Category Archives: New Utopia

Ikea research lab ponders the future of the ideal city

Space10 Ikeasresearch and design lab in Copenhagen has teamed up with publisherGestalten to create a book that explores a better urban environment for humanitys future

The Ideal City is a new book from Space10, the Swedish furniture giant Ikeas own R&D lab, based in Copenhagen. A compilation of best practice from around the world 53 cities in 30 countries the thrust of the book is to capture urban projects that are striving to make a difference, gently but inexorably steering towards the impossible goal of utopia. As a result, theres a welcome thread of positivity running through the pages, perhaps unsurprising when you consider how much of a positive spin Ikea has managed to place on the prosaic art of furniture making.

The project run from public toilets to new parks, urban farms, food provision, even prisons and wholescale city district regeneration. Divided into five focal areas The Resourceful City, The Accessible City, The Shared City, The Safe City and The Desirable City the book includes projects and proposals from featured architects such asSelgasCano, Naruse Inokuma Architects, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, and Urban-Think Tank, along with a host of thinkers and theorists.

Photography:Anne-Sophie Rosenvinge

The topics cover all the key talking points of our age, from closed-loop energy systems to more walkable, accessible and diverse urban spaces. As architect Bjarke Ingels describes it, true utopia might be impossible, but that doesnt stop designers from ensuring that each time they design a little fragment of the world [you have to make it] more like the way you wish the world to be.

Many of the featured projects follow the now-familiar format of a focal point designed to act as an exemplar and generator of socially progressive ideas, whether its a place of worship, a community market, a bike park or public seating.

The book goes further by talking to planners and entrepreneurs, highlighting the uneasy relationship between public and private that makes progress so unpredictable. Youll come away from these pages realising that although design leadership is never in question, whats needed most is political will. Without economic and legislative building blocks, a new social contract will struggle to take shape.

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Ikea research lab ponders the future of the ideal city - Wallpaper*

Despina Stratigakos, vice provost for inclusive excellence and professor of architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning, has been named to the board of directors of the Martin House.

Frank Lloyd Wrights Martin House, designed and built from 1903-05, is considered by Wright scholars to be a significant turning point in the evolution of Wrights Prairie house concept. The National Historic Landmark is located in the Parkside neighborhood of Buffalo.

An architectural historian, Stratigakos conducts research that explores how power and ideology function in architecture, whether in the creation of domestic spaces or world empires.

She is the author of four books. Hitlers Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (2020) examines how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to construct a model Aryan society in Norway during World War II. Where Are the Women Architects?(2016) confronts the challenges women face in the architectural profession.Hitler at Home(2015) investigates the architectural and ideological construction of the Fhrers domesticity.A Womens Berlin: Building the Modern City(2008) traces the history of a forgotten female metropolis. It won the German Studies Association DAAD Book Prize and the Milka Bliznakov Prize.

Stratigakos has served as a director of the Society of Architectural Historians, an adviser of the International Archive of Women in Architecture at Virginia Tech and as a trustee of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.

She has taken part in Buffalos municipal task force for Diversity in Architecture, and was a founding member of the Architecture and Design Academy, an initiative of the Buffalo Public Schools to encourage design literacy and academic excellence.

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Stratigakos named to Martin House board - UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff - University at Buffalo Reporter

To quench the pandemic-inspired hunger for travels, our columnist invites readers to visit some of the worlds quirkiest places, made special by technology.

Not being able to travel for nearly a year due to the persisting Covid-19 pandemic is starting to slowly but surely affect my sanity (excessive use of the split infinitive is one of the first symptoms, or so I hear).

That is why I was thrilled to be approached recently by a Berlin-based international publisher with an offer to compile an atlas of the worlds oddest places. As a former QI elf (yes, I worked on that popular TV programme as a writer/researcher some years ago), I can confess to being an avid collector of geopolitical, technological and other oddities, so the publisher did his own research well.

In Mafia speak, it was indeed an offer I could not refuse.

Currently in the midst of going through my copious notes and archives, I am still not sure what to include. So to somewhat quench (another split infinitive I did warn you!) the pandemic-whipped hunger for travel, allow me to introduce just three of the potential 100 entries made odd by technology/ies.

The worlds smallest national railway network, the Vatican Railway, is a short stretch of track that connects the states only station with one just outside the Vatican walls in Rome. It was once used to transport Popes dead and alive but in recent years it has, thanks to the papal plane, been relegated to freight runs, bringing goods from Italy into the Vatican.

The Vatican Railway system is the shortest in the world: line length, 0.68km; track length, 1.19km. It has two tracks, but only one station and one platform. Passengers traverse a mere 624m on their voyage from the Vatican station to Roma-San Pietro.

The Vatican Railway operates just one passenger train per week, on Saturday mornings, and an occasional freight train.

The Papal States grand train station was constructed between 1929 and 1933 and decorated with the expectation that it would be used by Popes and VIPs. Three popes have indeed used the Vatican Railway, four if you count the fact that Pope John XXIII had the relics of Pope Pius X transported to Venice via train from the Vatican.

The incumbent Pope Francis himself has not yet taken a train from the Vatican Station. However, in 2014, he welcomed 500 children who travelled by train to the Vatican from Naples as part of a care programme for socially deprived children.

For comparison, the worlds longest railway network, with an operating route over 250,000km long, is in the USA. The second longest, at 100,000km, is in China, while the third longest, in Russia, measures 85,000km.

The South Australian town of Coober Pedy is the worlds only town situated entirely underground. Aptly enough, Coober Pedy is an Aboriginal expression thought to translate as white man in a hole.

Millions of years ago, the whole Australian continent was submerged by the ocean. When it receded, minerals from the seabed filled cracks in the earth and created colourful opals. Coober Pedy is part of the Great Artesian Basin, renowned as the opal-mining capital of the world. What began in 1916 with the arrival of the first adventure-seeking miners, soon evolved into the worlds largest opal-mining operation.

Coober Pedy residents began turning discarded opal mines into permanent dugouts to escape the oppressive heat. That is why, despite being home to around 2,500 residents, the town has an eerie, almost otherworldly feel to it.

Entire bookshops, churches and bars are installed in the towns carved underground walls and, after years of living in these dugouts, the folks who call them home have no plans of leaving.

