Category Archives: Socio-economic Collapse

Take a look around you. We are in the middle of an unprecedented situation, something that has never been experienced before and we all hope that we dont have to ever experience it again. While we all are tirelessly working to care for others or for those who we love, it is important to think ways to prepare our cities for all kind of future disasters, as this is not the last one we are struggling with. As the Covid wave surges, there is concern that challenges will amplify and undermine Indias economic growth. Perhaps India is at a critical moment where it can preserve and build on the gains from the first major wave.

Both the waves of the pandemic have shown how neighbours and neighbourhoods have been more effective in helping each other out in a pandemic that has spread like wildfire through cities. Citizens groups, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and community organizations at local level have been able to come together to trace hospitals, medical supplies and oxygen sources. Many have pooled together to even look after Covid-affected families with food, grocery and medicines.

So what worked here? Where we have missed the bus? And moving forward what should be the Indias governance model?

Technically, Indian lawmakers voted for governance model way back in 1992 with the 74th Amendment to the Constitution enhancing the power of Urban Local Bodies. The 74th CAA made a revolutionary change by recognizing local governments right to exist through the following mandatory provisions: (1) constitution of municipalities, (2) composition of municipalities, (3) holding of regular elections, under the supervision of the state election commissions, (4) protection against arbitrary dissolution of local elected bodies by higher levels of government, (5) constitution and composition of ward committees to ensure greater proximity to citizens, and (6) reservation of seats for women and other marginalized groups.

Unfortunately, it never got fully implemented and states have not ensured that power devolves to the local governments. The model of Wards Committees established as a governance model by our policy leaders did not work. A major objective of providing for Wards Committees in the 74th Constitution Amendment was to enable closer interaction between the people and their elected representatives and thereby more sensitive responses to local needs and accountability of the elected persons to their constituencies could be obtained. We rarely saw local councillors emerging as a force to reckon with during these crises.

We saw during the Covid pandemic in 2020, some commissioners worked with the councillors, who in turn relied on RWAs and citizen volunteers to further micro-manage the healthcare related activities. In fact, in an interview to Magicbricks, the then Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Maha Nagara Palike (BBMP) called the RWAs the fourth tier of governance.

When the first national lockdown was declared, images of migrants marching on foot to their hometowns and villages, tugged at the worlds heartstrings. This was primarily because though they live and work in the city, the migrant population still does not have voting rights or any right whatsoever in a city where they may have worked for several years or even decades. Many are part of the informal workforce, but do not have any documentary evidence of their inclusion in the ward. This, despite the fact that they avail of primary and secondary health and education services, contribute to the economy of the ward and also function as a critical part of that economy as maids, drivers, ironing teams, guards, gardeners, cooks and the like.

The defining objectives of the governmental/institutional instruments of policy and programmatic restructuring has to refocus on inclusiveness, safety and health aspects.

The pandemic highlighted the following common concerns

The preparedness, response and recovery of cities from future pandemics and crises rests on robust governance systems. A fundamental shift and redefining the city mandates, roles and responsibilities of actors at Central, State and Local levels is mandatory for new age transformations. The big focus is to translate lessons learned from this pandemic into the citys institutional and governance frameworks to reduce urban inequalities and burden of share on marginalized people. This requires going back to the drawing board and start thinking about long term structural changes and reforms with a focused approach for resilient governance to get back on track for sustainable and smart growth.

Furthermore, existing bottlenecks and barriers that have withheld implementation of critical reforms must be removed. The municipalities have been entrusted with 18 core responsibilities under Article 243W, the Twelfth Schedule.

This includes:

There are many reasons why they are not able to execute these functions efficiently or many times not at all. The first is lack of capacities at the local levels.

Decentralization and fiscal federalism is a must to brings local governments and users close to urban services and development. The functions, functionaries and finances have to go together for any process of devolution to be meaningful. In order to enable people be able to understand the link between their vote and the consequences of such a vote in terms of provision of public goods and services, contemporary ways of accountability should be explored. The principle of subsidiarity should be made used to devolve funds, functionaries and functions to different levels ward committees/area sabhas, cities and regions.

Decentralization should be based on the principle of subsidiarity (Also recommended by the II Administrative Reforms Commission, 2008). The principle of subsidiarity stipulates that functions shall be carried out closest to citizens at the smallest unit of governance possible and delegated upwards only when the local unit cannot perform the task. The citizens delegate those functions they cannot perform, to the community, functions that the community cannot discharge are passed on to local governments in the lowest tiers, from lower tiers to larger tiers, from local government to the state governments, and from the States to the Union. Many years ago, the city council in San Jose in the US, refused Cisco a new tower because it felt that the existing local infrastructure needed to be augmented to hold so many new jobs, traffic, housing needs and even physical infrastructure such as water, power and sewerage systems.

Secondly, local leadership must be encouraged to innovate and leapfrog from business-as-usual tools and technologies. This really means that role of Central and state governments should be to support by creating conditions, enabling environment and necessary tools to encourage and incentivize cities to make local governments directly accountable to citizens, whereas, the role of cities should be focused on providing better services, while balancing fiscal and functional imperatives.

Unless this forms part of the larger vision, any incremental fixes to making a city liveable will lead to further infrastructural collapse and deterioration in quality of living. Being the engines of socio-economic development, it is the cities which are going to be the lead actors in the nations economic growth. Given this state of affairs, the following shloka from Bhagwat Geeta and its beautiful interpretation by Prof. B. Mahadevan in his article on Meaning of Life and Innovation provides us the way forward. 2.22

In this Shloka, Lord Krishna reminds us that discarding old ideas and mind-sets is a very important prerequisite for moving forward. Innovation requires inheriting new ideas and it happens only when old ideas are discarded. When the dress that we have been using has worn out, it is a natural behaviour on our part to discard it and in its place have new ones. Lord Krishna says that in a similar way when the soul comes to a conclusion that the physical body that it currently occupies has outlived its purpose, it merely discards the body and inherits another. Viewed from this perspective, death could be an opportunity and one step for the soul to progress in its journey. In the context of urban governance, it implies that the constitutional provisions need to be revisited for diagnosis of the reasons that have not permitted it to have visible impact and reinvent structures and processes of urban governance. The constitutional provisions need to be given altogether a new garb.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Covid second wave A case for local governance at ward levels - The Times of India Blog

Since the suspension of mining in Goa (March 2018), livelihoods of mining dependents from state are in doldrums and are in search of prosperity and the pursuit of happiness.

