foreignpolicy--2019-08-22--Outsiders Battle to Rebuild Libya Is Fueling the Civil War There

Outsiders’ Battle to Rebuild Libya Is Fueling the Civil War There  Four months after Libyan National Army (LNA) chieftain Khalifa Haftar began his assault on Tripoli, Libya is closer than ever to collapse. Haftar’s hopes for a swift seizure of the Libyan capital have unraveled due to stiff resistance from forces loyal to the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). Meanwhile, a panoply of international stakeholders—including China, Russia, Italy, France, and the Persian Gulf states—have become involved in the conflict, dragging it on. Although some of these actors cite the need to slow the flow of migrants from Libya to Europe or the hope of stabilizing Libya as rationales for foreign intervention, they’re also motivated by the prospect of lucrative reconstruction contracts.  The most bitterly contested contracts are in Libya’s oil industry, which is expected to double its production by 2023, and in infrastructure projects that leverage Libya’s strategic location on the Mediterranean Sea. For example, foreign powers are clamoring for dominance over the El Sharara and El Feel oil fields, which lie in southern Libya’s oil crescent; control of offshore oil deposits held by the GNA; and access to crucial ports, such as Benghazi and Ras Lanuf.  The balance of forces in Libya profoundly affects who will win what contracts. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and France have supported the LNA’s military activities, and their economic interests hinge on the success of Haftar’s charge on Tripoli. Italy, Turkey, and Qatar have consistently supported the GNA and helped the U.N.-backed government resist Haftar’s territorial offensives. Russia and China have treaded cautiously in Libya and bet on neither party gaining a decisive advantage.  If the status quo, where the GNA controls Tripoli and its environs and the LNA dominates eastern and southern Libya, is formalized, Russia and China are poised to benefit the most. That is why they have advocated for maintaining this setup against other actors that would rather see the LNA or GNA emerge as the overwhelmingly dominant force.  And so, although Russia has been criticized for blocking a U.N. resolution condemning Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli and for allegedly deploying private military contractors in support of the LNA’s military activities, it has also maintained active relations with the GNA. This balancing strategy has economic foundations. Russia has printed dinars for distribution by Haftar’s parallel Libyan central bank, while the Russian energy giant Rosneft signed a deal to purchase oil from Libya’s National Oil Corporation in 2016.  Given these economic interests, the optimal scenario for Moscow is a peace settlement that ends the U.N.-enforced arms embargo against Libya and creates a frozen conflict. Prior to the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, Russia had $4 billion in arms contracts with Libya. Even today, the LNA’s air force relies extensively on Russian military technology, so Moscow would benefit greatly from the removal of the arms embargo.  Russia’s ability to balance favorable relations with the GNA and Haftar could also help Moscow land some much-coveted national infrastructure contracts. Russian companies are especially interested in constructing a railway linking Benghazi to Sirte, which would bolster Russia’s economic and geopolitical influence on the Mediterranean Sea, and Moscow hopes that its unique diplomatic strategy will help its bid for the $2.5 billion project triumph over rival offers.  As for China, which has adhered to a policy of stringent nonalignment in Libya, the preservation of the status quo could also help Beijing secure major reconstruction contracts. In recent years, China has taken steps to entrench itself as a major force in Libya’s oil industry and construction sector—both that controlled by the LNA and that controlled by the GNA.  After years of stagnation, Libya’s oil exports to China doubled in 2017, and National Oil Corporation Chairman Mustafa Sanallah has emphasized the importance of energy sector cooperation with Beijing. Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj has also pledged to expand the presence of Chinese companies in GNA-controlled territories, to guarantee Libya’s participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. North Africa is a small but rapidly growing area of interest for Chinese investors, and Beijing views a foothold in Libya as an essential component of its regional economic power projection strategy.  With Russia and China at a clear advantage, foreign powers that are unambiguously aligned with either the LNA or GNA are using military force to level the playing field. Although Haftar’s goal of seizing Tripoli appears far-fetched, the LNA’s sponsors, including Egypt and France, hope that he gains enough territory for international institutions to legitimize his control over eastern and southern Libya. Meanwhile, the GNA’s primary allies, including Turkey and Italy, are seeking to stymie Haftar’s offensive and restore control over southern Libya’s oil reserves to the internationally recognized government. The failure of either faction to gain a decisive advantage has stalled the resolution of the conflict and exacerbated the France-Italy, Egypt-Turkey, and intra-Gulf struggles for dominance in Libya.  Since Haftar seized control of Benghazi in 2017, France and Italy have been locked in a competition for influence over Libya’s petroleum reserves. Initially, Italy had the upper hand, as the Italian firm Eni had extensive access to oil reserves in southern Libya. Italy’s ambassador to Libya at the time, Giuseppe Perrone, struck a deal with the GNA to rebuild Tripoli International Airport’s passenger terminal. Haftar’s seizure of southern Libya’s oil fields nullified Italy’s advantageous position, and the French oil giant Total is now the largest prospective beneficiary from these reserves. Recent clashes in Murzuq are a flash point in the France-Italy rivalry, as both countries view the fate of that town as potentially critical to the future power balance in southern Libya.  While the Egypt-Turkey struggle for geopolitical influence has played out in the military sphere as both countries have armed their respective factions of the LNA, a similarly intense contest is playing out in the economic arena. The president of the Egyptian-Libyan Association for Businessmen, Nasser Bayan, has described Turkey as a direct competitor to Egypt’s efforts to enter the Libyan market. Of the three major interstate rivalries for reconstruction contracts, the Egypt-Turkey contest is the most zero-sum in nature, as Ankara has been blocked from investing in LNA-held territories since at least 2015. With Turkey looking to reconstruction projects in conflict zones as a major opportunity to strengthen its sagging economy and with concerns growing in Egypt about the cost of aligning with the LNA, both countries are poised to continue supporting military action to break the deadlock in Libya.  Sustained intra-Gulf tensions have also contributed to the militarization of the contest for reconstruction contracts. Although Qatar has been circumspect about investing in Libya due to the country’s instability, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi fear that a shift in the balance of power favoring the GNA will trigger an influx of Qatari investment in Libya.  To avoid this scenario, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are continuing to bankroll Haftar’s offensive and are lining up future investments to capitalize on LNA gains. Through a partnership with the Libyan Business Council, the UAE has engaged directly with Libyan companies and devised proposals to develop a direct sea line between ports in both countries.  Although the contest for reconstruction contracts has remained out of the headlines, it is a major contributor to Libya’s ongoing war. Even if the war of attrition between the GNA and LNA ultimately dies down, the other geoeconomic rivalries in Libya could undermine true reconstruction of the Libyan state, dashing hopes for renewed stability and future prosperity.