The underground dwellings have all the traditional amenities internet access, electricity, and water. The only difference between normal homes and those in Coober Pedy is that the latter never see daylight.

A word of warning based on personal experience: visitors need to watch their step especially at night to avoid falling through the ground or bumping into mining equipment and abandoned vehicles scattered around the town!

In 1927, Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer and then the richest man in the world, bought a 3,900-square-mile patch of the forest in the Brazilian Amazon. His intentionwas to grow rubber fortyres, but the project rapidlyevolved into a more ambitious Utopian bid. Ford temporarily succeeded in constructing an American-style town, which he wanted inhabited by Brazilians hewing to what he considered American values. Workers wereaccommodated in good-quality clapboard bungalows, some of which are still there now. Streetlamps illuminated concrete sidewalks lined with warehouses and dance halls.

In his efforts to build a new American Utopia, Ford forbade consumption of alcohol on the site while promoting gardening, square dancing and readings ofpoetry. Special sanitation squads patrolled the outpost, killing stray dogs, draining puddles of water where malaria-transmitting mosquitoes could multiply, and checking employees for venereal diseases.

Alas, Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, despite the best intentions of its founder, soon became the site of an environmental and social disaster. Although many fine buildings were constructed, in the plantations, the trees were planted too closely and therefore suffered from all sorts of diseases. No rubber was produced.

The site which, significantly and unlike this writer, Ford himself never visited was returned to Brazil in 1945.

Fordlandia these days is not quite a ghost town, but home to nearly 2,000 descendants of Fords plantation workers, now mostly employed in farming. Some of them live in the crumbling, yet surprisingly sturdy, structures built nearly a century ago.

Have you visited any places (towns, areas, countries) made odd or special by technology? Letus know at engtechmag@theiet.org with 'After All' in the subject line.

The Bumper Book of Vitalis Travels Thirty Years of Globe-Trotting by Vitali Vitaliev is published by Thrust Books.

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After All: From my collection of techno oddities you never knew existed - E&T Magazine

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, titled, Theres One Big Problem With Electric Cars, the author argued that the switch to electric cars is an improvement, but doesnt solve many of the problems that all cars cause, regardless of what they run on. They take up a lot of space, both on roads and elsewhere in cities. They sit unused most of the time, and their parking spaces alone eat up a lot of room in cities, and that room may be put to better use. Theres also a lot of death and destruction associated with cars, with over a million dying globally every year in crashes.

The main point was that instead of switching cars to electric, we should be pushing society away from cars toward alternatives, like transit, to solve the problems he laid out.

My first reaction was to raise the problem of realpolitik, which the author did partially get into. People are at least willing to change from a gasoline car to an electric car because it doesnt totally upend a big chunk of their life that was built around cars. Neighborhoods, cities, jobs, and many other things are all built around cars, and people dont like that feeling that their life, which they worked their butts off to get together, is changing out from under them.

Even changing fuels is controversial and hard to get people to do, and might be barely achievable over a decade or two. Pushing for something even more fundamental like getting cars out of cities is likely to be a non-starter, so wasting energy on that instead of what people would be more willing to do might keep any kind of change from happening.

As Otto von Bismarck said, Politics is the art of the possible. Letting the perfect become the enemy of the good isnt a good way to get anything done.

As I thought about it more, I dont think the premise of the piece is very sound. Getting rid of cars might not actually be a better outcome.

Disasters and Emergencies

Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic showed us that a world powered mostly by mass transit wouldnt be the utopia some people think it is. With enclosed spaces, dozens or hundreds of people sharing the same air, and tight quarters that preclude social distancing, trains, subways, and buses are efficient but arent that compatible with life during a pandemic.

Eventually things will go back to normal, but theres no way this is the last pandemic we will ever face. Even if we avoid something this bad happening for another 100 years, we dont want to compound the problem with 100 years of collectivist transportation monoculture. If there arent any Ubers or car lanes the next time we get into this kind of crisis, the only remaining alternative will be bikes and scooters (assuming the government should run everything scolds dont ban dangerous e-bikes in favor of transit, too).

The pandemic cant be the only kind of black swan that would cripple us if we became overly reliant on transit for everything. Texas got shellacked this past week because they assumed that the kind of winter weather they got wouldnt happen often enough to matter, so wed better take a look at all of our assumptions before we get rid of cars and other privately-controlled forms of transportation. What could possibly go wrong? is a question we should be answering, not taking rhetorically.

Cities Dont Exist In A Vacuum

But lets take that scary disaster stuff off the table for a minute and assume that nothing goes wrong. Urban people could be better off without cars taking up so much room. Thered be more room for pedestrians, micromobility, and even housing without traffic lanes and parking lots/garages taking up all that space, right?

The problem is that cities are usually ringed by suburbs, which then give way to an archipelago of exurbs before youre back in the wilderness. What about all the people near the city but not in its core? I guess you could beef up transit in those places, too, and even beef up transit between suburbs and exurbs, but that would only happen at great cost. We are already decades if not a century into sprawl development in most places, and idealism cant provide us with a Ctrl+Z solution unless someone invents the flux capacitor.

The Urban-Rural Divide

Even worse, its not good to have rural people and people in small towns speaking completely different transportation languages. That only deepens the urban-rural divide. In theory, people visiting the city from a small town could park in a garage or lot at the edge of the urban core, but youre imposing an extra fee for outsiders, and discouraging them from interacting with the city. People living in the city, not having cars, would have a greater expense when they want to go visit the countryside, and theyd naturally do less of that.

The political problems and impasses that separate urban populations from rural populations are already bad enough now without imposing what would basically be a toll or tax on anyone trying to cross the urban-rural divide. I know Reagan isnt popular with environmentalists, but he was right when he said you get less of the things you put a tax on.

If we put roadblocks on the bridges crossing the urban-rural divide, we risk more political drama at best and war at worst in the long run.

Ive seen some people (not the author Im responding to) suggest that nearly everyone just be moved into cities to protect nature and for other reasons. The Chinese government has actually been doing this, against rural peoples wishes, for years. They force people to move, bulldoze the small settlements and towns (some of which have existed across multiple ancient dynasties), and move everyone into multi-story dwellings. The goal is to make everything more efficient, provide more opportunities for the people theyre moving, and help spur domestic economic demand to make China economically stronger.

