Kurdistan’s feminist

revolution
Ron DeSantis: the
next Trump?
Re-writing history
in India
Brazil’s trans
legislators

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At the heart of most struggles for justice is the
CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:
desire for a better world – immediately, and for
future generations. That second part is the most Tarushi Aswani is an
challenging. As prison abolitionists Mariame Kaba independent journalist based
and Kelly Hayes have written, we often need a in India. She reports on
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transformation and escape from the ‘false sense of religion and politics and
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As New Internationalist turns 50, we’ve set our @tarushi_aswani
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Rebecca Wilks is a Cardiff-
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for tenants’ rights.
bring you a selection throughout the rest of 2023.
This time it’s a prescient piece from the Global Emma McKeever is an
Warming magazine, published in 1990 – a time Irish writer, environmental
when much of the conversation around climate educator and amateur
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Also in this edition, Tarushi Aswani on the Indian Ireland Climate Change-
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MARCH-APRIL 2023 3
CONTENTS

THE BIGGER STORY CURRENTS

Stories making the news
8 Landless workers take office in Brazil
Plus: Borderlines
9 Introducing: Ron DeSantis
Plus: Seriously?

MEDIA LENS KING/SHUTTERSTOCK

10 Turkey’s autocrat goes to the polls
Spanish judges resist reform
Peru: self-coup, counter-coup
Plus: Inequality Watch
Plus: Sign of the Times
12 Afghanistan’s One Kidney Village
Plus: Open Window
13 The techno-tracking of India’s sanitation workers
Plus: Reasons to be cheerful

THE WORLD WE WANT TO SEE

15 A world to win
REGULARS
Conrad Landin introduces the Bigger Story: in which
6 Letters
our writers make propositions for a just future.
Plus: Why I… and a note about an exciting new
18 Hope from the seed of trauma campaign.
For Andrew Simms the pandemic years reveal the
prospect of rapid, transformational change. 7 Letter from Anta
Stephanie Boyd on a final farewell full of warmth in
23 Extractive delusions Peru’s southern Andes.
Fungi have been touted as a panacea to our addiction
to plastics, but Emma McKeever wonders if we are 48 Country Profile: Moldova
asking the wrong questions.
50 Temperature Check
24 Treasure hunt Climate activism is increasingly criminalized around
Amy Hall reports on the Kenyan court case that the world. Danny Chivers looks at what can be done
could give multinational tax avoiders a run for to resist.
their money.
52 The Interview
29 Stilling the pendulum Young South African climate activist Ayakha Melithafa
Dinyar Godrej looks to the moment when the perpetual speaks to Uyapo Majahana about holding power to
swing of progress and pushback over our identities account.
finally ceased.
63 Southern Exposure
32 Decision time
Peruvian photographer David Arias captures the
How we can turn away from democratic dissolution
magic of a steaming mug of coffee in the valleys
and build a more participatory future? Nick Dowson
where it is grown.
explores the possibilities

36 What would your grandchild say? 72 Hall of Infamy – The Wagner Group
Rebecca Wilks explores what it could mean to legislate for The Wagner group, aka Putin’s private army, has been
future generations – with some lessons from Wales. dragged into the limelight by its bloody contributions
to the war in Ukraine – but its tentacles spread further.
40 Present assignation
What does the future hold for art? A meditation from 80 The Puzzler
Raqs Media Collective.
81 Agony Uncle
44 Cartoon Future All takin’ and no givin’? Agony Uncle looks at whether
ILYA and Jamie Kelsey-Fry imagine the world in 2073 – working for destructive industries to pay the bills is a
when, in spite of 21st century capitalism’s best efforts, long term strategy.
things have actually turned out alright.

4 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
82 What if…
Social media were not for profit? Nick Dowson
imagines a different world of online communities that
MIXED MEDIA
puts our needs first. 74 Spotlight
Filmmaker Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso on the

OPINION
power of people coming together, as told to Grace
Livingstone.

76 Book Reviews
51 View from Africa Abyss by Pilar Quintana, translated by Lisa Dillman;
As legal action is launched in Nairobi against Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng; The
Facebook owners Meta, Rosebell Kagumire asks: Heart of Our Earth by Tom Gatehouse with Jo Griffin;
are social media bosses beyond accountability? Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Centre of the
Plus: Marc Roberts’ Only Planet World by Elaine Brum, translated by Diane Whitty.

59 View from Brazil 78 Film Reviews

Leonardo Sakamoto on trans champions in Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom directed and written
parliament. by Pawo Choyning Dorji; Joyland by Saim Sadiq.
Plus: Kate Evans’ Thoughts from a Broad
79 Music Reviews
73 View from India Being by Baaba Maal; The Land, the Water, the Sky by
Nilanjana Bhowmick outlines recent progress on Black Belt Eagle Scout.
abortion rights.
Plus: Polyp’s Big Bad World

FEATURES
56 From the archive: The denial syndrome
IN THE NEXT ISSUE: LONELINESS
We head back to 1990 when Anuradha Vittachi
looked at the human tendency for denial in the face
of climate change.

60 Control alt delete

The Indian Right is on a mission to rewrite history, as
Tarushi Aswani reports.
ONLINE FEATURES newint.org

30.01.23 Turkey is running northern Syria dry

64 The science of women Gisella Ligios reports from Rojava on the threat
Rahila Gupta explores the Kurdish feminist revolution. of food and water insecurity, and its impact on
farming livelihoods.
KURDISHSTRUGGLE/FLICKR/CREATIVE COMMONS

23.01.23 Heat the rich: British Gas/Centrica

As part of its investigation into firms cashing in
on the energy crisis, Corporate Watch turns a
critical eye on British Gas.

22.12.22 Killing of protesters sparks early elections

Vanessa Baird traces how Peru’s political turmoil
swiftly tipped into bloody state violence.

21.12.22 Why we need the solidarity economy

The Solidarity Economy Association makes
the case for building movements based on
international co-operation and knowledge
exchange.

MARCH-APRIL 2023 5
LETTERS
SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK
The New Internationalist welcomes your letters, but please note that they
might be edited for space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org.
Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
Disarming wealth
The phrase ‘Putin is a butcher’
in ‘Whodunnit?’ (Keynote,
NI 541) is far from objective.
Putin is just the product of the
global power system in which
the West had up to now had a
primary role. He is a dictator
for sure, but perhaps not even
the worst. With the world
ruled by the politics of power
(directed mainly by profit
interests) there will always
arise new dictators and new
wars. The climate crisis will
make it even worse.
In the section on alterna-
tives there was no mention of
tackling cuts in the tremen-
dous military spending all
over the world which could
be invested towards solving
many of the problems men-
tioned.
So, to answer the question
about the world would I like
to live in (Letters): in a world
without the arms industry and
commerce. If humanity could
disarm, it would likely be able
to achieve taxes on wealth,
expanding public services,
restrictions on commodity
speculation, debt cancel-
lation... Because it would
be the sign that humanity
has become responsible and
capable of acting in favour of
everyone.
VERONIKA HEÉ HUNGARY,
BUDAPEST
6 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Headhunters
No, austerity isn’t the solution
to Zambia’s woes (‘Structural
adjustment 2.0’, NI 541)! It’s
the same age-old programme
they [institutions like the IMF]
have used to subjugate, cheat
and impoverish Africa from
the 1980s onwards – or have
you forgotten? The dollar,
euro and sterling is just paper
but what they get in return
is worth a thousand times
per ounce. Seek real and fair
payment and they will take
your head!
EDWARD KOLAWOLE VIA
SOCIAL MEDIA
Helen Wyn Thomas
Re: ‘Hear us roar!’ (The Long
Read, NI 540) on the women
of Greenham Common. I was
struck by the fact that Helen
Wyn Thomas, who died after
being hit by a police vehicle,
came from Newcastle Emlyn
in Wales, as I have relatives
who moved to a hamlet near
there a few years ago.
They looked up information
about Helen and found that
there is apparently a memo-
rial garden to her, and that
their farmer-neighbour had
contributed one of his quartz
stones to her memorial.
They also said that there
is a memorial bench by the
clocktower in Newcastle
Emlyn and there was a Welsh
language folk song dedicated
to her by the singer Dafydd
Iwan  called ‘Cân i Helen’. She
was also one of five women to
be nominated in 2019 for the
first-ever named Welsh statue.
EDDY RICHARDSON RINGMER, UK
Seeking balance From the archive
I found ‘Hear us roar!’ (NI Going through old NIs, I
540) inspirational and found a reader’s letter entitled
motivational. However, ‘Military madness’ in NI 233
politics is not where life ( July 1992). It stated: ‘Your
happens. With that said, in issue entitled Green justice
the practice of permaculture (NI 230) somehow ignored
or community-oriented the single largest cause of
proactive sustainable land environmental injustice on
rehabilitation, I become the planet – militarism...’ And
empowered to manifest so it continues. Why do you
balance in the world without not have an edition about this?
subjugating my truth to a ULLA GRANT
disadvantaged position of
being counter-cultural in
the futilitarian condition of
global capitalism. It is better
to cultivate a community Life might not begin at 50,
orientation and live a but New Internationalist
sustainable life. Sustainable is needed now more than
culture in new localism ever. That’s why we’re
(worldwide) manifests post- planning a new way for
capitalism. This type of readers to help secure
co-operative and collaborative our future and reach the
‘systems thinking’ (for social next generation with our
and ecological environmental campaigning journalism.
change) is what can establish Find out more in the next
bioregionalism. issue.
JON HANZEN
Why I... work to reduce my carbon footprint
Conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote: ‘Harmony with
land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish
his right hand and chop off his left’. This holds true for
our relationship with the planet.
I have calculated my environmental footprint using
an online calculator and it’s estimated to be 8.8 tonnes
of CO2 equivalent, compared to a world average of 6.3
tonnes. I now eat less meat, avoid air travel and have
signed up to a 100 per cent renewable energy tariff. I
believe we can collectively make a difference, combined
with international efforts by governments and industry.
ROBERT MACDOUGALL-DAVIS OXFORD, UK
To share your passion, please email letters@newint.org
 LETTER FROM ANTA
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Stephanie Boyd on a beautiful farewell in Peru’s southern Andes.
Just before boarding my flight to Cusco
from Lima’s crowded airport, I call my
partner Miki to wish his father a happy
80th birthday.
Miki’s voice breaks when he answers,
followed by a long pause.
‘Tío David died,’ he says.
‘When?’
‘A few minutes ago.’
Tío (Uncle) David had been ill for a few
weeks but no one expected him to depart
so soon. The evening before he helped
Miki’s father Coco blow out candles on
his early birthday cake.
I take my seat on the plane in shock
and try to finish some urgent accounting.
Shortly before our descent, the pilot
announces we’re passing over Apu
Sallqantay, a glacier the Inka worshipped
as a mountain spirit. I look out over the
snowy peaks glinting in the sunlight,
floating among white clouds. Suddenly
I’m hit with the sensation that Tío David
is there.
‘You finally made it to the top,’ I whisper.
In his youth, Tío David roamed the
mountains hunting deer, but in later years
exchanged his rifle for a garden hoe. He
and his four adult sons took in countless
stray dogs and cats. Injured wild animals
were nursed back to health and set free;
goats and sheep became pets with names.
‘Ahhh, I’ve gone soft,’ he’d say with a
dismissive wave of his calloused hand.
But there was nothing soft on the outside
of this tough widower who was still
getting up at dawn to water his plants
when I went away a month ago.
The drive to the farm from Cusco
winds along a single-lane highway, past
Sallqantay and finally circling down into
lush river valley.
I push open the heavy front gate and
ILLUSTRATION: SARAH JOHN
step onto the dirt path that leads to the
old farmhouse, which was once a Jesuit
seminary. It’s lined with ancient trees,
wild flowers, thick foliage and the sweet
odour of jasmine. I nod to the nopal cacti,
shaped like people waving, their pink
fruits half-eaten by birds. This is where
MARCH-APRIL 2023
I often came across Tío David using his
strong-arm cane to reach his avocado
orchard. He always stopped to chat and
predict the weather.
The feeling of loss hits me, like gazing
into an infinite black hole.
‘Who will tell me when it’s going to
rain?’ I ask the trees.
Tío David is laid out on his bed, freshly
washed and clothed. Miki’s sister Soledad
has covered him with white and orange
flowers and eucalyptus leaves. Candles
burn on the dresser. The large double
window is open, with the sound of the
river flowing past below.
Visitors wander through over the
next two days. Children play football on
the grass patio outside while older fans
watch pre-World Cup friendlies in Tío
David’s room. Excited shouts of ‘goooaal’
break the tension. Evenings are spent
eating and drinking in the kitchen and
space is found for anyone who wants to
sleep over.
On the third day Tío David is cre-
mated and the next morning the family
gathers in the flower garden. David had
asked his sons to bury him under the
purple bougainvillea, beside the simple
wooden cross marking his parents’
graves. His daughter Silvia sings a haunt-
ing melody in her throaty voice. David’s
remaining four siblings stand embracing
each other’s shoulders before the grave
and address him from the heart. Other
family members follow. The ceremony
ends with Tío Enrique bidding ‘hasta
pronto’. Until we meet again, Tío David.
Everyone is worried about Coco, who
has been unusually introverted during
the rituals. The following day I find
myself alone with him at the lunch table,
lingering behind the others. He chews
intently, his head of thick curly white hair
bowed low over his plate.
I ask him cautiously what he thinks
happens when we die.
‘Ahh,’ he exclaims, looking up. ‘The
Great Mystery,’ and waves his hands as
though trying to conjure a white rabbit.
He returns to his food. After a few
minutes he looks at me intently with his
clear blue eyes. ‘Personally, I think we
become one with the universe,’ he says,
slowly moving his hands through the air
as though touching invisible particles.
‘There, here, over there,’ he gestures.
Then he gulps the rest of his herbal
tea, brushes the crumbs from his white
beard and walks outside to water his
garden. O
STEPHANIE BOYD IS A CANADIAN FILMMAKER AND
JOURNALIST WHO HAS BEEN LIVING AND WORKING
IN PERU SINCE 1997.
7
CURRENTS
BRAZIL
LANDLESS LEGISLATORS
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s
return to the presidency in
Brazil was hailed as the start
of a new era by social activists
across the country. The violence
and vitriol of the preceding
Jair Bolsonaro years was
encapsulated by his supporters’
storming of the country’s
legislature, presidential palace
and supreme court in January.
The Movimento dos
Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
(Rural Landless Workers’
Movement, MST) was one of
the main targets of Bolsonaro’s
hostilities, with his government
branding the movement’s
actions as terrorism.
Every new member of Brazil’s state
assemblies receives a certificate in
a formal government ceremony,
but Marina dos Santos opted to
hold a parallel ceremony in which
she would be presented with her
mandate by electors.
MARCIO MENASCE
8 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
‘We kind of, just, survived
as a social movement,’
Marina dos Santos, an MST
leader who joined when
just a teenager, says of the
past few years. The MST
was founded in the 1980s,
demanding agrarian reform
in a continental-sized country
where nearly half the land
is concentrated in the hands
of just one per cent of rural
landowners. Perhaps the
MST’s greatest sins in the eyes
of bolsonarismo are its actions
to occupy idle land and its
challenges to the powerful
agribusiness sector.
Land redistribution
remains the movement’s
key demand, but its work
also centres the pursuit of
social justice and defence
of democracy. The MST
stood behind Dilma Rousseff
at the time of her 2016
impeachment and staunchly
defended Lula when he
faced politically-motivated
corruption convictions,
holding a daily vigil during
his 580 days in prison.
With Lula back in power,
the MST and other social
movements once again
have a seat at the table as
the government seeks to
address Brazil’s most pressing
social issues, notably glaring
inequality and hunger.
‘We’re experiencing
democracy again… we’re
drinking it in, celebrating,’ says
Dos Santos, but adds that the
movement’s work to defend
this freedom does not stop.
The landless workers’
movement picked up new fights
too during the dark years of
bolsonarismo. The coronavirus
pandemic gave it a new
vocation, a natural extension
of its sustainable agricultural
activities: food distribution.
‘The pandemic was a moment
in which the MST played an
important role in Brazilian
society,’ Dos Santos explains.
BORDERLINES
Racist excuses
The US has expanded
pandemic-era restrictions
which have been used to expel
Latin American migrants caught
crossing the US-Mexico border.
In a move widely slammed
for unlawfully blocking
migrants from claiming
asylum, on 5 January 2023
the administration of president
Joe Biden extended the
expulsion policy, known
as Title 42, to Nicaraguans,
Cubans and Haitians caught
crossing into the US.
Migrants covered by Title
42 are expelled to Mexico
without being able to make
their case for refugee status to
an immigration judge.
Title 42 was first deployed
by the Trump administration
during the Covid-19 pandemic
in March 2020, allegedly to
prevent people who posed
a public health threat from
entering the country. It initially
covered arrivals from Mexico,
Guatemala, Honduras and El
Salvador.
‘The racist underpinnings
driving it were clear: use the
pandemic to deny Black and
Brown migrants opportunity
to seek safety,’ said Silky
Shah, Executive Director of
Detention Watch Network.
In his election campaign,
Biden said he would reverse
Trump’s asylum policies. His
administration ended Title
42 in April 2022, but a court
case brought by Republican
attorneys-general blocked
the move. The conservative-
dominated Supreme Court is
considering the case.
Biden then extended Title
42 to include Venezuelans in
October 2022.
‘Title 42 was never
about public health and
should never have been
implemented,’ Shah said.
ALESSIO PERRONE

‘We were able to return some
of the solidarity that we had
always received with the fruits
of our struggle: food.’
The MST also entered
institutional politics for the
first time. Lula himself invited
the MST to swell the ranks
of Workers’ Party candidates
in last year’s elections. Dos
Santos herself successfully ran
for a seat in the Rio de Janeiro
state assembly under the name
‘Marina from the MST’.
She and the five other MST
members who were elected to
a state or national legislature
representing the governing
party now face a balancing
act, between backing the
Lula government on the
one hand, and maintaining
the MST’s autonomy as a
social movement defending
Brazilian workers on the other.
‘My mandate, our mandates,
must be a tool to strengthen
popular movements, social
movements, but they must
also be a tool of popular
democracy, and a tool to fight
hunger,’ she says. Although the
outlook for Brazil is hopeful
under President Lula, the
MST’s fight for a fairer, more
inclusive democracy continues.
CONSTANCE MALLERET
INTRODUCING...
RON DESANTIS
There is a ‘new gun’ on the
Republican far right.
To the delight of most and
dismay of the loyalist few,
MARCH-APRIL 2023
and despite halfheartedly
launching his third
presidential campaign, a
reluctant Donald Trump is
(hopefully) riding off into the
sunset, besieged by lawsuits
and poor mid-term election
results. But have no fear: the
new sheriff in town, two-
term Florida governor Ron
DeSantis, is situating himself
to take over the fight against
Black people, the ‘mainstream
media’, gay and trans people,
‘ineligible’ voters, immigrants,
criminals and anyone to the
left of Genghis Khan. DeSantis
is (at least stylistically)
everything The Donald is not:
handsome, hardworking and
with a presentable family and
good grasp of policy issues. In
short: Trump with brains.
But DeSantis is no return to
the traditional Republicanism
presided over by golfers and
bankers. He has situated
himself as leader of angry
hordes of rednecks set to
make America great again – if
they can only figure when it
was last great. He is taking
up the cudgel in the culture
wars by purging education of
everything from ‘critical race
theory’ to ‘gendered lessons’.
In Florida he created an
Office of Election Crimes
and Security to suppress
the vote and passed a law
forbidding any kind of
educational content that
made white people feel ‘guilt,
anguish, or any other form
of psychological distress’
in discussions of race. He
managed to politicize his
pandemic response with an
ersatz libertarianism that
overrode municipal mask
mandates, and dragged his
feet on vaccinations. To
promote Florida’s tourism-
based economy, he sidelined
scientists’ recommendations
during the pandemic. This
left the state 13th overall in
overall Covid death rates, and
second in total deaths (83,606
and counting) behind only the
highly populous California.
But no matter. Despite not
publicly endorsing the ‘Trump
won the election’ mantra,
DeSantis is the new darling in
the make-believe world of Fox
News – a sure sign of a rising
star in the Republican lexicon.
For a presumptive
presidential candidate
DeSantis ticks a lot of the
compulsory boxes for the
white supremacist gang that
controls the Republican party.
At 47 he is young compared
to the gerontocracy that
haunts the halls of presidential
speculation. He has a military
record providing legal cover
for the Navy Seals. With
three terms in the House
of Representatives he has
national experience. There
he starred in such groups as
Americans for Prosperity
(founded by the billionaire
Koch brothers and committed
to blocking anti-climate
collapse legislation) and the
far right ‘Freedom Caucus’.
Although he barely won his
first gubernatorial race in
Florida, he won the second
in a landslide against a weak
Democratic opponent. He
has fostered the enthusiastic
support of a bevy of US
billionaires who see him
as best placed to defend
their wealth against the
unreasonable demands of the
unwashed masses.
However DeSantis can come
across as cold and remote,
appearing to ooze plutocratic
disdain for ordinary folk
which may not wash with a
US electorate that prefers an
amiable ‘have-a-nice-day’
style in its politicians. The
other wild card in the pack
is of course Trump and his
intention to run again. If
DeSantis manages to get the
Republican nomination the
Trumpsters could decide
on an independent run in
2024, possibly splitting the
conservative vote.
RICHARD SWIFT
In the News
SERIOUSLY?
Slopestyle philanthropy
The UK’s richest man, Sir Jim
Ratcliffe – owner of chemical
company Ineos – has been
funnelling cash from his
‘charitable’ foundation to a
luxury ski lodge at an Alpine
resort.
The clubhouse – set
up with the ostensible aim
to teach underprivileged
children to ski – was found
by the Guardian to have an
eye-wateringly high barrier to
entry. A $27,000 joining fee,
with a $6,500 annual retainer,
to be exact. Not to mention
the member nominations
needed to join Ratcliffe and
co on the slopes. After being
contacted by the paper’s
reporter, the club affirmed that
it was devoted exclusively to
serving its private members.
When news broke about
its faux pas, the club insisted
that any such claims were
‘defamatory’. To be sure, the
Charity Commission has yet
to confirm any wrongdoing,
but the unchecked diversion
of tax-exempt funds toward
billionaire vanity projects is
hardly new. Indeed Tribune
writer Jamie Medwell calls
these nifty manouvres
‘reputation rehabilitation
– straight from the Bill and
Melinda Gates playbook’.
Not implausible –
according to Corporate
ILLUSTRATIONS: EMMA PEER
Watch, fracking magnate
Ratcliffe’s wealth stemmed
from ‘aggressive lobbying,
high risk investments, tax
dodging and union-busting’.
HUSNA ARA
9
CURRENTS
TURKEY
AUTOCRACY CHALLENGED
With elections approaching,
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is
scheming to keep Turkey’s top
job after 20 years in power,
first as prime minister then,
since 2014, as president.
Erdoğan is facing public
anger over extreme inflation
– independent experts put
it at nearly 140 per cent over
last year.
His Justice and Development
Party (AKP) has been losing
support. Current polling
suggests it can count on 35 per
cent or less of the vote share.
Meanwhile opposition
parties are showing surprising
unity. Six have signed a joint
manifesto, committed to
restoring civil liberties and a
‘strengthened parliamentary
system’. The excluded pro-
Kurdish HDP is eyeing its own
alliance with leftwing parties.
The so-called ‘Table of
Six’, though, still lacks a joint
candidate for the presidential
election. A recent prison
sentence against mayor of
Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu, a
prominent rival to Erdoğan,
has weakened it.
Even if they can agree
on a candidate, it will be an
uphill battle as Erdoğan has
gathered the levers of political,
judicial and media power in
his own hands. An alliance
with the ultranationalist
MHP strengthens his chances
of keeping the presidency,
although control of parliament
is more in doubt.
The politically-motivated
verdict against İmamoğlu is a
further step in a crackdown on
key opposition figures and was
followed by the blocking of the
HDP’s bank accounts. Ninety
per cent of the media is under
government control while
journalists face prosecutions
and other attacks.
With the progressive
dismantling of the rule-of-law
architecture, environmental
10
movements have become
a particular target. Green
movements are a platform to
ask for a more transparent,
democratic and ecological-
oriented governance – as
seen in the massive Gezi Park
protests in 2013. For that they
have been criminalized, but
their demands for greater
democracy support the
possibility of political change.
FUTURA D’APRILE
SPAIN
REFORM? NO THANKS
Spain’s conservative-
dominated constitutional
court has blocked a reform of
how judges are picked, raising
concerns about Spain’s young
democracy.
At the end of 2022, the
court intervened to block
a senate vote on reforming
the appointment of judges,
including its own.
The mandates of several
constitutional court judges have
expired, but the left-leaning
government has struggled to
get the three-fifths majority
needed for appointments and
was seeking to reduce this.
The thwarted reform would
have allowed the government
to replace some judges whose
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Trade unionists protest against the UK government’s proposed anti-
strike laws in London, 30 January 2023.
terms had expired, resulting in
a leftward shift. Compromise
appointments to the supreme
court have since been accepted.
Two judges at the end of
their mandate participated in
the narrow decision instead
of abstaining – essentially
voting to stay.
‘The move erodes the
credibility of [democratic]
institutions, which has been
damaged for years,’ said Pablo
Simon, a politics professor at
Madrid’s Carlos III university,
adding that this can enable the
rise of autocrats.
ALESSIO PERRONE
INEQUALITY
WATCH
OF ROUGH SLEEPERS
IN THE US
HAVE SOME FORMAL
EMPLOYMENT
Source: University of Chicago
PERU
WHO’S TO BLAME?
Peru is no stranger to the
violent quelling of protest –
but events of recent times have
shocked the world with their
brutality.
Firing live ammunition
and gas bombs, Peruvian
JOÃO DANIEL PEREIRA/ALAMY
security forces killed at least
56 demonstrators, including
children, in the first six
weeks following the ousting
of the country’s ‘campesino’
president Pedro Castillo and
his replacement by former ally
Dina Boluarte. In the southern
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

Andean town of Juliaca, 17 were
killed in one day. Relatives of
victims reported police aiming
for heads and torsos. Hundreds
have been injured.
The thousands who
mobilized for anti-government
protests, blocking highways,
occupying airports and
bringing much of the country
to a standstill, had a diverse set
of grievances. But they shared
key demands: Boluarte’s
resignation, the closure of
Congress, snap elections, and a
new constitution.
The authorities responded
by claiming – with no
evidence – that the protesters
MARCH-APRIL 2023
were ‘terrorists’, ‘agitators’,
‘criminals’, ‘narco traffickers’
and ‘red poncho’ provocateurs
from Bolivia. They even
accused former Bolivian
president Evo Morales of being
behind it all.
Human-rights organizations
saw it differently, and Peru’s
attorney general launched an
investigation of Dina Boluarte,
her Prime Minister Alberto
Otárola and other key officials
on charges of ‘genocide,
qualified homicide and serious
injuries’.
The anger that has erupted
in Peru has deep and complex
roots that go way beyond
any one person – including
Pedro Castillo (who enjoys
the protesters’ sympathy but
few calls for reinstatement).
It taps into centuries of
prejudice against the country’s
Indigenous and campesino
populations; a Lima-based
political and economic elite
that is seen to be serving only
itself; growing poverty and
widening social inequality –
and the ‘corporate capture’ of
the Peruvian political system,
notably by polluting extractive
industries.
Snap elections could return
another Right-dominated
Congress: under the current
In the News
system it’s almost impossible
for social movements to meet
the funding conditions to
form parties and partake in
elections. A new constitution
would also likely face
opposition from the country’s
entrenched economic
elite. It remains to be seen
whether Peru’s vibrant social
movements can negotiate with
those in power.
VANESSA BAIRD
Demonstrations have demanded the
removal of president Dina Boluarte
and immediate elections.
LUCAS AGUAYO ARAOS/DPA/ALAMY
11
CURRENTS

AFGHANISTAN ‘I had to do it for the sake

of my children,’ donor Mr
decision to sell a girl child
in order to provide for the
A 11-year-old Afghan girl stands in
the middle of a crowd at the Sheidaee