mintpressnews--2019-05-07--Yemens Houthi Movement Unveils National Vision to Heal Rebuild and Modernize their War-torn Nat

Yemen’s Houthi Movement Unveils “National Vision” to Heal, Rebuild, and Modernize their War-torn Nation

SANA’A, YEMEN — In what is the most extensive national plan published by a Yemeni government entity in the past three decades, the political wing of the Houthi movement, Ansar Allah, unveiled a comprehensive plan to rebuild war-torn Yemen through a manifesto offering 175 goals to rebuild the nation into a modern, stable and democratic state by 2030.  The manifesto, officially called the National Vision, refutes long-echoed Saudi claims that the Houthis are simply violent rebels occupying Yemen’s capital and shows a flexing of political power that reaffirms the Houthis primary reason for mobilizing against the ousted government of Abdul Mansour-al Hadi: a desire to have competent government institutions that establish a Yemeni democracy and to make the country prosperous.  It’s also a sign that the Houthis are seeking to reestablish relationships with countries around the world, and ultimately reopen Yemen to foreign investment.                 The incumbent president of the Supreme Political Council in Sana`a, Mahdi al-Mashat, who is also a senior member of the Ansar ِAllah political party, announced the implementation of the National Vision and confirmed that the government in Sana`a, known as the National Salvation Government of the Republic of Yemen, has officially adopted the new vision.  Speaking at an inauguration event attended by members of the Supreme Council, al-Mashat called on Yemenis to sharpen their resolve and move towards rebuilding the country, saying “while we are confronting the Saudi-led Coalition, we also face the challenge of building the state.”  Supreme Council Secretary Dr. Yaser Al-Houri said that representatives from various political, professional, trade union, and women’s groups participated in crafting the manifesto, with the goal of providing services, strengthening the economy, and becoming self-sufficient in all areas.  Rune Agerhus, chairman of the International Solidarity Committee with Yemen — a consortium of human-rights activists, journalists, and politicians from around the world — explained what the vision means:  The National Vision also aims to remake Yemen into a regional power, while strengthening state institutions that have been destroyed during the war, all before the year 2030 and while the Saudi-Coalition continues its bombardment of the country.  Some of the critical areas addressed in the National Vision include raising the average life expectancy, improving social services, increasing the literacy rate, tackling corruption, and raising the percentage of women in the workforce to 30 percent by 2030. Today, women comprise a mere 6 percent of Yemen’s workforce.  The National Vision also strives to unite the country — currently splintered along political, secteratairan and tribal lines — by launching a comprehensive national reconciliation that addresses political solutions, governance, social construction, economic development, administrative development, justice, the rule of law, innovation, creativity, knowledge, scientific research, education, health, environment, defense, foreign policy, and national security.  Furthermore, it endeavors to tackle corruption in a country that currently ranks amongst the worst in the world on the World Corruption Perceptions Index and achieves an annual real economic growth rate of less than 5 percent.  The 2030 goals set out by the National Vision are lofty, to say the least, especially for a country that has suffered immensely through four-years of a war waged by a coalition that is seemingly hell-bent on destroying every facet of civilized society. However, if the National Vision’s goals are reached, by 2023 Yemen will rise significantly on World Corruption Perceptions Index, will increase its literacy to at least 80 percent, will increase the participation of women in the labor force to at least 30 percent, and will reduce the poverty rate to less than 20 percent.  Yemen’s sustainable development index will improve from 45 to 60; its investment index will rise from 130 to 190; its annual per capita GDP will reach above $2,000; and its unemployment rate will be reduced to 10 percent.  The National Vision also lays out a plan to boost Yemen’s economy into one of the top 100 in the world, reduce its annual inflation rate to less than 5 percent and, perhaps most impressively, raise the war-torn nation to at least 98 on the international index of democracy and the freedom and protection of citizens’ rights.  Yemeni experts are optimistic about the plan and Ansar Allah’s ability to carry it out. The vision — whose primary slogan is a saying by the late Ansar Allah President Saleh al-Sammad: “one hand protects, the other hand builds” — faces obstacles but has a good chance at success.  According to Saleem Saleh, a scholar who has studied the Houthi movement since its inception, “the Houthis previously held no military or political power but quickly became a powerful force able to withstand a coalition of several countries, despite six [previous Yemeni] wars fought.”  However, many political analysts who spoke to MintPress believe that Saudi Arabia will work to thwart the National Vision, as it emphasizes national sovereignty and independence, values that contradict Saudi Arabia’s vision of Yemen as a backyard to the kingdom. They cite the Saudi assassination of Yemen’s former President of the Supreme Political Council, Saleh al-Sammad, who was murdered by Saudi drones in Hodeida after he first proclaimed the idea of a new National Vision in 2018.  Saudi Arabia’s policy is not without precedent. North Yemen’s charismatic president, Ibrahim Muhammad al-Hamdi, was murdered by Saudi Arabia on October 11, 1977, after the Al-Hamdi government embarked on an ambitious economic development plan to help bring Northern Yemen closer to 20th-century modernity.  Feature photo | A Yemeni man cleans in front of his house during a national cleanup campaign in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 12, 2018. Hani Mohammed | AP  Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.