The gravity of the situation cannot be over-exaggerated, nor its future ramifications can be underscored. The right to life and livelihoods of the villagers was impacted by shutdowns and embargoes; and the suffering has now heightened beyond extreme to a point of gasping for air', in search of oxygen' through Pandemics and nature's fury. In the cognizance with the current situation, without any further delay resurrection of mining is demanded as an urgent solution to the problems faced by Goans.

Goa's globally renowned tourism industry, which was second only to mining has now completely collapsed and for next couple of years will not see its golden times. According to a report submitted by States Tourism Ministry in December 2020, Goan Tourism has suffered losses to the tune of Rs 7,000 crore; with recorded job losses in the range of 35 per cent. Now with the second wave of pandemic the entire structure of the state's economy and the livelihood of the people has fallen apart.

Puti Gaonkar, President, GMPF said, "The impact of the Covid-19 second wave has further worsened the sufferings of the Goans. The people of Goa especially from the mining belt have broken down completely and finding difficult to meet basic needs such as food and medicines.

"The people from the villages are at present living with limited resources, borrowings, spot jobs, gold loan at the very least. Hence in the interest of communities an interim direction of immediate resumption of mining in the state of Goa will provide relief to the people of the state."

Jayashree Devanand Parab, Sarpanch- Panchayat of Pissurlem, Sattari, Goa, said, "Panchayats of the mining belts have told our Supreme court Advocate to knock the door of Supreme Court again to come to the rescue of our livelihood.

"Three years of livelihood loss since mining closure in March 2018 and then the Covid-19 pandemic and now the second wave have devastated us further with more sufferings and job losses. Our village people are on verge of collapse. All are wating for Supreme Court decision to get back the livelihood by restarting mining.

"Hope the Supreme Court hear our cries of our livelihoods and save the village people from economic death before its too late. We cannot blame the State and Central Government and sit idle. We also will do our bit in the Supreme Court to fight for our people's livelihood.

"Hope Supreme Court understand our sorrowful plight and give a decision or solution which will start mining within few months and our villagers get back the livelihood source."

"We, Panchayat of the mining belt had gone to the Hon'ble Supreme Court for early hearing and decision on Goa Mining matter which is delayed. Now more of our village youths are in trouble because of the severe second wave of Covid which has devastated our village economy and employment. The recent cyclone has further created huge losses to our people due to the destruction it has caused. We see immediate resumption of mining is very important to get lives back to track," says Surya Naik Sarpanch, Rivona Panchayat, South Goa.

The mining ban is not only taking a toll on the livelihoods of Goans but is also badly impacting the socio-economic condition of the state. The Goa Mining sector has been one of the biggest earners of foreign exchange to the state exchequer till the ban which caused a loss of over Rs 11,000 crore revenue to the state's exchequer in the last 3 years.

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Covid2.0 & Tauktae ravaged Goans appeal for ASAP resurrection of mining activities - Sify

Raising children is too expensive and the state doesn't help. Marriages are down by 12 per cent, while new births dropped by 18 per cent. As a result of the one-child policy there are too many men: about 118 for every 100 women. Cancelling population control policies won't be enough to reverse the trend; experts call for subsidies for couples.

Beijing (AsiaNews) Young Chinese do not want to have children because it costs too much to raise them and they get no help from the state.

Chinese authorities face a dilemma: The younger generation prefer to give up parenthood in order to maintain their standard of living while demographic collapse is looming over the country.

According to Chinas Ministry of Civil Affairs, 8.1 million couples married last year, down 12 per cent from 2019, the 7th consecutive year of decline and a 40 per cent drop between 2013 and 2020.

Yesterday, Chinas National Bureau of Statistics released the results of the national census. In 2020 the population exceeded 1.4 billion, but compared to 2019 new births fell by 18 per cent, from 14.65 million to 12 million.

Chinas fertility rate also fell to 1.3 children per woman, well below the 2.1 replacement level needed for a stable population. This is even lower than Japan (1.37 children per woman), which has one of the oldest populations in the world.

Some researchers estimate that over the next 10 years the share of Chinese women between 22 and 35 years will drop by more than 30 per cent.

Another problem is that as a result of the one-child policy the male population is far larger than the female population. In the 15-19 age group, the ratio is 118.39 men per 100 women.

According to several observers, the rate at which China ages is faster than that with which it accumulates wealth.

The ageing of the population and the decline in the number of people of working age require changes and flexibility in the countrys economic structures.

The clear shrinking of the labour force poses a threat to Chinese leaders since the regime bases its legitimacy on economic growth and the promise of prosperity for the Chinese.

In April, the Peoples Bank of China (PBC), the countrys central bank, recommended that the government abandon its population control policies because, without such a step, the country could lose its economic edge.

The central bank has essentially confirmed the failure of the past one-child policy. Easing it in 2106 by allowing couples to have two children did not change the situation.

According to the PBC, allowing couples to have as many children as they want must be done now since there are couples who still want to have more children. Otherwise, certain socio-economic trends might change this in the future, like in the more developed countries.

However, several experts believe that scrapping existing population policies will not be enough to prevent demographic collapse. The Chinese must also be encouraged to start a family.

Women especially should receive subsidies to compensate for the costs and professional sacrifices they face if they choose to have children.

Financial support should be concentrated in large cities, where housing and child rearing costs are higher.

For the Chinese Communist Party, this is a difficult challenge. Western societies with more generous family support programmes have failed to stop declining birth rates, including Japan, where demographic decline has coincided with economic decline.

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CHINA Young Chinese don't want children putting at risk the population and economic growth - AsiaNews

During the Cold War, people of the Soviet Union had little except their secret faith in God and hope for a better life

By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY

The post-war history of SovietAmerican relations, seen from an American perspective, can be summarized as a series of Cold War cycles.

The first cycle, 194555, might be called the TrumanStalin duel. This period coincided with the division of Germany and Europe, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the Warsaw Treaty, and the Korean War.

The second cycle, 195673, featured Khrushchevs nuclear threat, the expansion of socialist ideology into developing countries, the development of Soviet space technology as demonstrated bySputnik, and the SovietEgyptian arms deal.

The third cycle, 197486, began with the self-destruction of an American president, Richard Nixon, via Watergate, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The United States then imposed a trade embargo and otherwise tried to isolate the USSR.

In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his administration challenged the Soviet government by enlarging the U.S. nuclear and conventional military arsenal. Attempts by the Soviets to compete with the military production of the UnitedStates eventually devastated the Soviet economy and severely impacted its physical environment and natural resources.