ONE KIDNEY VILLAGE Nooruddin, 32, told French

There is a settlement just
outside Herat, Afghanistan,
news agency AFP. ‘I had no
choice.’
Following the surgery,
rest of the family, while male
children particularly in rural
areas are sent out to perform
menial jobs for a few cents.’
camp near to Herat, Afghanistan.
Her father is asking for around $300
for Shirbaha, a price paid for a bride.
MAHSHAD JALALIAN/ALAMY

which has come to be known
as ‘One Kidney Village’. This
is where the debt-ridden and
desperate come to heal from
kidney donation surgery – or
wait for one of the region’s
countless organ brokers to
make an offer.
Recipients come from all
over the world, paying as little
as $1,500 for a kidney, plus
hospital fees.
The sales are unregulated.
Surgeons operating on the
hundreds of transplant patients
in the region ask no questions
of either donor nor recipient.
Many donors are illiterate,
some are disabled, they are
a mix of ages, both men and
women. What they have in
common is that they are all
desperate to feed their families.
Nooruddin is crippled by pain She added that European
and unable to work. The burden support to ensure sustainable
of responsibility to provide for livelihoods could help.
his family falls to his 12-year- SUBI SHAH
old son, who earns 70 cents a
day polishing shoes.
Twenty-year-old mother OPEN WINDOW
of three Aziza, is waiting to Attack on Brazilian Democracy by Thiago Lucas (Brazil)
be matched with a recipient.
‘My children roam the streets
begging,’ she said. ‘If I cannot
find a buyer I will be forced to
sell my one-year-old daughter.’
Speaking to New
Internationalist, activist, exiled
campaigner and journalist
Nifofar Ayoubi said: ‘Once
funds from a cheaply-bought
kidney are depleted on settling
debts, families again sink into
starvation.
‘Increasingly they are
forced to make the harsh

12 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 In the News

INDIA
ON YOUR WATCH
On a cold November morning,
in Chandigarh, north India, a
group of sanitation workers,
each wearing a smartwatch,
sit huddled together and seek
warmth from a fire burning
close by.
Sanitation workers in
several Indian cities – others
include Indore, Panchkula,
and Navi Mumbai – are
expected to wear the GPS
tracking devices during work
hours. They are monitored
while performing a number
can spend such lavish amounts
on surveillance, workers ask, REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
why wasn’t it able to provide
basic safety equipment during
the coronavirus pandemic?
The workers claim their
pay gets docked if they stray
from a geo-fenced area, or
the smartwatches run out
of battery. Meanwhile they
are held responsible for
maintaining the devices,
potentially facing penalties
for repair or loss. They
have also protested that the
watches do not track overtime
outside regular hours, leaving
this unpaid. But municipal

of duties, including sweeping
streets, cleaning toilets and
maintaining septic tanks. Each
of these smartwatches – called
‘human efficiency tracking
systems’ – has a SIM card, a
camera for sending pictures
as a proof of attendance, and a
microphone.
Elsewhere in the cities, the
workers appear as green dots
on a screen at the municipal
corporation’s HQ. Out of fear
of being snooped on, many
avoid going to washrooms
during work hours.
Roll out of the invasive
tracking and dehumanizing
devices has been encouraged
by the national government
of Narendra Modi, through
the Digital India campaign,
and the Clean India Mission
– where civic bodies can
earn extra points for digital
attendance and compete in a
list of ‘cleanest cities’.
Workers say the persistent
commissioner Anindita
Mishra begs to differ. ‘The
salary deduction might have
happened due to some other
reasons but not because of the
watch having malfunctioned
or having been switched off.’
The municipality argues
that supervisors have also
been required to wear the
devices, and that initial
resistance from workers has
dissipated. ‘We are not really
monitoring any personal
document or anything like
that,’ Mishra adds. IMTAC did
not respond to requests for
comment.
Workers, who are
predominantly from lower-
caste Dalit communities, are
also fearful about how this
data is being stored. India’s
caste system limits the job
prospects of Dalit people, who
have become associated with
menial jobs like cleaning.
Advocate Mehmood
ROD MELTED
A Nobel Prize-winning journalist has been acquitted of tax
evasion charges, which she says were trumped up in a bid
to muzzle press freedom. Maria Ressa co-founded Filipino
news outlet Rappler and won the gong in 2021 for her work
to ‘safeguard freedom of expression’.
Rappler reported extensively on former president Rodrigo
Duterte’s violent war on drugs, and Ressa faced a string of
civil and criminal charges from 2018. ‘Today, facts win, truth
wins, justice wins,’ she said after the ruling.
TICKET TO RIDE
Spain has extended its flagship free travel scheme to cover
intercity buses. Last September the country’s government
made most of Spain’s train journeys free – subject to a
refundable deposit – in an effort to combat the cost of living
crisis. Long-distance train journeys remained chargeable, but
now the Madrid to Barcelona bus route has been added to
the scheme, with other intercity bus journeys expected to be
covered too. Spain is one of a number of European countries,
including Germany, Ireland and Austria, to take affirmative
action on travel fares in recent years in a bid to cut household
costs and encourage public transport.

monitoring has made their
lives miserable. ‘We have to
take these watches home too,’
exclaims Paramjit, one of the
Chandigarh workers. ‘How do
we know if they are snooping
on us even then? There is no
Pracha says that giving
tracking devices to sanitation
workers violates their
fundamental right to privacy.
‘It is everybody’s right to live
without surveillance, to live
without any intrusion from
DADDY RULE
Dads and adoptive parents working in Jamaica’s public
services can now take paid leave. The island’s government
also extended paid maternity leave from 40 days to three
months, with effect from 1 January. Fathers will be granted
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER

human dignity.’
The municipal corporation
in Chandigarh, a city in
northern India, pays $265,000
a year to rent the smartwatches
from IMTAC India Pvt Ltd, an
IT company. If the authority
any quarters,’ he says. 20 days of paid leave ‘on at least three occasions’. There is
This story was reported with now pressure on private sector employers to follow suit.
support from the National
Foundation for India’s Fellowship CONRAD LANDIN
for Independent Journalists.
ASMA HAFIZ

MARCH-APRIL 2023 13
 A GIFT FOR
FUTURE GENERATIONS
Some readers choose to
remember New Internationalist
in their will.

Giving in this way helps us

to keep publishing the stories
that really matter.

Every gift, large or small,

even just 1%, makes a difference.

If you would like to know more, please contact Laura at

laura.veitch@newint.org or on +44(0)1865 413304
 THE BIGGER STORY
FUTURES

We don’t just need solutions – we need the courage to imagine they

will succeed. Conrad Landin makes the case for collective action
to secure a just future.

MARCH-APRIL 2023 15
THE BIGGER STORY
A study of 10,000 young people across 10 countries
found 45 per cent said climate change ‘negatively
affected their daily life and functioning’. The
impact was significantly higher in the four Global
South countries surveyed: Brazil, Nigeria, the
Philippines and India.
MEDIA LENS KING/SHUTTERSTOCK
16
uch as generational politics are often
reactionary, climate change asks us to
re-examine the case for the political
cleavage of age. Many communities –
particularly in the Global South – are
already facing its devastating impacts,
there’s no denying that global heating
will materially effect under-40s on a dif-
ferent scale to our elders. While there
is likely less of a generational gap in
popular opinion than often stated, across
the world 69 per cent of 14 to 19-year-olds
recognize the climate emergency, com-
pared to 58 per cent of over 60s.1
Younger generations are worried
for good reason. Ahead of COP27 last
autumn, Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research director Johan Rock-
ström warned that the world is coming
‘very, very close to irreversible changes
… time is really running out very, very
fast’. 2 Earlier in 2022, the Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
found that around 3.3 to 3.6 billion
people ‘live in contexts that are highly
vulnerable to climate change’. 3 Although
we are seeing many impacts already, the
IPCC emphasized that particularly after
2040, ‘climate change will lead to numer-
ous risks to natural and human systems’.
Moreover, there is a strong likelihood that
‘multiple climatic and non-climatic risks
will interact, resulting in compounding
overall risk and risks cascading across
sectors and regions’.
In the face of such a bleak forecast, it
is easy to despair. In a survey of 10,000
children and young people across 10
countries, more than 45 per cent said
their feelings about climate change ‘neg-
atively affected their daily life and func-
tioning’. 4 This impact was significantly
higher in the four Global South coun-
tries included in the study: Brazil (50 per
cent), Nigeria (66 per cent), the Philip-
pines (74 per cent) and India (74 per cent).
There is mounting speculation that the
climate is increasingly a consideration
in choosing whether or not to have chil-
dren – although the evidence base for
this seems limited. 5
So much environmentalist discourse,
moreover, remains grounded in the
notion of individual responsibility. But
concepts like the ‘carbon footprint’, as
brilliantly explored by the Australian
journalist Jeff Sparrow’s recent book
Crimes Against Nature, were explicitly
invented by the world’s biggest pol-
luters in order to let themselves – the
real climate criminals – off the hook.7
It’s fundamentally correct that recy-
cling and turning down your heating
by one degree will do precious little for
the planet on an individual level – but
to suggest there’s nothing we can do as
individuals is a disempowering message,
unless a clear alternative is offered. As
too are the warnings from Rockström
and others that escalating international
conflict will make it so much harder to
take action on the global stage.
New Internationalist celebrates its 50th
anniversary this year. The question of
whether we will reach our 100th birth-
day is not limited to the future of print
media or even the persistent challenges
of sustaining an independent magazine:
it is also one of whether, in 2073, human
society will still exist in its current form.
The answer to the latter question is
that surely it can’t. If we keep going on
our current trajectory, there will be suf-
fering of genocidal proportions. If, on
the other hand, we are living in a world
that has adapted to some increase in
temperature and stemmed any further
escalation, it could be the product of
two possible courses of action – both of
which would signal that the world has
fundamentally changed.
The first of these options would be a
rapid transition to post-carbon capital-
ism. While it remains unlikely, given the
vast amounts of wealth tied up in fossil
fuel extraction, if it were achieved it
would be capitalism’s greatest victory –
a demonstration that greed can survive
its own self-cannibalism. The confidence
which this would instil in our ruling class
would likely unleash a wave of violence
against the poor and dispossessed, and
bring about new hierarchies which would
make the current world seem equitable.
Alternatively, we could have brought
about – in the intervening years – a
single and irreversible shift away from
profit, extraction and imperialism and
towards a socialism that delivers a truly
global justice. That can only happen
if we reject both the narrative of indi-
vidual responsibility and the nihilistic
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

It is incumbent upon all of us
to build and sustain global
movements - across generations
and borders - to make system
change the only option
shifting of responsibility to those who
will never take it. Instead, it is incum-
bent upon all of us to build and sustain
global movements – across generations
and borders – to make system change
the only option.
In order to do so, we need to have
the confidence not only to discuss what
needs to change, but to believe it is pos-
sible. As was more apparent when New
Internationalist was founded in 1973 – a
time of rapid decolonization, rising
industrial militancy and falling income
inequality – change can be brought
about when there is a collective will to
do so. And that will come, not from busi-
nesses and governments, but from ordi-
nary people and the mass movements
they build.
This magazine does not have all the
answers, but it does take seriously the
existential threats to our future, while
showcasing the strengths and weaknesses
of some of the practical steps already
being taken. It will make the case not just
for the world’s existence in 2073, but for a
world worth fighting for.
What becomes clearer by the day
is that there is no time to lose. While
understanding that a 1.5 degrees celsius
increase in temperatures risks cata-
strophic impacts, the IPCC has found
that an increase of an additional 0.5
degrees would monumentally increase
these risks. 4 Whether we can limit such
rises – and avoid the tipping point
impacts that they could bring – depends
on the action we take in the next decade.
We must be prepared to talk about
tactics, as well as the ideological and
MARCH-APRIL 2023
Futures
class characters of the social movements
that emerge to take on the challenges at
hand. Just as struggles around the cost
of living, tax or conflict can be shaped
by different ideological currents and
social forces, so too can environmental
campaigns – which will in turn affect
whether they attract the broad appeal
they require to succeed. Of course, we
should not turn in on ourselves or seek
ideological purity when the pressing
need is for unity. But we must still be
prepared to constructively challenge one
other and take criticism from our com-
rades in good faith, as the interests of
the many – material comfort and envi-
ronmental preservation, for instance
– inevitably clash with each other as
well as with those of the few. 7 A press-
ing deadline requires us not only to work
fast, but to get it right – for we may not
get another chance.
‘The crisis,’ as Antonio Gramsci put
it, ‘consists precisely in the fact that the
old is dying and the new cannot be born;
in this interregnum a great variety of
morbid symptoms appear.’ Confronting
the threat to our future is scary, but we
can’t let ourselves be scared off. O
1 Damien Carrington, ‘UN global climate poll: “The
people’s voice is clear – they want action”’, The
Guardian, 27 January 2021, bit.ly/40cPTep 2 Damien
Carrington, ‘World close to ‘irreversible’ climate
breakdown, warn major studies’, The Guardian,
27 October 2022, bit.ly/3Y8Sp3s 3 ‘Summary for
Policymakers Headline Statements’, IPCC Sixth
Assessment Report, February 2022, bit.ly/40eN5h9
4 Caroline Hickman et al., ‘Climate anxiety in children
and young people…’, The Lancet, Vol 5, No 12 5 Sam
Shead, ’Climate change is making people think
twice about having children’, CNBC, bit.ly/3XKuGH3
6 Jeff Sparrow, Crimes Against Nature, Scribe
Publications, 2021 7 ‘Green jobs – puffery and
promise’, NI 544, bit.ly/3XKwobr
17
THE BIGGER STORY
HOPE FROM
THE SEED
OF TRAUMA
The pandemic years were the pivot for a rapid
shift bringing a better new world into being.
Andrew Simms travels through time.
A
sked to review what he called a
‘country book’, the late, great green
socialist Raymond Williams spotted
a problem. Looking back some 50 years,
the book’s author lamented the recent
loss of the once eternal rural idyll. But
Williams, being a well-read literary
critic, knew that if you went back 50
years to those supposedly halcyon days,
there were people writing then about a
lost golden age they’d known 50 years
earlier still. More than that, he traced a
pattern over centuries: of writers bewail-
ing that things were better in some
earlier time, ‘back then’. ‘Is it anything
more,’ he asked, ‘than a well-known habit
of using the past, the “good old days”, as a
stick to beat the present?’
18
Remembering, then, that paths are
made by walking – and not by looking in
the rear-view mirror – on New Interna-
tionalist’s 50th anniversary, is it possible
instead to imagine that the best times
could lie ahead? Does that fly in the face
of visible chaos and collapse all around,
or is there evidence for hope? For that we
can look to the present, recent and deeper
past to find out. After all, the future will
grow from the present, and as the novel-
ist William Faulkner wrote: ‘The past is
never dead. It’s not even past.’ What if,
50 years from now, instead of looking
back and yearning for how things were in
2023, we find ourselves in a more equal,
tolerant, and just society living more har-
moniously with the rest of life on earth?
If that sounds laughably optimistic,
look down at some of the green shoots
of just such a future germinating even in
today’s hostile environment. Science or
‘speculative’ fiction is often, after all, not
wild fantasy, but an exercise in placing
the present in the future to lay bare more
clearly what is already happening, but
is yet to be seen or fully recognized. I
believe something happened during the
traumatic upheaval caused by Covid-19
that hints at transformatory possibilities
for rapid social and ecological transition.
Not just individual behaviour but whole
systems revealed themselves as capable of
unprecedented shifts.
‘The poor are always with us’, ‘Home-
lessness will never go away’ – such folk
notions can be used to excuse society’s
failures by making specific political out-
comes seem as historically inevitable
as geology. Yet, in the case of one of the
most apparently intractable challenges,
homelessness, for a brief moment during
the coronavirus pandemic – due to a
sense of extreme urgency, concern over
public health and consensus for action
– it was virtually ended overnight in
several places.
Far from being an ‘unfortunate fact
of life’, the impossible became possible.
In Brussels, Belgium, local authorities
found 700 places in 11 hotels to provide
shelter. In France hotels and guest houses
were requisitioned, with 170 opened in
Paris alone in the first week of the crisis.
Even in the UK, with its weakly regu-
lated housing market and poor record on
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 ANDY K USING IMAGES FROM SHUTTERSTOCK

MARCH-APRIL 2023
19
Futures
THE BIGGER STORY
evictions, a temporary ‘Everyone In’ initi-
ative was launched during lockdown, and
street homelessness was almost ended
overnight. An official, public promise
was made to house the homeless within
two days. The homelessness campaign
group Crisis called it ‘extraordinary’
after decades of prevarication. When
pandemic restrictions eased, a return to
‘normal’ brought homeless people back
on the streets.
But looking back from 2073 in our
alternate history of the next half century,
instead of backtracking, this is the
moment we realized homelessness could
be ended for good and a mix of rent
controls, social housing building pro-
grammes, rules against property specu-
lation and the growth of community
land trusts broke the grip of an economic
system based on the wealthy few extract-
ing rent from the many. And the aware-
ness that genuinely different futures were
possible didn’t stop there. Several cats
were out of their bags.
Breaking the spell
It wasn’t obvious at first, but looking back
it was the moment when consumerism’s
decades-long corrosive spell was broken.
Lots of small changes were triggered,
creating a domino effect and a desire
to live differently. The chains of a debt-
fuelled ‘work and spend’ cycle began to
loosen for millions. In the pressure of the
moment, examples of what was possible
and necessary spread quickly and inter-
nationally. That made it harder for reluc-
tant governments to argue that change to
meet needs wasn’t possible.
It wasn’t obvious at first, but looking back it was
the moment when consumerism’s decades-long
corrosive spell was broken. The chains of a debt-
fuelled ‘work and spend’ cycle began to loosen
20
Thanks to lockdowns, work changed
immediately. Nine-to-five office life
ended overnight. And although it took
some adapting to, many were happy to
see it go. Those who could worked from
home and found freedom from commut-
ing saved a lot of time, money and – with
cars left in garages – carbon pollution.
Something different happened to those
who couldn’t, like nurses and carers,
public transport and shop staff – the
people who kept essential services going.
The wider world woke up and swiftly
found out which workers were of the
most value to society, and that these were
also some of the most vulnerable and
worst paid. When politicians cynically
exploited the genuine weekly displays of
doorstep applause for health workers in
the UK, and subsequently failed to deliver
overdue pay rises, this fed a loss of faith
in mainstream politics that saw many
governments voted out and created con-
ditions for deeper change.
Strikingly too, under popular pressure,
politicians who’d previously pleaded that
government coffers were bare were sud-
denly able to pay the wages of workers
who couldn’t work, from Germany’s Kur-
zarbeit system to the UK’s furlough
scheme. The taste for both homeworking,
and a shorter working week took hold.1
Several things happened simultane-
ously to make it possible for more people:
changes to make housing more afford-
able combined with experiments to give
people financial security, like the rising
introduction of basic income schemes
and universal basic services. 2 Even pre-
viously hard-line institutions like the
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

OECD saw the winds of change and pro-
duced a country tracker on the transfor-
mation in thinking. 3
More people with more time, spend-
ing it at home, in and around their
neighbourhoods increased awareness
of the importance of urban green space
for health and wellbeing. Communities
came together with a dramatic growth
of mutual aid and other groups, which
echoed the sense of mission in the early
co-operative movement that sought
both to make quality, affordable goods
available, while equally sharing benefits,
and engaging in economic and political
education. The shift took root. In the
United States, mutual aid groups that
arose during the pandemic in a random
patchwork went on to organize region-
ally.4 Meanwhile in the UK, four out of
ten mutual aid groups set up to respond
to the crisis carried on and broadened
their local support work. 5 As the pan-
demic highlighted the inequalities in
our society, anti-racism came to the fore,
driven by Black Lives Matter and other
organizations, but supported by new fol-
lowers feeling the sense that change could
really happen and that community was
important again, including the commu-
nity of protest.
System change
In academic and policy circles new
buzzwords crept into use: things like
‘quarantine of consumption’, ‘habit dis-
continuity event’, ‘post-traumatic growth’
and ‘behavioural spill-over effect’.
Technical sounding for sure, but they
described real changes in households and
high streets.
With all but essential shops closed,
and people briefly encouraged to ‘buy
only what you need’ (surely good advice
in ordinary times) and with time on their
hands, a great reskilling began. Mending
things around the home, from furniture
to clothes, instead of throwing them away,
cooking from scratch from fresher ingre-
dients, the spell of passive consumerism
was broken. At the same time, learning
from cities like São Paulo in Brazil and
Chennai in India, more places started
removing advertising and its pressure
to consume from public spaces where it
began to be seen as a ‘non-consensual’
imposition. Whole cultures began shift-
ing in a direction that was less wasteful
and brought higher well-being.
MARCH-APRIL 2023
No longer just places to shop but
where you go to do things and access
vital services, empty spaces left on high
streets by a downturn in the orthodox
economy were filled with mutual aid,
climate emergency and migrant welcome
centres. Share sheds gave low-cost access
to household and garden items. Bike
hubs started making active travel possi-
ble. Home energy retrofit advice points,
shop fronts for local micro produc-
ers and makers, arts exchanges – the
changes breathed vitality back into high
streets failed by market economics which
became, once again, places where com-
munity and public life thrived. Visions
long held by networks like the interna-
tional Transition Town movement, and
Buen Vivir in Latin America took physi-
cal form. It was system and behaviour
change happening simultaneously and a
new public, localized and mutual finan-
cial system emerged to support it.
Towns and cities were further trans-
formed by demand for urban farming
that brought communities and food
closer together while plant-based diets
received a boost.6 The realization
emerged that it was possible, rapidly, to
design out private cars from centres and
give space back to people, local busi-
nesses, and for healthier ways of moving
around. Local authorities learned from
cities like Medellín to Milan about cre-
ating more people and planet friendly
places to live, and how to do it quickly.
It wasn’t only the replacement of pol-
luting private cars by walking, cycling
and clean affordable public transport.
Flying – the fastest way to fry the planet
and done overwhelmingly by a global,
wealthy minority – stopped, all but for a
few essential purposes. Businesses were
happy, discovering that a shift to online
meetings saved them huge amounts of
time and money. Skies were less scarred
by contrails and communities near air-
ports found greater peace. For holidays,
people turned to slower, less stress-
ful ways of travelling and took breaks
nearer to home discovering new places to
explore. The ‘staycation’ came to stay.
In the home, the shock of the pan-
demic and lockdowns accelerated other
changes that were already happening
but little noticed. From the days of ‘haul’
videos on YouTube glorifying materi-
alism, a backlash grew among young
people turning against consumerism
Futures
and making ‘unhaul’ videos in which
they explained why there weren’t buying
a load of new ‘stuff’. 7 It was visible in
a growing number of ‘makerspaces’
in Africa promoting a ‘do it yourself ’
culture, and pioneering initiatives
around the idea that people have more
agency as producers as well as consum-
ers – dubbed ‘prosumers’. It was seen in
the rejection of fast fashion by a small
but growing number of Chinese youth. 8
The world also learned how to tackle
waste from the example of Taiwan, once
referred to as ‘garbage island’, which
became a world leader in waste reduc-
tion and recycling.
The inadvertent gift
Each change reinforced another that
reduced humanity’s impact on nature,
shared the economy’s benefits more
equally through increased agency and
empowerment, and focused on activi-
ties that were known to improve human
wellbeing. On the global stage financial
markets finally took fright and whisked
their money out of fossil fuel compa-
nies. Renewable energy had continued
its meteoric rise, growing continually
cheaper. The fear that oil assets could
suddenly become worthless due to a com-
bination of climate policy and the high
costs of extraction tipped the balance
against the old energy incumbents. The
change created the political space for a
Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to be
negotiated: to keep coal, oil and gas in the
ground while compensating producers in
the Global South.
During lockdown’s ‘quarantine of con-
sumption’ the serotonin high of shop-
ping was replaced by other deeper, more
lasting and satisfying pleasures. Commu-
nal art and gardening projects took off,
people picked up musical instruments,
rediscovered reading and wrote poetry.
Top-down, celebrity-driven commer-
cial entertainment was edged aside as
older traditions of self-entertainment
in music, art and poetry that had once
thrived in rural and industrial working-
class communities re-emerged. Creativ-
ity replaced consumerism in many ways.
Unsurprisingly, that great upheaval led
to pandemic epiphanies with people
asking deeper questions about work and
the mainstream economy. Neoliberal-
ism – the extreme form of selfish, com-
petitive, unregulated market economics
21
THE BIGGER STORY
Neoliberalism - the extreme form
of selfish, competitive, unregulated
market economics - had long been
seen as failed and past its sell-by
date, a dead idea still walking.
But to put it in its grave required
people to be able to see how things
could be different
– had long been seen as failed and past its
sell-by date, widely referred to as ‘zombie
economics’, a dead idea still walking. But
to put it in its grave required people to
be able to see how things could be differ-
ent. That was the inadvertent gift of the
trauma of Covid-19.
A light shines
Perhaps the greatest revelation was
that, far from rapid transition being
impossible, whole societies, their ways
of working, their towns, businesses and
economies were remarkably adapt-
able. They could switch overnight
to giving public health priority over
private profit. Disaster movies often
show people behaving appallingly in
emergencies, looting and fighting. But
reality widely revealed human nature
to be much kinder, compassionate and
concerned to care for each other. This,
more than anything, laid the founda-
tions for lasting change. Seeing things
being different allowed people to believe
in even greater possibilities for change.
The author Rebecca Solnit captured it
when reporting on community self-help
initiatives at the time: ‘I believe the gen-
erosity and solidarity in action in the
present moment offers a foreshadowing
of what is possible – and necessary. The
basic generosity and empathy of most
ordinary people should be regarded as
22
a treasure, a light and an energy source
that can drive a better society, if it is rec-
ognized and encouraged.’
That greater solidarity wasn’t just
localized to neighbourhoods – it became
international. One lesson of the pan-
demic was that we are all part of nature,
and nature does not recognize human
borders. This was something that we
should have learned from global heating,
but instead we learned it from a virus.
The initial response of wealthy govern-
ments who promised and failed to deliver
a worldwide vaccine programme was
punished by the return of lethal variants.
A new realism about how to address crises
that ignored borders emerged, touching
everything from climate to pandem-
ics and migration, where  new taxes on
large-scale, volatile cross-border finan-
cial  transactions (so-called ‘Robin Hood
taxes’) proved a poetically neat way to
generate resources to help people cross-
ing borders.
These changes worked in tandem with
other changes that allowed a more just,
effective and sustainable relationship to
grow between global North and South. A
fall in overconsumption by the wealthy,
and boosts in production for meeting
local needs saw a long-term shift in
unjust international trade relations with
nations in the South keeping more of the
benefits of their own economic activity.
It also reduced the environmental pres-
sure of trade.
The year is now 2073. A vibrant, caring
localism prevails alongside a progres-
sive, new internationalism. It’s a world in
which people really do have more control
over their own lives. Experiments in daily
local democracy, citizen’s assemblies and
sortition have revived civic engagement.
We lead more balanced lives, with basic
material security ensured and a greater
sense of well-being. Caring professions,
whether caring for people or nature,
share the highest status.
Looking back to the ravaged uncertain
times of the 2020s, from a world in which
humanity now lives within its plan-
etary boundaries allowing all its people
and nature to thrive, it’s easy to see why
nobody knew civilization had turned a
corner, but that is exactly what had hap-
pened. A sentence by Raymond Williams
became almost a mantra, even if people
didn’t know its origins: ‘To be truly
radical is to make hope possible  rather
than despair convincing.’ O
ANDREW SIMMS IS AN AUTHOR, POLITICAL
ECONOMIST AND CAMPAIGNER. HE IS CO-DIRECTOR
OF THE NEW WEATHER INSTITUTE, CO-ORDINATOR
OF THE RAPID TRANSITION ALLIANCE AND THE
BADVERTISING CAMPAIGN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
OF SCIENTISTS FOR GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY,
AND A RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF SUSSEX. TWITTER: @ANDREWSIMMS_UK
MASTODON: @ANDREWSIMMS@INDIEWEB.SOCIAL
1 Rapid Transition Alliance, ‘A win-win four day
week’, 8 December 2022, bit.ly/RTAfour 2 Andrew
Simms, ‘Reset #4: time, work and sharing
economic benefits’, Rapid Transition Alliance,
4 June 2020, bit.ly/RTAreset 3 See oecd.org/
coronavirus/en/#country-policy-tracker 4 Ella
Fassler, ‘Mutual aid groups that arose during
Covid gather to build power regionally’, truthout,
10 July 2022, bit.ly/building-power 5 Rachel Hall,
‘Four in 10 pandemic era mutual aid groups still
active…’, The Guardian, 13 June 2022, bit.ly/still-active
6 Rapid Transition Alliance, ‘Plant-based food enjoys
a pandemic boost’, 31 May 2022, bit.ly/plant-
based-boost 7 Brendan Canavan, ‘Consumerism
in crisis…’, The Conversation, 15 January 2019,
bit.ly/unhaul 8 Zoe Suen, ‘Young Chinese are
criticising consumerism…’, BoF, 23 February 2021,
bit.ly/young-Chinese
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