globalresearch--2019-11-09--Geneva Is Key to Syria’s Recovery

Geneva Is Key to Syria’s Recovery

The political solution to the Syrian conflict is the task at hand for the constitutional committee that has been meeting in Geneva since October 30. The co-chairs are Ahmad Kuzbari from the Syrian government and Hadi Albahra from the opposition. The Mini-Committee continued activities on Wednesday for the fourth successive day at the UN headquarters in Geneva while working towards amending the constitution for Syria, which is seen as the roadmap to recovery. The 45-member committee equally divided between the Syrian government, the opposition and civil society will hold a four-hour session per day. The full committee consists of 150 members: 50 each representing the Syrian government, the opposition, and civil society. The political solution is necessary before the US and EU sanctions against Syria are lifted, western embassies reopen in Damascus, and reconstruction funds are pledged to rebuild Syria.  Those representing the Syrian government are a cohesive and unified group; however, the group representing the Syrian opposition is extremely varied in their ideology and it is difficult for them to speak with one voice. Some of those opposed to the Syrian government from the outset of the conflict were secular, liberal dissidents living abroad in western countries; however, the Syrian Islamists, especially the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, established close relationships early-on with the US State Department, and the Americans preferred supporting the faction following Radical Islamic political ideology rather than the secular, liberal dissidents.  The current opposition has been overrun by radicals aspiring to a Syrian Sunni State, and the groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham, which left the non-radicals feeling marginalized. It was the Obama administration that gave its full support to the Islamists, but it was the Trump administration that shut off that support; however, the US insisted the Syrian Islamists be represented in the Geneva talks while excluding the Kurds at the request of Turkey.  Last week, UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen delivered the Code of Conduct approved by the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government which stipulates that the negotiating parties “show respect and tact toward members and refrain from inflammatory speeches and personal attacks”. In his opening remarks, he said, “I know that it is not easy for all of you to be here together in this room.” Despite the opposing side’s deep divisions of ideologies, they all have a similar goal to amend the constitution which can begin the healing process.  Opposition sources said their delegation has submitted a working paper of the proposals presented last week, adding that the civil society representatives presented a range of proposals orally during Wednesday’s meeting. The Committee will attempt to arrive at its decisions by consensus; however, if that fails they may resort to a majority of 75 percent of votes.  There is no Kurdish representation in the constitution committee. In a recent interview with the Kurdish General Mazloum Abdi, he said,  The Syrian Democratic Forces and allied militias, composed of mainly Kurds, have more than 100,000 soldiers and had been US allies previously in the fight to defeat ISIS which occurred in Syria.  The diplomatic gymnastics among Presidents Assad, Putin, Erdogan, and the Kurds are in high gear. The Turkish foreign minister has said Turkey would retreat from all occupied areas if the Syrian government would assure the Kurdish self-administration project was dismantled, and the Kurdish militias were dissolved and integrated into the Syrian Arab Army. Talks could begin on the eventual return of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to their original communities, thus avoiding a ‘safe-zone’ in northeast Syria, which Erdogan had planned as a Sunni non-Kurdish plantation. President Putin’s backchannel diplomacy between Damascus and Ankara is ongoing.  In last week’s interview, President Assad said he did not expect the Kurds “to hand over their weapons immediately,” adding that while the Syrian state would exert control in the northeast,  The current military maneuvers and confrontations in northeast Syria are the beginning of the end of the Syrian conflict, as each of the various players involved on the ground will make deals based on negotiated settlements. To keep one foot in the door, Trump ordered his military to re-invade Syria from Iraq, to occupy the oil well at Deir Ez Zor. General Mazloum Abdi believes the US move has nothing whatsoever to do with oil or profits from oil. He said,  Idlib and the northeast may be returned to the control of the central government in Damascus, and with a possible new constitution in place, and future elections scheduled under UN observation, Syria may once again return to the peace and security that has been missing since 2011.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.


unian--2019-07-05--Zelensky We must end war and restore Donbas simultaneously

Zelensky: "We must end war and restore Donbas simultaneously"