The reality isnt as rosy as they had hoped. Moving that many people that fast has led to struggles with building infrastructure, housing, and even providing jobs for the new residents that pay enough for them to afford to live in the city.

Theres also the mental health issue nobody wants to talk about.

The fact is, humans didnt evolve in cities, and we dont cope very well with our disconnection from nature. Need some proof? Just look at what happened to many people after watching Avatar (the 2009 film). After seeing a realistic, three dimensional view of a beautiful jungle paradise, some fans couldnt cope very well with returning to a normal life on earth in a synthetic and engineered city.

When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed gray. It was like my whole life, everything Ive done and worked for, lost its meaning, one viewer wrote in an online forum. It just seems so meaningless. I still dont really see any reason to keep doing things at all. I live in a dying world.

Its not just a VR version of the post-vacation blues. Human populations passed 50% living in cities a decade ago, and the frightening truth is that we dont know how well thats going to work. A well-established body of research shows that humans have a need to be connected to nature. There are a number of psychological and even physical ailments that people suffer because weve been removed from the environment in which humanity evolved. It has even been shown that patients recovering from surgeries recover faster when they have a window with a view of trees instead of a brick wall, and prisoners are less prone to violence and conflict when theres some nature introduced into the prisons.

Instead of vilifying sprawl and those who decide to move to the suburbs, maybe we should treat cities the same way the NYT op-ed treats cars. Maybe instead of concluding that cars should go away because theyre bad for cities, we should question whether cities are the right way forward for humanity itself.

I know we will never abolish cities, or move all people into them, but we should be looking for ways to mix mankind with nature more for our well being. We may even consider reducing density, and having people work remotely from smaller towns and even rural areas. Just like we need a healthy balance of cars and other forms of transportation in cities, we need a healthy balance of the urban and the rural in our lives.

Cars can be a good part of that solution, especially when theyre electric and dont contribute to the destruction of nature as much as other kinds of cars.

Featured image: My Nissan LEAF out in nature at the Painted Desert in the Petrified Forest National Park.

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There Are Many Big Problems With Getting Rid Of Cars - CleanTechnica

Twenty-five years ago, late Subcommander Insurgent Marcos from the EZLN, described globalisation as a war against humanity. HisSeven Loose Pieces of the Global Jigsaw Puzzle(1997) pictured several dimensions of this war including the omnipresence and omnipotence of money. Today the war against humanity has reached a point of no return. Crises are inherent to the fabric of capitalism. Through crises, capital renews itself to continue self-expanding. The problem that we face is not the 1% of greedy capitalists standing against the 99% of the world. Rather, this ill-conceived idea of the Occupy Wall Street movement prevents us from understanding that the problem we have to confront is that capitalism is an (im)possible project, i.e. a system that has colonised human and non-human life to the point of self-destruction.

Recently, USA based best-seller authors, such as Rutger Bregman inUtopia for Realistsand Peter Frase inFour Futures, proposed that the project for the left should be based on a massive redistribution of money (cash transfers/ universal basic income), together with full automation. What a big mistake! Let us be clear: money, as means of exchange, existed before capitalism. But it is only in capitalism that money becomes a form of existence of human practice. To get rid of money as means of exchange will not do either. As the old mole demonstrated a century and a half ago, the most important feature of (colonial, patriarchal) capitalism is not to put people to work and exploit them in the workplace (although this is essential), but to secure the subordination of the human and non-human life to money, sustained by the separation between the producers and the means of production as the precondition for its existence (Dinerstein and Pitts). Money is not a simple mediation in market transactions: it is the most abstract expression of capitalist property and hence the supreme social power through which human social reproduction is subordinated to the power of capital (Clarke).

My question to those who want to distribute money is: How is this going to solve the problem of the central role of money in the subordination of life to the power of capital, and the violence, cruelty and misery it creates?

Todays crisis is a crisis of the social reproduction of human and no-human life, with its ecological, political, financial, economic, energy, food and environmental forms of expression. The solution to the crisis is in the hands of those who are struggling in rural communities, in the city, in the harbour, in the jungle: they constitute the seventh piece of the jigsaw puzzle in Marcos analysis: the pockets of resistance against the empire of financial pockets. Grassroots organising is expanding and has a chief role in the creation of alternative forms of social life to the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist one.

The process of creation of alternatives brought back the depreciated idea of utopia in a new light without becoming utopianist. Grassroot movements, collectives, and communities have freed utopia from the heavy ideological prison and party politics burden and embrace, instead, a concrete utopia based on a praxis-oriented activity. Concrete utopias have left behind the abstract project of a dreamed society by the political Avant guard to be realised in the future. Instead, they are opening spaces (pockets) from where to enunciate and articulate new concrete realities in the present. They are utopian because their praxis denaturalise capitalist society by operating within the dimension of the not yet reality that awaits in the interstices of the present reality to be anticipated. This process is driven by hope as political praxis and resistance, rather than wish, passive expectation, religion, or fantasy.

Alternativesengage with possibility. To speak the language of possibility is not nave: the world is open, unclosed, wrote Ernst Bloch, and possibility is not a mental creation but exists in the material texture of the world. Possibility is not the same as Probability. Most of the things we dream of are not probable because there is no objective evidence or established conditions for them to emerge. But can we dare to say that to eliminate hunger in the world is impossible? Clearly not. All we can say is that it is not probable right now, but it could be possible. We cannot rule things a priori because we have not imagined them yet. It was unimaginable and improbable that the indigenous communities of Chiapas would have produced a global revolution. The Zapatista uprising demonstrated that it was possible. The Zapatistas revolutionary movement that represents the voice of indigenous people of Chiapas, Southeast Mexico. They came to light on January 1, 1994, when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) occupied several counties of Chiapas, an economic strategic area where abundant natural resources (biodiversity, oil, waterfalls) coexist with extreme poverty and social exclusion. The entrance of the Mexican state to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) demanded a reform of Article 27 of the National Constitution which would facilitate the opening up of indigenous lands (ejidos) to large agrobusiness. On January 1, 1994, the first day of NAFTA, the Chiapas peasants, represented by the EZLN ski-masked leaders, exclaimed Enough is enough! (Ya basta!), declaring war on the Mexican state and characterizing globalization as a war against humanity.