EXTRACTIVE DELUSIONS
Fungi have been touted as an alternative to plastics
– but it’s dangerous to see them solely as a product,
argues Emma McKeever.
W
e live today in environments pol-
luted with plastics. And increasingly,
public discourse is polluted with
them too: from the image of a drinking
straw being pulled from a turtle’s nose to
reports of microplastics mingling inside
all living beings.
Amid this awareness of their destruc-
tive impact, significant resources are now
being invested in researching alterna-
tives. In particular, researchers have been
excited by the capacity of fungi to not
only grow alternatives to plastic, but to
potentially remediate toxicants that have
leached into our environments through
unmanaged plastic pollution.
The Californian start-up Mycoworks
has developed patented fine mycelium
leather.1 It’s made by combining waste
plant material and the mycelium roots
of the reishi mushroom. In New York,
the packaging company Ecovative, has
created reishi-based styrofoam alterna-
tives and in London, start-up BIOHM is
currently developing mycelium-based
insulation. 2
It is gratifying to look to fungi to help
us undo the harm perpetuated by extrac-
tive economic systems. But is fungi’s
emerging status as saviour disguising
another form of extraction?
This is a question that troubles many
mycological thinkers. David Satori,
founder of fungal conservation project
Rewilding Mycology, had a massive re-
think as it dawned upon him ‘that the
utilitarian approach to working with
fungi shouldn’t be the force that drives
the development of mycology as a dis-
cipline’, and that it should instead ‘come
from a desire to understand and support
the incredible species we co-inhabit this
planet with’. 3
MARCH-APRIL 2023
For Sophie Strand, a storyteller who
interweaves diverse mythology with the
equally diverse world of mycology, it’s
a question of how fungi can ‘teach us to
become involved in general aliveness
instead of in this very narrow idea of
human survival’.4
It is dangerous to wish solely to extract,
especially from a relationship that already
nurtures us in timescales and ways we
humans can barely grasp. Fungi have
been evolutionary guardians to plants,
showing them how to develop complex
root structures. Even their reproductive
spores have been theorised to be ‘cloud
seeds’: they host hygroscopic sugars which
condense water in the atmosphere, ulti-
mately leading to rainfall. 5
So how do we help each other to move
away from extraction and into systems of
good relations with all species? Dr Max
Liboiron, a Métis geographer who centres
the indigenous concept of accountability
to relationships while studying plastic
pollution and its effects on indigenous
food webs, illustrates how their lab resists
western research institutions’ colonial
desire to extract from nature by detailing
Futures
relationships within their methodology.
MYCALLOHGEE/MUSHROOM OBSERVER/CREATIVE COMMONS
In their book, Pollution is Colonialism,
they set out to ‘show how methodology
is a way of being in the world and that
ways of being are tied up in obligation’,
and a way they enacted within the book is
through detailed footnotes which lovingly
acknowledge the impact that the work of
others has had on their methodology.6 A
methodological practice I have taken from
the book is simply to be mindful of the
origins of the fungi samples I work with,
just like Dr. Liboiron’s team does with
the fish guts they analyse for evidence of
plastic pollution.
Being mindful of our relationships can
help us stay continually concerned with
the question of to whom are we obligated:
to our fellow humans, to the more-than-
human world, or even to the creation of
our hypothetical future?
While it is important for innovat-
ing companies to develop alternatives
to plastic, they also must outline their
methodology. We can’t replace extrac-
tion with more extraction: instead, we
need non-extractive practices that show
an awareness of the varying needs of the
diverse relationships that support our
earth’s existence. O
EMMA MCKEEVER IS AN IRISH WRITER,
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATOR AND AMATEUR
MYCOLOGIST.
1 Mycoworks: official website, mycoworks.com
2 Ecovative: official website, ecovative.com; ‘Biohm:
Mycelium & Food Waste to Create Regenerative
Construction Materials’, vegconomist’, 12 January
2023, nin.tl/BIOHM 3 David Satori, ‘Can fungi really
save the world?’, rewilding_mycology, Instagram,
14 December 2022, nin.tl/Satori 4 ‘[Full Interview]
The Inner Lives of Fungi - with Sophie Strand’,
Lifeworlds (podcast), nin.tl/Strand 5 Benjamin
Thompson, ‘Fungal spores: the root of rain?’,
Microbiology Society, 9 September 2015,
nin.tl/FungiRain 6 Max Liboiron, Pollution is
Colonialism, Duke University Press, 2021.
23
THE BIGGER STORY

24 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

Opposite page top: Heading out to sea in
Mahébourg, Mauritius.
TOMMY TRENCHARD/PANOS PICTURES
Opposite page bottom: An empty maternity ward
at a hospital in Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya,
taken in 2010. Countries, including Kenya, are
missing out on vital tax revenue that could go
towards healthcare.
SVEN TORFINN/PANOS PICTURES
MARCH-APRIL 2023
TREASURE HUNT Could a Kenyan court case point the
way towards a more just tax system?
Amy Hall investigates.
A
lthough Kenya has one of the highest
concentrations of healthcare workers
on the African continent, the govern-
ment estimates that they are still down
3,238 medical officers.1 The shortage
is worldwide, but Africa has one of the
largest regional deficits. 2
‘I’m looking forward to resilient and
self-reliant African countries that are
using the revenue that they are gener-
ating to actually deliver critical public
services,’ says Tax Justice Network
Africa (TJNA) policy assistant Everlyn
Muendo, when I ask about her vision
for a global tax system of the future.
‘We shouldn’t be having women who are
dying in the process of giving life in this
day in age.’
Tax revenue should be a crucial part
of states’ ability to fund public services.
But, as the Tax Justice Network (TJN) has
estimated, the world is losing over $483
billion a year thanks to corporations and
the wealthy using tax havens to under-
pay tax. 3
And while a number of political
choices can contribute to shortages of
healthcare workers, the fact that elected
governments are missing out on tax
income is significant. The loss of revenue
is not a case of careless misplacement, but
Futures
the result of a system rigged in favour of
powerful companies, the mega-rich and
former colonial powers.
Africa continues to be a net creditor to
the world, with far more wealth leaving
the continent, in various forms, than
coming in, including aid. It’s estimated
that in 2015 this was a surplus of $41.3
billion.4
One of the ways multinationals can
avoid tax is through double tax agree-
ments (DTAs). On the face of it, these
seem harmless – the idea is that the same
income is not taxed twice. But they can
often result in double non-taxation, in
which multinationals can avoid paying
tax altogether.
There has been an increase in the
signing of DTAs by Majority World coun-
tries. 5 But as researcher Nicholas Shaxson
highlights, double taxation puts them at
a disadvantage.6 For example, DTAs can
enable European companies to avoid
paying taxes on money made in Africa.
An African country may agree not to
tax the company’s earnings there at all,
or provide preferential rates. Then the
European company can send its earn-
ings through a third conduit country, a
secrecy jurisdiction, that has a treaty with
the African country where the money
25
THE BIGGER STORY
was made. The ‘treaty haven’ also agrees
not to tax the income and the multina-
tional is quids in. Meanwhile both the
home European country and the African
country miss out on tax revenues.
Research from TJNA estimated that
in 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa had at least
300 double tax agreements in force, the
majority of them signed with European
countries. The IMF has warned develop-
ing Majority World countries to be cau-
tious of signing bilateral tax treaties. 5,7
‘It’s supposed to be a very fair process
in which both countries win, but the
ideal is not the reality, especially for
African countries,’ explains Muendo.
‘The main reason for this is because they
tend to be capital importing countries,
and it’s developed countries which are
the capital exporting countries. In fact,
the main reason why African countries
keep getting into double taxation agree-
ments is because they are trying to attract
foreign direct investment.’
A historic win
In 2014, TJNA took the Kenyan govern-
ment to court over its DTA with Mauri-
tius, having labelled the island as one of
the ‘most corrosive corporate tax havens
against African countries’. 8 In 2019, the
organization was victorious when the
Kenya-Mauritius DTA was voided and
declared unconstitutional by Kenya’s
High Court.
‘It was historic really,’ says Muendo.
‘Nobody had ever really interacted with a
double taxation agreement from a human
rights perspective, and from a constitu-
tional basis. That is a precedent that has
been set and hopefully other African
countries can borrow from it.’
There were two main arguments to
the case. Firstly, that the Kenya-Mauri-
tius DTA was actually more likely to lead
to revenue leakage and erode Kenya’s
tax base than attract foreign investment
and ensure fairer taxation. Secondly,
that the process by which the agreement
was entered into was unlawful – and
unconstitutional to boot. ‘The minis-
try of finance entered into the double
taxation agreement but failed to table
the DTA at parliament for approval,’
explains Muendo. ‘It wasn’t a transparent
process: there was no public participation
involved.’
It was on this second point that TJNA
secured its victory, but although it did not
dismiss or disagree with technical argu-
ments about the potential revenue losses
26
associated with implementing the DTA,
the ruling was not based on the substance
of the DTA itself.
As Muendo says, ‘a win is a win’, but
the fact that the ruling was based on pro-
cedure meant that the government could
swiftly and quietly sign another agree-
ment with Mauritius.
Joy Waruguru Ndubai, a teaching
and research associate at the Institute
for Austrian and International Tax Law,
has studied the 2014 Kenya-Mauritius
case in depth. She argues that DTAs are
not inherently bad. ‘There is a purpose
but there’s also the risk of misuse and
the question is whether the DTA can be
safeguarded from this risk of misuse,’
she explains. She agrees that the original
Kenya-Mauritius DTA did not have the
sufficient safeguards to prevent double
non-taxation, or tax avoidance.
Mauritius, with its heavy British influ-
ence, is described by Shaxson as ‘ideal as
an offshore centre in many respects’. That
is, ‘it is politically stable, boasts a cheap,
well-educated and multilingual labour
force and is in the perfect time zone to
serve Europe, Asia and Africa’.6 And as
the 2019 Mauritius Leaks investigation
shows, multinationals, often aided by
major accounting and advisory firms,
have used Mauritius to avoid paying taxes
in some of the world’s poorest countries.9
Now, TJNA are awaiting the results of
another case, lodged in 2020, involving
10 of Kenya’s DTAs, including the new
Mauritius one. Results are expected in
the first quarter of 2023.
Small victories
While it awaits the outcome of the
current case, it seems that TJNA has
already helped bring about wider change
in Kenya. In 2021 the government pro-
posed binding DTAs according to Kenya’s
Treaty-Making Ratification Act, there-
fore increasing the potential scrutiny of
these agreements before they are signed.
‘We are happy to see that MPs are playing
their rightful role in the design of policy
in Kenya that goes beyond rubberstamp-
ing decisions of the executive,’ then TJNA
executive director Alvin Mosioma said at
the time.10
One of the most important lessons
from this process for Muendo is that
change can take a long time. ‘Some-
times it’s a step by step process,’ she
explains. ‘We haven’t been able to win
so far on the substance of double taxa-
tion agreements, but we have improved
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Futures

‘When you work in civil society you realize that

sometimes the work you are doing now is not going
to benefit you during your lifetime, but it will benefit
others - I am the beneficiary of the work of civil
society from the past 20 years’

the regulatory frameworks about double
taxation agreements.’
Kenya’s government is now more likely
to call for public opinion on DTAs before
they are signed. ‘So we’re also seeing a
change at the practices level, and that’s
normally something that civil society
struggles with – not only affecting a legal
change but also a change within the prac-
tices of the government,’ says Muendo.
The increased ability for the public to
feed back on these agreements makes it
even more important for civil society to
skill-up on the technical details, argues
Ndubai. ‘Business can comment on it,
advisory firms can comment on it – they
know how to use these treaties, and they
understand how they are framed to be
more beneficial or less beneficial.
‘Ultimately lobbying is more effective
to prevent fire than fight fire, most times.
It takes a lot of money to get involved in a
court case and then it takes a long time to
get an outcome.’
Muendo is playing the long game. ‘I
think that when you work in civil society
you realize that sometimes the work you
are doing now is not going to benefit you
during your lifetime, but it will benefit
others – I am the beneficiary of the work
of civil society from the past 20 years,’
she explains.
There is still a lot of work to do, she
says. ‘For Kenya to try and enter into a
double taxation agreement with Ireland,
which is a well-known tax haven, means
that we still have a long fight when it
comes to engaging the government on
the substance, but the fact that they are
changing the regulatory framework, as
well as their practices gives us hope.’
Meanwhile, some African countries
have binned their treaties with Mauritius
altogether. In 2020, Senegal tore up its
DTA with the island – the first time it has
ended a bilateral tax treaty. The country
estimated that the agreement had cost
an estimated $257 million in lost tax
revenue over 17 years. ‘This is a big deal,’
an anonymous Malawi tax researcher old
the International Consortium of Investi-
gative Journalists (ICIJ). ‘I have a feeling
that this will trigger a wave of similar
reactions, especially now that there is a
lot more awareness of how African coun-
tries are losing out through DTAs with
tax havens like Mauritius.’ 9 Later that
year, Zambia also tore up its DTA with
Mauritius.
Rotten roots
The inequality in the global tax system
is not accidental. The rules and infra-
structure by which it is currently organ-
ized were overwhelmingly created, and
monitored, by richer and imperialist
nations. As chief executive Alex Cobham
has described, tax ‘remains central to the
extractive processes of economic and
financial globalisation that have replaced
formal empire’.11 This ‘new form of impe-
rial extraction’ extends to both resources
and taxing rights, and ‘relies on networks
of dependent territories, above all those
of the United Kingdom, which have been
facilitated to establish themselves as
financial hubs. This has involved the con-
tinuing political and legal support of the
imperial power.’11
Dereje Alemayehu, executive co-
ordinator for the Global Alliance for Tax
Justice, says: ‘It is not by accident that the
most notorious secrecy jurisdictions are
British crown dependencies and over-
seas territories and that they were set up
really partly also to stash expropriated
and looted income and wealth from colo-
nies. Colonialism was replaced by neo-
colonialism – it didn’t go away, and then
they adapted the institutions.’
Central to maintaining this state
of affairs is the Organisation for Eco-
nomic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), which sets rules and standards
on tax treaties. Established in the 1960s,
Cobham describes it as a ‘club of rich
imperial powers and settler states’.12
But a recent development has left
many tax justice campaigners with a
renewed sense of hope. Towards the
end of 2022, the UN General Assembly
adopted a resolution enabling intergov-
ernmental discussions over possible UN
reforms to the global tax system, ‘includ-
ing the establishment of new UN bodies
and mechanisms to monitor, evaluate and
decide global tax rules’.13 It is hoped that
this will mark ‘the beginning of the end’
of the OECD’s power over global tax and
will open the door to the creation of a UN
tax convention. Because more countries

MARCH-APRIL 2023 27
THE BIGGER STORY

wealthy people and corporations. The

‘Colonialism was replaced by proposal is for a financial transaction tax

on global financial market trades, which

neocolonialism - it didn’t go increases over time. Instead of a one-off

approach like a wealth tax or one-off repa-

away, and then they adapted rations payments, it targets ‘the epicentre
of capitalism, finance capital and there-

the institutions’ fore the root of power’.16

than just those in the OECD club will be
able to have a say in how it works, the
hope is that it will also be fairer.
Speaking on the organization’s
monthly podcast Taxcast, TJN’s Rachel
Etter-Phoya described watching the pro-
ceedings at the UN as ‘incredible’. ‘To
see what was like a boxing match where
the underdog Nigeria, representing the
Africa group at the UN, alongside all
other countries that have really been cut
out of the international tax discussions
to stand up and say, “this is the time to
change the rules of the game, to start
negotiations on international tax”… it is
so different from how we’ve seen inter-
national tax negotiations over the last few
years.’14
Change the narrative
As we move to a more just tax system, we
will need to be honest about where the
power dynamics have come from, as well
as how and why they are maintained. For
Alemayehu, part of this is shifting the
global discourse on corruption and ste-
reotypes around African leaders. ‘As an
African it makes me angry,’ he says.
Just three per cent of the $1.2 trillion to
$1.4 trillion that was estimated to have left
Africa in illicit financial flows between
1980 and 2009 was related to corrupt
activities such as bribery and embezzle-
ment, whereas commercial transactions
‘Will we ever have a global tax system
that works for us? Wow, that would be
so nice,’ says Muendo. ‘We call the ordi-
nary citizen in Kenya ‘Wanjiku’. Essen-
tially, we’re going forward to a situation
where Wanjiku isn’t paying more taxes
as per her income than a multinational is
paying… I look forward to a system where
we are sharing the tax burden fairly.
by multinational companies make up ‘We want to change the whole narra-
around 60 per cent.15 tive of Africa being reliant on the West
‘The focus on development aid is really and developed countries when we are so
being superseded by “if we get our taxes blessed with resources. If anything, they
we don’t need development aid”, says Ale- have been bleeding our resources for so
mayehu. ‘It’s giving corruption a different long – from colonial times to right now
meaning – who are the enablers, who are – so that’s the kind of Africa that I’m
the facilitators? It’s about the structures looking forward to.’ O
that are making corruption possible.
This project was funded by the European
‘Showing the colonial roots and the Journalism Centre through the Solutions Journalism
cause and effect relationship without Accelerator. This fund is supported by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.
minimizing what the current leaders are
doing – that is a major thing.’
For economist Priya Lukka, a more
reparatory tax system would have to
enshrine the principles of compensa-
tion, acknowledgment of harm caused,
and non-repetition – a guarantee that
the abuses will not happen again. Tax
would become much more about revers-
ing, repairing and compensating for the
impacts of neocolonialism, colonialism
and neoliberalism.
‘The tax system today is also very
good at consolidating extreme wealth,’
she says. ‘So if we think about what a
post-capitalist reparations tax system in
2073 would be, it would explicitly tackle
poverty with real political intention. It
would mitigate for widening inequality
and it would include repair and redistri-
bution in a much more meaningful way.’
The Ubuntu restoration tax is one idea
that has been proposed to target the most

1 John Muchangi, ‘Kenya tops in health workforce numbers...’, The Star, 23 June 2022, nin.tl/kenya 2 World Health Organization, ‘Nursing and midwifery’, 18 March
2022, nin.tl/nurses 3 Tax Justice Network, ‘State of Tax Justice 2022’, November 2022, nin.tl/state-2022 4 Global Justice Now and others, ‘Honest Accounts 2017’,
May 2017, nin.tl/honest 5 TJNA, ‘Trick or Treat (Y), 2018, nin.tl/trick 6 Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands..., The Bodley Head, London, 2011. 7 IMF, ‘Spillovers in
International Corporate Taxation’, 9 May 2014, bit.ly/3XKalBJ 8 TJNA, ‘UAE and Mauritius are the most corrosive…’, 29 May 2019, nin.tl/corrosive 9 Will Fitzgibbon,
‘Senegal nixes “unbalanced” tax treaty...’, ICIJ, 26 May 2020, bit.ly/3DjY4fc 10 TJNA, ‘Civil society welcomes...’, 28 June, 2021, bit.ly/40cJ2Sy 11 Alex Cobham,
‘Imperial extraction and ‘tax havens’’, in Gurminder K Bhambra and Julia McClure (eds), Imperial Inequalities…, Manchester University Press, 2022. 12 Alex Cobham,
‘What if…there was a world tax organization?’, New Internationalist, NI538, July-August 2022, bit.ly/3R9tn29 13 Tax Justice Network, ‘UN adopts historic decision...’,
23 November 2022, bit.ly/3wAWfac 14 Naomi Fowler, ‘The day global power shifted…’, Tax Justice Network/Taxcast, 16 December 2022, bit.ly/3XK13Wm 15 Masimba
Tafirenyika, ‘Illicit financial flows from Africa...’, UN/Africa Renewal, December 2013, bit.ly/3kHBKWl 16 revolutionaryreparations.org/the-ubuntu-tax

28 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Futures

STILLING THE
PENDULUM
The ghost of Dinyar Godrej looks back from 2073
to see how personal revolutions built a society
that is truly social.
AT THE CUSTARD FACTORY, BIRMINGHAM. PHOTO: JOHN JAMES/ALAMY
DELUGE, AN ART INSTALLATION BY SCULPTOR TOIN ADAMS,

MARCH-APRIL 2023 29
THE BIGGER STORY
H
ow can it be that in the tiny span of 50
years we humans ceased centuries of
fighting, then accommodating, then
fighting once more, over who we were
or should be? How did we finally relax
enough to let our journeys take billions
of different courses? How did we realize
that rather than continue to relegate
each minority identity into entrenched
suburbs and hinterlands to supposedly
protect the main drag of ‘the norm’, we
could live as a glorious mix? When did we
finally give up the language of ‘accept-
ance’ and ‘tolerance’ – and the hierarchy
it implied – and choose just to be?
After all, we had been forced to wave
our flags so hard to fight for our rights
– whether for sexual relations with
consenting partners of our choosing,
or to have recognized partnerships, or
simple bodily autonomy – that it some-
times felt those flags were glued to our
hands. Because the struggle was so all-
consuming, it had to become an identity,
the place of safety we had to continually
barricade, even if our lives were about
so much more than any of those things.
What sweet miracle allowed us to let go
of the flags, open the gates of our bar-
ricades, only to find a welcome from our
fellow travellers?
Look back 50 years to 2023. The pen-
dulum was in hectic swing. Forward:
sexual minorities may have stopped
being unmentionables, and even been
given close to equal rights in some places.
And back: with the old companions of
name-calling, ostracism, violence, con-
servative politics and hate-mongering
ganging up.
Contradictions abounded. All across
the US – still clinging on to hegemonic
global power then, but my how that has
changed! – a flurry of inhumane bills
were introduced to restrict trans people’s
participation in that thing that masquer-
aded as society.1 Polls were showing that
a nearly two-thirds majority of the US
population were in favour of protecting
30
trans people from discrimination. But
strangely, the number of people who
believed that gender was determined by
sex assigned at birth was also growing. 2
Meanwhile the US government had intro-
duced the ‘X’ gender marker on passports
in an attempt to be ‘respectful of individ-
uals’ privacy while advancing inclusion’. 3
Back in the day this was often the kind of
language that came with just being who
you were. The pressure remained on,
with more than 50 per cent of trans and
non-binary young people per year in the
US considering suicide.4
Meanwhile, in a world where nearly
half of all human pregnancies were
unwanted (more than 120 million per
second), Supreme Court judges in the US
had decided in their wisdom to bang the
gates on abortion access shut. The right to
not be pregnant – to bodily autonomy, to
not be viewed as a mere human incubator
– was yanked from people who could get
pregnant, just like that. 5
Decolonization dingdong
Activists on the Indian subcontinent
were busy decolonizing gender identities,
pointing further back to the past – before
the British occupiers came – when trans
and intersex people had had their own
social niche. The same was said for same-
sex relations in many instances before
the persecution of British-imposed laws.
But, oh, the dingdong of desired state
and of reality. Pakistan, 50 years back,
had somehow created an amazingly pro-
gressive piece of legislation on gender
identity, which was defined as a person’s
‘innermost and individual sense of self
as male, female or a blend of both or
neither’. People could self-identify as
they wished. However, on the ground,
things were not so rosy.
These are the rousing tongue-in-cheek
words of trans rights activist Mehrub
Moiz Awan from that time: ‘Welcome to
the Incel Republic of Pakistan. We have
210 million citizens in our country, and
many non-citizens: some men, some
women and some “transgenders”. Previ-
ously, we used to call them “shemales”, as
that is what porn had taught us. Now, they
call themselves “transgender” in English
and “khwajasira” in Urdu, but what we
really want to call them is “dead”. For
every 100,000 transgender people in
our Incel Republic, we kill almost 800 of
them in one year alone. This is 15 times
higher than the highest murder rate in
the world (El Salvador), but we come in
peace. Because for every 800 transgender
persons that we kill in a year, we make
800 normal male and female babies in
just over an hour. We think it is a fair
bargain.’6
The shift
So, how did we finally still that tedious
effing pendulum that kept swinging back
on the progress we had made? How did
we get past squabbling over personal
pronouns and embrace the evolving
person? How did we move beyond the
restrictions of son and daughter, and let
the child flourish? How did our fenced-
off sexualities – some of which we had
had to fight tooth and nail for because
bigots felt it in their gift to deny ‘permis-
sion’ – finally cross-pollinate into one
infinitely diverse field?
Curiously for such a gigantic and
recent change, records of this interven-
ing period are sketchy due to the digital
wipe-out that hit the world in 2057. But
this is what our elders tell us...
They say many things happened. That
finally the world got weary of the per-
petual war and ecological breakdown
that the acquisitive worldview known
as capitalism had unleashed. This will
to power was recognized as being inti-
mately related to something called
patriarchy, which insisted on hammer-
ing into restrictive slots all people who
didn’t behave in particular ways appar-
ently decreed by bits dangling between
one’s legs or lack thereof. People, who
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Futures

A seismic shift occurred -

from human being to human
becoming. The inquisition of
difference came to an end

had been fighting this demon for centu-
ries and who had latterly come be called
feminists, then collectively sighed: ‘It’s
about bloody time!’ The whole model of
discipline/punish/subjugate just to main-
tain a social pecking order crumbled and
human groupings became at peace.
People figured out that letting other
people be – whether it meant their cloth-
ing choices didn’t conform, or their
idea of the erotic was a bit different to
one’s own, or their bodies were unruly –
brought even more peace and evaporated
so much anger and frustration. And guess
what? This diversity didn’t affect one bit
the great things they could do – or their
capacity to love, share, co-operate or be
smart. According to the elders, those
were great head-scratching times. People
couldn’t believe they had clung on to all
this constraining shit for so long.
Among the pioneers were small,
inspirational groups of people who were
young then, who refused to cling to rigid
sex divisions, bioessentialism or fixed
notions of sexuality – they were trans,
queer, genderfluid, pansexual, weirdos
and freaks (terms they embraced), until
even those names no longer mattered.
They just wanted to go on their own jour-
neys and be their truest selves. None of
which limited what they had to contrib-
ute to society at large. It had long been
noted about identity that that which
defined you also limited you. Here were
brave souls who were setting identity
free – and they couldn’t have been truer
persons. They were deciding who they
wanted to be – rather than the state or
society doing it for them – and what that
was was continually being created. They
were often reviled but also gained respect
for their courage. Others saw the freedom
of this way of going about life and that
it was about so much more than just
gender or sexuality, it was about making
power horizontal rather than vertical. It
had the potential for people to be truly
social rather than controlling. Eventu-
ally, enough people said, ‘Why not?’ and
a seismic shift occurred – from human
being to human becoming. The inquisi-
tion of difference came to an end.
As diversity rippled through us and
behaviour rather than clothing styles,
bodily characteristics or assigned sex
became what mattered, more layers
began to be shed. As the norm and the
type fell away, we were getting closer to
the person and to the equality between
persons that had been evading us for cen-
turies. Now we could conceive of truly
being individuals – because each per-
son’s journey was so important – without
the moulds that had been pressed down
upon us and without the isolation and
competitiveness that that state had hith-
erto implied. We were all different and
we could all work together. The outlaws
were in. O
1 ‘Annual GLAAD accelerating acceptance study…’.
GLAAD, 4 November 2021, bit.ly/acceptance-study
2 Kim Parker and others, ‘Americans’ complex views
on gender identity and transgender issues’, Pew
Research Center, 28 June 2022, bit.ly/complex-views
3 US Department of State press statement 31 March
2022, bit.ly/x-gender 4 Sam Levin, ‘More than 50%
of trans and non-binary youth…’, The Guardian,
17 December 2022, bit.ly/trans-US 5 Charlotte Shane,
‘The right to not be pregnant’, Harper’s, October
2022, bit.ly/Shane-right 6 Mehrub Moiz Awan, ‘An
uncensored guide to the republics of Pakistan’, The
Funambulist, No 45, December 2022, bit.ly/MMAwan