During the Cold War, people of the Soviet Union had little except their secret faith in God and hope for a better life.Economic, political, military and ideological tensions between the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War affected Soviet people across all socio-economic spheres: shortages of goods and food products; government controlled economy, rigid censorship of social media, science, literature, entertainment and fine art; inability to travel abroad by a majority of Soviet citizens; the Communist Party control of the election process; persistent Marxist-Leninist propaganda at all social and educational levels.

Citizens suffered from unprecedented government corruption in all spheres of life and only one political partythe Communist Party, with its presiding Politburo, in charge of the entire country and its citizens.

And these are only few of many features of the Socialist socio-economic system, with underlining Marxist-Leninist ideology, established to guard the Soviet Socialist regime from a free worldvery much like to todays North Korean dictatorship.

A warming period during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and United States began withthe Duke Ellington orchestras 1971 visit to the Soviet Union, as the most important and publicized tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Ellingtons tour of the Soviet Union occurred during the efforts of President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to establishdtenteat the height of the Cold War.

Ellington found acceptance by the Soviet people and reluctance of Soviet government to censor American jazz. Although Ellington was an apolitical musician, he wanted his performances to embody the differences between what he viewed as the freedom and democracy in America and the isolation and lack of freedom and democracy in the Soviet Union. Ellington made a strong impact on the Soviet society.

Ellingtons orchestra performed in the major cities in the Soviet Union, including Kiev, the capitol of Ukraine. As a freshman student of the history faculty of the Kiev Pedagogical Institute, I, driven by academic interest in American culture, attended his concert that was held at the Sport Arena.

To my surprise, only half of the Arena was occupied during the concert. Rather than obvious enthusiasm and excitement among attendees, there wasonly an atmosphere of uncertainty and intellectual curiosity.

Finally, after a short introduction, the concert began, with some unfamiliar and incoherent musical sounds to my ears. And, indeed, I had been well-versed in classical music. To me, Ellingtons orchestra sounded like a rehearsal by obscure musicians. The American jazz did not appeal to me at all.

At some moment of the concert, a black voluptuous woman appeared on the stagea vocalistnamedElla Fitzgerald. She accompanied Duke Ellington during his tour of the Soviet Union.

I could not connect with her performance either. Soviet indoctrination (or a Marxist-Leninist brainwashing) in Socialist Realism inherently dictated my understanding and preferences in music, literature and other forms of fine art.

Certainly, it was not an imperfection of the performers during the concert that caused my dislike, but my lack of knowledge, familiarity and, subsequently, appreciation for the American jazz. After the intermission, I left the concert early, thinking to myself, What a waste of time and money.

Many of my classmates who attended Ellingtons concert shared with me a similar view and experience.

On May 22, 1972, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Moscow to begin a summit meeting with the Soviet Chairman of Politburo Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet officials.

On May 26, Nixon and Brezhnev signed two landmark nuclear arms control agreements. TheStrategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) was the most significant of the agreements reached during the summit.

Like Duke Ellington, Nixon visited several major cities in the Soviet Union during his trip, including my home townKiev, Ukraine. I dont recall the purpose of Nixons visit to my town, but I do recall that all streets were blocked and secured in places where his escort was to pass from one point of the city to another. Numerous secret service agents were guarding these streets, as well as windows of the apartments that were facing those streets.

Soviet citizens sincerely believed that after Nixons visit to the Soviet Union their life would improve with plentiful and high-quality goods and services made available to them through the introduction of a free-market economic system. This wishful dream became a reality only 20 years laterin the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a collapse of the Socialist regimes in East European countries, including the Soviet Union.

In spite of all of the mutual animosity of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union never engaged in direct military action, fighting, at worst, by proxy. In fact, both American and Soviet leaders did a fairly good job of preventing a hot war between these two great nations, thereby preserving mankind for subsequent global challenges.

Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1977; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and hasbeen the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see http://www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on theWorld Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus,andClipper Odysseyvessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications includeFairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka;Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia;Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska;Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII;Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East;Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.

Read: Old believers preserving faith in the New World

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Alexander Dolitsky: Duke Ellington and the effects of Cold War in Soviet Union on intellectual curiosity - Must Read Alaska

This article is the third of five in a series for the Future of Georgia project run by Carnegie Europe and the Levan Mikeladze Foundation analyzing contentious issues in Georgian society.

The protracted conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, dating back to the early 1990s, have isolated these two societies from Georgia proper for almost three decades. Both regions have been out of Tbilisis control for thirty years and run by de facto authorities that are heavily influenced by Russia. Lack of daily interaction, limited opportunity for people-to-people communication, and near total absence of political dialogue have caused Georgians, Abkhazians, and South Ossetians to drift apart. Consequently, the memory of peaceful coexistence predating the 1990s has slowly faded away, while opposing and radicalized narratives about the nature of their conflicts and the other side feed the public discourse in all three societies.

A critical analysis of the radicalized narratives that dominate the discourse about Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia is much needed. As Sara Cobb explains, radicalized narratives simplify the complex conflicts and solidify the determinant judgments in the public discourse and censure anyone who would challenge them or speak differently about the issues. Rather, a debate on this issue should help Georgians acknowledge the complexity of the conflicts and identify different approaches to tackle the obstacles to the peacebuilding process with Abkhazians and South Ossetians. This is not to diminish the role and responsibility of Russia in triggering and maintaining the conflicts in these regions. A more proactive approach by Georgia should also mitigate Russias deepening influence in the country and its breakaway regions.

The causes of the conflicts that began in 1990 in South Ossetia and in 1992 in Abkhazia are various. Russian influence, the chaos caused by the gradual breakup of the Soviet Union, and the ethnonationalist aspirations of political leaders in Georgian, Abkhazian, and South Ossetian societies all contributed to their outbreak.

Natia Chankvetadze is a PhD student at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University.

Former president Zviad Gamsakhurdia contributed to the alienation of Abkhazians and South Ossetians from the new Georgian national project with his exclusionary rhetoric and discourse on minorities. His policies have been described as a mixture of nationalism, populism, religiosity, and conservatism. Yet today the Georgian public does not associate his name with the start of the wars. In the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC) poll for Carnegie Europe and Levan Mikeladze Foundation (Carnegie/LMF) in 2020, only 20 percent of respondents held him responsible (see figure 1).