The idea of the alternative must be problematised rather than romanticised. The alternative is not simply the enactment of an ideal society but a complex process of struggle towards dignified life. They begin with an -implicit or explicit NO, like the Zapatistas Ya Basta! To say NO is a very important step but it is not enough. Every no, writes Bloch, contains at the same time a dangerous and battle-worthy Yes. (Bloch).

The process of communising, inventing, exploring, creating and contradicting collectively is affirmative in the sense that it shields life in a non-religious and non-transcendental manner. We are here to live, and to live with dignity. As critical affirmations, alternatives are not positive or optimistic. Rather, they constitute an advanced form of negation that has progressed from saying NO to the enunciation of a new reality. But critical affirmations are always at risk of being obliterated. Hope is not safe, secured, says Bloch. It entails risk and danger. This risk is created by multiple contradictions that emerge in the process, internal and external, individual, organisational, collective cultural and political. The art of organising hope emerges from within capitalism and stands with, against, and beyond the state, the law, money, etc. As the political form of capital, the state is genetically designed to create order; its managers endeavour to subordinate resistance to a historically specific form of order by either obliterating it by force or by translating our struggles into something else that befits the grammar of the state order, via policy, money, and legislation. In the process, the radical anticipatory and prefigurative elements of the alternative, usually are lost in translation, although legislation passed as a response to a process of mobilisation can create a better situation (e.g. the recent achievement of legal abortion in Argentina), and therefore enable us to be in a better position to continue the struggle beyond capitalism.

But this is not the end of it. As we navigate contradictions collectively, we produce a surplus possibility that we must cherish, nourish and expand. The idea of defeat prevents us from capturing this incredible dimension of the art of organising hope. We must find another way to process disappointment and identify the content of surplus possibilities (excess). Then, we will stop worrying about what the state will do; we already know the answer to this, and shift focus onto theuntranslatablepossibilities that we are creating: the signs, ideas, experiences, horizons, practices and projects that are beyond the state reality, that exist in a beyond zone of an alternative praxis and therefore cannot be recuperated and integrated by the state.

This means that we will produce a different way of measuring success, considering how alternatives challenge the systems, ways of doing, classifying and naming, thinking, etc. As Icaza and Vazquez put it clearly, these struggles are epistemic struggles, so they cannot be adequately understood through the rationality that underlies the processes they want to break and therefore, we must read social struggles as open questions to the dominant ways of thinking and ordering the real.

Bloch, E. (1959/1986). The Principle of Hope Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Clarke, S. (1988). Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the state, Aldershot, Edward Elgar.

Dinerstein, A. C. (2015). The politics of autonomy in Latin America: The art of organising hope, Basingstoke, Palgrave McMillan.

Dinerstein A.C. and H. Pitts (2021) A world beyond work? Money, Labour and the Capitalist State between Crisis and Utopia, Emerald, Society Now Series, London,

Icaza, R. and Vzquez, R. (2013) Social Struggles as Epistemic Struggles, Development and Change, 44(3), pp. 683704.

Levitas, R. (1997) Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia. In Daniel, J.O. and Moylan, T. Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch, London and New York: Verso), pp. 6579.

Levy, Z. (1997) Utopia and Reality in the Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. In Daniel, J.O. and Moylan, T. Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch, London and New York: Verso, pp. 175185.

Teaser photo credit: Sign of the entering Zapatista autonomous territory:North Zone. Board of Good Governance. Strictly prohibited: The trafficking of arms, planting and consumption of drugs, intoxicating drinks, illegal sale of wood, and the destruction of nature. Zapata lives, the fight continues You are in rebellious Zapatista territory. Here the people rule the government obeys. By Matthew T Rader, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88956310

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The power of the Alternative - Resilience

New Delhi: Citing damning examples of Reagan era policies that have led to irreparable damage to the USs farmers, 87 farmers unions in the country have extended solidarity to the ongoing protests by farmers in India.

In a strong letter, the organisations draw a sharp connection between how agriculture has been affected by forces of neoliberalism in both India and the US. The unions began the letter by quoting Ghazipur protester Ringhu Yaspal, who says, Agriculture has turned into a slow poison. Its better to die fighting here.

The unions called the ongoing protests at Delhis borders one of the worlds most vibrant protests in history.

Their rallying cry is to repeal the three unjust laws that were passed without their knowledge or consultation. We extend our solidarity to countless farmers who are peacefully and boldly standing up for their rights and dignity, with other farmers from across the globe.

One of the key demands of the movement is for farmers to receive a Minimum Support Price (MSP) currently assured for just a few crops for all produce, including vegetables, the unions note.

The unions extol the virtues of MSP, noting that it is a key price signal to other traders, and ensures that farmers receive a fair price for crops.

A security person keeps vigil near barbed barricades at Ghazipur border during the ongoing farmers protest. Photo: PTI

Notably, the unions recognise the role of the US government in creating the current imbroglio.

The US has been a key opponent of Indias limited use of MSP at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The US, with Australia, Canada and European allies, has claimed that Indias MSP distorts trade.

In a two-part analysis forThe Wire,Indra Sekhar Singh had essayed the after-effects of US policies on agri-business and the model India has sought to follow with these farm laws.

The unions also exhorted the Biden administration to make agricultural policies conducive to farmers.

While the U.S. agricultural sector receives inordinately large support compared to many countries, access to that support remains inequitable. In particular, Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian-Pacific and other people of color producers, who lack secure land tenure and are concentrated in vegetable and small-scale cattle sectors, have been excluded historically. Support flows to larger agribusiness farming operations instead of the independent family farmers whose voices we amplify.

The unions note that it is their understanding that what Indian farmers are enduring now happened in the US almost four decades ago.

Reagan era furthered the farm crisis through deliberate federal policy changes, with systematic erosion of parity prices and other deregulatory efforts. Get big or get out has been our governments mantra. Farmers with the means to consolidate have been rewarded for growing monoculture commodities. Tribal nations and traditional producers as well as small farmers who have always practiced or shifted to diversified agroecological farming have effectively been subsidizing the US agriculture sector. It is rare for these food producers to make a living without supplemental income. Unsurprisingly, farm suicides in rural America are 45% higher than the rest of the population.

The WTO has worsened an already unequal playing field between the Global South and Global North, the unions note. What every nation-state can do, at the very least, is protect small farmers from deregulatory efforts, such as the three farm laws in India, that diminish the limited bargaining power that farmers have, pushing them off their farms, they said.