MARCH-APRIL 2023 31
THE BIGGER STORY

32 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

DECISION
TIME
Nick Dowson looks to the future of democracy –
and considers how we can make it our own.
Opposite page: Following an uprising in the
early 1990s, a status of ‘ frozen conflict’ in
Southern Mexico allowed communities to
develop democratic practices through ongoing
organization and political education. Here,
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’s
Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, known as
Subcommandante Marcos or Delegate Zero, meets
with community activists in the Emiliana de
Zubeldia auditorium in October 2006.
LUIS GUTIERREZ/NORTEPHOTO.COM/ALAMY
MARCH-APRIL 2023
A
world of cages, propaganda-scrolling
on our screens, rights and free move-
ment dismantled for most – but flows
of capital intact. Techniques of targeted
voter suppression honed as the data
mining industry matures.
All the noise of an endless media
circus, even as genuinely progressive
ideas are kept off the agenda. Support for
so-called (liberal) democracy spirals out
through the plughole – where the solu-
tions to our overlapping crises should be.
It’s easy to imagine the doom story.
The erosion of the democratic ideal, our
political systems descending from flawed
but partially functional, to something
much worse. But there is another path,
another story that is with us, if we can
work out – all of us – how to grasp it…
First the bad. 2023 is a state already, so
what could 2073 look like?
The new brand of neofascist pop-
ulism has bred. We all know the type:
‘Big’ men with bad ideas, deflecting criti-
cism through bombast and humour, and
a penchant for punching down. In the
background, careful media management
Futures
and the connivance of corporate outlets
and their algorithmic counterparts keep
their shows on the road.
They cut healthcare and other ser-
vices, first for migrants then for the rest
of us; they also cut taxes for the rich.
Wealth is even more concentrated, dis-
tilled and enmeshed in politics and the
media. There are descendants of Mark
Zuckerberg in the US senate. The Bezos
family empire, not content with con-
trolling the Washington Post, has used
the dominance of Amazon to buy into
video news and social platforms includ-
ing Fwitter. A Bezos-Murdoch wedding is
on the cards. New plutocrats have joined
them after the rapid growth of a new
sector: green energy.
Meanwhile, restrictions on protest and
labour organizing have been tightened
across most countries. Encouraged by
Britain’s example, over 100 governments
have made chanting without police per-
mission an imprisonable offence.
Unofficial strikes – risking beatings
from far-right thugs – are now the only
option for most workers, because unions
have been fined into bankruptcy. Police
utilize increasingly advanced surveil-
lance technologies including drones,
electronic tagging, social media moni-
toring and voice and facial recognition
against leftwing organizers. Armies of
bots drown out critical voices, as do tar-
getted internet shutdowns. Legal avenues
for protecting peoples’ rights have been
curtailed.
Attacks on journalist by politicians and
others are common. Independent outlets
have been forced out of business as print
readerships have dwindled, many online
publications seeing their readerships
repeatedly decimated when social media
sites tweak their algorithm.
A brighter future
Now imagine instead the alternative: a
2073 suffused with democracy. Decisions
in our workplaces and communities are
made collectively. Collaboration between
different collectives – from neighbour-
hood assemblies to co-operatives – is
33
THE BIGGER STORY
For a democratic future we will have to nurture
a culture and practice of democracy throughout
society - from our homes to our workplaces,
with friends and in social movements
common, aggregating democracy from
the ground up.
The principle that decisions should
be made by those affected by them is a
habit: discussion and agreement rather
than dictat is the norm. That said, there is
a recognition that not all decisions are of
the same importance, that the time spent
on discussion should be proportionate to
the issue at hand.
Popular communication apps service
the spirit of the times too, embedding
online tools to support good decision
making: from polls to decide where to go
to lunch, to tools for more lengthy struc-
tured discussions, shared wikis and for
checking agreement or disagreement.
Co-operatives – from worker-run
manufacturers to community energy
– are widespread, as is public owner-
ship: giving people a say in key sectors.
Public-public partnerships, between local
and national agencies, or between public
bodies and co-operatives, are flourish-
ing. Trade union membership is strong,
adding another layer of democracy and
accountability.
Political engagement is boosted by a
thriving media – viewed as a public good,
and in collective hands. Political dona-
tions are strictly limited and political
corruption is treated seriously, investi-
gated thoroughly and punished. Innova-
tions like recallable delegates and the use
of citizens’ juries (sortition) and partici-
patory budgeting are widely used.
Tipping the scales
The question, then, is how we get there.
And a good place to start is by learn-
ing from places where there is a living
tradition of participation, a culture of
34
democracy embedded in strong social
movements.
For example, in Chile, where a popular
uprising sparked by an increase to metro
fares spawned a wave of cabildos – local
assemblies which ‘became spaces in
which everyday people met and debated
about demands’.1 The movement built on
years of ground-level organization and
anger at the persistence of the neoliber-
alism installed by the Pinochet dictator-
ship. Ollas comunes – soup kitchens – have
also been cited as an important part of
grassroot organizing and mutual aid in
the country.
We can also look to Indigenous tradi-
tions. For example, the Native American
Iroquois Confederacy has been noted for
its participatory democracy and constitu-
tion, with women having a key role in its
political system.
Elsewhere there are the remarkable
achievements of Kurdish movements in
northern Syria and Turkey, where years
of organization, learning and reflection
built resilient democratic structures,
often driven by women. This level of
organization was crucial for organizing
resistance when the Syrian Civil War
broke out.
Self-managing ‘communes’ became
widespread in Rojava, in north east Syria,
as forms of local participatory democ-
racy, and barriers to womens’ participa-
tion have been countered through a 40
per cent minimum quota and parallel
womens’ structures.2 (See The Long Read,
Page 64) Self-organized communities
confederate together by sending recall-
able delegates to co-ordinating bodies.
Members of the movement believed
‘a profound democratic culture within
society and solidarity-based, egalitar-
ian relationships across communities
was needed to put an end to domination’,
according to the academic Dilar Dirik. 3
There are similarities with southern
Mexico’s Zapatista movement. Following
an uprising in the early 1990s, a status of
‘frozen conflict’ allowed communities to
develop democratic practices through
ongoing organization and political edu-
cation. Such autonomy enabled the Zapa-
tistas to develop a relationship towards
the Mexican state more pluralist than
separatist – expressed in their goal of un
mundo donde quepan muchos mundos – a
world where many worlds fit.
Building democracy throughout our
economies will also be essential for cre-
ating a lived democracy better than the
disappointments in which most of us
live. Here we can take inspiration from
examples like that of the Mondragon
Corporation in Spain’s Basque Country
– a federation of workers’ co-operatives
with an annual revenue of around $12
billion, its network encompassing a wide
range of goods manufacturing as well
as a credit union and the Mondragon
University.
But existing state power can’t be
ignored in building a more participatory
world – bringing the challenges of those
who attempt to capture state (or party)
power often being captured by it in turn.
Here the aim, as Bookchin put it,
should be transform the form, not just
the content of politics. Ideas can be
gleaned here from elsewhere in Spain –
such as the municipal platforms, broad
political coalitions which developed out
of the post-crash Indignados movement
and won power in key cities.
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

In Madrid, for example, the new
city council deployed the free software
Consul as an online space for decision-
making – with $113 million allocated in
2017 for participatory budgeting, with
proposals coming from citizens.4
Particularly interesting in challeng-
ing the traditional party model is the
example of the CUP (Popular Unity Can-
didacy), a radical leftwing Catalan sepa-
ratist party which grew first at village and
municipal level. Party rules prevent its
parliamentary candidates running for
more than one term.
Decision-making is by assemblies of
members – when it takes a position on, for
example, legislation, each local assembly
in the area it covers will debate, and where
consensus cannot be found, vote on the
issue. 5 Delegates are then sent to co-ordi-
nation meetings and these decisions are
binding on its MPs and secretariat.
A particularly remarkable moment
came in 2016 and 2017 when the CUP
was in the position of kingmaker in the
Catalan parliament. Its members delib-
erated over key political issues for the
region and, through their democratic
control of CUP deputies, an assembly of
2,900 delegates deliberated on the future
of the region’s austerity-mongering presi-
dent Artur Mas, eventually forcing him to
stand aside.
The rocky road
So there are reasons to hope – despite
frequent headlines which claim declining
support for ‘rule by the people’.
In fact, last year the Democracy Per-
ception Index, covering 75 per cent of the
world’s population across over fifty coun-
tries, found 84 per cent of people thought
it was important to have democracy in
their country – an increase from 78 per
cent in 2020.6 Nonetheless, disenchant-
ment with our political systems is (rightly)
widespread, and open to exploitation.7
The causes are clear. Politicians are in
the pockets of big business and lobbyists.
Neoliberal ideas pushed by corporate-
political interests have entrenched the
idea that the state must promote ‘free
markets’. As a result, neoliberal states –
and hierarchical forms of government
– ‘bracket out’ control over many aspects
of our lives. Many decisions are left to
the market, or are effectively enforced
– unfree – by market discipline. Par-
ticularly in the Global South, structural
adjustment and austerity have led states
to stop providing key public services.
MARCH-APRIL 2023
As the range of options debated by
political parties shrinks to rearranging
deckchairs, and most politicians repeat-
edly fail to deliver real action on improv-
ing material conditions for the majority,
disillusionment is inevitable.
Rightwing ‘populist’ authoritarians
have exploited this rightful anger – while
continuing to collaborate with big busi-
ness, of course. In case any governments
do get the wrong ideas, international
enforcers like the IMF and investor
courts, or Washington’s sanctions and
military intervention, are there to restore
the neoliberal order.
But the causes go deeper. In many
places, we’ve lost the idea of what democ-
racy really means.
Firstly, there’s the totemic and simplis-
tic reduction of democracy to voting. The
corollary of this is that so long as there
are elections, our society is democratic.
This means we miss another essen-
tial: the importance of wide discussion
and deliberation, a positive vision of free
speech that enables everyone to contrib-
ute – tackling the structures that silence
women and minorities. Of a public
sphere that includes a variety of perspec-
tives – not the stale binary, ‘both sides of
the debate’, that excludes other views.
Some social movements have
responded to disillusionment with liberal
democracy by rejecting the idea of voting
altogether as intrinsically majoritar-
ian and flawed, and through its associa-
tion with governmental elections (AKA:
choosing your own ruler). This ignores
the wide range of possible voting systems
and uses, and the importance of voting
as a clear and simple way for people
to express their preferences. In many
cases, attempts to do things differently
have simply created more opaque voting
systems – or handed power to those who
are loudest and most assertive.
In the face of all this, it’s understanda-
ble that some people want to abandon the
idea of democracy and start again. But as
we struggle to build a more participatory
society, tackling these issues and build-
ing a common sense idea of democracy
that is not excluded from the economic
sphere, that spans both deliberation and
forms of voting appropriate to the cir-
cumstances, will be vital.
Joining our dots
For a democratic future we will have to
nurture a culture and practice of democ-
racy throughout society – from our
Futures
homes to our workplaces, with friends
and in social movements.
Experimentation will be required but
we’ll need a consensus on democracy’s
essential conditions: that everyone has
not just the right to speak but is able to be
heard; that all can have their preferences
counted; that where power lies is trans-
parent and its holders removable.
‘For me, there are four tenets of
democracy: accountability, represen-
tation, transparency – the notion that
the rules must be known by everyone
involved – and participation,’ writes
history professor Moses Ochonu, arguing
for the recovery and repurposing of Afri-
ca’s many pre-colonial democratic forms
– away from the Western consensus on
‘zero-sum’ elections as the sole guarantee
of accountability.8
In what can seem like bleak times,
building power in our neighbourhoods
and linking up self-organized grassroots
associations as the building blocks of a
more powerful participatory democracy
can bring hope. Here we can try to see
democracy as less ‘legislating’ than col-
lective problem-solving.
In Rojava, democacy is ‘understood as
a mentality, an attitude towards the right
to exist and let exist,’ says Dirik. ‘A prac-
tice to enable what activists often call a
“more just, right, and beautiful life”.’ O
1 Ivette Hernández Santibañez and Margarita
Rebolledo Hernández, ‘Chile: long path towards a
democratic constitution’, Latin America Bureau, June
2021, nin.tl/3WLKNDe 2 Michael Knapp, translated
by Janet Biehl, ‘Democratic Autonomy in Rojava’,
New Compass, October 2014, nin.tl/3Y5rNRc 3 Dilar
Dirik, ‘Stateless citizenship: ‘radical democracy as
consciousness-raising’ in the Rojava revolution’,
in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power,
Vol 29, 2022, nin.tl/3Yanu7g 4 Bernardo Gutiérrez,
‘Madrid as a democracy lab’, openDemocracy,
July 2017, nin.tl/3HlMmlB 5 Marc Almodóvar, ‘The
radical party behind the Catalan referendum’, New
Internationalist, September 2017, bit.ly/3wH6rO8
6 Colm Lehane, ‘Polls: Democracy remains
important to people but trust erodes’, Democracy
Without Borders, June 2022, nin.tl/3Dm4Vos
7 David Olusuga, ‘As the world loses faith in
democracy, leaders of vision are desperately
needed’, the Guardian, February 2020, nin.tl/3RiXV1f
8 Moses Ochonu, ‘There are no dogmas for the
practice of democracy’, Africa Is a Country, March
2022, nin.tl/3YaT6tp
35
THE BIGGER STORY
WHAT WOULD YOUR
GRANDCHILD SAY?
Wales is pioneering a law supposed to ensure that public
organizations protect future generations, as well as the living.
Rebecca Wilks explores the results so far.
S
omewhere between the 15th and 17th
centuries, members of the feuding
Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga
and Seneca nations gathered on the
shores of Onondaga Lake in what is now
known as New York State, and formed
the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Accounts of this summit describe
legendary leader Deganawida – known
best as ‘The Peacemaker’ – uprooting
the tallest white pine tree in the area and
asking the assembled leaders to bury
their weapons beneath its roots, provid-
ing the genesis for the idiom ‘bury the
hatchet’.
Later joined by the Tuscarora people,
the Confederacy – which at its peak
governed territory across much of New
York, Ontario, Quebec and parts of Vir-
ginia and Kentucky – was united under
the Great Law of Peace. Laid out by The
Peacemaker at Onondaga Lake, this Law
was passed on in an intricate oral story-
telling tradition and is still used today.
At its centre is the ‘Seventh Genera-
tion’ principle: ‘Make your decisions on
36
behalf of the seventh generation coming
– defend them, protect them...’ The idea
being that any governance decisions
would have to keep in mind the wellbeing
of seven future generations.
This kind of long-term thinking seems
to elude many international policymak-
ers, who often struggle to act beyond the
election cycle, let alone generations ahead
– though there have been attempts to do
things differently. In 1993 the govern-
ment of Finland formed its first ‘Commit-
tee for the Future’, tasked with generating
discussion on science, technology, and
‘major future problems and opportuni-
ties’. In 2007, Hungary appointed Sándor
Fülöp as its first Ombudsman for Future
Generations, although he stepped down
when, following the 2010 re-election of
far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,
the post was merged with several others
to become the ‘Commissioner for Funda-
mental Rights’, a weakened, more advi-
sory role.
More recently, Wales has thrown its
hat into the ring with its Wellbeing of
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
ANDY K USING IMAGES FROM SHUTTERSTOCK
THE BIGGER STORY
Future Generations (WFG) Act. Passed
in 2015, this legislation is supposed to
encourage decision-makers to act in
line with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals, keeping the planet and
‘current and future generations’ of Wales
residents in mind.
Public bodies are required to set
objectives in line with seven ‘Wellbeing
Goals’ for a future Wales that is pros-
perous, resilient, healthier, more equal,
and globally responsible; with cohesive
communities, a vibrant culture and a
thriving Welsh language. Public organi-
zations must collaborate with each other
and the public, ‘take all reasonable steps’
to achieve their objectives, and balance
meeting the needs of the present with the
ability to continue providing for them in
the future.
Along with the WFG Act came a new
role: The Future Generations Commis-
sioner. Appointed by Welsh government
ministers for a seven year term, the Com-
missioner’s duty is to ‘act as a guardian of
the ability of future generations to meet
their needs’, and to monitor the extent
to which public bodies are adhering to
their responsibilities under the Act. The
position was occupied by Sophie Howe, a
former Welsh Government advisor and
Deputy South Wales Police and Crime
Commissioner, from 2016 until January
this year.
An imperfect system
So, what can be learned from Wales’
experiences? Should all countries be
instating such legislation by 2073?
Howe is enthusiastic about the Act’s
potential. Speaking in December 2022,
she said she was ‘really proud’ of its
impact so far. Fresh from a review of how
the government was using the Act, she
said her findings showed real change: ‘It’s
‘The fact that I’m not elected means that I am
not bound, as all the rest of our politicians are,
by populist decision making’
38
in the DNA of the way that the govern-
ment does its business, and even beyond
that – though the Act only applies to the
public sector, it’s become a sort of frame-
work vision, something to work towards,
for the whole of Wales.’
One point of pride for Howe is the
Football Association of Wales (FAW), an
organization that, while not covered by
the WFG Act, has nonetheless published
a sustainability strategy informed by the
seven Wellbeing Goals. Among its raft of
pledges, the FAW commits to becoming
a ‘Real Living Wage’ employer, review-
ing its procurement policies across all
its activities, ensuring its merchan-
dise is ethically-sourced and fairtrade,
and divesting its pension fund from ‘all
forms of harm’, including fossil fuels,
arms, pollutants and products that drive
deforestation.
‘That’s for grassroots football, right
up to the elite level,’ Howe said. ‘They
don’t have to do that, but they’re doing
it because they think that it’s a brilliant
vision for Wales.’
For now, however, FAW’s pledges are
just that. It’s still largely unclear how
organizations might be held to the prom-
ises they make under the WFG Act. Like
Hungary’s Commissioner, the Welsh
counterpart is a largely advisory role. If
a public body argues that there is ‘good
reason’ for it not to follow the recommen-
dations of the post holder, it doesn’t have
to act on them.
In 2019, high-ranking barrister Rhodri
Williams used the WFG Act to try and
trigger a judicial review of the deci-
sion to close a school in the Upper Afan
Valley, South Wales. The challenge was
thrown out, with High Court judge Justice
Lambert remarking: ‘I do not find it argu-
able that the 2015 Act does more than
prescribe a high-level target duty which
is deliberately vague, general and aspi-
rational.’1 In other words, it can easily be
ignored.
Williams told the BBC at the time that
he considered the WFG Act a ‘particu-
larly badly drafted piece of legislation’
and that without a route for the public to
seek redress from authorities, the legisla-
tion is effectively ‘toothless’. 1
Asked about this critique, Howe said:
‘The reality at the end of the day is that
the Commissioner is an unelected official,
interacting with a democratically man-
dated government.’
But, she claimed, an elected FG Com-
missioner would be a ‘double-edged
sword’. ‘The fact that I’m not elected
means that I am not bound, as all the rest
of our politicians are, by populist deci-
sion making – which is going to be based
on what the electorate wants in the here
and now.’
That the Commissioner’s remit
includes ‘the unborn’, Howe added,
enables them to push for policies that are
unpopular in the short term but judged
to be necessary for the future, like the
introduction of congestion charges for
polluting vehicles, or the Welsh govern-
ment’s decision to freeze work on most of
its planned road-building projects.
‘There’s no perfect solution to any of
this, but I would rather have an imperfect
system, which is trying to achieve recog-
nition of the long term and take action,
than the pretty bloody awful system that
we’ve gotten across the world, where the
interests of future generations are not
considered at all,’ she said.
Setting the tone
Despite the enthusiasm of its support-
ers, appetite for a re-examination of the
WFG Act is growing. A series of contro-
versial development decisions, such as
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

That the Act pledges a ‘globally responsible Wales’
has not stopped the Welsh government partnering
with and providing funds to international arms firms
like Thales and Raytheon
excluding a significant road expansion in
the South Wales Valleys from the Welsh
government’s road-building freeze, as
well as allowing large investment firms to
buy up farms for use in carbon offsetting,
have tested public confidence. That the
Act pledges a ‘globally responsible Wales’
has not stopped the Welsh government
partnering with and providing funds to
international arms firms like Thales and
Raytheon.
Meanwhile, a number of reports have
identified significant problems in the Act’s
roll-out that have not yet been resolved.
In 2021, a Senedd Committee concluded
that the Welsh government ‘did not show
sufficient commitment to the Act’ in its
early years, and that this ‘set the tone
for the rest of the public sector’. A more
recent analysis by scrutiny body Audit
Wales found that the Welsh government
itself had not provided ‘clear supporting
evidence’ that it had applied WFG Act
principles when setting its own ‘aspira-
tional’ wellbeing objectives, making it
difficult to measure progress. Concerns
were also raised that ‘the full diversity
of the population’ had not been properly
involved in the goal-setting process.
These questions all carry important
implications for those that want to enact
similar legislation in future, and they
will hang over incoming FG Commis-
sioner, Derek Walker. Formerly the head
of Cwmpas, an agency that supports co-
operatives in Wales, he was also once
head of policy at the Welsh Trades Union
Congress.
‘There will be challenges, of course,’
said Howe. ‘Getting people to think long-
term becomes more difficult when you’re
constantly responding to crises – whether
that’s in the healthcare system with
increasing demand, or the cost-of-living
MARCH-APRIL 2023
crisis, and because of that we’re prob-
ably not going to see the progress that we
would like. Possibly the best Derek could
hope to achieve in the next seven years is
making things less worse than they would
otherwise be, which is not a position that
anyone wants to be in.’
A model for the future?
The WFG Act has garnered Wales
coveted attention on the world stage and
indeed, it does represent the first attempt
by a government to create a law which
combines a duty to protect our descend-
ants with the UN’s Sustainable Develop-
ment Goals. The UN itself is due to hold
a Futures Summit in 2023, at which it
will make a Declaration for Future Gen-
erations. The Scottish Government has
already confirmed its intention to appoint
its first FG Commissioner, and is explor-
ing the potential to enact its own WFG
Act. Similar interest has been expressed
by politicians in Northern Ireland, and
an attempt to replicate the WFG Act was
introduced to the UK Parliament in 2022,
although the bill got no further than its
second reading.
But Howe had a word of warning for
those wanting to take a similar path to
Wales. ‘Governments shouldn’t think that
passing the law means the job is done,’
she said. ‘[That] is just the start of a com-
plete system transformation.’
Whether such drastic change has
been realized in Wales is debatable.
Though passed by a Welsh Labour gov-
ernment that identifies as socialist, the
Act has nothing to say about shrink-
ing the private sector and its hold on
housing, health and social care. Accord-
ing to researcher Frances Williams, who
studied the impact of the WFG Act on
community art groups in North Wales,
Futures
the law ‘reveals much about the neolib-
eral flavour of Welsh Labour’.
Further suggestions for improve-
ment are offered by Cardiff’s ‘Save the
Northern Meadows’ campaigners, who
are involved in a bitter dispute with the
local Welsh Labour council over its plan
to build a new cancer treatment centre
on a beloved local green space, instead
of co-locating it with the city’s largest
hospital – a decision they say will leave
current and future generations with a
substandard model of care. A mechanism
for the public to report ‘clear disregard
of the Act’ to the FG Commissioner’s
office – and receive a swift response – is
one proposal, as is the ability to challenge
decisions by the Commissioner.
‘It’s a great idea in principle’, a spokes-
person for the group commented. ‘But it
must require public bodies to act, and not
just think.’
As governments catch onto the
concept of policymaking for the wellbe-
ing of coming generations, could we see
a future where every government truly
balances the needs of the living with the
needs of those yet to be conceived? What
happens in Wales could be a determining
factor. O
REBECCA WILKS IS A CARDIFF-BASED FREELANCE
JOURNALIST FROM THE RHONDDA VALLEY,
REPORTING ON WELSH POLITICS, HOUSING AND
POLICING. SHE HAS ALSO PUBLISHED INVESTIGATIVE
WORK ON THE HIGH-RISK COAL TIPS STILL FOUND
THROUGHOUT SOUTH WALES. WHEN NOT WRITING,
SHE LOVES TO PAINT AND IS AN ACTIVE CAMPAIGNER
FOR TENANTS’ RIGHTS.
1 Paul Martin, ‘Law to protect future generations in
Wales “useless”’, BBC, 15 May 2019, nin.tl/useless
39
THE BIGGER STORY

40 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

PRESENT
ASSIGNATION
Art does not simply reflect the world – but
frames and shapes our future. A meditation
by the Raqs Media Collective.
From Raqs Media Collective’s ‘Three Shadows’,
exhibited as part of their exhibition ‘The Laughter
of Tears’ at Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2021.
RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE
MARCH-APRIL 2023
M
any pasts never end up acquiring
a future. The future gathers many
pasts to itself.
In October 2001, when the 21st
century was still young, we had written
a text for art students in an art academy
in the German town of Braunschweig at
the request of their teacher, Jochen Gerz.
The question we were asked was: “What
is, in the context of contemporary art, your
vision of a future art?”
Our answer presented itself as an
argument between reality and desire. We
had written, then:
‘…Art, which we might call the
process by which desire, and its corol-
lary, imagination, encounter the real, is
at present held hostage to a framework
Futures
of institutional practices, canons and
histories. These serve primarily to sepa-
rate art, or the domain of the aesthetic
from the ethical, from the everyday,
from dealing with the day to day fact of
making meaning in difficult times. The
future of art will depend on how far those
who work with art are prepared to go in
terms of restoring to art its function of
being that which involves a desire “to do”
something with life, and the world…
‘This is a wager worth taking up for
consideration, and any person who
makes art, or lives with art, or has visions,
epileptic fits, nightmares and hangovers
about art has to place bets, cut deals and
count their chances along these lines. To
do this is to say: “…yes, in a world where
terror is the breath of the real, we can imagine
that it is still possible to participate in the
creation or transmission of objects and situ-
ations of relentless and unforgiving beauty,
by the clarity or confusion with which they
change the way we look at life, that by their
very force, will bring to bear another reality
upon the world…”
‘It is to say: “here, take your passport, your
newspaper, your identity card, your work
permit, your electoral register, your health
record, your social security number, your
X-ray, your bank statement, your doctor’s pre-
scription, your inheritance, your insurance,
your wage bill, your shopping list, your debt,
your balance sheet, your inventory, your fear,
your anxiety, your boredom, your humiliation
- and see what happens if they were to dis-
solve, evaporate, transform.”’1
Then, two decades later, in the autumn
of 2021, we returned to the same town,
Braunschweig, with an exhibition (‘The
Laughter of Tears’) that looked at tears,
and laughter, and the repressive power
of the state to silence feelings and other
questions of existence and extinction. It
was like a date, an assignation, between
the past and the future, in a town that had
asked us to consider the future. And we
were present.
41
THE BIGGER STORY
There were two things that we wrote
into our preface to this exhibition in
Braunschweig in 2021, which recalled
the contours of our conversation with
the future in 2001. First: ‘The only actu-
ally shared sensation is the present continuous
tense. It reconstitutes, every day, the coarse
fabric of being human, rearranging the atoms
of collective experience.’ Second: ‘Every
person is a temporary defeat of the second
law of thermodynamics. Everything else is
ordinary.’
Has our understanding changed? Has
the future changed? It has, and it hasn’t.
Today, our sense of the future is much
more predicated on the present continu-
ous sense than it was before. Let us clarify
what we mean.
In ‘The Laughter of Tears’ we showed
a video rendition of an archival photo-
graph of cross-dressing workers from
India dancing during a First World War
siege where the Indian army (part of the
Allied Forces) was under attack in Iraq,
more than a hundred years ago. We called
this work, simply, ‘Three Shadows’. It has
a sense of moment that is not frozen, as
it would normally be in a photograph,
but that animates time in the perpetual
present continuous sense.
The work has three shadows (of care,
rage and indifference) hovering between
occurrence and oblivion, not yet at ease.
What speaks in the misread poetry and
dancing of enlisted combatants and
workers in a mad war? It is a cascade of
sensations waiting to fall in place and out
of time, asking, persistently, to be made
sense of.
This demand – to continue ‘making
sense’ in the middle of war’s insanity
– is the way in which the work (the verb,
not the noun) of art beckons to us to free
ourselves of the habits of the present, and
everything else that we take for granted.
Yes, in a world where terror is
the breath of the real, we can
imagine that it is still possible
to participate in the creation
of objects and situations of
relentless and unforgiving beauty
42
When we first came across the pho-
tograph in an archive, before it turned
in our hands into ‘Three Shadows’, it
suggested to us what a moment of sane
reverie in the middle of war might look
and feel like. It had a kind of beautiful,
reckless futurity.
In the swirl of the worker-soldier-
dancer’s costumes, there was a sense
of the kind of fraternity-sorority (the
dancers were men dancing as women,
workers amid soldiers) that breached the
boundary-making logic of war, and the
entire combative purpose of empires
and nation-states. The circle formed
by the soldier-spectators of this dance
was a kind of place-making that, even if
momentarily, suspended the consensus of
how territory could be imagined by the
grammar of constituted politics. There
was a deliberate, and deliberative, trans-
intentionality in the steps of the dance
that zig-zagged away from any straight
line of ‘progress’ marching towards a
one-size-fits-all future.
Forms of affinity – fraternities, sorori-
ties, solidarities – that breach boundaries,
a sense of place-making that suspends
settled consensuses, and a deliberative
duration – a stretching and twisting
of time that gives new intentionalities
room to breathe – these three features
reach out of this work to us to suggest a
different way in which art can frame the
future, and therefore, even our time, the
present. Here, now. O
FOUNDED IN DELHI IN 1992, RAQS MEDIA
COLLECTIVE IS FORMED OF JEEBESH BAGCHI,
MONICA NARULA AND SHUDDHABRATA SENGUPTA.
THEIR WORK AS ARTISTS, CURATORS AND
PHILOSOPHICAL AGENT PROVOCATEURS HAS BEEN
EXHIBITED ACROSS THE WORLD.
1 Raqs Media Collective, ‘Art of the Future’, for
Anthology of Art, initiated and collated by Jochen
Gerz, nin.tl/ArtFuture
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
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THE BIGGER STORY

Cartoon – ILYA Words – Jamie Kelsey-Fry

44 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Cartoon Future

than intended.