There a similar judgment on Gamsakhurdias successor. The armed phase of the conflict in Abkhazia began in August 1992, eight months after his fall, when Eduard Shevardnadze was already Georgias de facto leader. Yet, when asked what was the main failure of Shevardnadzes presidency, 21 percent of respondents said it was the countrys economic collapse whereas 11 percent cited his failure to prevent the wars.

Ketevan Murusidze is a peace researcher and practitioner based in Tbilisi.

The conflict over South Ossetia resumed briefly with the Georgian-Russian Five-Day War of 2008, which was followed by Moscows recognition of both breakaway regions as independent states. This radicalized narratives in Georgia anew. The government of then president Mikheil Saakashvili put greater emphasis on Russias destructive role in prolonging the conflicts. At the same time, many Georgians were critical of his governments inability to prevent the war. Today, 25 percent of respondents in the CRRC poll view this as one of Saakashvilis biggest failures (see figure 2).

The war of 2008 profoundly altered the relationships between Georgians, Abkhaz, and South Ossetians. It also simplified the narrative about the root causes of the armed conflicts in the 1990s.

The framing of the conflicts continued to be entirely different on each side. Sukhumi and Tskhinvali portray the Russian military presence on their territory as being a guarantee of their security, while Tbilisi stresses that both regions are suffering from the illegal deployment of Russian occupation forces who exercise effective political control there. Another argument in Georgia is that Moscow is seeking to exploit the conflicts in the two territories and other places to regain control over the post-Soviet states. This idea was boosted in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and escalated the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The recent war in Nagorny Karabakh also raised concerns that the real intention behind the deployment of a Russian peacekeeping mission there in November 2020 was to strengthen Moscows military position in the whole region.

The radicalized narratives about the root causes of the conflicts and the war with Russia has reinforced a simplified narrative about the lack of agency of Abkhazians and South Ossetians, denying their capacity to act independently. This misses the reality of how the breakaway regions have increasingly diverged not just from the rest of Georgia but also from each other.

Since 2008, the South Ossetian de facto authorities have successfully copied repressive Russian legislation. They have never disguised their ambition to integrate into Russia, either by joining it directly or by joining the Russian autonomous republic of North Ossetia-Alania. The fact that the agreement they signed with Moscow in March 2015 is labeled as one of alliance and integration demonstrates this. By contrast, the de facto authorities in Abkhazia seek more autonomy and continue to resist the Kremlins demand to change their law on land ownership to allow Russian citizens to own property there. The agreement they signed with Russia in September 2014 is labeled instead as one of alliance and strategic partnership and not integration. However, their November 2020 agreement on establishing a Common Socio-Economic Space supported the skepticism among the Georgian public about the capacity and willingness of Abkhazia to claim real autonomy from Russia.

Georgian insecurity has also been increased by the ongoing process of borderizationthe de facto authorities building barbed-wire fences and detaining people on the administrative boundary lines (ABLs) between Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Georgia proper. Borderization focuses Georgian public discourse on the issue of Russian occupation.

In Georgian discourse, Abkhazians and South Ossetians are simultaneously demonized as being ungrateful or marionettes and romanticized as brothers and sisters. For example, in 2014, the draft of a parliamentary resolution on Ukraine suggested by the United National Movement referred to the Abkhazian and Ossetian de facto leaders as puppet leaders whom Russia uses to legitimize its aggression. In 2019 the speaker of parliament, Archil Talakvadze, said: It is important that the spirit of regulations directly coincides with the main strategic goalpeaceful de-occupation and restoration of Georgias territorial integrity. I am sure that together with Abkhazian and Ossetian brothers and sisters, we will soon be working on a constitutional law related to the restoration of territorial integrity.

Georgian public discourse portrays Abkhazians and South Ossetians as brotherly people who were forcibly taken away from Georgia. The brothers and sisters narrative is based on the notion that Georgians and Abkhazians, as well as South Ossetians lived in harmony before the 1990s. Moreover, prior to the conflict in 1991, around 100,000 Ossetians lived in other regions of Georgia, while 65,000 lived in the Tskhinvali region. On the other hand, they are perceived as unthankful to Georgians. Although this simplifies the image of Abkhazians and South Ossetians, it partly recognizes their agency, as they are capable of rejecting Georgias offers.

The discourse changed somewhat in 2012, when Paata Zakareishvili, a civil society activist with a long experience of working with Abkhazians and Ossetians, took on the government portfolio for the conflicts and renamed the State Ministry for Reintegration to the Office of the State Minister for Reconciliation and Civic Equality. The Georgian Dream government elected in 2012 attempted to revisit the narrative about the agency of Abkhazians and South Ossetians. Then prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili declared readiness for direct dialogue with our Abkhazian and Ossetian brothers. However, after eight years in power, the government has neither achieved a breakthrough in this process, nor altered the overall radicalized discourse. Like other political parties, Georgian Dream lacks a fresh and alternative vision for transforming the conflicts.

However, while the radicalized narratives about Abkhazians and South Ossetians still dominate the political discourse in Georgia, a comparison of public opinion surveys from 2013 to 2019 shows a slow and quiet transformation of public perception of the conflicts and of possible solutions. Recent data shows that more Georgians are willing to compromise to reach solutions with Abkhazians and South Ossetians. In an April 2020 poll, 69.7 percent of respondents supported the idea of direct dialogue between the government and the de facto authorities in Abkhazia. However, more research is needed on how much conflict narratives have changed in society behind the public discourse.

A Georgian narrative of victimization also helps sustain simplified images of Abkhazians and South Ossetians. This is fueled by genuine grievances, including over borderization and the diminishing hopes of internally displaced persons that they will get a chance to return home. However, if Georgians are victims, the perpetrators are more plausibly the Russian authorities and not necessarily Abkhazians and South Ossetians. Moreover, this situation also arguably makes the latter victims of Russia too, even if they are yet to acknowledge it. Radicalizing the victimization narratives only reinforces the social boundaries separating Georgian, Abkhazian, and South Ossetian societies.

A key factor that maintains and strengthens stereotypes and radicalized narratives in conflict-torn societies is the lack of direct interaction and communication between the in-group and the out-group. The intergroup contact theory devised by Gordon Allport suggests that continuous contact between alienated societies, preferably supported by institutions, can reduce stereotypes and bias. However, Abkhazian and South Ossetian societies are almost completely isolated from the Georgian one, physically and psychologically.