Finally, the unions urged governments in the US and India to support independent farmers and localised food systems.

We have great respect for the unified struggles the farmers and farmworkers of Samyukt Kisan Morcha have built, and we stand with them, the unions announced.

Below is the list of signatories:

1. A Growing Culture2. Abanitu Organics3. AFGE Local 33544. Agri-Cultura Cooperative Network5. Agricultural Justice Project6. Agroecology Commons7. Agroecology Research-Action Collective8. Alabama State Association of Cooperatives9. Alianza Nacional de Campesinas10. Alliance for Progressive South Asians (Twin Cities)11. American Sustainable Business Council12. Americana World Community Center13. Ancestor Energy14. Association for Farmers Rights Defense, AFRD Georgia15. Black Farmers & Ranchers New Mexico/National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade Association16. Buttermilk Falls CSA17. Center for Regional Agriculture Food and Transformation18. CoFED19. Community Agroecology Network20. Community Alliance for Global Justice21. Community Alliance with Family Farmers22. Community Farm Alliance23. Community Food and Justice Coalition24. Compassionate Action for Animals25. Disparity to Parity26. Earth Ethics Action27. East Michigan Environmental Action Council/Cass Commons28. Echo Valley Hope29. Ecologistas en Accin30. Ecosocialist Working Group, International Committee, Democratic Socialists of America31. Fair World Project32. Family Farm Action Alliance33. Family Farm Defenders34. Farm Aid35. Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance36. Farmers On The Move37. Farmworker Association of Florida38. Ground Operations39. Health of Mother Earth Foundation40. i4Farmers41. Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle42. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy43. Institute for Earthbound Studies44. Just Transition Alliance45. Land Core46. National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association47. National Family Farmers Coalition48. Natures Wisdom49. NC Climate Justice Collective50. NeverEndingFood51. North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers Land Loss Prevention Project52. Northeast Organic Farming Association Vermont53. Northeast Organic Farming Association, Mass. Chapter54. Northeast Organic Farming Association-Interstate Council55. OPEIU 3956. Peoples Architecture Commonwealth57. Pesticide Action Network North America58. Philadelphia Community farm59. Real Food Media60. Regenerative Organic Alliance61. Regenerative Rising62. Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA63. Rural Advancement Fund of the National Sharecropper Fund64. Rural Coalition65. Rural Development Leadership Network66. Rural Vermont67. Safe Food and Feed Foundation68. Santa Cruz Permaculture69. Science for the People70. Science for the People Twin Cities71. Seeds for All72. Shaping Change Collaborative73. Sierra Club-USA74. Southeastern African-American Farmers Organic Network75. Steward Foundation76. Texas Drought Project77. The Carbon Underground78. United People Community Organization, Market, and Farms79. University of MN Food Recovery Network80. Uprooted & Rising81. US Food Sovereignty Alliance82. Utopia Cornucopia83. Vision for Change Foundation84. Vitis and Ovis Farm85. Washington Biotechnology Action Council86. Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice87. Womens Environmental Institute

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'Happened in US 40 Years Ago': 87 US Farmers' Unions Speak Out for Indian Farmers' Protest - The Wire

There are two reasons why my latest book is called Sonic White Poise. First, as a straight allusion to Paul Celans poem Espenbaum. (Aspen tree your leaves glance white into the dark, in Michael Hamburgers translation).

The underside of an aspen leaf is so pale compared to its other side that it appears white. The leaves of the aspen tree are reputedly louder than the leaves of other trees when rustled, thus Sonic White Poise, adjusted from a locution to be found in my poem concerning trees, The Discoveries of Thomas Fynch.

Espenbaum is totemic to me. I first read it 41 years ago as a schoolboy attending a workshop presented by John F Deane. Celans poem is a masterclass in the presentation of a real, actual event through the language and conventions of European Surrealism; a lesson in how Surrealism can be a vehicle for the real. While it is an affecting account of a sons loss after his mothers murder, its enduring appeal to me is on the level of its aesthetic achievement.

The other reason for my books title is to own up to my whiteness. Some people assert their whiteness as an expression of White Nationalism I have no time for such eejits. As a person whose 1970s childhood was overshadowed by the unremitting bloodshed in Northern Ireland I have a developed, deep-rooted revulsion for nationalisms of every ilk. I choose to identify as white in my book in order to acknowledge that white is not the default colour of humanity.

In the western literary tradition the only protagonists who have the colour of their skin described are those whose colour is different from the white authors who created them. White characters are presumed to be white. The question of white privilege and white saviour complex was never far from my mind in the composition of many of the poems included in this book.

To my knowledge, in 1970s Cork there was just one solitary Irish black child. One home-grown black child in the second largest city of our country. The nation, in all practicality, was homogeneously white. As late as the 1990s American observers were irate that a film like The Commitments, about black soul music, could be made in Ireland without any black person. A correspondent was dispatched to Dublin from New York who reported that he traveled right out to the projects and could find only white people.

The past is a different country. Ireland in the 2020s is quite a different place again and all the better for it. It behoves its artistic creators to acknowledge that. Raised in a different country from my children (who have a sibling of colour) I have had a suite of world views to adjust and reset. I am a refugee, fleeing the mindsets of the 20th century.

My father was a big Johnny Weissmuller fan and with him I, as a child, would have watched most of the Tarzan films with Irish actor Maureen OSullivan front of screen, while a troupe of African extras provided anonymous local colour in the background. Teilifs ireann also broadcast its fair share of British movies of the 30s and 40s, extolling the putative virtues of imperialism.

I began my re-education by coming across Edward Saids Orientalism at the turn of the century. Said helped relegate the English adjective oriental to the description of carpets and not persons. My poem The Isle of Langette recounts the narrative of an explorer who seeks out a lost world, when he gets there he describes the occupants in the language of occidentalist exoticism. The story does not end well for him.

In Prayer Service (first published in an early version in The Irish Times) I recount my experience of attending the funeral of Nuala N Dhomhnaill s husband. Dogan was a Turk and his funeral service took place in a Dublin mosque, attended by half the poets of Ireland. One issue for me was the experience of a lapsed theist attending a structured prayer service, but other concerns presented themselves where a white Irish person, raised in the Catholic tradition, enters an Irish mosque for the first time.