The president announced a big investment forum in Mariupol in autumn.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that Donbas must be rebuilt simultaneously with the completion of the war.  "We must end the war and restore Donbas simultaneously," he said in Kramatorsk while introducing new Governor in Donetsk region Pavlo Kyrylenko, according to an UNIAN correspondent.  Zelensky noted that social and humanitarian issues in Donbas could be solved immediately, without looking for the guilty or justifying the problems with the war.  Read alsoWithdrawal of Russian forces from Donbas "key to peace in Ukraine" – Volker  "The issue I will repeatedly raise and repeat tirelessly is a ceasefire ... We want to do everything and are sending constant signals for ceasing fire," said Zelensky. "I think that to settle many issues related to humanitarian, social missions in Donbas, we don't have to say all the time that someone is to blame, the war is to blame. We must do this in parallel. Simultaneously putting an end to the war, thinking about our people and restoring Donbas in reality."  He also announced a large business forum that would be held in Mariupol in September to raise funds for rebuilding Donbas. Investors from various countries were invited to take part in it.  "We're inviting investors from all countries there. In Canada, I held 19 meetings on this, we talked with the [Ukrainian] Diaspora. In Germany, in France, I met with businesses and explained how important it is to invest in Donbas today, so that people in the temporarily occupied territory could see that our country is really changing," he said.  As UNIAN reported earlier, Zelensky said at the Ukraine Reform Conference in Toronto, Canada, on July 3 that more than EUR 10 billion is needed to rebuild Donbas.


theseattletimes--2019-10-12--Post-war Liberians are demanding better mental health care

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — More than a decade after back-to-back civil wars ravaged Liberia its people still await justice for countless abuses, and many say the lack of accountability is worsening a mental health crisis.  The frustration soared when President George Weah recently indicated there was no need for his government to set up a war crimes court in the West African nation where the conflicts killed a quarter-million people. “Why now?” he repeated in an address to the United Nations annual gathering of world leaders last month.  The impatience with that attitude boiled over last month when hundreds of people stormed Liberia’s legislature with a petition asking the government for more mental health support. They said they represented some half-million people who have received mental health services over the years via a charity, the U.S.-based Carter Center.  Such private aid is not enough to assure that every Liberian receives assistance, they said.  “Mental health care continues to be seriously sidelined,” said Bill Ballah, a spokesman for the group. “Each of us needs good mental health to … pursue our life goals and meet our responsibilities as responsible citizens.”  Critics say Liberia’s president is not interested in creating a war crimes court because his political support base includes some elements who committed atrocities. Weah has rejected that accusation and his supporters dismiss it as untrue.  In addition to those suffering from trauma caused by the civil wars from 1989 to 2003, thousands of Liberians are trying to recover from the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak that killed more than 4,000 people in the country from 2014-2016.  More than 20% of Liberia’s post-war population has mental health issues including post-traumatic stress disorder, the World Health Organization said in 2016.  But the country has just a couple of psychiatrists for a population of nearly 5 million.  Until the arrival of a Nigerian psychiatrist three years ago, Dr. Benjamin Harris had been the only psychiatrist in Liberia for decades.  About 70% of students Harris interviewed near the end of the civil wars said they had seen people killed or tortured. About 60% said they had lost confidence in human beings and society.  “This can have a severe consequence on one’s mental function,” he told The Associated Press.  The need for mental health care in Liberia is so great and complicated that no government has been able to tackle the issue, and none has taken the initiative, Harris said.  Government authorities acknowledge the mental health problem is enormous but blame the country’s inability to raise enough revenue to address such issues.  The chairman of the senate committee on health and a former health minister, Dr. Peter Coleman, said the funding allotted to the health sector in the annual budget is negligible because there are competing priorities.  “When it comes to mental health right now, it’s collaborations with agencies such as the Carter Center that is helping us to at least do the rudimentary things in mental health,” he said.  Dr. David Henderson, chairman of the psychiatry department at Boston University’s medical school, said mental health could be tackled more rigorously in places like Liberia if global health funding paid more attention to psychiatry. If those resources were provided, “we can really build capacity very quickly.”  He cited the success story of Ethiopia, which went from just three psychiatrists to about 100 over 15 years.  For now Liberia has just one overcrowded and underfunded mental health hospital, an annex of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in the capital, Monrovia. Patients are charged the equivalent of $10 for 21 days of treatment, a cost many cannot afford.  Meanwhile the Catherine Mills Rehabilitation Center, a facility set up in pre-war Liberia as a home for people with mental illness, was ransacked and looted during the civil war and has never reopened. Officials have tried in vain to persuade people now living amid its ruins to leave.