MARCH-APRIL 2023 45
THE BIGGER STORY

46 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Cartoon Future

MARCH-APRIL 2023 47
 COUNTRY
PROFILE
I
n the crowded basement of Chișinău’s
National Museum of Fine Arts, Soviet-
era bronze and aluminium castings
by Claudia Cobizev depict heroic workers
and protest against Western foreign policy.
Born in the city in 1905, when Moldova
was part of the Russian Empire, Cobizev’s
life encapsulates Moldova’s history.
When she was 12, Moldova declared
independence from Russia, and inte-
grated instead into Romania. She
attended art schools in Brussels and
Bucharest in the 1920s and 30s, returning
to Moldova to witness, aged 35, the region
being ceded to the Soviet-Union follow-
ing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
The following year, Romanian and
German forces re-captured Moldova,
deporting and massacring hundreds of
thousands of Jews and Roma. Cobizev
entered her fourth decade as the Soviets
48
recaptured the territory. Her artistic
career flourished under the four and a
half subsequent decades of Communist
governance, but her style incorporated
Moldovan national identity as well as the
socialist realism favoured by the Kremlin.
She died aged 90 in 1995, shortly
after the newly-independent Republic
MOLDOVA
of Moldova had ratified its constitution.
The consignment of her work to the
museum’s basement is a testament to her
uneasy place in the history of a divided
country, and to the unresolved – argu-
ably more so than any other post-Soviet
country – nature of Moldova’s reckoning
with its past.
Moldova, after all, in 2001 became the
first former member of the Soviet Union
to democratically elect a Communist gov-
ernment – albeit a socially-conservative
one which initially sought cordial rela-
tions with the West. Its uneasy accord with
liberal opposition parties and foreign gov-
ernments broke down in 2009, when the
Communists’ victory in parliamentary
elections prompted allegations of fraud
and widespread protests in which partici-
pants shared assembly points and news via
a new social network: Twitter.
Fresh elections later that year fol-
lowing a crackdown on protests saw the
Communists fall short of a presidential
majority, and the party has remained
isolated in opposition ever since. Poli-
tics, media and public opinion remains
UKRAINE
Bălți
TR
AN
SN
Ungheni
IS
Chișinău
TR
IA
Tiraspol
ROMANIA
Cahul
0 100 Miles
0 200 Kilometres
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

divided between pro-Russian and pro-
Western camps, with the latter now in
government.
Transnistria, a predominantly Rus-
sian-speaking region on the country’s
eastern border with Ukraine, broke
away during the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, prompting an armed conflict in
1992. A ceasefire that year has left the
region a ‘frozen conflict’ zone ever since,
effectively independent but with Moldo-
van and Russian military supervision at
the border. The war in nearby Ukraine,
meanwhile, has led to a significant influx
of refugees and fears that Russia may
extend its renewed imperialist sights.
Much of the national infrastructure
is in poor shape, and the country has
one of the highest rates of emigration in
Europe. The pace of recent price rises is
illustrated by the fact that when tripling
AT A GLANCE
LEADER: President Maia Sandu.
ECONOMY: GNI per capita $5,460 in 2021
(Romania $14,170). Moldova saw huge inflation
in the 1990s following market liberalization. Its
economy has experienced significant growth in the
past two decades, but it remains heavily dependent
on remittances from abroad, which account for
almost 15 per cent of the national income.
Monetary unit: Leu (1 MDL = $0.051).
Main exports: insulated wiring, sunflower seeds,
wine, corn, seats.
POPULATION: 3.3 million. Annual population
growth: -1.12%. People per square kilometre 123
(Japan 84).
HEALTH: Under-5 mortality rate: 11.6 deaths
per 1,000 live births (Romania 5.4). Maternal
mortality rate per 1,000 live births: 19 (Romania
19). Compulsory health insurance system provides
everyone with cover, but healthcare provision is
marred by low standards and corruption.
ENVIRONMENT: Temperate climate with
moderate winters and warm summers. Heavy
use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has
contaminated the country’s soil and groundwater.
Clockwise from top left: the Maildova shopping centre in Chișinău; anti-government protests in front
of the general prosecutor’s headquarters in the capital; cave churches at Old Orhei, in the country’s
only national park; women picking grapes for wine production in Taraclia.
PHOTOBANK MD/CREATIVE COMMONS; DAN MORAR/SHUTTERSTOCK; DAVE PROFFER/CREATIVE COMMONS; PIOTR VELIXAR/
SHUTTERSTOCK
MARCH-APRIL 2023
trolleybus fares in Chișinău, authorities
opted to issue strips of three tickets at
once rather than printing new ones.
Moldova’s rich culture, warm climate
and low-priced economy are likely to
prompt an influx of tourists if its new
fast-track to EU membership is not
obstructed. The country’s wine once vied
with Georgia for the status of the best
in the Soviet Union, and its musical and
artistic scenes show the benefits, as well as
the dangers, of standing on the frontier of
East and West.
Some Moldovans still crave unification
with Romania, but others are sceptical. ‘I
don’t know,’ a young, largely pro-Western
Moldovan woman told me on the over-
night train from Bucharest to Chișinău.
‘We don’t understand Romanian jokes,
but we do understand Russian jokes’. O
CONRAD LANDIN
CULTURE: Much of Moldova’s national identity
and history is tied up with that of Romania, and
the existence of Moldovans as a distinct ethnic
group is controversial – but many describe
themselves as such. Cuisine draws from
Romanian and Slavic influences.
Ethnic groups: Moldovan 75.1%, Romanian 7%,
Ukrainian 6.6%, Gagauz 4.6%, Russian 4.1%,
Bulgarian 1.9%, other 0.8% (2014 est.)
RELIGION: Eastern Orthodox 81.9%, Protestant
6.4%, Roman Catholic 4.3%, other (including Muslim)
0.9%, none or atheist 0.2%, unspecified 6.3%
LANGUAGE: Moldovan/Romanian 80.2% (official),
Russian 9.7% (though more speak it on a daily
basis), Gagauz 4.2% (a Turkic language spoken in
an autonomous territory in the country’s south),
Ukrainian 3.9%, Bulgarian 1.5%, Romani 0.3%,
other 0.2% (2014 est.). Data represents mother
tongues, many being bi- or trilingual.
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 0.767
(Romania 0.821), joint 80th (with Dominican
Republic and Palau) out of 191 countries.
STAR RATINGS
INCOME DISTRIBUTION ++++ ++++,
Moldova is one of the poorest
countries in Europe, but wealth is
far more evenly distributed than in
most. Insufficient welfare support has
left many retirees dependent on the
informal economy, while recent price
rises have increased the cost of living.
LITERACY +++++
Illiteracy was largely eradicated during
the Soviet period, and the literacy rate
now stands at 99%.
LIFE EXPECTANCY ++++++++,
Life expectancy in Moldova stands at
72.44 years, being considerably higher
for women (76.52) than for men (68.6).
POSITION OF WOMEN ++ ++,,,
,,,
Employment rates are high for
Moldovan women, but many are
exploited and earn considerably
less than men. Some women are not
covered by the pensions system.
FREEDOM ++ ++,,,
,,,
Moldova’s media is heavily influenced
by oligarchs and political leaders,
and is divided into pro-Russian and
pro-Western camps. There is legal
protection for freedom of expression
but this is undermined by corruption.
Poverty has led to a huge exodus of
Moldovans abroad.
SEXUAL MINORITIES ++ ++,,,
,,,
Same-sex sexual activity has been legal
since 1995, and anti-gay discrimination
in the workplace is banned. But
same-sex couple households are
not eligible for the same support as
heterosexual couples. Public opinion
towards LGBTQI+ people is hostile, and
pride events have faced attacks and
intimidation.
POLITICS ++ ++,,,
,,,
The corruption of state officials has
been a constant barrier to good
governance, and Transnitria remains
in ‘frozen conflict’. The liberal
government is intent on joining the
EU – which is likely to bring more
investment to the country but also
exacerbate inequality – and strengthen
ties with Nato.
+++++
+++++Excellent
++++,
++++,Good
+++,,
+++,,Fair
++,,,
++,,,Poor
+,,,,
,,,,Appalling
49
 TEMPERATURE
CHECK
HOW TO FIGHT THE CLIMATE CLAMPDOWN
Protest works. In recent years govern-
ments have been toppled or forced
into major policy shifts by protests in
Armenia, India, Sudan, Chile, Bangla-
desh and Serbia, to name but a few.
But authoritarian regimes are pushing
back brutally against dissent, including
climate activism. New anti-protest laws
are used to jail protesters, even in sup-
posedly liberal countries like the UK and
Australia.
According to a recent report by the
human-rights monitor CIVICUS, this
seems to be part of a wider global crack-
down on protest rights linked to a rise in
authoritarian far-right governments.1
‘People are facing huge challenges
like the cost of living and the climate
crisis, as well as major threats to their
rights by governments and other far-
right forces,’ explains Aarti Narsee, one
of the report’s authors. ‘Rather than
responding to these crises in a way that
would help, governments are cracking
down on protest.
‘These restrictions tend to impact
excluded groups the most. For example,
in Poland and Hungary we’ve seen
LGBTQI+ campaigners being particularly
50
targeted, and Black protesters facing
tougher police and legal crackdowns in
countries like Belgium and the UK.’
In 2021, CIVICUS documented the use
of protest bans, excessive legal charges,
harassment and violence against envi-
ronmental activists and land defenders
around the world. 2
So, why the increased clampdown
on environmental direct action now?
It’s nothing new, after all. In the UK, for
example, activists have been blocking
roads, shutting down construction sites
and occupying power stations for decades,
as part of successful movements that
stopped massive road expansions, new
coal power stations and a third Heathrow
runway in the 1990s and early 2000s.
It’s possible that the deepening of
the climate crisis is leading to greater
visibility of, and public support for,
environmental defenders. The climate
movement in the Global North is also
strengthening links with Southern and
Indigenous movements and becoming
more outspoken about the need for sys-
temic change. All of this may be seen as a
greater threat to governments and elites
that benefit from the status quo.
Words – Danny Chivers
Australian activist Deanna ‘Violet’ Coco was
handed 15 months in prison for being part of a
climate protest that blocked Sydney’s Harbour
Bridge. An appeal against her sentence is due to be
heard in March 2023. A group of Coco’s supporters
gathered in front of Parliament House, Canberra,
on 5 December 2022.
LEO BILD/ALAMY
So, what can be done to resist? First and
foremost, we must keep shining a light
on, and making a noise about, excessive
police powers and other abuses against
protesters. States may have increas-
ingly draconian powers, but whether or
not they use them can be influenced by
public opinion. In 2009 the Camp for
Climate Action, which took place that
year in London, was policed much more
lightly than previous years, following
public outrage over aggressive policing
at earlier demonstrations (including the
police killing of newspaper vendor Ian
Tomlinson). 3 Protesters have frequently
found creative ways to skirt repressive
laws and make their voices heard (as in
Turkey’s Gezi Park in 2013), or to expose
excessive or absurd restrictions by break-
ing them in large numbers. These kinds
of tactics can reduce the use of heavy-
handed state measures in the short term
and build support for protest laws to be
loosened in the future.
As the risk to protesters increases,
support and solidarity become ever more
important. Even if they can’t always be
involved themselves, citizens can speak up
in defence of the right to protest; support
campaign groups like CIVICUS, Liberty,
Amnesty or Human Rights Watch; offer
solidarity to those being tried; and write
letters to imprisoned activists.
The right to protest freely has always
been hard-won, and is never guaranteed.
But people around the world are continu-
ing to defend that right in the most pow-
erful way they can – by using it. O
1 ‘Global assessment: Protest rights’, CIVICUS,
protestrights2022.monitor.civicus.org 2 Débora
Leão and others, ‘Defenders of our planet…’,
CIVICUS, November 2021, nin.tl/defenders
3 Paul Lewis, ‘How Ian Tomlinson’s death at the
G20 protests changed policing’, the Guardian
25 November 2009, nin.tl/tomlinson
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
VIEW FROM most. Some have shut down the networks
when their power has been threatened, or
over election-related concerns. Facebook

AFRICA
Antisocial media
Legal action has been launched against
Facebook owners Meta in Nairobi,
Kenya. Petitioners in the case claim that
the company promoted posts that led
to ethnic violence and killings in Ethio-
pia, due to the way Facebook algorithms
recommend content.1 Over the past two
years thousands of civilians have died
in Ethiopia in various conflicts, the
most prominent being in the Tigray
region. The petitioners in the case want
to compel Meta to create a $1.6 billion
victims’ fund.
The case came at the end of 2022, a
relatively volatile year in the world of
social networks with Elon Musk’s take-
over of Twitter and the deteriorating
content moderation of the platform.
While the Meta case is the first in Africa,
it shows the demand for social media com-
panies to be accountable for online harm
and their impact on life offline. Social
media use has grown considerably across
the continent – around 12 per cent of
Africans were on Facebook in 2020, the
most popular platform after WhatsApp
and YouTube. Yet the networks are playing
catch up in response to safety needs.
Many governments in Africa have
often sought to ally themselves with com-
panies to restrict the rights of users with
freedom of expression, seen as a threat by
is still blocked in Uganda almost two
years after the violent elections of 2021.
Increased internet penetration has
allowed a growth in online presence for
marginalized social groups. But they
continue to struggle against social media
companies driven by profit, with com-
munity standards that don’t serve all
communities. For years women, queer
activists and ethnic and racial minorities
have been outspoken about the inaction.
Meanwhile, hateful pockets of internet
users continue to inflict harm in the
public squares that social networks have
come to be.
In May 2022, Twitter was a ground for
anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric when Senegalese
footballer Idrissa Gana Gueye refused
to wear a rainbow jersey during a match
in France. It seemed the hate had spilled
over to the streets when a video circu-
lated showing a group of people beating a
man in Dakar while hurling homophobic
abuse. Similarly, when Facebook group
‘Homme Choc’ – ‘shocking men’ in French
– was found to carry violent misogynist
content, including abuse of women with
disabilities, Meta was slow to investigate
the group’s activities. Senegalese activists
who outed the group were targeted with
gendered disinformation campaigns.
Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur
on the promotion and protection of the
right to freedom of opinion and expres-
sion, has implored states to stem online
violence. She notes that ‘people with
intersecting marginalized identities, such
as people of African descent, Indigenous
people, Dalits, migrants, LGBTQ+ people
and persons with disabilities face more
frequent and more concerted attacks tar-
geting their identities’, which limits their
freedom of expression online.2
It’s almost as if social media compa-
nies are beyond accountability. Without
alternatives, major platforms now feel
like a trap because minoritized people
have built communities within them,
yet these very spaces have never really
existed to serve them.
Digital spaces owned and managed by
private actors, but positioned as serving a
public good, are the core of the problem.
Will 2023 show a glimpse of alternative
pathways? The Meta case – if the court
grants the petitioners’ request – could set
a precedent for accountability. O
ROSEBELL KAGUMIRE IS A PAN-AFRICAN FEMINIST
WRITER AND ACTIVIST WITH EXPERTISE IN AFRICAN
WOMEN’S LIBERATION, RACIAL AND GENDER
EQUALITY, PEACE AND SECURITY.
1 Amnesty International, ‘Kenya: Meta sued...’,
14 December 2022, nin.tl/meta-kenya Internet World
Stats, Internet World Stats. 2 Irene Khan, ‘Report of the
Special Rapporteur…’, UN, 30 July 2021, nin.tl/un-report

MARCH-APRIL 2023 51
THE INTERVIEW
Ayakha Melithafa
The 19-year-old climate activist is making her voice heard across
South Africa and beyond. She speaks with Uyapo Majahana about
climate anxiety, life lessons and getting beyond tokenism.
How did it all begin? What inspired your
involvement in climate activism?
This journey began in 2017 when my
province, the Western Cape [in South
Africa], was experiencing a water crisis
caused by a drought. My mother was,
and still is, a small-scale farmer and our
family depended on her produce for our
food and livelihood. But the drought was
bad, the livestock started to suffer and the
crops withered. This affected us all – our
cows, sheep and goats became so skinny
and some even died. It was so painful to
see my mother, other small-scale farmers
and commercial farmers frustrated as
they tried to make the most out of an
impossible situation.
Things got worse and restrictions were
imposed on everyone. Each household
had to make do with 50 litres of water per
day. It was quite devastating to see chil-
dren, including some of my classmates,
unable to come to school because they
had skin rashes or diarrhoea after having
to use polluted water for bathing and
drinking.
52
All this made me angry and I began
to question why it was happening and
investigate what was causing the drought.
That is when I came to terms with climate
change and a spark was lit.
Can you describe your early involve-
ment in climate action?
When I first learnt about the deplor-
able state of our planet I became super
climate-anxious and depressed. I strug-
gled to get my motivation up. But then I
joined a climate school project, School 90
by 2030, and I immediately started to get
back on my feet because we were learning
not only about the climate change prob-
lems that were happening, but also about
the solutions.
I began to speak on radio stations and
got to be interviewed by newspapers.
I also interacted with my community
members and shared why I believe people
should care about climate change and get
involved in climate action. Before long I
was part of the African Climate Alliance,
which organized a climate protest in Cape
Town against climate injustices and inac-
tion here in South Africa. In 2019, I also
had the opportunity to join the Rights
of the Child petition, a lawsuit where the
children of the world took world leaders to
court for neglecting our human rights.
I strongly believe our world leaders
should take more pronounced climate
change action, otherwise it shows they
do not care about children. All of the
decisions that are being made right now
impact children now, and more so in the
future as we are the ones that will have to
live with them.
What kinds of activities are you cur-
rently involved in?
I am currently working on developing a
climate awareness programme that will
be rolled out in South African schools
– we will be launching the pilot in Cape
Town. This comes after a realization that
there are low rates of climate literacy
and consciousness in our schools. I am
also part of the Western Cape Educa-
tion Council, having been appointed by
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
REUTERS/ARND WIEGMANN THE INTERVIEW

‘Since our leaders are failing us, we really should

try to be active citizens and participate in these
spaces as much as we can, so we can hold them to
account, because no one is coming to save us’

MARCH-APRIL 2023 53
THE INTERVIEW
the Education Minister Debbie Schaefer
to be part of this commission to advise
on how they can better incorporate
climate change into the curriculum. I
am counting on young people to help me
strengthen the education system in this
province.
You are also part of the Presidential
Climate Commission (PCC). What is that
experience like?
It’s quite interesting that I joined the PCC
by calling President Cyril Ramaphosa out
during a meeting, and asking him why
he is not doing anything about climate
change. In response, he allowed me to be
part of this commission. At 19, I am cur-
rently the youngest commissioner. It has
its challenges but I have seen how beauti-
ful it is for young people to be involved
in these spaces because we too get to
have our voices heard. Initially, I strug-
gled to make sense of the complex terms
and technical policy language that was
used in the meetings, but I am glad we
54
were all open about it and we have com-
munication channels to help each other
understand, so we can all contribute
meaningfully. I like that we get to visit
some of the most affected communities
to research what we can do to make them
feel more comfortable about the just
energy transition process.
As a young woman, do you feel like you
are being taken seriously?
Sometimes I feel like I am being used
as a token. But I have seen my contribu-
tions being implemented – for example,
making community engagement meet-
ings more accessible to the youth by
having them at times when they are back
from school. I am also happy that they
are broadcast live on Facebook and on
local radio stations. Since our leaders
are failing us, we really should try to be
active citizens and participate in these
spaces as much as we can, so we can
hold them to account, because no one is
coming to save us.
Share your light
Explore spirituality
with a caring
community
How do you balance school work and
all the stress that comes with climate
activism?
Nature is my best friend, and my mum
really helps. She knows when I am getting
overwhelmed and she is able to say no for
me. She has taught me to decline invi-
tations to participate in activities that
would overwhelm me.
How can we ethically include children
in climate change activism when they
might not understand it or its structural
causes?
Children are very creative and innova-
tive, so we need to focus on making it
fun. For example, if you are teaching
them about how trees help the environ-
ment, it’s always best to go and teach
them outside. We also need to include
things that they love in order to conjure
up a winning formula. O
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Develop skills to respond
to global challenges

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hear from our students and alumni.

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• Build up an excellent professional network
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go.bath.ac.uk/humanitarian-dev-studies
MARCH-APRIL 2023 55
FEATURE

The denial syndrome

Faced with monumental change, we all tend to convince ourselves
that our lives will continue unscathed. In the first of our new series,
with picks from the New Internationalist archive, we go back to 1990
when Anuradha Vittachi explained why, in the case of climate change,
denial – that basic human trait – could bring about our downfall.

Back in 1990 climate change – or
global warming as we called it then
– barely got a mention in much of
the media. Yet the warnings about
its impact were already there. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) had just published its
first assessment report, warning that
emissions caused by human activity
were increasing the concentration of
greenhouse gases which would result
in a warming of the planet.
In his opening editor’s letter for our
1990 magazine on global warming,
Wayne Ellwood pointed to the impacts
of climate change already being felt,
including the knock-on effect of already
lighter winter snows in his home country,
Canada. The magazine was constructed
as a series of lessons in ‘how to turn
down the heat’ from saving trees to
boosting renewable energy. This piece
from Anuradha Vittachi came under
the teaching ‘Love your neighbour’,
alongside these words: ‘Attempts to
deal seriously with the problem will
require co-operation on a global scale.
Bridges must be built between nations
in the search for common solutions to
common problems.’
O
nce upon a time there was a frog
which was dropped into water so
hot that it leapt out, shocked – and
saved itself. Later it was dropped into
tepid water, which it found very pleasant.
Then the water began to warm up, but
only imperceptibly, so the frog remained
lulled and relaxed, becoming more and
more warm and sleepy... until it was too
late to escape, and it was boiled to death.
I was told this story three times in a
single day by a Norwegian activist, a US
politician and a Soviet scientist, at the
massive Global Forum conference in
Moscow earlier this year. Each of them
stressed their anxiety that human beings
were still swimming around relaxedly
instead of taking urgent action to save
the planet from the effects of global
warming. And it does seem that public
interest has been waning since the initial
shock of awareness in the summer of
1988. Yet unless we spur ourselves into
action soon, it may be too late to act at
all; we will drowse, like the frog, to a
dismal death.
Why are we so inert? At the Moscow
conference, denial was offered as the chief
explanation. Denial is the psychological
process by which a painful truth is pushed
out of an individual’s consciousness. We
use denial as a defence mechanism, to
protect ourselves from the force of a truth
we imagine will be too shattering for us
to cope with. When someone we love dies
suddenly, for example, for many months
we may keep expecting them to come
home as usual. We ‘deny’ their death,
because we can’t cope with the loss.
And that may be what is happening in
our response to global warming. Certain
high-consuming humans (like ourselves
in the West) have been putting huge
amounts of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere. And now the terrible con-
sequences of this behaviour are begin-
ning to show, we suspect the imminent
loss of our high-consumption way of life.
Rather than acknowledging that loss and
beginning to come to terms with it, we
choose to deny the reality of the green-
house effect.
Humans are chronically attached to
the past. We don’t like separation from
what’s familiar: it makes us feel deeply
insecure. It always has done, from the
moment of birth when we had to leave
the womb, or the time of weaning when
we had to leave the breast. Courage and
psychological strength are needed to
face an unknown future – especially
when the future seems to be governed

56 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 From the archive

It isn’t long ago that

Ronald Reagan was
saying: ‘A tree is a tree.
How many more do
you want to look at?
If you’ve seen one,
you’ve seen them all’

by forces beyond our control. But also, affair. She may stop cleaning, call a lawyer, just one small, integral part – and a rather
WORLD DAY/SHUTTERSTOCK

we don’t want to change our pattern of
living because we high-consumers have
been having a pretty good time. We like
our ‘modern’ high-tech lifestyles, full of
gadgets and glitter.
This is where denial comes into its own
as a way out. It’s a lot easier than thinking
up a series of individual excuses – just
deny the whole problem exists. Perhaps
it won’t happen, this greenhouse effect.
There isn’t any really hard evidence yet,
is there? (‘The water’s just pleasantly
warm,’ said the frog, dreamily.)
Some scientists and politicians are
experts in denial. A few centuries ago,
they knew the earth was flat. In the 1970s
they knew that chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) were harmless. And now some sci-
entists know greenhouse warming is not
a problem. Kenneth Watt, professor of
environmental studies at the University
of California, calls the greenhouse effect
‘the laugh of the century’. Is Professor
Watt right? Or is he denying a truth he
finds uncomfortable?
But let’s be charitable to those who
deny. Denial isn’t always bad. A woman
who cleans the house all day to make it
inviting for her devoted husband may one
day discover a letter revealing a rapturous
throw her husband out and get a job – or
she may go on polishing the furniture
with redoubled vigour telling herself she
misread the letter. But the period of denial
may be an important shock absorber:
while superficially she denies and pol-
ishes, she may be gathering strength to
make her break and go back out into the
world. Perhaps we too, as a society, are
going through a period of shocked denial
while we adjust. After all, the psychologi-
cal changes we are being asked to make
are sudden and profound.
We are being asked, for example, to
dethrone the god of growth after centu-
ries of apparent industrial success. We are
being asked to believe that the Cold War
is over and that national sovereignty is no
longer the highest good, despite centuries
of personal sacrifice in nationalistic wars;
to hold ‘earth patriotism’ as more valuable
than nationalism; to see ‘the enemy’ not
as Soviets (or Americans) out there but to
reconstruct it mentally as our own inner
fear and greed.
And we are being asked to see nature
not as a form of life secondary to humans,
submitting willingly to our domination
and exploitation, but as a complex, won-
drous, universal system, of which we are
disreputable part at that. These are just a
few of the fundamental changes of per-
ception being thrown at us, and during a
very short space of time. After all, it isn’t
long ago that Ronald Reagan was saying:
‘A tree is a tree. How many more do you
want to look at? If you’ve seen one, you’ve
seen them all.’
No wonder we are finding it so hard
to adjust. But my sympathy for us shell-
shocked consumers starts to fade when
one particularly nasty form of denial
rears its ugly head, and that’s the dis-
placement of our responsibility for the
damage we’ve caused onto those who
are not in a position to argue back.
Ronald Reagan, for example, appar-
ently claimed that ‘trees cause pollution’.
How’s that for blaming the victim? For-
tunately, not many people took Mr Rea-
gan’s views seriously. Far more worrying
is the veiled victim-blaming indulged
in by influential environmental experts
who ought to know better. They seem
to be reactivating the 1960s population-
bomb bogey, blaming future green-
house disasters on consumption caused
by population growth among the poor,
instead of consumerism-led consump-
tion in the West.