In my life I have been fortunate enough to have, among the women who have shown me love, women of colour. Several poems in the book address questions of privilege and occidentalism in the context of one relationship. My poem Dinka had as its starting point a particular portrait of a man by Leni Riefenstahl. Possibly, in portraying Dinka and Nubian people as paragons of beauty and physical perfection, Riefenstahl was compensating for her earlier association with the Hitler gangs moronic assertion of Nordic bermenschheit; probably not. Either way her Afrika portfolio is problematic for its white gaze. And those problems are referenced in my poem, ambivalently, ambiguously, along with other efforts to sidestep white privilege and saviour complexes.

I loathe explaining or justifying my poems. I would wish to live in an aesthetic utopia where a Joycean silence and cunning remained the order of the day. I was never one for shrouding myself in artistic intrigue and mystery but in my ideal world every poem is consumed by an omnisciently insightful reader immersed in literary convention and non-convention. In this world the poet belongs to a priestly class whose liturgy is never questioned or justified, merely liked or disliked. We do not live in such a world.

The late American poet Tony Hoagland discovered that fact to his grief. In his 2003 collection What Narcissism Means To Me he included a poem called The Change. The poem had previously been published in the journal Agni, so it is a text which has been knocking about for quite some time. As you can guess from the title of his book Hoagland was an ironist.

Another of the poems in the book is called Poem in Which I Make the Mistake of Comparing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washerwoman. The Change concerns a white American protagonist who is observing someone like Serena Williams playing tennis against a European blonde. The protagonist of the poem describes the Williams-like character with tropes most enlightened people would find offensive and goes on to say:

I couldnt help wanting

The white girl to come out on top,

Because she was one of my kind, my tribe,

With her pale eyes and thin lips

And because the black girl was so big

And so black,

In the context of the full collection and Hoaglands inclination for mischief I read the poem as a self-aware account of unself-aware racism. My interpretation was that Hoagland did not endorse the opinions of his protagonist and was implicitly condemning them by exposing their existence.

Years after it was first published, Claudia Rankine came across the poem. She considered the possibility of a reading such as mine but seemed to settle on the opinion that it was an unselfaware account of unapologetic racism. She called Hoagland to account. But Hoagland made the mistake of believing that, like a mid-20th-century Beckett or Joyce, he should make no account of himself and his poem.

He learnt for himself, and for all of us, that we are at the wrong transection point in history to cultivate a position of aesthetic elitism or poetic priesthood. The affair left him out in the cold, interpreted as patronising and dismissive. He was loved to his grave by luminaries such as Terrance Hayes, but life was never the same for him after reports of his inadequate response to Rankine went viral.

Poems need to be ambiguous, sometimes ambivalent, nuanced. An art works relationship to generally perceived truth needs to be complex and complicated because people are. We consume art to discover how particular individuals struggle with asserting their individuality amidst a society which demands crowd conformity.

There is no point in producing a poem which is completely in tune with perceived moral correctness. Such a text would be mere agitprop or an essay in political philosophy or, at the very least, a performative exercise in virtue signalling. But while acknowledging that a poem should be nuanced, concomitantly the poet cannot be nuanced, cannot be ambivalent, cannot be ambiguous.

Whatever might be needed to be said on the page to be artistically truthful, in these troubling times, ( the word troubles of course has a particular understated connotation in Irish discourse) the poet must be clear and resolute in their support for progressive society off the page.

Sonic White Poise, a collection of poems by Patrick Cotter, has just been published by the Dedalus Press, Dublin

Read the rest here:

White privilege: I am a refugee, fleeing the mindsets of the 20th century - The Irish Times

Once upon a time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was unpopular, viewed by many as welfare redux. Barack Obamas promise that If you like your healthcare plan, youll be able to keep your healthcare plan, didnt exactly work out. By the middle of the 2010s, so-called Obamacare had cost the Democrats both houses of Congress.

Yet one great recession and one raging pandemic later, the ACA is liked, if not necessarily loved, by a majority of Americans.

The political process doesnt stop just because a bill becomes a law, according to Jonathan Cohn.

As if to prove Cohns point, the US awaits a ruling by the supreme court on another challenge to Obamacare, this one brought by the Trump administration and Republican state attorneys general. If they prevail, more than 20 million Americans may lose health coverage. Nearly a half-million have died from Covid. Markets dont always deliver what is needed.

The Ten Year War is a look back at the crusade for universal healthcare coverage, and a sequel to Cohens earlier book, Sick: The Untold Story of Americas Healthcare Crisis. Cohn is a senior correspondent at the Huffington Post. His take remains informed and nuanced, not breathless. The Ten Year War also captures acrid and tectonic shifts in US politics.

Cohn persuasively argues that the combatants in the healthcare fight operated with less than perfect knowledge, and that preconceived convictions too often clouded their judgment. Cohn aims at both policy wonks and political junkies. Laced with interviews and quotes from both sides of the aisle, his book is definitely newsworthy.

Obama and Tom Price, Donald Trumps short-tenured health secretary, speak on the record. David Axelrod, Obamas counselor, and Michael Carvin, a veteran conservative litigator who unsuccessfully argued against Obamacares constitutionality, also talk to the author. Years earlier, in the 2000 election, Carvin was on brief in George W Bushs winning supreme court gambit.

There were those who suggested that we shouldnt do anything other than the economy

Obama admits his surprise over Republicans not moving on after the ACA passed, unlike Medicare in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. We got no take-up on any of that stuff, he says. Left unsaid is that blue and red are more than just colors they are tribes.

By the same measure, Obama acknowledges that there were those who suggested that we shouldnt do anything other than the economy. That is an understatement.

One of those outsiders was Chuck Schumer, now the Senate majority leader. Even then, Cohn writes, the New Yorker grasped the political consequences of going all-in on healthcare amid a meltdown in the jobs and housing markets.

Indeed, after the Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, New Yorks senior senator unloaded on Obama before the National Press Club: After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs. Said differently, the ACA highlighted the inherent instability of the Democrats upstairs-downstairs coalition.

Instead, in Schumers telling, we took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem healthcare reform. Apparently, there are few things more gratifying in politics than telling a sitting president: I told you so.

Of course, political myopia is not the sole province of any one party. Price admits that Republicans too operated in their own universe.

I think there was a lack of appreciation on the part of all of us in the administration about how difficult repealing Obamacare would be, he says. Price is a physician as well as a former Georgia congressman.