There are only limited opportunities for Georgians to interact in person with the out-groupsthough a little more with Abkhazians than with South Ossetians. Dialogue and confidence-building projects organized by NGOs provide a safe space where people from the divided societies can discuss issues in a constructive manner. Cross-ABL trade and the Referral Program, under which the Georgian government provides free medical support for the residents of the breakaway regions, create other opportunities for direct communication. However, the number of people involved remains small. Importantly, even when personal relationships are established, they are kept out of the public eye out of political or safety concerns.

In the absence of face-to-face interaction, a conflict-oriented rather than peace-oriented discourse in the Georgian media further reinforces radicalized narratives about the conflicts. Sporadic coverage of the topics related to Abkhazia and South Ossetia focuses almost exclusively on negative incidents at the ABLs and Russian-backed decisions made by the politicians in the breakaway regions. Although the media plays a vital role in giving visibility to humanitarian crises and human-rights violations, the way journalists frame the news also significantly influences how the public makes sense of these events. Media coverage portrays ethnic Georgians as the sole victims of borderization, while in reality ethnic Abkhazians and Ossetians are also affected by it. For example, 325 out of 549 detainees along the South Ossetia ABL in 2016 were South Ossetian citizens as Tskhinvali reported to Amnesty International.

Providing a fuller context and more complete information about the implications of borderization on both sides of the conflict divides would shift the narrative from one of victimhood to a better understanding of common interests. Moreover, media coverage of the conflicts does not provide sufficient space for critical and constructive discussions on peacebuilding processes or for the occasional positive signals by politicians from the breakaway regions, such as the calls for dialogue with Tbilisi by the de facto leadership in Abkhazia in 2020. A few online news channelssuch as Open Caucasus Media, Netgazeti, Radio Libertys Ekho Kavkaza program, and Jam Newstry to challenge this practice, but they cannot change the mainstream media discourse.

The lack of acceptance of those who seek to critically analyze the conflicts and recent history creates conditions where any Georgian who openly challenges the prevailing narratives and stereotypes risks being stigmatized as a traitor or Russian agent. This self-inflicted constraint hinders an in-group self-reflection process that could question the radicalized narratives.

One reason why Georgians are reluctant to challenge some of the radicalized narrativesparticularly those that afford increased agency to Abkhazians and South Ossetiansis an overwhelming fear that this might lead to widespread international recognition of the territories as independent states, beyond that granted by Russia and its small group allies. According to the CRRC survey, the territorial integrity of Georgia is a significantly higher priority for Georgians than membership of NATO and the EU (see figure 3).

Every decision related to the conflicts that Tbilisi makes is considered through this lens. Thus, any changes in the terminology or established narratives are considered a threat to the national interests of Georgia. As one study puts it, to engage with Abkhaz perspectives seriously, so the argument runs, is thus to play into the hands of the Russian aggressor, and weaken Georgia.

Incompatible stereotypes and radicalized narratives rooted in the conflict-torn societies of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Georgia proper not only hurt prospects for a broader peacebuilding process but also obscure important issues that communities in the conflict areas face. For example, the daily struggles of ethnic Georgians living on the other sides of the conflict divides are overshadowed by a strong focus on Russian occupation and borderization.

Ethnic Georgians in the Gali region of Abkhazia and the Akhalgori region of South Ossetia are deprived of basic human rightssuch as the right of political participation, to land ownership, and to access to education in their native languageswhich the international community has repeatedly condemned. Although Russia is accountable for any kind of violations committed during its effective control of the breakaway territories, diminishing the agency of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali and failing to engage in dialogue with them limits the opportunities to address those issues in a meaningful and constructive manner.

Narratives simplifying the conflicts to the single dimension of the Georgian-Russian context overlook uneasy questions. These include: What are the roles of Abkhaz and South Ossetian sides in the process of borderization and detentions at the ABLs? and To what extent is isolation externally imposed on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and to what extent is it embraced voluntarily by the de facto leaders of these places?

The radicalized narratives create a sense of uncertainty and disbelief around peacebuilding efforts, which a recent OSCE report calls protracted conflict syndrome, or a condition when all parties have come to expect that their conflict will not be resolved for the foreseeable future, and they have adapted to that expectation. These self-perpetuating radicalized narratives shape the comfort zone for each society while re-examining and critically engaging with them evokes a fear of compromising national interests. The overall effect of the reluctance to critically analyze and reflect on prevailing narratives erodes the chances of a successful peacebuilding process between Georgians, Abkhazians, and South Ossetians.

The Future of Georgia project is run by Carnegie Europe and the Levan Mikeladze Foundation, with financial support from the Government Offices of Sweden and imminent financial support from the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Natia Chankvetadze is a PhD student at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Her research interests include conflict transformation, community peacebuilding, identity formation, social and symbolic boundaries, and everyday peace indicators.

Ketevan Murusidze is a peace researcher and practitioner based in Tbilisi. Her research interests include peacebuilding, conflict transformation, local capacities for peace, monitoring and evaluation for peacebuilding programs, peacekeeping in the post-Soviet countries, and everyday peace indicators.

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Re-examining the Radicalizing Narratives of Georgia's Conflicts - Carnegie Europe

Over decades, if not centuries, the US dollar has been the worlds leading currency. The central banks all over the world hold an enormous part of their investments in the US currency, while some private companies use it for international transactions. With this, the trade in US treasury has boosts the American economy and greases the wheels to the global financial system.

But, many experts predicted a tipping point will come that would cause the dollar to collapse, thus lead to a global economic problem. In this scenario, many investors would rush to other currencies to run off further losses. This would mean a breakdown of the national economy. The aftermath of this scenario could likely lead to a dollar collapse.

What is Dollar Collapse?

Full of sudden currency collapses have happened in history. A dollar collapse is characterized to a long-term depression in economic activity, increased poverty and a disruption of the social order. One of the primary roots of any collapse is the lack of confidence in the stability or efficacy of money to serve as an effective store of value or medium of exchange.

The main sign of a dollar collapse is when the value of US dollar drops. There are some conceivable scenarios that could cause a sudden crisis for the dollar. When there is a great threat of high inflation and high debt, in which rising consumer prices force the government to raise interest rates.

If the US entered a steep recession without dragging the rest of the world with it, anyone who holds dollar-denominated assets might sell them at any cost that includes foreign governments and no one wants to buy them, worst would leave the dollar. Thus, anytime, everyone should prepare for the worst, but you can prepare for a dollar collapse through these economic indicators.