MARCH-APRIL 2023 57
FEATURE

But an average Briton uses 50 times
as much electricity as an average Indian.
So even if the population in poor coun-
tries doubled to eight billion people by
the year 2030 and the rich countries’
population remained static at one billion
people, the rich would still be doing far
more environmental damage through
consumption than the poor.
And even if, by some political and
economic miracle, every one of the poor
eight billion people were allowed to earn
and consume twice as much as they do
now, the small numbers of the rich would
still be consuming the lion’s share. Added
to this is the fact that several Western
European countries are actively encour-
aging population growth (at least of white
babies, though not of Black) in their own
high-consuming nations. Clearly, it is not
consumption per se that worries the West
but who gets to go on doing it.
A little serious energy-saving by
the rich would make far more differ-
ence than any heartbreaking, sublimi-
nally racist manipulation of the poor.
But this kind of practical information is
not always welcomed by First Worlders
(whichever country they were born
in: being a member of the First World
depends on your state of mind and your
bank balance, not on geography). This
is because it forces them into changing
their own ways of behaving.
When, for example, an Indian delegate
at the Moscow conference pointed out
that some of the panellists’ sentimental
whimsies (like: ‘We should see the birds
and animals as delegates here’) might
not be as useful as vegetarianism, he was
clearly regarded as a crank rather than
as a man with a simple, practical sugges-
tion. He was urged from the platform to
let individual freedom rule: people should
have the right to change their diets only
when and if they wanted to. Fine. Just as
mothers and fathers should have their
individual freedom to have children when
they choose – and not according to the
panellists’ preferred population figures.
To sum up, there are two main threats
at present to the stability of the global
temperature: massive damage caused by
the rich world’s consumption levels, and
some damage caused by the poor. Both of
these threats could be mitigated straight-
forwardly by a willingness in rich con-
sumers to stop denying or displacing the
problem. The outcome would be not only
a safer planet but also a cleaner, greener,
fairer life for everyone, rich and poor
alike. O
ANURADHA VITTACHI IS A FORMER NEW
INTERNATIONALIST EDITOR AND AUTHOR OF EARTH
CONFERENCE ONE, ON GLOBAL SURVIVAL, AND
STOLEN CHILDHOOD, ON THE RIGHTS OF FUTURE
GENERATIONS. SHE IS THE FOUNDER OF ONECLIMATE
AND CO-FOUNDER OF ONEWORLD ONLINE.
This piece was originally published in NI 206:
‘Global warming: how to turn down the heat’.
Subscribe at newint.org for access to our full digital
archive.

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58 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
VIEW FROM
BRAZIL
Champions
Lula’s return to power is not the only
change in Brazilian politics for 2023.
For the first time we will have two trans
women in parliament. This is remark-
able because we are the country that,
according to the Trans Murder Monitor-
ing platform, killed the most trans people
between 2008 and 2022.
The new electees are activist Erika
Hilton of the Socialism and Freedom
Party, who was already a city councillor
in São Paulo and chaired the first par-
liamentary investigation committee on
transphobia there. And literature teacher
Duda Salabert of the Democratic Labour
Party, who was previously elected as a
city councillor in Belo Horizonte with the
highest ever recorded number of votes.
Reflecting on their victory, Hilton
says: ‘I think it’s very important that the
world’s most lethal country for transgen-
der people and transvestites – where
they are killed in the most cowardly and
cruel ways – elected representatives who
can expose this reality and transform
people’s mentality based on our actions,
and through public policies.’
MARCH-APRIL 2023
For her, the image and presence of
both congresswomen will also represent
a break in the silence and anonymity
imposed on LGBTQI+ bodies in Congress,
an institution riddled with machismo.
Salabert points out how transgender
people are denied employment options
beyond sex work and have abysmal access
to education. ‘It’s because we have never
been on the agendas of the Right, the Left
or the Centre. Having transgender people
in Congress is something new, and it can
give visibility to a harsh reality that has
been historically erased,’ she says.
She wants to develop four major policy
areas to bring about change: improving
employment options so that transgen-
der and transvestite people do not have In February 2019, the Supreme Court
to resort to prostitution; a housing pro- found that discrimination based on
gramme, as many trans people are sexual orientation and gender identity
thrown out of the family home, often at was a crime. Acts of hate can be punished
a young age; a public safety programme; with up to five years in prison.
and in-depth classroom discussion of Hilton is all for official action on
gender to raise awareness and create LGBTphobia, with more severe pun-
respect for diversity. ishment, but feels that is not enough.
‘But, before all that, it is worth remem- ‘We must transform society’s views
bering that we, transvestites and trans- and include transgender and transves-
sexuals, have not yet achieved the status tite people, so that everyone can live in
of humanity,’ she adds. ‘If you ask what harmony,’ she says. ‘Then violence will be
the main agenda of the transgender fought at its deepest roots.
movement in Brazil is today, they’ll tell ‘This is a medium- and long-term
you that it’s respect for people’s names, process. In the short term, if Congress
identities, access to the toilets.’ acknowledges that hatred against trans
Erika Hilton argues that there is a need people is deeply rooted in Brazil, we’ll
for safe spaces in order to protect lives, have taken a first big step.’ O
including within police stations, with LEONARDO SAKAMOTO IS A POLITICAL SCIENTIST
AND JOURNALIST BASED IN SÃO PAULO. HE IS
staff trained to listen sympathetically to
A CAMPAIGNER WITH THE INVESTIGATIVE NGO
trans people. REPÓRTER BRASIL, WHICH HE ESTABLISHED IN 2001.
59
FEATURE

Control
alt
delete
In India, a Hindu supremacist government is
intent on erasing the country’s Islamic history.
Tarushi Aswani reports.

ANDY K

60 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

‘T
hey want to rub out every detail
of Islamic history from India,’
says Saleem Ansar, a resident of
Gorakhpur in northern India’s Uttar
Pradesh (UP) state. He’s shaking his head
at the decision a local governing body
took in September 2022 to change the
‘Muslim-sounding names’ of a dozen
locations in his home town.
A month later, another such body in
UP’s Varanasi announced similar name
changes for 10 locations in the city. For
example, Nawabganj, reminiscent of
governors in the Mughal era (‘nawabs’),
was now to be called Durgakund, after a
Hindu goddess.
Previously, in May 2022, a leader from
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu
nationalist  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
had filed a petition to the Supreme Court
seeking the creation of a fact-finding com-
mittee to ‘study the real history’ of the Taj
Mahal, a 17th-century mausoleum built
by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. In
his petition, Rajneesh
Singh, a dentist by pro-
fession and head of the
BJP’s media relations in
Ayodhya, asserted that
though it is said that the
The repeated exercise to rename
emperor built Agra’s
world-famous Taj Mahal,
cities and reclaim monuments
there is no ‘scientific evi-
dence’ to prove this. In
with visible Islamic traces is
October, the Supreme
Court trashed the peti-
aimed squarely at stoking the
tion, deriding it as ‘pub-
licity interest litigation’.
passions of the Hindu majority
Singh, who questions
the validity of the Taj
Mahal’s existence as an
Islamic mausoleum, feels that ‘the truth
should come out’. Speaking to New Inter-
nationalist, he said: ‘The kind of history
being taught in India is a “half-truth”’.
On being asked why he chose to ques-
tion the monument’s origins, he said:
‘Ayodhya, Kashi, Mathura and Agra are
all viewed as religious sites in Hindu
scriptures. Yet Agra is in history because
of the Taj Mahal; This perception of Agra
as an essential peg in Mughal history [has]
fractured the original history of India.’
MARCH-APRIL 2023
Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, a professor
at Aligarh Muslim University, explains:
‘Unfortunately, in India, history is being
“replaced” by myths, by personal whims
and fancies. Hindutva forces are tailor-
ing the past in accordance with their
agendas, projecting concepts which were
never there in the past.’ He described the
Taj Mahal as one of the world’s ‘most well
documented structures’.
Singh’s effort to ‘reclaim’ a Mughal
monument and thereby Hinduize its
existence does not exist in isolation. In
2018, BJP officials changed the name of
Allahabad in UP to Prayagraj – ‘prayag’
refers to the confluence of the rivers
Ganges and Yamuna in the city, a site of
pilgrimage for Hindus. The name Alla-
habad, still widely in use by locals, goes
back to the 16th century, when it was
bestowed on the area by a Muslim ruler,
the Mughal Emperor Akbar.
As Modi completes eight years as
prime minister, Hindu nationalist poli-
ticians from the BJP, bolstered by the
far-right paramilitary volunteer organ-
ization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS) – as well as other extremist
Hindu organizations that share a vision
of India as a Hindu nation – have  been
on a renaming spree. Names of Indian
towns and cities, streets and train sta-
tions, have changed overnight with
Muslim ones culled and replaced by
identifiably Hindu ones. Uttar Pradesh
is particularly hardcore in this respect,
Hinduization in India
with Yogi Adityanath (born Ajay Singh
Bisht), a Hindu supremacist monk and
leader of a monastery, at its helm as chief
minister.
Tectonic shifts
This agenda of erasing – or attempting
to erase – Muslim identity in order to
supposedly appease the Hindu major-
ity (nearly 80 per cent of the country’s
population) is nothing new. We only
need to look back to the shocking 1992
demolition of the 16th century Babri
Masjid (mosque) in Ayodhya, when
radical Hindu foot-soldiers, inflamed by
the fiery rhetoric of BJP hate-stirrers and
other hardliners, stormed the historic
edifice and destroyed it stone by stone.
In 2019, after 27 years, India’s Supreme
Court awarded the site of the demol-
ished mosque to the Hindu deity Ram as
the symbolic owner of the land.
All of the 32 people accused of crimi-
nal conspiracy over the mosque’s demo-
lition were acquitted in
2020, including several
BJP leaders. With regard
to the verdict, Kamaal
Farooqui, a member of
the All-India Muslim
Personal Law Board,
says that Muslims were
deeply
‘Muslim
dissatisfied.
contribution
to Indian culture is tre-
mendous, but today,
religion is being politi-
cized to extent of razing
down Islamic heritage,’
he says. Today the con-
struction of a mammoth
temple dedicated to Ram is in full swing
on the site where the Babri Masjid was
demolished.
During 2019 there were various
tectonic shifts where secularism was
further undermined by the BJP gov-
ernment, which was then beginning
its second tenure. Several controver-
sial laws were introduced which, in one
way or another, targeted the existence
of Muslims. Be it to deny citizenship to
undocumented Indian Muslims, or to
61
FEATURE
In November 2022, BJP Member
of Parliament Pratap Simha
got so incensed by the mosque-
like domed shapes of a roadside
bus stand that he threatened to
bulldoze it
dismantle the special status of Jammu
& Kashmir (where Muslims make up the
majority), or the controversial citizen-
ship register, the Hinduization of India
– a pet project of the BJP – has gained
more support from the electorate over
the years. And in this project, reclaim-
ing markers of Muslim history as Hindu
plays a key role.
In August 2021, a petition filed by five
Hindu devotees sought rights to pray
daily before Hindu idols on the outer
walls of Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi,
as they alleged that a  shivling  (a phallic
symbol representing the Hindu deity
Shiva) had been found in the mosque
complex. Their argument was that the
mosque stands on the ruins of the 16th
century Kashi-Vishwanath temple and
that this temple was partially destroyed
in 1669 on the orders of Aurangzeb, the
sixth Mughal emperor.
In September 2022, Akhil Bharat
Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM), a Hindu
organization, filed a petition before a
local court in Mathura, UP, seeking the
removal of the Meena Masjid mosque.
It claimed the mosque sat on a piece of
land believed to be the birthplace of
the Hindu deity Krishna. In November
2022, members of Bajrang Dal, a radical
Hindu group notorious for its violence,
filed a petition in Karnataka, South India,
claiming to be in possession of proof that
the famous 17th century Jamia Masjid in
Delhi (nearly 2,000 kilometres away) was
once a Hindu temple.
And on it goes. This repeated exer-
cise of renaming cities and reclaiming
monuments with visible Islamic traces
is aimed squarely at stoking the passions
of the Hindu majority. These claims and
62
petitions run alongside a rise in hate
crimes, with radical Hindu groups being
the main instigators. A 2022 report from
sociocultural organization Act Now for
Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD)
revealed that from 2014 – the year Modi
came to power – until 2022, 878 cases of
hate speech and hate crime occurred. Out
of these, 646 incidents targeted Muslims.1
Engineering division
Zafarul-Islam Khan, former Chair of the
Delhi Minorities Commission, recalls
that after India gained independence
from the British some place names were
renamed to correct awkward spellings
based on the colonizers’ pronuncia-
tion – thus Cawnpore became Kanpur,
the name Indians had always called it.
However, as Khan puts it: ‘The recent
campaign to change names of cities,
towns, villages, historical places and
roads is an attempt to rewrite Indian
history and undermine the historical
role of the Muslim community in the
building and development of India.’ That
attempt has also extended into school
history books under the BJP’s rule, with
scholars decrying the political slant
being given to India’s Islamic history for
the consumption of young minds.
‘Today’s India is not the democracy
that it needs to be,’ says Zahid Hashmi,
a representative of AIMIM (All India
Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen), a politi-
cal party dedicated to protecting the
rights of Muslims, other minorities and
underprivileged communities. ‘Muslims
are being banned from offering namaz
[prayers] in public spaces, Muslim women
are being harassed for wearing hijab, and
those Muslims who dare to question the
state are instantly jailed.’ He notes too
that the BJP is even controlling what
Muslims can sell and eat.
In November 2022, BJP Member of
Parliament from Karnataka, Pratap
Simha got so incensed by the mosque-
like domed shapes of a roadside bus stand
that he threatened to bulldoze it. A few
days later, the National Highways Author-
ity of India issued a notice to the local
administration ordering its demolition.
Reflecting on this, Apoorvanand, a politi-
cal commentator and professor of Hindi
at the University of Delhi, says: ‘What
they are actually trying to prove is, that
everything on the geographical surface
of India was always Hindu, but Muslims
distorted this. So, they claim that they’re
correcting this distortion.’
Mukhtar Alam, a Muslim resident
of Varanasi, thinks that the motivation
behind the renaming spree is to build
confidence among Hindu voters. ‘They
[the BJP] want Hindus to feel that giving
every corner a Hindu name is going to
turn history in their favour. They want
Hindus to feel that by crushing Muslims,
they will become stronger.’
This process of engineering division is
a tactic the BJP deploys to win elections,
by constantly telling majority Hindus
that Muslims are a threat. It breeds fear
and suspicion among communities, and
has often reaped violence. Critics point
out that it is no different to the ‘divide
and rule’ strategy employed by the
British colonizers.
Apoorvanand calls the concerted
effort to delete India’s Islamic history
a ‘cultural genocide’ against Muslims.
‘The plan is to banish Muslim-ness from
Indian-ness,’ he says. ‘They want to get
rid of Muslim-ness from all spheres.’ O
TARUSHI ASWANI IS AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST
BASED IN INDIA. SHE REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS,
GOVERNANCE, RELIGION AND POLITICS AND WRITES
FOR FOREIGN POLICY, AL JAZEERA, NIKKEI ASIA,
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR AND THE WIRE,
AMONG OTHERS. SHE TWEETS @TARUSHI_ASWANI
1 Jayant Pankaj and Deshdeep Dhankhar, ‘From
speech to crime to genocide…’, The Wire, 22 April
2022, nin.tl/hate-travels
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
SOUTHERN
EXPOSURE Highlighting the work of artists and
photographers from the Majority World

Between the Peruvian Highlands and the Amazon, in the valley of Esquilaya, Puno, over 1,700 metres above sea
level, photographer David Arias says one of the country’s best organic coffees is grown. His shot shows several
varieties of coffee fruit – red caturra, yellow caturra, typica, bourbon and catimor. ‘In the subjectivity of an image
is the essence that allows us to dream and tell stories,’ he says of the photo. Arias says his photographic work
explores the construction of stories under the principle of duality and reciprocation – exchange and giving back –
practiced in the Peruvian Andes.
Night and day, life and death; pairs in oppositions are striking in the symbolic traditions of Andean arts and
perhaps that’s why Arias’s art sticks to black and white.

MARCH-APRIL 2023 63
THE LONG READ
The
science
of
women
Around the world, people
are chanting ‘Women, Life,
Freedom’ in solidarity
with the women’s uprising
in Iran – dubbing it the
‘first feminist revolution
in the world’. Not so,
argues Rahila Gupta, as
she examines its precursor:
a Kurdish feminist
revolution in Rojava.
64
T
he killing of Jina Mahsa Amini,
a Kurdish Iranian woman who
allowed a wisp of hair to escape
the confines of her hijab, by the moral-
ity police on 16 September 2022, has set
the streets of Iran on fire with an inten-
sity that threatens to bring down the
Islamic regime.
Feminists around the world have been
staging solidarity protests and mass
hair-cutting rituals. I too chopped off a
lock of my hair at London’s Piccadilly
Circus in an event organized by Maryam
Namazie, an Iranian activist, from One
Law for All campaign.1
Media interest has been at an all-time
high. Western support for the uprisings
in Iran has been described by Jacobin
magazine as ‘a kind of “intersectional
imperialism” that seeks to justify mili-
tary and diplomatic escalation with
Iran in the name of female emancipa-
tion from Islamic “barbarism”’. 2 Iranian
activists, though, argue that not enough
has been done to isolate the government
of Iran.
In the high-pitched enthusiasm for
the Iranian uprising, some vital truths
are being lost. In an interview in The
Observer, Iranian writer Shiva Akhavan
Rad, refers to the slogan Zan, Zindagi,
Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) without
mentioning that this was in fact adapted
from the original Jin, Jiyan, Azadi: a
Kurdish slogan protesting the death of a
Kurdish woman, Jina Amini. 3
This is not an act of sectarian point-
scoring, but an acknowledgement of
the fact that the Kurds are a historically
oppressed minority in Iran and across
the border in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, and
their struggles must not continue to be
invisibilized.
That this cause has been embraced by
Iranians strengthens the opposition to
the country’s oppressive government. But
it is the Kurdish regions of Iran, known as
Rojhelat in Kurdish, that have borne the
brunt of regime brutality.
This brings me to the second trope:
that the protest movement in Iran is
‘the first feminist revolution in the
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
world’. Actually, no. The first feminist
revolution in the world is in progress in
Rojava, northeast Syria, led by Kurdish
women (and men) since 2012. It is here
that the slogan, Jin, Jiyan, Azadi was first
popularized.4
The Rojava women’s revolution has
hardly been covered in the mainstream
media, perhaps in deference to Turkey, a
NATO ally, which sees the movement for
Kurdish self-determination as ‘terrorism’
– and is bombing Rojava at the time of
writing. In the meantime, a protest move-
ment with the potential to bring down
the Islamic regime of Iran gets unprec-
edented coverage: because Iran is an
implacable enemy of the West.
Jin, Jiyan, Azadi
A slogan that was little known before
the death of Jina Amini, and was enthu-
siastically chanted in Kurdish politi-
cal gatherings, now reverberates in
meeting halls and demonstrations across
the world. An opportunity to discuss
its origins is an opportunity to raise
MARCH-APRIL 2023
awareness of Rojava and so the univer-
sal embrace of this slogan is a positive
development.
Yet Kurdish women warn of the danger
of slogans becoming empty words. As
Dilar Dirik, a Kurdish academic and
activist, noted at a conference organized
by Kurdish women in Berlin in Novem-
ber 2022: ‘Radical and revolutionary
slogans and symbols increasingly become
commodified, mass-produced, emptied
of their meaning, and sold back in plastic
to the same people that gave their lives
creating these values.’
Jin, Jiyan, Azadi was first chanted on
8 March 2006 at International Women’s
Day demonstrations by Kurdish women
in cities across Turkey. 5 Within the
Kurdish freedom movement, the words
are attributed to Abdullah Öcalan, the
jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) who has been languishing in
solitary confinement in a Turkish prison
since 1999. He used them in 1993, not as
a slogan, but as a pithy evocation of the
goals of the movement.
Jin is the Kurdish word for woman
and the root of Jineolojî (or ‘the science of
women’) proposed by Öcalan. His revolu-
tionary history began with Marxism-Len-
inism and the demand for an independent
nation-state of Kurdistan in 1978, when he
set up the PKK in Turkey. However, Öca-
lan’s thinking evolved in prison. Influenced
partly by Murray Bookchin’s ideas on
radical municipalism, Öcalan renounced
the state as an inherently patriarchal,
violent and anti-democratic institution, in
favour of a model of participatory grass-
roots self-administration which he called
‘democratic confederalism’.
Along with anti-statism, Öcalan came
to believe that women are the vanguard
of the revolution. Öcalan’s reading list
in prison included the feminist works
of Judith Butler and Maria Mies which,
alongside his lengthy discussions with
Kurdish feminist revolutionaries like
Sakine Cansiz, are credited with influ-
encing his feminist beliefs.
Without wanting to diminish the con-
tribution to the feminist cause of Öcalan
65
THE LONG READ

and his Kurdish compatriots, it is impor-
tant to reflect on whether Öcalan’s evo-
lution would have been possible without
the theoretical outpourings and extensive
activism of second-wave feminism. It is a
pleasing cross-fertilisation of ideas. The
any feminist, and his position is without
precedent among male leaders of libera-
tion struggles.
‘Woman’s biological difference is used
as justification for her enslavement,’ he
writes. ‘All the work she does is taken for
Above: The People’s Protection Units (YPG)
and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) are
predominantly-Kurdish armed militias which
have played a key role in fighting Islamic State in
the Syrian civil war.
KURDISHSTRUGGLE/FLICKR/CREATIVE COMMONS

internationalist outlook of Kurdish femi-
nists is reflected in their knowledge of a
range of Western thinkers, a compliment
that is not returned – typical of Western
orientalism which rarely grapples with
ideas and theories that emerge in the
granted and called unworthy “woman’s
work”. Her presence in the public sphere
is claimed to be prohibited by religion,
morally shameful; progressively, she
is secluded from all important social
activities… Thus, the idea of a “weak sex”
Previous page: The tagline of Iran’s recent pro-
women’s movement is translated from a Kurdish
slogan which neatly captures the ideology of the
region’s feminist politics. Here a mural displays
the Kurdish original.
HERZI PINKI/CREATIVE COMMONS

Global South. becomes a shared belief. In fact, society

For Öcalan, ‘Women’s freedom is
more precious than the freedom of the
homeland’. He believes that after the
workers’ revolutions and national libera-
tion struggles of the 19th and 20th cen-
turies, the 21st century is that of women’s
revolution.6 The pre-eminence of women,
the emphasis on our freedom as a pre-
condition for the freedom of the whole of
humanity, is an idea that drives the revo-
lution in Rojava and animates the Kurdish
movement for self-determination.
This latter-day Nelson Mandela’s anal-
ysis of patriarchy stands equal to that of
treats woman not merely as a biologically
separate sex but almost as a separate race,
nation or class – the most oppressed race,
nation or class: no race, class or nation is
subjected to such systematic slavery as
housewifisation.’6
Öcalan found the term feminism lim-
iting: it focussed on women’s oppression
by men, thus failing to capture all the
contributions made by women to history,
society and life.7
‘It suggests the meaning that she is
merely the oppressed woman of the dom-
inant man. Yet women’s reality is more

66 NEW INTERNATIONALIST

Not only were the women fighting
for Kurdish self-determination in the
armed struggle in the mountains,
they were also resisting the
patriarchal attitudes of their male
comrades in the guerrilla movement
comprehensive than that and includes
other meanings beyond gender with far-
reaching economic, social, and political
dimensions.’
In meetings with Kurdish political
activists in prison in 2014, he elaborated:
‘Feminism needs to be a more radical
movement against the system and to
purify itself from the effects of liberal-
ism. Jineolojî will contribute to this.’ He
elevated it to the status of a science, a
subject worthy of study like any other,
such as sociology or pedagogy, an ‘ology’.
The only reason, he argued, that this
science did not exist was because the pro-
duction of knowledge has been skewed by
male dominance.
Öcalan’s view of feminism as the
rebellion of the oldest colony turbo-
charges Jineolojî as an instrument for
decolonizing the curriculum from a
gender perspective, not a perspective
common in Britain where decolonization
is mainly about race.
While Öcalan is to be credited with
formulating the original principles of
Jineolojî, it is Kurdish women who have
continued to develop and add nuance
to it, based in part on practical knowl-
edge gained from their activism and the
experience of establishing the women’s
revolution in Rojava in 2012. Discus-
sions began among the women guerril-
las in the mountains of Kurdistan before
spreading through the rest of society.
There are Jineolojî committees across
the four parts of Kurdistan, Europe and
Russia. There have also been several
international conferences to develop
their theories. Dilar Dirik devoted only a
few pages to Jineolojî in her recent book
on the Kurdish Women’s Movement
MARCH-APRIL 2023
because it is a ‘constantly evolving
process and defining it too much can be
limiting to its evolution’. 8
Self-determination and armed
struggle
As early as the third congress of the PKK
in 1986, it was announced that an auton-
omous women’s organization would be
set up. 9 In 1987, the Kurdistan Patriotic
Women Union (YJWK) was founded.
This group hosted the movement’s first
theoretical discussions on patriarchal
exploitation, women’s liberation and
the social construction of women and
their role in the family. These ideas were
contextualised by Öcalan in his book,
Woman and the Family Issue in Kurdistan
(not available in English).
The founding of the women’s armed
wing in 1993, in an attempt at autono-
mous organization in all areas of political
activity, generated new understandings
and knowledge. Not only were the women
fighting for Kurdish self-determination
in the armed struggle in the mountains,
they were also resisting the patriarchal
attitudes of their male comrades in the
guerrilla movement. This made them
understand the importance of fighting
for women’s liberation alongside class
and national liberation struggles.
Given the emphasis that Öcalan placed
on women’s freedom, this was not a matter
to be postponed until after the solution of
the Kurdish question. This was a significant
lesson taken from previous national libera-
tion struggles against colonial powers, par-
ticularly in Asia and Africa, where women
were asked to postpone their own struggles
until after independence was won. Women
began organizing in the cities as well,
Rojava’s feminist revolution
where they came to understand the patri-
archal structures of capitalist modernity.
‘The theory of “Eternal Divorce”, aiming
to make the issue of freedom visible for
both woman and man, became an impor-
tant step to enable both genders to become
aware of their own reality,’ as the booklet
on Jineolojî explains. Öcalan’s theory on
‘Killing the Dominant Male’ – dealing with
toxic masculinity – is based on women’s
struggles to free themselves from the
oppression of men.
The first women’s party (PJKK) was
formed in March 1999, soon after Öcalan’s
arrest, to address his regret over having not
formed one thus far. The party dropped
the reference to Kurdistan in the following
year and renamed themselves PJA (Free
Women’s Party), to signal that all women
of all nationalities and backgrounds were
welcome to join, an inclusiveness which
transcends the narrow nationalisms based
on ethnic identity. The dynamism of the
movement is reflected in the number of
different organizations that have been set
up in the last 20 years, with a number of
name changes to reflect nuances of politi-
cal positions. However, it is a veritable
alphabet soup to be decoded only by the
most fervent scholars of the movement.
Central to the project of Jineolojî is
the attempt to achieve a transformation
in the social sciences, which claim to be
a systematized production of knowledge
of lived reality, an objective, rational,
scientific study of human behaviour and
social relations. ‘Jineolojî is a science
born out of objections to conventional
science,’ says the booklet. It enumer-
ates the areas in which women played a
central role but have slipped below the
horizon of history, insisting that ‘women
are not the sediment of society, but are
the core’. Its function is to provide the
ideological foundations for a system that
is centred on women and engages with
nine subject areas: history, ethics and
aesthetics, demography, health, educa-
tion, self-defence, economy, politics, and
ecology.
Importantly, Jineolojî is a template for
action, a solutions-based approach which
posits the establishment of democratic
confederalism, with women at the centre,
as the only way to fight capitalist and
patriarchal oppression.
Positivism in the dock
Positivism is given a hard time by Jine-
olojî. Western reliance on evidence-based,
objective truths and scientific principles,
67
THE LONG READ
on what is provable, and which denies the
relevance of other forms of learning and
traditional wisdoms, is critiqued for its
short-sightedness. Jineolojî examines how
science, apparently so emotion-free and
rational, has become corrupted by power,
racism and sexism.
While acknowledging the negative
patriarchal values embedded in subjects
like mythology, religion and philosophy,
Jineolojî believes there are truths con-
tained in them which should not have
been cast aside by positivism as it devel-
oped in 17th century Europe. Around the
same time, women’s traditional wisdom
as healers was seen as a threat to society
and women’s behaviour was disciplined
by the mass burning of ‘witches’, a
history that is now reclaimed and recast
by writers like Silvia Federici in Caliban
and the Witch as part of the journey from
feudalism to capitalism.10
Jineolojî questions the great claims
made for the Enlightenment, critiquing
the principles of positivism by which it
was shaped. It questions the fragmenta-
tion of social sciences and the value of
specialisms like economics, sociology,
history and philosophy, when knowledge
should be whole and indivisible.
The ‘harsh materialism’ of positivism
is seen as more regressive than metaphys-
ics and religion. Yet in Öcalan’s ‘three
ruptures’ theory, the role that religion
plays in shoring up patriarchy comes in
for a thoroughgoing critique. In his pam-
phlet on women’s revolution,  Liberating
Life, Öcalan advances his ‘three sexual
ruptures’ theory of women’s enslave-
ment and eventual liberation. The first
rupture, or turning point, was the rise of
patriarchy when Neolithic times ended
and ‘statist civilization’ arose; the second
sexual rupture was the intensification of
patriarchy through religious ideology.
As Öcalan says: ‘Treating women as infe-
rior now became the sacred command
of god’. The third rupture is yet to come,
the end of patriarchy or as Öcalan puts
it ‘killing the dominant male’, which is
about reshaping masculinity so that it
no longer defines itself in relation to its
power over women.
Claims to exceptionalism
The booklet on Jineolojî hopes to clarify
how ‘Jineolojî’s approach differs from the
other currents of thought’. This is where
the trouble begins – it lays down a gaunt-
let to feminists to respond to, with exam-
ples of feminist theorizing that cover
68
the same ground as Jineolojî. Many of
us, who are allies of the movement, have
been exercised by this claim, particularly
as there are so many strands of femi-
nism in the West that all the theoretical
approaches in Jineolojî have already been
articulated by women at some point. In
making its claim to exceptionalism, Jine-
‘We cannot just
olojî does appear to homogenize Western
feminism as mainly liberal without rec-
make revolution
ognizing the more radical strands. Dilar
Dirik critiques liberal feminism’s indi-
happen by changing
vidualistic and legalistic approach to
change as ‘forms of ideological assimila-
the system and then
tion that pacify movements rather than
transform the system’. This criticism is
expecting that the
also articulated by women who subscribe
to radical, socialist or Marxist ideologies.
system will change
But, as Kurdish feminists rightly point
out, this plethora of perspectives has
the people within
driven a fragmentation of transnational
feminism, while Jineolojî has been able
it. We see from
to coalesce elements of these various
thought systems into a single framework
history that this is
behind which Kurdish women have
united. Their anti-state position, for
not enough’
example, has brought many anarchists
flocking to the cause. Others have been
attracted to the equal emphasis placed
on changing the system and the self,
each standing in a symbiotic relationship
to the other, and the theory of xwebûn,
or being and becoming yourself – unlike
classical Marxism which proposed that
the individual was shaped by class rela-
tions and that once the system changed
it would shape human character in a
more progressive mould. The booklet
on Revolutionary Education argues: ‘We
cannot just make revolution happen by
changing the system and then expecting
that the system will change the people
within it. We see from history that this
is not enough.’11
The ‘freedom’ part of the Jin, Jiyan,
Azadi slogan is also a reference to chang-
ing mentality in both men and women.
‘Transforming the man is essential to a
free life,’ says Öcalan. Dilar Dirik tells
us that the women’s liberation ideology
is not a framework reserved for women.
It is also taught to male cadres, whose
militancy is assessed by their approach to
women’s liberation and by their engage-
ment with ‘men’s freedom problem’.
In an email, the Academy of Jin-
eolojî explained that one of their main
research topics currently is the analysis
of ‘co-life’ (hevjiyana azad) and dominant
masculinity. How to build the potential
for freedom instead of the potential for
NEW INTERNATIONALIST