Price criticizes Trump for fashioning policy to comport with the last voice to whisper into his ear, and for a fundamental lack of understanding of healthcare and insurance.

We would make concrete decisions about what we were going to do, he says, get presidential sign-off, and then within 24 hours the decision would change.

For Prices boss, pulling the rug out from under others was standard operating procedure.

According to recent reports, Steve Bannon, then ensconced at the White House, believed Trump was in the throes of dementia and ought to have been removed. That didnt happen but Price did leave government amid a swirl of controversy surrounding his use of taxpayer funds to finance travel on private aircraft.

No book on Obamacare would be complete without a retelling of John McCains late-night thumbs-down on the Senate floor. Here, Cohn definitely delivers. Adding to the legend, Cohn relays the Arizonans loss of patience with Senator Lindsey Graham, his longtime wingman who was already morphing into a Trump acolyte.

Hours before McCain dealt a death blow to ACA repeal, he appeared at a press conference with Graham to discuss the latest administration-backed gambit. As told by Cohn, McCain seemed not to be paying attention to what Graham was saying. One Republican aide saw what was happening, Cohn reports, and surmised that McCain had come to believe: This thing is so fucking stupid Ive got to kill it.

More than five in nine Americans believe it is the federal governments responsibility to ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage, a level of support actually smaller than 15 years ago. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, Joe Biden was the only top-tier contender who opposed both Medicare for All and efforts to abolish private health insurance.

He also understood the Democratic center better than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The core of the party wanted reassurance, not socialism or Massachusetts-style McGovernism. Neither senator would have beaten Trump.Utopia could wait.

When Biden, as Obamas vice-president, exclaimed that the ACA was a big fucking deal, he was tacitly recognizing that Obamacare had pushed the boundaries of what was practicable. To quote Cohn, In America, that is what change looks like.

Read more:

The Ten Year War review: Obamacare, Trump and Biden's battles yet to come - The Guardian

The collection, directed by Anna Himali Howard and Georgia Green, cover stories of estrangement and loneliness; of connection and redemption; of despair in confinement to hope found in life outdoors.

Paul Miller, Artistic Director, said today, As we emerge from a bleak Winter, its appropriate that the OT commits to new talent and new initiatives. Literary Associate Guy Jones has curated a beguiling and moving series of short plays from some writers familiar to the OT and some new to us, to reboot our theatre. And these will also be our first venture into live-streaming: we want to live-stream all our work in the future and this is our first step towards that. We want to be back to full-scale productions that welcome audiences when it is safe. Until then I am proud to present this new play project as the best possible way of platforming the new and emerging talent thats vital for the future.

Inside/Outside is part of OT On Screen, the Orange Tree Theatres digital project launched in January 2020 with Maya Arad Yasurs play Amsterdam, watched by over 25,000 people worldwide. The productions, filmed in collaboration with The Umbrella Rooms, mark the companys first live-streamed project, and the first live performances at the Orange Tree Theatre since lockdown began on 16 March 2020.

All rehearsals and filming will be conducted in a Covid secure environment in line with current government guidelines.

Sonali Bhattacharyya was 2018 Channel 4 writer in residence at the Orange Tree, where she wrote Chasing Hares, winner of the Sonia Friedman Production Award. Her credits include Megaball (National Theatre Learning for Lets Play), Slummers (Bunker Theatre), 2066 (Almeida Theatre), The Invisible Boy (Kiln Theatre) and White Open Spaces (Pentabus Theatre South Bank Show award-nominated). She was one of three playwrights selected for the inaugural Old Vic 12, and is currently under commission to Fifth Word and Kiln Theatre, writer in residence at National Theatre Studio and recently shortlisted for the Womans Playwriting Award for her play Deepa the Saint.

Deborah Bruces theatre credits include The House They Grew Up In (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Distance (Sheffield Theatres/Orange Tree Theatre finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Joanne (Latitude Festival/Soho Theatre), The Light (Live Theatre), Same (National Theatre) and Godchild (Hampstead Theatre). As a director, her credits include Pride and Prejudice (Regents Park Open Air Theatre).

Zoe Coopers Out of Water had its world premire at the Orange Tree in 2019 and was a finalist in the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was also shortlisted for the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Awards 2019, and nominated for the Best New Production of a Play Award in the Broadway World UK Awards. Her playwrighting credits include Jess and Joe Forever (Orange Tree Theatre/Traverse Theatre/UK tour Off West End Award for Most Promising Playwright Award 2017, longlisted for the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award) and Nativities and Utopia (Live Theatre).

Joel Tan is a Singaporean playwright based in London. His credits include Love in the Time of the Ancients (Shortlisted for the 2019 Papatango Prize), Tango (Pangdemonium Theatre nominated for Life Theatre Awards Best Original Script), Caf (The Twenty-Something Theatre Festival), The Actors Tour (international tour), Mosaic (M1 Festival) and The Way We Go (Checkpoint Theatre). He is part of 503 Five, Theatre503s residency scheme and an associate artist with Chinese Arts Now and Singapores Checkpoint Theatre

Kalungi Ssebandeke was selected for the BBC Writersroom London Voices, and Soho Theatres Writers Lab. He was also selected for the Lyric Hammersmith Ten Week Writers Programme and has written for the Young Vic, Bush Theatre and Talawa, his credits include Assata Taught Me (Gate Theatre). As an actor, his credits include Blood Knot (Orange Tree Theatre).

Joe Whites debut play Mayfly premired at the Orange Tree in 2018, for which he won Most Promising New Playwright at the OffWestEnd Awards and was nominated for Best New Writer at The Stage Awards. He has written work for The Old Vic, Lyric Hammersmith, Bush Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Birmingham REP and BBC Radio 3. In 2014, he was selected for the BBC Writersroom 10 and won the Channel 4 Playwriting Award. In 2015, he was the Writer in Residence at Pentabus Theatre Company, and in 2017, he was selected for the Orange Tree Writers Collective and the Old Vic 12. In 2019, he was selected for the BBC TV Drama Writers Programme, through which he is developing a pilot with STV. He is currently under commission with Sheffield Theatres, Audible and Carnival Films.

Georgia Green directs. Her previous credits include The Mikvah Project (Orange Tree Theatre/BBC Radio 4) for which she was nominated for Best Director at The Stage Debut Awards.

