With over 3,000 casualties, and roughly 1.6 million displaced persons, the war in the Ukraine and, in particular, potential Russian involvement cannot and must not be justified. But it can be understood. And to understand, we cannot ignore the behaviour of the USA, Europe, and the historic West.

New peace, old fears

Perhaps after the end of the Cold War, one could have attempted what Germany and France managed after the Second World War. A similar mutual distrust, exacerbated by the lack of natural borders protecting against invaders, had kept Germany and France at odds in a similar fashion that Russia is at odds with Western Europe today.

But even if the NATO powers had wanted to, Russia simply could not have been integrated in the existing Atlantic security system after 1991. As Richard Sakwa writes: “In structural terms, Russia was too big, too independent, too proud and ultimately too strong to become part of an expanded ‘West’.” And instead of reforming existing structures and actively seeking cooperation and compromise with Russia, building the ‘Common European Home’ that Gorbachev had envisioned, the capitalist West saw itself to have won the day, leaving Russia with an unjustified sense of defeat, a questionable new ‘Cold Peace’, and old fears of the Great European Plain.

With its continuing “triumphalism”, the USA would go on to unilaterally influence international politics like no other, ultimately turning Russia away from Europe and the West. Sakwa describes 2003 as the year in which Putin decided that US involvement in the Iraq War demonstrated the nation’s true ambitions, its expansionist policies, which were incompatible with his embrace of national sovereignty––a firm position Russia has kept until this day. NATO’s and the EU’s expansion eastwards were a confirmation to Russia of what they were already suspecting. The West was coming for their neighbours, and ultimately, for them. And when the West reached Ukraine, Russia pulled the emergency brake.

Freedom in the Russian neighbourhood

Even as recently as 2014, the USA remains convinced that Ukraine can be anything but Russia’s neighbour. “[T]he future of Ukraine must be decided by the people of Ukraine”, were US President Barack Obama’s words before unleashing sanctions on Russia which, together with those of the EU, nearly “brought the Kremlin to its knees.” But Russia has adapted to the sanctions and proved surprisingly resilient to the external pressure. Rather than forcing the Kremlin to obey, they have been, if anything, marginalized even more, once again turning inwards, relying on no one but themselves––and their Ukrainian buffer.

When we look at a map, one of the first things that stand out are the carefully carved lines that make the borders of a state. The end of the Cold War has added many new lines and shapes to the map of Eastern Europe, but it has not added a new topographical alto-relief, indicating the mountains that Putin keeps praying for. The stretch between Moscow and the Atlantic Ocean remains dark green, and, most importantly, flat. This means that Russia has to rely on other means of creating a defense line––its immediate neighbours. So, when Bush announced the end of the Soviet Union, what he meant was the end of an ideology, rather than the end of geopolitical power struggles. And when he called Eastern Europe “free,” what he meant was: “As free as one can be when sandwiched between Russia and the rest of Europe.”

Related articles:

Ukraine: Revolution of Dignity

NATO Membership: Better Defence at a Lower Cost

Photo credits:

Sam Oxyak, Unsplash

Марьян Блан (@marjanblan), Unsplash

Jeroen, Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

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