A society can never
be free without
women’s liberation
ABDULLAH ÖCALAN
Abdullah Öcalan co-founded the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party in 1978 and is the leading
political theorist of the Kurdish struggle. He has
been held in Turkey’s İmralı prison since 1999,
initially facing a death sentence which has since
been commuted to life imprisonment.
HALIL UYSAL/CREATIVE COMMONS
MARCH-APRIL 2023
slavery in all, including sexual relation-
ships between women and men. As Havin
Guneser, translator of Öcalan’s works into
English, points out in her book, The Art of
Freedom: ‘What we are seeing is that the
relationship between men and women is
deemed to be a private domain, but it is,
in fact, the first and foremost locus of the
colonization process.’12
While Western feminists have ana-
lyzed toxic masculinity, the work of
changing men and their patriarchal
mentality is more often seen as a job for
men and not the responsibility of women.
There are some women’s organizations
which have established perpetrator pro-
grammes, such as anger management,
aimed at men who have been violent
towards their partners. The importance
of personal transformation for both
men and women while at the same time
engaging in a struggle to change the
system with its anti-capitalist, anti-state
and ecological focus, is a syncretic politi-
cal tradition the like of which we have not
quite seen before. ‘It refuses to choose
between a materialism, which takes the
object as the absolute, or an idealism,
which takes the subject as the absolute.’
The emphasis on ethics and aesthet-
ics as the fundamental basis of the per-
spective and practices of Jineolojî is also
unusual for a liberation struggle. This is
seen by its proponents to be the main dif-
ference that distinguishes Jineolojî from
scientism and from the dominant under-
standings of social sciences. Beauty is not
about appearing attractive to men but is
reconceptualized as synonymous with
freedom, cultural and ethical values. This
is how Öcalan expresses it: ‘The one who
fights becomes free, the one who becomes
free becomes beautiful, the one who is
beautiful is loved’. Aesthetics should be
informed by a commitment to justice,
autonomy, truth and liberation.
Zozan Sima, from the Jineolojî
Academy in Rojava, expands upon Oca-
lan’s statement: ‘Women, who democ-
ratize politics, women, who risk their
lives to protect communities and other
women, women who educate themselves
and those around them, women who live
communally, women who save the eco-
logical equilibrium, women who struggle
to raise children in free countries, with
their own identities, and many others
are all women who become beautiful
through struggle. In today’s world full of
ugliness, injustice and evil, it is not physi-
cal, augmented forms of aesthetics which
Rojava’s feminist revolution
constitute beauty; only women who
defend life through struggle can create
beauty. In this sense, is there anything
more beautiful than the young women
who fight against Daesh fascism?’
But these claims to exceptionalism
do not convince Nadje Al-Ali and Isabel
Käser, feminist academics. In their essay,
‘Beyond Feminism? Jineolojî and the
Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement’,
they locate Jineolojî within standpoint
theory, a perspective that empowers
marginalized groups by validating the
knowledge produced from their subjec-
tive positions.13
They also point to transnational femi-
nists who challenge the binary between
secularism and spirituality common
in Western thought and recount the
number of feminists who have critiqued
the social sciences and dedicated them-
selves to unearthing women’s histories.
At one level, this is academic. If Jineolojî
provides the template for the first and
only women’s revolution in the world, its
claim to exceptionalism is totally justi-
fied. Why should it matter whether there
is an overlap or not with other strands of
feminist thought? It is surely the science
of the women’s revolution which is its
primary distinction from other feminist
theorizing.11
Al-Ali and Käser are unnecessarily
defensive in the face of their Kurdish
interviewees’ critique that global femi-
nism is divided and unable to translate its
critical perspectives into political action,
in pointing to ‘the long history of femi-
nist mobilization globally, which, despite
many setbacks and unresolved inequali-
ties, has been central to challenging
structural inequalities and improving
women’s everyday lives in many contexts’.
The fragmentation of women’s struggles,
the different strands – radical feminism,
anarcho-feminism, Marxist-feminism,
ecofeminism – has undeniably held us
back. The Jineolojî booklet describes
Western feminism as ‘hope movements’
without revolutionary potential. In Lib-
erating Life, Öcalan argues that feminism
can never be totally successful in a capi-
talist system, which thrives on division;
that class and race equality in a secular
democratic system is part of the struggle
for women’s liberation. Many feminists,
such as the Combahee River Collective
of black feminists, would agree with this
analysis, but they are unable to put into
practice ideas of race and class equality
in a capitalist system. No wonder that
69
THE LONG READ
transnational feminism is often derided
as a middle-class affair which excludes
working-class and minority women.
The response of the Jineolojî com-
mittee, Europe, to Al-Ali and Käser’s
article was also unnecessarily defensive
– surprisingly so, given the value that the
Kurdish women’s movement places on
criticism and self-criticism. The commit-
tee critiqued the authors’ methodology,
felt that interviewees had been quoted
out of context and noted the fact that
they did not read any of the work avail-
able in Kurdish or Turkish – a criticism
that could equally be made of this article.
Criticizing the authors for ‘patroniz[ing]
and trivializ[ing] our work,’ is an unfair
criticism as the piece was attempting
to engage seriously with Jineolojî and
appraise it from a position of solidar-
ity with Kurdish women.14 As Al-Ali and
Käser acknowledged, ‘Jineoloji’s trans-
formative potential has not been realized
by any other feminist politics’.
Troubles with sexuality
Al-Ali and Käser are arguably correct in
their assessment that there is a tendency
to essentialize women, as seen in the
frequent references to women’s inher-
ent emotional intelligence. Here is an
example from the booklet on Jineolojî:
‘Jineolojî will determine its methods by
referring to the flexibility of woman’s
nature, her fluid energy which does not
fit static shapes, the ability of transfor-
mation within women’s biology, and
women’s emotional intelligence.’ In Lib-
erating Life, Öcalan makes a similar point:
‘Because hierarchy and statism are not
easily compatible with woman’s nature, a
movement for woman’s freedom should
strive for anti-hierarchical and non-stat-
ist political formations.’ Although Öcalan
does attribute women’s emotional intel-
ligence to external influences such as the
How to deal with desire and
sexuality has also been an Achilles’
heel in Kurdish women’s thinking
70
biology of different physiques and their
socialization, the overriding impression
we are left with is one of women’s essen-
tial superiority of character.
How to deal with desire and sexuality
has also been an Achilles’ heel in Kurdish
women’s thinking. I discovered that
during my visit to Rojava in 2016, when
I tried to assess attitudes towards lesbian
and gay relationships. The most common
response was that this was not a priority
for the struggle at the moment. Al-Ali and
Käser’s interviews with Kurdish women
also found a reluctance to deal with the
issues of sexuality which were often seen
as shameful, and not for public discus-
sion. LGBTQI+ identities were seen as
part of consumer culture and the capital-
ist commodification of sexuality. They
found that while there were different
views on how desire shapes everyday life,
there was a general consensus ‘that in this
political climate the focus has to be on
the struggle and not on personal fulfil-
ment or sexual identities’.
One of their interviewees, Kejal from
JIN TV expressed her discomfort with
same-sex relations: ‘I don’t really see
this as something natural.’ It is partly a
reflection of the more conservative social
norms of Kurdish society but Öcalan’s
proscription of relationships between
men and women in the PKK cadre has
a feminist logic that is hard to quibble
with. He argues that, under patriarchy,
it is not possible to strike up a relation-
ship of equality. The response of the
Jineolojî committee to this issue is also
compelling: ‘While in the west, asexual-
ity is accepted as a queer identity, while
respected feminists like Adrienne Rich
spoke of “compulsory heterosexuality”,
while Black feminists like Audre Lorde
broke ground when speaking of eroti-
cisms outside of sexuality, why is it that
the Kurdistan Women’s Movement’s
political choice to opt for asexuality
under patriarchal conditions, and their
struggle to conceptualize the philosophi-
cal meaning of love in relation to notions
of freedom, nature, life, and humanity,
are seen as forms of suppression of desire
by Al-Ali and Käser?’ Why, indeed?
A divided solidarity
One of the most energizing aspects of
the Kurdish Women’s movement is its
active search for alliances with transna-
tional feminism and its embrace of other
struggles. In the middle of its existential
battle with Daesh (ISIS), the movement
found the headspace and time to launch a
social media campaign in solidarity with
#BlackLivesMatter, not the more self-
referential slogan, #KurdishLivesMatter
that they could have adopted, as other
minorities did, on the back of the anti-
racist campaign in the US. When I was
in Rojava, I asked everyone I met about
how we could provide solidarity here in
the UK. Almost everyone said that true
solidarity would be for feminists every-
where to adapt and adopt their model of
democratic confederalism in their local
contexts.
One of the problems with them
seeking solidarity and us providing it is
that Kurdish women are burdened with
the divisions facing feminists everywhere
and implicitly and explicitly required to
pronounce which side they are on. From
a UK perspective, they are faced with
questions that may be tearing apart the
women’s movement here, but which have
yet to arise in their local context. I was
particularly struck by this when moder-
ating a session on the women’s revolution
in Rojava at the Kurdish women’s first
international conference in Frankfurt
in 2018. A young German woman asked
about the panel’s view on non-binary
gender identity. The women on the panel,
who had travelled directly from Rojava,
did not address the question – it seemed
so far outside their reality.
Feminist solidarity groups are deeply
divided on the issue of gender identity.
Groups on both sides of this debate are
inspired by the women’s revolution in
Rojava but working across the divide,
keeping the ultimate goal of solidarity
for Rojava in sight, is difficult especially
if one side considers the other to be
transphobic.
Conversations with Kurdish women
suggest that they too may be divided, par-
ticularly those in the diaspora who have
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 Rojava’s feminist revolution

been exposed to different political tradi-
tions and debates. There have been very
few public pronouncements on this issue,
apart from statements such as the one
quoted above about LGBT identities being
the expression of the commodification of
sexuality. The 2015 manifesto of the HDP,
a pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey,
explicitly guaranteed the elimination of
‘discrimination and oppression based on
sexual orientation and gender identity’.15
At their conferences the door is open to
all. Revolutionary Education, the booklet
produced by the Andrea Wolf Institute of
Jineolojî based in Rojava refers to ‘women
and female-socialized people’ and talks
in terms of people of all genders.11 As the
Andrea Wolf Institute is mainly interna-
tional, this is quite possibly evidence of
the influence of internationalists in the
drafting of such literature.
At their second conference in Berlin
in November 2022, Kurdish women,
with breath-taking ambition, called on
women to set up a Women’s World Demo-
cratic Confederalist model, the system in
operation in Rojava, a form of grassroots
democracy which is secular, ecologically
minded, multi-ethnic, and anti-capitalist
with women in the driving seat. They
believe the time is right for women to
take control of human destiny, given the
crisis of capitalism that we are witness-
ing, even if initially these are parallel
structures within existing nation-states
similar to the existence of Rojava within
Syria. If the women of Iran are looking
for structures to embody their revolu-
tionary spirit, they need look no further
than the models in use across the border
from them in the revolutionary Autono-
mous Administration of North Eastern
Syria, also known as Rojava. O
(With thanks to Dilar Dirik and the Jineolojî Academy
in Rojava for helping me access some of the material
published in Turkish)
RAHILA GUPTA IS A WRITER, JOURNALIST AND
PATRON OF PEACE IN KURDISTAN.

1 One Law For All: official website, bit.ly/OneLawAll 2 Djene Rhys Bajalan, ‘The Kurdish Struggle Is at the Heart of the Protests in Iran’, Jacobin, 10 May 2022, nin.tl/JacobinKurds
3 Shiva Akhavan Rad, ‘The power of women: acclaimed Italian author Elena Ferrante on patriarchy and protest in Iran’, The Observer, 26 November 2022, nin.tl/Ferrante
4 ‘Military fatigues and floral scarves’, NI 492, nin.tl/Rojava492 5 Meral Çiçek, ‘Jîna “Mahsa” Amini Was Kurdish And That Matters’, Novara Media, 4 October 2022,
nin.tl/AminiNovara 6 Abdullah Öcalan, Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution, International Initiative Edition, 2013, nin.tl/LiberatingLife 7 Abdullah Öcalan, The Sociology
of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization: Volume III, International Initiative Edition / Kairos / PM Press, 2020, nin.tl/SociologyFreedom 8 Dilar Dirik, The
Kurdish Women’s Movement History, Theory, Practice, Pluto Press, 2022 9 Jineolojî is rooted in the Kurdish women’s freedom struggle. Much of my understanding of
Jineolojî is based on works available, often in poorly translated English, as I speak neither Turkish nor Kurdish in which, I am told by Kurdish activists, the debates are
richer and more nuanced. I am indebted to a booklet on Jineolojî for the history of its development and its central principles: nin.tl/jineoloji 10 Silvia Federici, Caliban
And The Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation, Autonomedia, 2017 11 Revolutionary Education: Notes from the first term of the Andrea Wolf Institute
of Jineolojî in Rojava, Andrea Wolf Institute, 2020, nin.tl/RevEducation 12 Havin Guneser, The Art of Freedom: A Brief History of the Kurdish Liberation Struggle, Kairos
/ PM Press, 2021 13 Nadje Al-Ali and Isabel Käser, ‘Beyond Feminism? Jineolojî and the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement’ in Politics & Gender, Vol 18, No 1,
March 2022 14 ‘Open Letter to the Public About the Article “Beyond Feminism? Jineolojî and the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement”’, Jadaliyya, 24 May 2021,
nin.tl/OpenLetter 15 ‘Pro-Kurdish HDP pledges LGBTI equality’, Kaos GL, 21 April 2015, nin.tl/HDP2015

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MARCH-APRIL 2023 71
 HALL OF
INFAMY
THE WAGNER GROUP
POSITION: Russian paramilitary
organization
REPUTATION: Putin’s private army
The Wagner Group for many years did
not exist – or at least not according to
those whose interests it serves. There
are no tax returns and until January
no company registration, much less
accountability for its victims. The mer-
cenary outfit is illegal under Russian
law, which bans private military compa-
nies, yet it has offices and a presence in
many of the world’s ‘conflict markets’ – a
term used by private military contrac-
tors (PMCs) to describe their growing
areas of operation, mostly in Africa
and the Middle East. Even the man who
apparently sponsors the Wagner Group,
Yevgeny Prigozhin, has denied its exist-
ence (depending on who he’s talking to).
Prigozhin, a heavily-sanctioned oli-
garch and former convict back in the
days of the USSR, started post-Soviet life
as a Saint Petersburg food entrepreneur
(a hotdog salesman, some say) and is a
long time buddy of Vladimir Putin. His
services to the President are multiple and
varied. He is known as ‘Putin’s chef ’ as his
large catering firm is in charge of Putin’s
opulent banquets for foreign dignitar-
ies as well as other lucrative state cater-
ing contracts. But his biggest impact is
undoubtedly his role as Wagner’s lynch-
pin – connecting the global network
and acting as an intermediary with the
Kremlin, according to some.
Wagner is a late Russian entry into the
world of PMCs, a huge growth industry
where annual sales, already over $220
billion, are expected to balloon this decade.
Many PMCs and their recruits have ideo-
logical inclinations that run to militarism
and even extremist white nationalism. In
the case of Wagner they represent them-
selves as the hard-bitten ‘tough guy’ yet
somehow ‘professional’ wing of a Russian
military no longer able to dine out on its
heroic efforts in World War Two. They
recruit from white supremacist milieu,
particularly the so-called ‘Russian
72
Imperial Movement’: ultra-nationalists
who advocate tsarist restoration.
It is estimated that Wagner has lost
thousands of soldiers (many recruited
from Russian prisons) in the Ukraine war.
The group has been most visible in the
Russian campaign to prop up the Assad
dictatorship in Syria and in the fight-
ing since 2014 in the Donbas in Eastern
Ukraine. Wagner was initially founded
by Russian military intelligence officer
Dmitry Utkin in 2014 to back separa-
tists in the region. They gained a higher
profile in 2015-17 when they helped take
back the El Shaer gas field in Syria, which
had fallen to the Islamic State.
But Wagner has since spread its wings,
most of all in Africa, leaving bloody foot-
prints from Mali to Mozambique. In
Sudan, it works hand-in-glove with the
country’s military chiefs to keep their
increasingly unpopular junta in power,
as well as to guard lucrative facilities like
mines and Red Sea port infrastructure
in league with the linked Meroe Gold
company. In the mineral-rich but deeply
troubled eastern region of the Central
African Republic Wagner ‘guards’ mines.
Some reports suggest it has thrown in its
lot with the Democratic Republic of the
Congo’s central government in a brutal
campaign against a myriad of dubious
militia groups.
Its involvement in Madagascar is
murky: as well as alleged involvement in
a Russian firm’s takeover of the countries
national chromite producer, Wagner and
Prigozhin also attempted election inter-
ference. In Libya Wagner is propping up
PRESSLAB/SHUTTERSTOCK
the brutal warlord Khalifa Haftar, and
has secured oilfields and infrastructure
in parts of the country under his control.
Wherever it goes Wagner has been
accused of the arbitrary killing of civil-
ian non-combatants, including through
deadly land-mining of conflict zones,
looting and corruption. Add in propping
up political thugs often of a military dis-
pensation, and variously using torture,
selective assassination and bullying,
and the picture that emerges from the
shadows is not pretty. Of course the main
advantage for any government employ-
ing PMCs like Wagner is that when things
‘go south’ – as they inevitably do – they
can shrug and wink at the cameras and
proclaim ‘nothing to do with us’. Plausi-
ble deniability is the name of the modern
mercenary game. O
LOW CUNNING: PMCs like Wagner justify
their actions by claiming to ‘professionalize’
militaries and in this way somehow contrib-
ute to shortening conflicts. If this were true it
would make for a puzzling business model as
PMCs depend of continuing conflict for their
handsome pay cheques.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: The joke is on the
German composer Richard Wagner whose
anti-Semitic inclinations make him a white
nationalist icon. His operas have been reported
to have made Hitler weep. Still it’s a stretch to
blame the melodramatic 19th century German
composer for the land mines planted in Libya
by a group of thugs that bear his name.
Sources: Time; the Guardian; Yahoo News; Sydney
Morning Herald; newamerica.org; New York Post;
the New York Times; Foreign Policy
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
VIEW FROM
INDIA
Leading the way on abortion rights
On 30 September 2022, India’s top court
voided a rule that differentiated between
married and unmarried women and their
rights to a safe abortion. Previously, in
2021, a historic amendment to India’s
abortion law had finally allowed unmar-
ried women to undergo pregnancy ter-
minations – but married women were
permitted abortions until four weeks later.
The court ruling removed that distinc-
tion, setting the limit at 24 weeks for all.
Despite widespread social conserva-
tism, our abortion laws have been quite
progressive. Abortions for married
women have been legal since 1971 under
the Medical Termination of Pregnancy
Act and Rules (MTP).
But lawmakers have faced challenges
making these laws more gender-respon-
sive. The continuing preference for sons
meant families often opted to abort female
foetuses once prenatal sex-determination
technology became available. So lawmak-
ers made sex-selective abortions illegal –
driving the practice underground.
The court’s ruling calls out the dis-
tinction between married and unmar-
ried women as ‘artificial’, saying that
maintaining it in law would ‘perpetuate
MARCH-APRIL 2023
the stereotype that only married women
indulge in sexual activities’. It also
stressed that ‘reproductive autonomy
is closely linked to bodily autonomy’,
bearing in mind ‘the consequences of
unwanted pregnancy on a woman’.
The ruling is at once an attempt to
make the process of termination of
pregnancy a safe and taboo-free experi-
ence. In a country where no-one much
cares about women’s experiences, and
where even the judiciary is infamously
patriarchal, this is a huge win – not just
for women’s choice and agency but also
in helping identify abortion as a health
issue. Unsafe abortions, after all, remain
the third leading cause of maternal mor-
tality in India. According to a study in The
Lancet, of the 15.6 million abortions that
took place in India in 2015, a majority
were conducted outside medical centres.
Single women often find it difficult to
access safe abortion owing to the taboo
surrounding pregnancy outside mar-
riage. If a girl or woman was under 18,
her doctor had to report the case to the
police. This led to fear among minors, or
their guardians, of being harassed under
the Protection of Children from Sexual
Offences Act. The September 2022 ruling
exempts doctors from reporting to the
police, which means minors can now
access abortion at safe medical facilities.
It also offers another first by insisting
that the ‘meaning of rape must include
marital rape’ within the ambit of the
MTP Act. The Indian Supreme Court is
currently deliberating upon a petition to
criminalize marital rape. Only time will
tell if this ruling will act as a precursor to
what the Court decides on that issue.
I see it as a collective victory for Indian
women, as well as an important addition
to the global debate that has erupted
since the US Supreme Court overturned
Roe v Wade last year. If that was a bad
precedent for women’s rights, here is a
hopeful attempt to reset the course. O
NILANJANA BHOWMICK IS THE AUTHOR OF LIES
OUR MOTHERS TOLD US (ALEPH). SHE TWEETS
@NILANJANAB
73
MIXED MEDIA
SPOTLIGHT
IVEY-CAMILLE
MANYBEADS TSO
W
hen Ivey-Camille ManyBeads Tso
was in fifth grade at school in Flag-
staff, Arizona, a teacher made her sit
at a separate table along with all the other
Indigenous Navajo students. ‘She gave us
all third-grade homework because she
didn’t think we could do anything higher
than that. It’s a border town; there’s just a
lot of racism,’ she says.
‘The teacher also refused to let me test
[for] the gifted programme because, she
said, it would be impossible for me to be
a gifted student.’ However, a short while
later, aged just 13, Ivey-Camille made a
film that won 11 awards and was shown in
90 film festivals.
Now 27, Ivey-Camille has just released
the multi-award winning Powerlands,
a stunning and devastating film docu-
menting Indigenous resistance to the
dispossession and pollution of their lands
by multinational companies in Navajo
County (Arizona), Colombia and the
Philippines.
‘I started off with the simple idea that
as Indigenous people we feel so isolated
and alone oftentimes during this resist-
ance,’ says Ivey-Camille. ‘The whole
purpose was to show people that they’re
not alone and all of us collectively can
make a massive impact.’
Ivey-Camille spent her early years on
a reservation – Black Mesa in the Navajo
Nation. She lived with her grandmother,
parents, her father’s seven siblings, their
spouses and children in three hogans
(eight-sided traditional buildings) and
a two-roomed main house. ‘There were
30-plus people and we all just piled in,’
74
she says. When she was three-years old,
she moved with her parents to Berkeley,
and then on to Flagstaff, a town about
one-and-a-half-hour’s drive from the res-
ervation. She still lives there today.
I ask her what it was like to grow up as
a Navajo in Arizona. ‘The United States
are racist,’ she replies. ‘So, depending on
where you are in the States, your type of
brown might be accepted or it may not.
If you’re close to res [reservation], then
that border town tends to hate whatever
native tribe is in that area. Growing up, I
heard a lot of derogatory things thrown
my way. I got told “Oh you’re going to be
an alcoholic because you’re native”. It was
just constant.’
She remembers coming home from
school one day, aged four or five, and
telling her mother that she had stopped
speaking Navajo. Racist bullying was the
most likely reason, but she says: ‘I don’t
really know what happened, it’s kind of a
black spot in my memory.’ Navajo was her
first language and she’s re-learning it now.
But Ivey-Camille says she always had
family and friends to rely on. She had lots
of cousins and aunties living in Flagstaff,
and she’s still close to her old school-
friends with whom she endured play-
ground racism: ‘We bonded and stood
together when we needed to.’
Family is clearly important to her.
Powerlands is inspired by the example of
her grandmother, who spent years strug-
gling against Peabody Coal and BHP, cor-
porations that began mining on Navajo
lands 40 years ago. ‘She’s a badass lady,’
says Ivey-Camille. ‘She has marched on
Words: Grace Livingstone
Photo: Powerland
Washington. She has pulled up fence-
posts. She’s gone toe-to-toe with multiple
rangers. She taught me how to stand up
for what I believe in.’
The film features two other inspir-
ing women in her family: Louise Goy
(her grandmother’s sister) who refused
to move house to make way for mining,
and Marie Gladue (her grandmother’s
niece) who tends sheep as a way of pre-
venting corporations encroaching on
Navajo land.
Ivey-Camille joined a film-making
workshop when she was nine years old
and has been making films ever since.
The idea for Powerlands emerged from a
conversation with producer Jordan Flat-
tery, who had just returned from Colom-
bia. Ivey-Camille saw the similarities
between mining’s impact on Indigenous
peoples there and in Arizona. In one
powerful scene a Colombian community
leader sits across the table from smart-
shirted representatives of Cerrejón – a
giant coalmine controlled by Glencore –
and describes how 427 families had been
‘uprooted’ from their homes with ‘fire
and blood’.
Ivey-Camille says viewers in Europe,
the US and elsewhere can help. ‘Your
dollar bills are powerful. By holding
these energy corporations accountable,
by being like: “Hey, we want you to clean
up after yourselves. When you’re done
mining, pick up your shit.” That’s going
to help the people in Colombia, here in
Black Mesa, in the Philippines.’
She is now working on a film about
her mother. ‘Film is a medium that
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 ‘I started off with the simple idea that
as Indigenous people we feel so isolated
and alone in our resistance. The whole
purpose was to show that all of us
collectively can make a massive impact’

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with

throughout my life. There’s so much
corporate media and mass-produced,
fast, easy-consumable stuff, and that’s
not for me. But when I can be in charge
of the story that’s being told and the way
that we’re portraying it, then I love it.’ O

powerlands.org

MARCH-APRIL 2023 75
MIXED MEDIA

BOOKS
Abyss Call and Response
by Pilar Quintana, translated by Lisa Dillman by Gothataone Moeng
(World Editions, ISBN 9781912987405) (Oneworld, ISBN 9780861543342)
worldeditions.org oneworld-publications.com
++++, ++++

affair with her sister-in-law’s that the characters undertake.