Anna Himali Howard directs. Her forthcoming work as a director I STAND FOR WHAT I STAND ON (Strike A Light). Past work includes I Wanna Be Yours (Paines Plough/Bush Theatre), A Small Place (Gate Theatre), and Albatross (RWCMD/Paines Plough/Gate Theatre). Howard was Associate Director for Fleabag (Soho Theatre, international tour). She was Paines Ploughs Trainee Director in 2016 and is an alumnus of the Birmingham REP Foundry. She was recently a Staff Director at the National Theatre, London.

Orange Tree Theatre Listings1 Clarence Street, Richmond, TW9 2SA

INSIDE/OUTSIDEBox Office: 020 8940 3633orangetreetheatre.co.uk

Inside: Thursday 25 Saturday 27 March 2021Outside: Thursday 15 Saturday 17 April 2021Performance Times: 7.30pm (Evenings) & 2.30pm (Saturday Matinees)Tickets: from 10 on sale 23 February to OT Members and 25 February public sale

Audio-described performancesInside: 26 March at 7.30pm and 27 March at 2.30pmOutside: 16 April at 7.30pm and 17 April at 2.30pm

Captioned performancesInside: 27 March at 2.30pmOutside: 17 April at 2.30pm

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Orange Tree Theatre announces Inside/Outside - London Theatre 1

Representative image  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

Imagine this scenario: Concerned about Joe Bidens new Middle East policy and the International Criminal Courts decision to investigate war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel decides to get on everyones good side and announces that it will vaccinate the entire Palestinian population against COVID-19. Such a decision would be an instant public relations victory. But dream on. While Israel is among the leaders in the world in inoculating its population, it has shown no inclination toward taking care of all of the people under its control the Palestinians being the excluded class. Worse, it appears to actively seek to be an impediment to good sense, going so far as to turn away a truck bound for Gaza last week with the vaccine the Palestinian Authority had secured from Russia. The situation in Israel-Palestine, however, is not unique in vaccine un-diplomacy. The pandemic has not been an advertisement for the claimed moral superiority of the West over the Rest.

But first, back to Israel and bear in mind here that it claims to be the only Western, or at least Western-styled, nation in the Middle East. Admittedly, under international law Israels obligation to vaccinate the Palestinian population living under military occupation is unclear. As the occupying power, Israel has specific responsibilities for the occupied populations medical needs. But a global pandemic is a unique situation that isnt specifically addressed. Nonetheless, youd think there would be moral grounds for helping out, as well as enlightened self-interest Israels population interact with Palestinians on a daily basis in many cases, after all.

An apologist might argue that Israel doesnt have enough vaccine to spare. And this, in fact, speaks to the wider unsavoriness of the vaccine-grab among specifically and exclusively Western nations. In their rush to secure vaccines for themselves, wealthy countries in the West, like the United States and some members of the European Union, have turned their backs on large areas of the developing world. Canada has vaccines on order for more than five times the number of its population, even as South Africa has been able to secure only one million doses for its 55 million people (full disclosure: I live in Cape Town).

Access to vaccines reinforces power dynamics between the developed and developing world. While the rich vacuums up any vaccine they can find, the rest are left wondering if they will get access to any doses at all.

And lest you think the G-7 has now pledged to change all that, remember that Britain, for example, promises only to donate leftover vaccines (eventually).

Then there is the issue of the vaccines themselves. Western-designed vaccines such as those from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca have generally been perceived as the gold standard in quality and effectiveness. But what of the Russian and Chinese versions? The implicit prejudice against inferior vaccines made by these non-Western countries has resulted in The New York Times opinion piece this month pleading that Its time to trust Chinas and Russias vaccines. The fact that such a plea had even to be made to the Times liberal readership speaks volumes.

Despite (mostly unfounded) concerns about the quality of Russian and Chinese vaccines, new geopolitical alliances are being formed along national vaccine lines. The UAE, Egypt, Serbia and Pakistan are among the countries to have approved the Sinopharm vaccine from China. Bolivia, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil have approved another Chinese vaccine, made by Sinovac. The Russian version has been approved across more than a dozen countries in the developing world.

As the world becomes more fragmented along the lines of access to vaccines and to which vaccines, its instructive to consider just how far it has veered from the globalization put forward in the West over the last 30 years. The Flat Earth utopia advanced by the journalist and best-selling author, Thomas Friedman, for whom humanity is linked by Western-led and -styled peaceful global trade, digital communication and strong institutions, has proved a farcical myth during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Instead, international institutions are under attack, and vaccination efforts that would enable countries to gain control over the virus are disjointed and viciously national. Benevolent American leadership a key to Friedmans Flat Earth hypothesis has all but evaporated.

The West, essentially, asserts that it is more important after all than the rest and is more deserving of the available Western vaccines. While globalization is indeed a sound idea, the shame is that the West was never committed enough when it mattered most.

For developing nations, abandonment by the West when the chips are down is going to prompt a reevaluation of who their friends really are. This, after decades of exhortation by the West, to be more like the West economically, through the Washington Consensus on trade, economics and property rights, and more like the West politically, through the adoption of Western values of elections and human rights.

At a moment of existential peril of the highest order bigger than any economic meltdown or inflationary run-up or monetary crisis it was China and Russia (but mostly China) that rode to the rescue of the poor. Regardless of Chinas motives, the pandemic now has recast power and influence in Beijings favour.

Does that matter? The West feigns concerns for all; but in times of stress, it still believes itself to be more important (hypocrisy be dammed). Its claimed values are not, after all, unqualified. China, on the other hand, does not hide its self-interest, and its unashamed ambition for superpower supremacy should be a cause for wariness. Neither the West nor China is an ideal partner if youre poor. However, China is even less of a model for the world, and even more risk in the aggregate to the individuals that make up a state. Just check with the Tibetans, Uighurs, and the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Israel, in its recent engagement or maybe disengagement with the Palestinians under its control, provides a stark example of what might happen if the West (or near-West) does not live up to its idealized promise. The vaccine that was stopped while on its way to Gaza came from Russia. China cant be far behind.

In arrangement withSyndication Bureau

Joseph Dana is a guest contributor. Views expressed are personal.

Continue reading here:

Israel, the West and vaccine inequality - Times Now