If US dollar collapse happens, it might come to pass. No one would predict it. Thats because the signs of forthcoming failure are difficult to see. It is imperative for the government to take a necessary intervention to bring an economy back from collapse. Yet, this can often be slow to remedy the problem.

US Currency is weakening

When US dollar weakens, it suggests an adverse financial effect. A weaker currency would encourage exports and make imports inflated. This would mean decreasing a nations trade deficit over time. Every business will have a certain degree of effect depending on the increased price of goods and services.

A weak dollar can boost the gross domestic product during an economic recession. Because exported goods cost less, foreign buyers buy them in greater amounts. It can also result in higher inflation expectations and higher commodity prices. Furthermore, it could lead the Federal Reserve to react and tighten monetary policy.

The emergence of China and Europe Economy

The emergence of major foreign holders of US treasuries is a potential factor to a dollar collapse. Nonetheless, the US dollar must be quite resilient to bar this kind of occurrence.

The Risk of Growing Government Debt & Central Banks

According to the Federal Reserve and U.S. Department of Treasury,

foreign countries costs over trillion dollars of debts like China (about $1.17 trillion) and Japan (about $ 1.06 trillion) held the highest percentages as of January 2018. It appears that central banks will do its power to save the situation, but remember that central banks can also lose control. This situation would be very demanding for the government with high debt loads.

A dollar collapse suggests an economic plight. It is akin to deep recession that scarcity and shortage of resources would occur. One must prepare for the worst scenario and to respond to this kind of uncertainty, you must be mobile. Here are few ways to prepare and protect yourself and survive a dollar collapse.

1. Prepare your Finances and Start being Smart with your Money Now.

You start with cutting all unnecessary expenses and spend that money to pay down your debt. The possibility of losing your home to debt collectors is a very real prospect.

An Emergency Fund is a potential aid to prepare for financial troubles. It will give you stress-free during hard times. It can provide you with a fund to buy last minute supplies once things start to go bad.

Remember to always have a cash on hand. When things go wrong, there is a very real possibility that the banks may freeze your accounts. Its important to have cash that is accessible, either from a savings account or a cash box in your home. This can drift you over in an emergency until you can access money in your emergency fund.

Now is the perfect time to buy long-term supplies that you will need to survive in the future.

Start stockpiling food and long-term supplies. In any type of crisis, especially during a collapse, food, water and long-lasting consumables are essential and indispensable. You will likely see main supply chain shortages and problems, making these types of supplies one of your most important pre-collapse concerns.

Put together a supply of first-aid & medical supplies on hand. Once you create a kit, in the event of a collapse, you may not be able to shop for these supplies, sots important to have them on hand.

3. Secure your Home

To prepare for a dollar collapse is to choose your shelter type. A separate shelter is designed to survive from natural disasters or man-made weapons or attacks. During this kind of crisis, power systems may fail and robbers and scavengers may threaten your home. Take precautions to protect yourself and your home.

Another thing is to create two sources of electricity. One source could be solar. Hook it up to your home and then run the system underground. The second source might be an underground generator. You will use this in the event of a total loss of power. Keep your energy sources hidden underground to protect them.

Set an alarm system in your home. Home alert alarm systems are easy and inexpensive to install and maintain. Wireless security systems notify you if a trespasser is approaching your home. Hidden cameras allow you to see internal and exterior areas in your home where a trespasser may be present.

One of the prevalent risks youre going to face during dollar collapse is the threat posed by people. Learn everything you can about self-defense. When things go bad, you are going to need a way to protect yourself and those you love, your home.

Make sure that every member of the family is mindful of the situation. To prepare for a dollar collapse, you need have to guarantee that your whole family is ready with your preparations. This means informing them in honest terms what is about to happen and telling them what they should be doing. It is important that everyone takes the situation . Otherwise, they will not be mentally prepared in the event that collapse happens.

Each family member must be informed of the steps you have taken to prepare your finances, essential supplies, food, and shelter. Instruct them on doing the same.

Every member should understand the relationship between inflation and economic growth. Explain to them the adverse impact of a dollar collapse on your familys socio-economic life.

Consider including other family members, neighbors, or a community group in your preparations. Make sure that these are people who are reliable and will put to work for the benefit of the group.

5. Equip your Mind

Even more important than supplies, is survival knowledge and awareness. Knowledge is the key to your survival, and now is the time to get plenty. During any kind of crisis and survival, including a dollar collapse, knowledge is going to be your most powerful ally.

Read books on survivaland preparedness, then start collecting information on how to live a more independent lifestyle.

Do your own research and dont rely on government spun stories, or crafted in the media; you need to do your own research too. Check the reliability of the information you get to prepare for the collapse.

6. Expect a Financial Crisis

The major risk you are going to face in a dollar collapse is the downturn of your finances. It is important to be ready beforehand on what to do and what not to do on your financial systems.

Check and track the price of commercial commodities. Changes in the prices of commodities affect the countrys economy and the value of the US dollar. An increase in commodity prices is associated with an increase in inflation. Increased inflation correlates with economic growth. But, if commodity prices drop, inflation slows, which indicates an economic decline.

Take note of the financial markets. Big ups and downs in the markets are a red flag signaling a general decline.

Watch the oil prices. When oil prices increase, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) goes up too. Remember that the fluctuation of oil prices has a macroeconomic impact. If it is increasing, then the value of goods and services also increases.

Everybody else could tell that a dollar collapse would be coming. A sudden dollar collapse would create global economic depression. It would allow the US government to come up with a currency system and a kind of economic strategies to avoid grave consequences.

Demand for Treasurys would drop, and interest rates would go up. US importprices would skyrocket, causing inflation.

Irregular public services like school system experience frequent strikes that shut them down, power issues and outages become more frequent.

Unemploymentwould worsen and more people will experience job loss or layoffs. More people are displaced and finding a job will become almost impossible.

An increase in criminal activity will definitely happen. People will become desperate to feed themselves and their families and more people will be more willing to cross the line into criminal activity to get what they need.

Lots of people will lose access to their healthcare when they lose their jobs. Healthcare appointments may become more difficult to schedule and it may take longer to get in to see a doctor because more people are getting sick and need care.

You can expect increased incidents of domestic violence as family relationships are strained and crack under the stress of poor living conditions.

A dollar collapse is a real threat with far-reaching repercussions. While it is inevitable, there are advance preparations that individuals and their families can make, at the very least, protect themselves from the event triggers. Stay informed on top of the global economy. You can be safe in a dollar collapse if you follow the ways that protect you from an economic crisis.

central banks, debts, Department of Treasury, dollar collapse, economic crisis, economy, Federal Reserves, financial crisis, inflation, recession, survival, triggers, unemployment, US government

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Dollar Collapse Predictions: What Will Happen When It Happens?