As Philip Larkin famously
wrote, ‘They fuck you up,
your mum and dad. / They
may not mean to, but they
do.’ Eight-year-old Claudia,
the protagonist in award-
winning Colombian author
Pilar Quintana’s latest novel,
is a case in point. Her mother,
obsessed with celebrity sui-
cides and struggling with her
own demons, is largely absent
– if not physically, then cer-
tainly emotionally. Her father
escapes into work and silence.
When her parents do commu-
nicate with her, it is often with
a casual cruelty and disregard
for what their daughter might
need or want to hear.
They live as an uneasy
but functioning unit, until
Claudia’s mother starts an
new husband, at which point
things start to fall apart.
Claudia tries to navigate
the twists and turns of her
parents’ relationship, while
not fully understanding what
is going on or how to express
her fear that she will be aban-
doned by them.
At a point of strained rec-
onciliation, the family goes
to the mountains for the
summer. But the idyllic loca-
tion becomes a place of night-
mares when a car and body
are found in a ravine. Claudia
observes the abyss inside her
mother, which she describes as
‘a bottomless pit that nothing
[can] fill’, and is herself drawn
ever more forcefully to the
cliff edge, peering over in
order to experience ‘the lus-
cious feeling in my belly, and
the fear, the desire both to
jump and to run away’. That an
eight-year-old should feel such
a dangerous emotional con-
flict is as disturbing as is the
way she ultimately makes her
parents pay attention to her.
A vivid and compelling
exploration of family dynam-
ics and the damage they can
do, Abyss is a tale to fall into
and learn from. JL
Like a body of water at
just the right temperature,
Gothataone Moeng’s stories
are ever so easy to enter and
luxuriate in. These nine
unhurried, fully realized tales
may brim with their pro-
tagonists’ yearnings, familial
rivalries, regrets and disap-
pointments, but reading them
is pure pleasure. They end but
do not resolve, they linger,
maturing further.
Situated in the urban
village of Serowe in Bot-
swana, where Moeng cur-
rently resides, and the capital
Gaborone, with characters
often travelling between the
two, they constantly play off
expectations of place (the
backwater versus the big city)
with the journeys of becoming
Moeng’s great gift is her
ability to pierce the inner
lives of her protagonists in
a way that rings absolutely
true – these are people we can
imagine ourselves as, their
reactions often touching the
tender spots of our own self-
deceptions and hurts. Here is
teenaged Gagontswe longing
for grown-up sophistica-
tion, calling herself Gigi and
undergoing a rigorous ‘beauty’
regime ‘all in an effort to
moult and pupate and arrive
at school sleek and self-pos-
sessed, novel and enigmatic,
someone of her own inven-
tion’. And Phetso, clinging to
mourning after the death her
husband, longing to ‘reach a
different state of maturity, one
without her faithless dread
or her bewilderment or her
unanswerable questions’.
The pitch-perfect novella
‘Early Life and Education’, the
only piece with a male pro-
tagonist, tells a tale of aspira-
tion to a settled life, of a boy
wanting to become ‘a man
worthy of respect’. It also folds
in vast themes of decoloniza-
tion, spiritual crisis and much
else besides in a manner that is
completely unforced and fas-
cinating. Rich, thronging with
life, Call and Response is a
collection to be treasured. DG

76 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 MIXED MEDIA

Reviews editor: Dinyar Godrej

Reviewers: Jo Lateu, Dinyar Godrej, Vanessa Baird, Peter Whittaker

The Heart of Our Earth Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon

by Tom Gatehouse (with Jo Griffin)
as the Centre of the World
(Practical Action/LAB, ISBN 978-1-90901-416-9) by Eliane Brum, translated by Diane Whitty
practicalactionpublishing.com (The Indigo Press, ISBN9781911648611)
+++,, theindigopress.com
+++++

communities and environ- the Amazon – and partly a

Okay. Mining is not a sexy
topic. We rarely notice its
products, though they are an
intricate part of our daily lives
– and soon to be much more
so. The energy transition away
from fossil fuels will involve a
massive expansion in demand
for minerals such as copper
and lithium. Much of this will
come from Latin America.
Yet, as this book shows,
mining is already the source of
bitter social conflicts, human-
rights abuses and environmen-
tal crimes across the continent.
The many cases covered, from
Mexico right down to Argen-
tina, follow an all too familiar
pattern: mining companies
making their fortunes by grab-
bing land, polluting water, and
riding roughshod over local
mental regulations. Often,
companies act with impunity
as national governments are
‘captured’ by corporate power
and the myth that resource
extraction is the way to jobs,
prosperity and development.
While dividing the spoils dif-
ferently, leftwing leaders have
been as susceptible to this
myth as the Right, though
Chile’s green-left Gabriel Boric
may prove to be different.
As mining expands, so does
resistance to it. Brave commu-
nities and individuals (increas-
ingly, Indigenous women)
stand up to companies like
Barrick Gold, Newmont, Glen-
core, Anglo-American, Vale,
BHP Billiton and Tongling,
risking life and liberty to try
and defend their habitat. This
thorough book is more engag-
ing when telling these personal
stories of resistance than when
overloading the reader with
facts and figures. Company
PR, ‘corporate social respon-
sibility’, diversionary tactics
and the oxymoronic notion
of ‘sustainable mining’ are
deftly exposed, but Gatehouse
also indicates ways to improve
matters, including proper reg-
ulation of the industry plus a
major paradigm shift towards
re-use, recycling and stick-
ing to ‘indispensable’ mining
only. VB
The portmanteau title of
Brazilian journalist and
activist Eliane Brum’s lumi-
nous paean to the Amazon
rainforest unpacks as a Por-
tuguese word and an Amazo-
nian one; banzeiro describing
a river in tumult and òkòtó
being the Yoruba word for
the helical whorls of a snail
shell. Taken together they
symbolize a twisting vortex
transmuting into infinite
variety, and underscore the
author’s central argument:
that the Amazon is the centre
of the world and must be
protected and nurtured. The
book is partly autobiographi-
cal – detailing the writer’s
relocation from city life in
São Paulo to Altamira on the
Xingu River in the heart of
series of essays that build a
multi-faceted portrait of the
Amazon.
Brum is rightly scathing
about the ongoing corruption,
feudalism and rampant eco-
logical destruction in the name
of ‘progress’ and profit. Her
contempt for the thankfully
now-departed Jair Bolsonaro
(described by her as the anti-
president) is bottomless – but
she also has harsh words for
the Workers’ Party and Presi-
dent Lula for their role in the
environmentally catastrophic
Belo Monte hydroelectric dam
project.
In a previous book, The Col-
lector of Leftover Souls, Brum
wrote, ‘Since 1998, I have been
roaming the Amazons, listen-
ing to the stories of peoples,
trees, and animals.’ Banzeiro
Òkòtó builds on those stories,
on that listening, to turn
her writing into something
beyond reportage, beyond
polemic; channeling the
many voices – by no means
all of them human – that
must be heard if the Amazon
is to survive and prosper, and
fulfill its vital role in ensur-
ing the planet has a future
that is habitable for all its
occupants. PW

MARCH-APRIL 2023 77
MIXED MEDIA
FILM
Lunana: A Yak in the
Classroom
directed and written by Pawo Choyning Dorji
110 minutes
+++++
This is a one-off, an Oscar-
nominated drama from
Bhutan. A compassionate and
captivating film about a city
boy’s encounter with a remote
community’s age-old way of
life, it highlights a massive
conflict between individual-
ism, status, and ambition – the
switched-on developed world
and a small-scale, kinder,
communal life.
It centres on a newly grad-
uated teacher, Ugyen. He
thinks he’s cool. He listens to
Western pop music, and plays
guitar and sings in a Thimphu
bar. He plans to go abroad,
make it as a singer, and is
waiting on his application
for an Australian visa. In the
meantime, he’s contracted to
teach. His supervisor, maybe
as a last throw, assigns him
to a remote village school in
Lunana, eight days trek from
the nearest road.
On the bus into the moun-
tains, he shuts himself off with
78
his iPod and headphones, as he
does when two villagers with
pack mules meet him at the
end of the road. Though he
shows a slight interest in their
singing, he’s ungracious and
complaining. When he learns
that the beaming village chil-
dren and many of the adults
have walked two hours to
stand in line to greet him, he’s
incredulous. He soon tells the
village leader he won’t stay.
Yet, around and about the
village, in his mud-walled
classroom and cold draughty
hut, he’s swayed by their
welcome, and their love and
veneration – for him, for
their place, for their animals,
for their lives. Open-ended,
investing us in the future of
a would-be migrant and a
remote community, this is a
beautiful, subtle, unmissable
film. ML
Joyland
directed and co-written by Saim Sadiq
126 minutes
++++
You may have heard about
Saim Sadiq’s debut drama
since it goes where Pakistani
film has never gone before. It
pulls no punches in showing
smothering gender roles in a
traditional patriarchal family,
and it sympathetically por-
trays a trans woman involved
in a sexual affair.
Joyland is the story of an
extended Lahore family, the
Ranas, but focuses on the
genial younger son, Haider.
Against convention, he happily
stays at home while his free-
spirited wife, Mumtaz, goes
out to work. He and Mumtaz
have no children and he helps
his sister-in-law, Nucchi, look
after her three young girls.
Everything is tolerable until
Nucchi gives birth to yet
another daughter. Haider’s dis-
contented father then insists
that he sire a grandson and
clan heir, and that he get a job.
Haider, ever obedient, finds
work; Mumtaz has to leave
hers. When she finds out she’s
pregnant, and will have a boy,
she secretly despairs, feeling
she’ll be forever trapped at
home. Haider, who they now
hardly ever see, is working at
a theatre, and tells the family
he is a manager there. In fact,
he is rehearsing as a backing
dancer, captivated by Biba, a
trans dancer. She, in turn, is
taken by his non-judgemen-
tal acceptance of her and his
gentle naivety.
The film brilliantly cap-
tures the family hierarchy,
the women’s frustrations and
distress, and the men’s una-
wareness – or indifference.
Only Biba has learnt to defy
convention and hostility and
is clear about who she is and
how she might find happiness.
Superbly acted and staged,
twisting and turning, inti-
mate, tragic and socially
perceptive, this is stand-out
cinema. ML
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 MIXED MEDIA

MUSIC
Reviews editor: Dinyar Godrej
Reviewers: Malcolm Lewis, Louise Gray
MATTHEW DONALDSON

NATE LEMUEL
Being The Land, the Water, the Sky
by Baaba Maal by Black Belt Eagle Scout
(Marathon Artists, CD, LP, DL) (Saddle Creek, LP CD, DL)
baabamaal.com blackbelteaglescout.com
++++, ++++,

Just when you thought that
Baaba Maal had no more sur-
prises up his sleeve, along
comes Being, a shimmering,
stomping work of glory. The
Senegalese superstar’s first
album since 2016’s The Trav-
eller (2016), it reprises Maal’s
relationship with the Swedish
producer Johan Karlberg. As on
the earlier album, the pictures
conjured are immense, time-
less swoops of sound. Opener
‘Yerimayo Celebration’, starts
slyly, quietly almost, before
bursting out whacking drums,
background drones and broad
strokes of electronic melody.
Viscerally exciting, it’s easy, lis-
tening to Being, to understand
why Maal has been so signifi-
cant on the soundtracks to the
Black Panther movies.
The smoother edges of
Being (it’s a consummately
produced album) signify no
diminution of Maal’s power.
For more than 40 years, his
soaring voice has defined
an Afrobeat so confident
it’s been able to work across
many musical genres. This
seeking out of connections, of
beginning, renewing, extend-
ing musical conversations,
is typical of Maal’s body of
work. Maal’s interlocutors
here are strong collabora-
tors: Esau Mwamwaya from
the Very Best Band on ‘Freak
Out’, Rougi on ‘Boboyillo’, and
thrillingly, the Mauritanian
rapper General Paco Lenol
on the mighty ‘Mbeda Wella’.
Longstanding band members
Chekh Ndoye (bass ngoni) and
Momadou Sarr (percussion)
anchor proceedings expertly.
For Maal, music has always
occupied a social and cultural
domain, and this is highlighted
here, with songs that deal with
issues of climate crisis, migra-
tion, and technological change.
Don’t be fooled by the slick-
ness of Being: it’s an expansive
album with an undercurrent of
radicalism. LG
So much to love here: The
Land, the Water, the Sky
is a feminist power opera-
tion delivered by the force
of nature that is Black Belt
Eagle Scout. BBES’s prime
mover is Katherine Paul, a
queer Swinomish/Iñupiaq
singer-songwriter based in
Portland, Oregon. In terms
of studio work, the band is
mostly multi-instrumentalist
Paul, joined by bassist Grace
Bugbee: live, as shown by the
video to lead single ‘My Blood
Runs Through This Land’, it’s
a different matter, with an all-
woman band rocking out in a
way that would do Nirvana or
Hole credit.
This is BBES’s third album,
and her first release since the
pandemic. Its origins lie in her
journey from Portland back
to the ancestral lands of the
Swinomish. The experience
was a way of recontextualiz-
ing herself with a long history
as a way of moving forward.
While the grungy exhilara-
tion of ‘My Blood…’ serves up
sheer velocity, much of the
rest of the album is nuanced
and contemplative. ‘Under-
standing’, with only four lines
of lyrics, is a statement of
being that is as much personal
as it is political. The ravishing
‘Sedna’ is a love song framed
in the oceanic flows conjured
up by the Inuit goddess of the
marine world.
Paul’s early musical educa-
tion was based firmly in indig-
enous experiences with family
and community groups;
teenage exposure to indie and
grunge music fuelled her tra-
jectory into a self-authored
music that has a melodic
swoon never foreclosed by
amplified guitar. There’s
space here for a genuine
realignment of culture and
community with a heritage
revitalized by crosscurrents
of sound and poetry. LG

MARCH-APRIL 2023 79
 THE The crossword prize is a voucher for our online shop to the equivalent of £20/$30. Only the
winner will be notified. Send your entries by 15 March to: New Internationalist Puzzle Page,

PUZZLER The Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK; or email a scan to:
puzzlepage@newint.org Winner for 260: Maris Davida Renshaw, Reading, England.

CROSSWORD 261 by Axe 12 Pub to bag French sweet white in the

CRYPTIC ACROSS
7 Brazilian city gets one American to
penetrate communist state (6)
8 Nonconformist eyes lawn obliquely (8)
9 Americans besiege Devon valley,
investing in some British candy (8)
10 Texan’s capital is in gold separated from
other metal by Siemens (6)
11 Waken nag to travel to old Swazi
homeland (8)
Gironde (6)
13 Hereward the Wake, for one, is a saint –
angel in disguise (4,7)
18 Ignore leading article that points to
Chinese city (6)
20 Fit out a good loo on return to the
Aquitaine area (8)
22 Asians take name from a metatarsus
section (6)
23 Likes going round Italian city: when cut
short the Spanish region (8)
24 Mexican, the first hidalgo accepted and
immersed into a form of Buddhism (8)
25 African compounds vessel on its return
to an island in Germany (6)
CRYPTIC DOWN
1 Republican president’s Namibian
supporter (7)
2 Managed to get cold water in Spanish
Chilean place (8)
3 A lawyer Samuel turned down over the
defence of Jews (6)
4 Turkey’s place, brown cow said, is to
the north (8)
5 Spout in Iceland is grey when boiling (6)
6 Ancient Indian city utensil is for cooking
chapati, not tea (7)
8 Desert support for film type over
troubled N African territory... (7,6)
14 ...neighbour’s barrel is one with a name
on the bottom... (8)
15 ...and neighbour has a vaguely regal
Scot in support... (8)
16 ...and his country’s oasis there, God
willing, has shed hard line (2,5)
17 Everybody’s up supporting spirit shown
by Virginia over Greek port (7)
19 Hard confederation is on the London
map for a Peruvian city (6)
21 Tokyo suburb moggy’s sound mission
to eat when it’s all over (6)
20 Brandy from a district of Aquitaine (8)
22 Peoples of central Asia who invaded
Russia in the 13th century (6)
23 Autonomous Spanish region and former
kingdom, capital Oviedo (8)
24 Liberal Buddhist school (8)
25 Afrikaner villages of huts, typically
enclosed by a fence (6)
QUICK DOWN
1 Aboriginal of southern Africa, especially
of the Kalahari Desert (7)
2 Stronghold of Bernardo O’Higgins
during the Chilean revolution (8)
3 Ancient mountaintop fortress where the
Romans besieged the Jews for a year (6)
4 Modern name for the Ottoman capital (8)
5 Icelandic hot spring (original spelling) (6)
6 Historic town NW of Delhi, site of battles
in 1526, 1556 and 1761 (7)
8 Disputed territory occupied by Spain
until 1975 (7,6)
14 African near-neighbour of 8 Dn (8)
15 ...and a closer one(!)... (8)
16 15 desert oasis (2,5)
17 Port and second-largest city of
Macedonia, Greece (7)
19 Peruvian Andean city, capital of Ancash
department on the Santa R (6)
21 Honshu city forming a NW suburb of
Tokyo (6)

QUICK ACROSS
7 Brazilian river and city, capital of Mato
Grosso state (6)
8 One of a major branch of Methodist
Protestants (8)
9 Members of a Native American tribe, the
original ‘okla homa’ (red people) (8)
10 Capital of Texas (6)
11 Part of Mpumalanga province of
South Africa, an apartheid ‘homeland’,
formerly, in 1971 (8)
12 Sweet white wine from the Bordeaux
region (6)
13 One from Suffolk, perhaps (4,7)
18 City of Guizou province, China, known
for its green tea (6)
SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 260
ACROSS: 6 Evora, 7 Heathrow, 10 Isthmus,
11 Airdrie, 12 Asansol, 13 Coimbra,
14 Bahia Blanca, 19 Burbank, 21 Mildura,
23 Chablis, 25 Israeli, 26 Parmesan,
27 Duren.
DOWN: 1 Godthaab, 2 Patmos, 3 Chesil
Bank, 4 Maya, 5 Corrib, 6 Epinal, 8 Hurrian,
9 Ceram, 13 Colombians, 15 Haarlem,
16 Akureyri, 17 Abaco, 18 Darien,
20 Reagan, 22 Lerida, 24 Susa.

ASSOCIATION WORDSEARCH 107

Find the 10 London
Solutions here are alluded to by ‘association’ words or phrases, eg
Underground lines
ICE as a solution could have association words like ‘melting (ICE)’ hidden here

WORDS 28 or ‘(ICE) skating’, so the association words in each clue could appear
in a phrase before or after the solution word.
ACROSS DOWN
1 Kirk; Isle of Man (7) 1 Gimli the; Star (5)
5 Office; Of life (5) 2 Dutch; Sam (5)
8 Current; For (7) 3 Chinese; Basket (7)
9 Wembley; theatre (5) 4 Red; Of crosswords (6)
10 Playing: Of Dreams (5) 5 Rhyming; Word (5)
11 Pidgin; Channel (7) 6 Central; The beautiful (7)
12 Tolpuddle; King (6) 7 Birds of a: Pillow (7)
14 In good; To the 12 Merry; Of the glen (7)
country (6) 13 Warehouse; One’s
17 Wooden; And brains (7)
dimes (7) 15 Lunar; Of the Sun (7)
19 Making; To port (5) 16 Line of; To the throne (6)
22 Air; The larder (5) 18 The storm; The pain (5)
23 Daily; Train (7) 20 Piazza del Campo in;
24 Horse; And lows (5) the home of the Palio (5)
25 Ingrowing; 21 Agave; Hemp (5)
clippers (7)

SOLUTION TO ASSOCIATION WORDS 27

ACROSS: 1 Coin, 3 Bach, 6 Bat, 9 Passion, 10 Risks,
11 Shell, 12 Asylum, 14 Nights, 16 Battle, 19 Arnold,
21 Daisy, 24 Irene, 25 Landing, 27 Gas, 28 Nest, 29 Ship.
DOWN: 1 Cap, 2 Issue, 4 Annual, 5 Harry, 6 Biscuit,
7 Test, 8 Billet, 11 Sand, 13 Bevy, 15 Gardens, 17 Aiding,
18 Adults, 20 Ocean, 22 Irish, 23 Wing, 26 Gap.
SOLUTION TO WORDSEARCH 106
The 16 Mexican states were:
Campeche, Chiapas, Durango, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco,
Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, Puebla, Sinaloa,
Sonora, Tabasco, Veracruz, Zacatecas.

80 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 AGONY
UNCLE
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like
we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective.
Enter stage: Agony Uncle
Q: I work for a big accounting
firm that services industries
including fossil fuels, the arms
trade and industrial agricul-
ture. I stay in the job because
I’m worried I will need the
money in future, for example
to start a family. But, maybe
this is just capitalist condi-
tioning talking? I do know
for sure that my employer,
and the accounting industry
at large – including related
sectors like law and banking
– are key facilitators of the
some of the biggest social and
environmental harms we face
right now. How should I recon-
cile the need to earn money to
pay my bills with minimising
the complicity of my labour
in gross injustices? Reform
from within seems unlikely
in this case, so should I leave?
Or, should I stay and do better
things with my income?
An anxious auditor
Your dilemma made me think
of effective altruism (EA), the
school of ethics that has been
in the news recently because
of its association with the dis-
graced cryptocurrency CEO,
Sam Bankman-Fried (what a
name!) EA is primarily about
applying statistical analysis
to determine which charities
are the most effective. It’s also
known for its rather distinc-
tive moral claims; some sup-
porters, for instance, argue
their ‘long-termist’ perspec-
tive means it is more impor-
tant to spend money right now
combatting a possible AI-pow-
ered robot apocalypse that
MARCH-APRIL 2023
could affect tens of billions
of future people, than fight
the many bad things already
happening.1
Another controversial
aspect of EA is its endorse-
ment of ‘earning to give’:
this is the practice of taking
super-high-paying jobs in,
say, finance in order to give
away big proportions of your
income to effective charities.
The reasoning is that a con-
scientious person who has the
potential to earn a huge salary
would make a bigger differ-
ence as an individual by getting
that job and redirecting their
earnings, rather than by slog-
ging away in a ‘good’ third
sector job. This has been cited
as an influence behind Bank-
man-Fried’s single-minded
drive to make as much money
as possible. He was arrested
last year, after his cryptocur-
rency exchange collapsed,
accused of engaging in fraud
among other charges (he has
pleaded not guilty).
The ‘earning to give’ ethos
is bleak for several reasons. In
particular, it assumes away the
radical political change that
we actually need to make the
world a meaningfully better
place (the kind that would
render most of those high-
paying jobs non-existent).
That said, it is a form of ethical
action that can have positive
consequences and involves a
kind of self-sacrifice.
So: is that your plan? Earn
money from an ethically com-
promised industry in order to
1) save for a family and 2) put
your money to work in effec-
tive charities? It might be
one way to sleep more easily
at night, but I’m not sure it’s
what I would endorse in this
situation. After all, there are
ethical grey areas in the world
of work (I recently heard of a
graphic designer whose boss
allowed employees to opt-out
of working on a campaign
for a fossil fuel company)
and … there’s doing work for
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER
the arms industry. Whose
raison d’etre is making deadly
weapons. I don’t know what to
say, other than: yes, I agree,
that’s pretty bad. It might
even be harmful to you, too:
you’re clearly a well-meaning
and morally-minded person,
so I’m worried the tug of war
between your morals and
your working life will eat away
at you. Corrode your soul.
Look, accountancy is an
eminently transferable set
of skills. Are there not com-
panies out there, perhaps
in-house at a medium-sized
business, that are hiring with
decent salaries? Keep an eye
on job listings and, perhaps,
set yourself a deadline for
when you’d like to leave. Don’t
just count pennies – be the
change you want to see. O
1 Amia Srinivasan, ‘Stop the robot
apocalypse’, London Review of Books,
Vol 37, No 18, September 2015,
nin.tl/StopRobots
SEND YOUR DILEMMAS TO
ADVICE @NEWINT.ORG
81
 WHAT IF…
SOCIAL MEDIA WERE NOT FOR PROFIT?
Nick Dowson imagines a different world of online communities that puts our needs first.
My first interaction with online
social platforms – other than email
– was on MSN Messenger. My mem-
ories of it sit alongside the unforget-
table tones of dial-up internet and
the bonsai kittens hoax.
The program had an unadorned
interface and text-based, mostly one-
on-one, chats. There was no public
posting, or algorithms (mathematical
rulesets) determining who read what.
When MySpace, and later Face-
book, came along we mistook their
novelty for fun. But, fast forward
not so many years and the love
affair with social media has quickly
soured – save for a brief interlude
where, having copied from tools
developed by social movements,
Twitter took credit for a swathe of
revolutions and protests.1
It shouldn’t have taken Elon
Musk’s ego to prove that having the
worlds digital public spheres – core
sites for democracy and social life in our
age – controlled by a handful of rich men
was untenable.
From service providers to the fibre
optic cables, the internet has been handed
over wholesale to corporations.
Its ills flow from that: social media’s
monetization through the attention
economy means data mining and the
nurturing of users’ insecurities; adver-
tising fuels consumerism; and platforms
are incentivized to favour the spreading
of far right messages – after all, outrage
is seductive.
So, what would it look like if we called
time on Big Tech’s failed experiment?
A better social media would need to be
decentralized – away from the US stock
markets and men like Mark Zuckerberg,
on whose watch images of breastfeeding
have been banned as misogyny spreads.
As well as avoiding a single point of
failure (or censorship), this would help
with other goals: community ownership,
ANDY CARTER
and democratic control, would be facili-
tated by having many smaller, perhaps
more local, sites.
82
Existing social media giants must be
brought into public (and transnational)
ownership – in a way that hands power
to citizens, not governments. But they
should also be broken up, using existing
anti-monopoly rules.
It is hard to know what sort of algo-
rithms would best promote real com-
munity until we try (Facebook has been
tweaking its software for years, casually
nudging elections while profiting from
misinformation). 2 But the algorithms
that determine what enters peoples’
social feeds must be transparent: open
source, open for scrutiny, and for change.
We could also adapt from sites like
Wikipedia (collectively edited) and Reddit
(where posts and comments’ visibility is
determined by user votes). Moderation
policies – what content is and isn’t allowed
– could be decided collectively, according
to groups’ needs. Interventions could be
developed to help individuals in crisis.
A new social media could be slower
and kinder; designed to be satisfying,
to build connections in the real world,
rather than addictive.
That would also help make it
green, as behind the analogy of
the cloud lies a huge infrastructure
of cables, servers and throwaway
devices, sucking energy and mate-
rials – not to mention the army of
exploited Global South labour, from
brutalized coltan miners to burnt-
out content moderators, that corpo-
rate social media rely on. Our social
media would reduce and optimize,
rather than maximize, network
flows and screentime.
An important step towards a
decentralized social network would
be interoperability, and data port-
ability. Different sites need to be able
to talk to each other (or ‘federate’),
just as email providers or mobile
operators are required to. There’s no
point being on a site if your friends
aren’t, but if your server can relay
messages to theirs there is less of a
barrier. Meanwhile encryption will
be vital for privacy. 3
One particularly intriguing idea is that
of artist and software developer Darius
Kazemi, who suggests every public library
– there are 2.7 million worldwide – could
host its own federated social media server.
As well as providing local accountabil-
ity and access, and boosting increasingly
defunded neighbourhood assets, these
servers would benefit from librarians’
expertise in curating information.
Back in 2023, there’s reason to hope. In
response to the chaos at Musk’s new play-
thing, several million users have set up
accounts with the Twitter-like federated
social media software Mastodon. It feels
like an experiment. We will need many
more. But from little acorns... O
NICK DOWSON IS ON MASTODON @
NICKMDOWSON@MASTODON.LOL.
1 Indymedia and the SMS-based ‘TXTMob’ have both
been credited as inspirations for Twitter. 2 See for
example: Casey Newton, ‘Facebook’s decision…’, The
Verge, nin.tl/3HmkZcs , October 2019. 3 An alternative
to federation is peer-to-peer models, the gold standard
for privacy and resilience. However there are trade-
offs in usability and difficulties with, for example,
moderation. See: Jay Graber, ‘Decentralized Social
Networks’, nin.tl/3HhkK2a , January 2020.
NEW INTERNATIONALIST
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