FAIR LAWN, N.J. On Tuesday, May 11 at 7:30 p.m. (ET), join historians mit Kurt and Dirk Moses for a conversation on Kurts new book, The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province.

If genocide, as a practice that includes murder and plunder, is orchestrated by a central authority but implemented at the local level, Kurt asks, what is the relationship between local and central authorities? What are the incentives and motives that leads to mass participation?

In his new book, Kurt challenges the depiction that state-sponsored genocide in all its dimensions could be carried out by the central government by edict and, instead, examines how local actors and even ordinary Muslims are complicit.Umit Kurt

To borrow from former House Speaker Tip ONeill, Kurt shows how all genocide is local and invokes Donald Bloxham and Moses observation that location tells us much about the political calculus underpinning genocide.

Kurt and Moses will examine how primary sources from Armenian, Ottoman, Turkish, British, and French archives, as well as memoirs, personal papers, oral accounts, and newly discovered property-liquidation records together provide an invaluable account of genocide at ground level.Dirk Moses

Kurt a historian of the modern Middle East, with a research focus on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, specializes in the late Ottoman socio-economic history, Armenian genocide, mass violence and interethnic conflicts. His broader training also includes the comparative empires, population movements, history of the Ottoman urban and local elites, wealth transfer and nationalism. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of History at Clark University. He is a former post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, the current Polonsky Fellow at Jerusalems Van Leer institute and teaches in the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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The Armenian of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province with mit Kurt and Dirk Moses - The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

A key feature of climate change is that it doesnt pose one single risk. Rather, it presents multiple, interacting risks that can compound and cascade. Importantly, responses to climate change can also affect risk.

In our highly connected world, climate risks and our responses to them can be transmitted from one system or sector to another, creating new risks and making existing ones more or less severe. In many cases risks cannot be understood without considering these interactions.

Recent evidence indicates how some of the most severe climate change impacts, such as those from deadly heat or sudden ecosystem collapse, are strongly influenced by interactions across sectors and regions.

For example, global warming of 2C is projected to reduce yields of staple crops by 5%20%. The compound interaction between heat and drought can make the risk to crops more severe. In response, global trade networks that link distant food systems together can help compensate for reduced local food security. But they can also create new risks, such as more rapid spread of disease, pests and invasive species. And new threats to local food security can arise from commodity price spikes caused by policy responses to climate shocks elsewhere.

Limiting global warming will reduce risk to crop yields. Yet the response actions selected to achieve this will also affect risk. For example, planting forests might displace food crops.

Analysts often treat physical climate risks and transition risks (mitigation and adaptation) separately. Yet policymakers face these risks simultaneously. A holistic view of climate change risk considers them together. It also considers how multiple risks interact.

So how can these complex risks be assessed? In a recent article, we propose three steps. The first is to recognise mitigation and adaptation responses as potential drivers of increasing or decreasing risk. The second is to identify how the multiple drivers of risk interact. The third is to pinpoint how multiple risks can aggregate, compound and cascade.

Typically in climate change assessments, risk is considered as a combination of three components hazard, vulnerability and exposure. This is the approach used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to date.

Take a simple example. Extreme heat (the hazard) poses a risk to rail infrastructure through its heat tolerance (its vulnerability) and its location (its exposure).

But responses to climate change also affect risk. Look at local biodiversity, for example. Planting trees could be as great a threat to habitat loss as drought itself. And tree planting and drought can interact to increase risk of intense wildfire, further harming biodiversity.

Some decisions can have negative unintended consequences, but some can have multiple benefits. For example, switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy will limit global warming and prevent millions of premature deaths caused by air pollution. A more unified risk framework recognises how this happens.

At the moment, risk assessment tends to focus on interacting climate hazards, especially extreme events such as concurrent heat and drought, or heavy rainfall coinciding with a storm surge to increase likelihood of flooding.

This physical science focus on compound extreme events needs to be integrated with greater attention to compounding drivers of exposure, vulnerability and responses.

For example, interactions of gender, age and race can increase risk of illness and death from extreme heat. The risk compounds when low-income workers spend more time working outdoors and are more likely to live in hotter parts of cities.

Understanding compound exposures, vulnerabilities and responses is therefore critical to climate justice. Mitigation and adaptation responses also interact. City trees, for example, reduce urban heat islands and energy use from air conditioning.

Climate risk assessment also needs to consider interactions between multiple risks.

Risks can compound, cascade and aggregate with others. Compound climate risks are those where two or more risks interact with each other to change the overall severity of risk. For example, risk to human life from tropical storms can compound with risk to life from COVID-19 in evacuation centres. A cascade is when one risk triggers many others. For example, tree death from drought affects health and property through wildfires, then river ecosystems, property, and human life from landslides. Aggregation occurs when risks with unrelated causes including those not directly related to the climate occur simultaneously. For example, if an area is hit by an earthquake and a drought at the same time.

Take Cape Towns drought as an example, which peaked in early 2018. Effective responses to the drought were delayed by the political risk of declaring a disaster and a lack of feasible water supply alternatives.

Responses became increasingly urgent when it seemed that the city of four million people might run out of water. This risk was expected to cascade, affecting health, economic output and security. Responses by different groups interacted to generate risks to municipal finance, as households used less water.

The interactions among risks matter because they can increase (or decrease) the overall level of risk. And the resulting overall risk may be very different from the sum of the individual parts.

Understanding the interactions among risks has the potential to change the way we respond to climate hazards.

Policymakers may worry that a response is riskier than the physical climate risk itself. This can delay action. Integrating responses into the way decision makers look at climate change risk helps make scenarios clearer.

Its also important to incorporate local and traditional knowledge and sustainable management practices. Understanding local social and ecological systems can help inform response options.

Our framework aims to strengthen assessment of complex climate change risks by clarifying the types of interactions that generate risk and where they originate. Assessments like this will better reflect the real-world challenges of managing risks across interconnected environmental, socio-economic, and political systems.

Link:

Climate change risk is complex: here is a way to assess it - The Conversation CA

The results that Popular Party (PP) candidate Isabel Daz Ayuso secured at Tuesdays Madrid regional election represent a crushing victory, which serves to continue the hegemony of her group in the region while at the same time revolutionizing the national political outlook. The importance of the result calls for an effort to understand exactly what happened. It is by its nature a complex phenomenon, with a number of factors that contributed to the win.

It would seem reasonable to point to the following points: Ayusos ability to connect with a wide-ranging feeling of pandemic fatigue, as well as the powerful craving for work activity and social interaction; her tapping in to the deep-seated rejection of the politics and alliances of Prime Minister Pedro Snchez that are felt among the electorate in the Spanish capital; the establishment of a campaign framework that was polarizing and anecdotal and favored her interests; and her ability to take advantage of the collapse of center-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) without making any mistakes.

It appears more than probable that a desire to punish the national government was a mobilizing factor

At the forefront, it is undeniable that Ayuso managed to read perfectly the fatigue with the pandemic and make use of the weariness of a society that is utterly exhausted of the tough restrictions and lockdowns that have been in place due to Covid-19. This understandable human instinct appears to have superseded the rational nature of the restrictive measures. Madrid is an exception on the continent in terms of its lax policies for controlling the pandemic. It is debatable as to whether the right balance has been found, but without a doubt, the approach has found support among the public. This understanding of the hopes of overcoming the pandemic could well be the key to this widespread support at the ballot boxes, which has widened Ayusos support.

Secondly, it appears more than probable that a desire to punish the national government was a mobilizing factor. To start with by the sectors that have been most affected by the coronavirus restrictions, but also, in generic terms, there is hostility among a large sector of the Madrileo electorate toward Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Snchez of the Socialist Party (PSOE), as well as former deputy prime minister and Unidas Podemos candidate for Madrid premier Pablo Iglesias. Contributing to this, no doubt, was the negotiations that the PSOE-Unidas Podemos coalition government has entered into with pro-independence parties such as the Catalan Republican Left and Basque nationalist group Bildu in order to pass legislation in the Congress of Deputies, where the government lacks a working majority.

Ayusos strategy of direct conflict with the prime minister has been effective. The initial involvement of Snchez in the Madrid election campaign and the direct participation of Iglesias as one of the candidates strengthening a framework that favored Ayuso brought a particular essence to this factor.

Confrontation and other skillful strategies during the campaign allowed Ayuso to avoid focus on questions of management during the two years she was Madrid premier, something that was less favorable for her than the fields of ideological confrontation, ambitions, and the demonization of the other candidates (including excesses such as the claims of links between Iglesias and Venezuela).

It is undeniable that Ayuso managed to read perfectly the fatigue with the pandemic and make use of the weariness of society

This is another important area that requires reflection. The success of the PPs candidate can be partly explained by her unusual style of leadership, which falls somewhere between entertainment and politics, and has garnered a large amount of popularity, as well as allowing her to reach outside the usual political conversations. This tactic has diverted attention not just from specific issues and future political projects, but also from corruption cases affecting the PP.

Ayuso has obviously been able to soar thanks to structural reasons that have nothing to do with her, such as the slow-motion political suicide that Ciudadanos has been committing for some time now, and of course the history of the PP itself in the region it has held power in Madrid for more than 25 years. This presence in the institutions has allowed the PP to mould the region in accordance with its ideological preferences, not just in relation to a particular culture but also a segregated social structure (Madrid has among the worst socio-economic segregation in schools in OECD countries). This connection between Madrid and the PPs political projects has now deepened to the point where there is now a focus on a regionalist populism, the progress of which will have to be monitored.

While all of these strategies are successful at the ballot box, they raise important questions regarding the implications that they will have in terms of polarization, the impoverishment of political discourse, and even in terms of confrontation between regions. But they also have implications for those parties who are still unable to read and express what their voters are going through in a very acute way.

English version by Simon Hunter.

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Madrid elections: The keys to Ayusos victory - EL PAS in English

In April 1986 35 years ago this week some 30 people were killed when a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history, in terms of both cost and casualties. Radioactive particles were released in a cloud that drifted over most of Europe, causing devastating environmental, public health and socio-economic impacts.

Dr. Alla Shapiro, author of Doctor on Call: Chernobyl Responder, Jewish Refugee, Radiation Expert, was a first responder in the Soviet Union during that crisis. She writes about the experience in a recent USA Today op-ed.

Shapiro worked as a pediatrician at a hospital in Kyiv, not far from Chernobyl, when the meltdown happened. She says she learned about the nuclear accident from her father, who called to warn her.

But no one at the hospital officially learned of what exactly happened until 13 days after the explosion, she says.

Children, bussed in from the disaster zone, started pouring into her hospital. They had persistent coughs and psychological symptoms stemming from anxiety and fear, she says.

The hospital staff was completely unprepared to treat radiation exposure, Shapiro recalls. Training on the topic wasnt part of their education at medical school or during residency. So doctors mainly treated patients based on their own intuition, she says.

That intuition told them they needed to put vulnerable children on oxygen. Tents filled with kids on oxygen tanks were set up outside the hospital, she remembers, and medical staff would play with the children to keep them calm.

Meanwhile, Shapiro got her then-3-year-old daughter to a safe location. She, however, was sent to the contamination zone two or three times with no clear instructions and no protective gear.

I know that I was exposed to radiation, but I have no idea what doses of radiation I received because we were not given that device that measures the radiation, she says. This was the reality that we faced.

More than two decades later, she was diagnosed with colon cancer while she was working in the United States. She believes it was a late effect of radiation exposure.

A variety of long-term health complications have been attributed to the nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl Forum, a group of United Nation agencies, assessed the different health impacts from the devastation and found childhood thyroid cancer to be the leading exposure-related illness.

Fortunately, Shapiro says shes doing well today. Over the past 35 years, shes made it her mission to develop countermeasures and medications for radiation exposure. She moved to the U.S. and began working on solutions with the Food and Drug Administration.

There are actionable ways to prepare for a nuclear disaster, she says. Physicians and medical students should have mandatory training for diagnosing and treating nuclear exposure, she advises.

Years after the incident, Mikhail Gorbachev called the Chernobyl disaster perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The silence and secrecy from Soviet officials defined the aftermath of the explosion.

Government officials, instead of scientists, were providing the information, she says.

The Soviet Union collapsed five years following the events at Chernobyl.

Shapiro says the governments role in downplaying disaster and telling lies ultimately propelled the tragedy something many with lingering illnesses are still reeling from today.

Emiko Tamagawaproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withJill Ryan.Serena McMahonadapted it for the web.

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Chernobyl First Responder Reflects On Lessons Learned 35 Years After Explosion - Here And Now