globalresearch--2019-11-05--“Robbing” Syria’s Oil to Thwart Syria’s Recovery

In the name of what the US president called “securing the oil” or what the Pentagon chose to describe as an attempt to “protect” Syria’s oil, the US is basically indulging in what can, in simple terms, be described as purposeful pillaging of Syria’s natural resources.  There are three objectives that the US aims to achieve through this “control” of Syria’s oil. First, it can thwart all attempts towards Syria’s territorial reunification under Damascus. Secondly, it can keep a lid on a critical source of Syria’s economy and can thus thwart Syria’s economic recovery and reconstruction. Thirdly, by “controlling” the oil, the US can clip Kurds and prevent their bid to make a deal with the Russians and the Syrians for integration with Damascus; hence, Pentagon’s “warning” to everyone—Russians and Syrians in particular—-against any attempts at recovering the oil fields. This, however, is equally going to make US-Turkey rapprochement extremely difficult, if not impossible.  The US, by deciding to directly control Syria’s oil, has re-intensified its geopolitical struggle in and around Syria. The US position close to the critical M2 Baghdad-Damascus highway indicates how it intends to stay militarily engaged in the Levant after the defeat of the Islamic State and Syria’s strong drive, supported as it is by Russia and Iran, towards re-establishing Damascus’ authority all over Syria.  During the recently concluded NATO summit in Brussels, Esper confirmed that that the US is sending an unspecified number of troops and materiel to “guard the oil fields” held presently by Kurdish forces, adding also that reinforcements “will continue until we believe we have sufficient capability” [to hold the oil fields for as long as we want].  The decision to “control” oil fields has, unsurprisingly enough, come at a time when Russia, Iran and Turley, have advanced well enough into bringing peace to Syria and creating a new constitution. Even the Syria opposition groups have confidently said that a political deal will be clinched next year. According to co-chair Hadi al-Bahra,  The joint statement released after a meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey in Geneva emphasised the same. All the parties, said the statement,  “Confirmed the continued commitment of the guarantor countries of the Astana format to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic.”  Even if a deal happens, lack of enough resources available to rebuild Syria will start causing new crisis, weakening Damascus’ hands. A “struggle for resources” might tear Syria apart. Given the US plan that goes specifically to this direction and mindful of the consequences that a minus-oil Syria will have to face, Russia is all the more critical of US policies. With the Russian foreign minister calling US policies “arrogant”, “illegal” and a violation of international law, the tempo for intense geo-political struggle has been set. This puts the US on one side, and the Astana countries on the other.  Notwithstanding the US ‘permission’ to let Turkey do its military operation in Syria, the fact that the US has once again started supporting Kurds (although it is more like thwarting Kurdish attempts to make peace with Damascus) means that Ankara will have some serious objections to it. This puts Russia, Iran and Turkey on the same page, reinforcing the Astana peace process.  Turkey, without any doubt, will see in the US “control” of Syrian oil fields and a tactical support for Kurds a threat to its interests… a process that might continue to gain momentum towards the ultimate objective of creating an autonomous Kurdistan in Syria – a territory that is supposed to become the bedrock of US and Israeli activities in the whole region.  This means that the prospects of a US-Turkey rapprochement will become a lot weaker than they seemed three weeks ago. There can perhaps be nothing more inflammatory to the Turkish national security establishment and public alike than collaboration between Kurdish militias and a NATO ally, the US. Within Turkey’s national security calculation, this collaboration can have no objective other than breaking Turkey from within and creating an independent state of Kurdistan in the Middle East.  The US’ renewed attempts at creating a mess in Syria through controlling the life-line of its economy is, therefore, going to have many consequences that will, once again, leave it surrounded by foes (Russia and Iran) and estranged allies (Turkey). It is obvious that the bid to control Syria’s oil has nothing with the fight against terrorism; it signifies a renewed US geo-political struggle to stay alive in the Middle East – something that no country in the region, save Israel and Saudi Arabia, will appreciate and welcome.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.


tass--2019-03-15--Russia urges international community to aid Syrias infrastructure recovery

Russia urges international community to aid Syria’s infrastructure recovery

MOSCOW, March 15. /TASS/. Moscow urges all members of the international community to follow Russia’s example and to start aiding the recovery of Syrian infrastructure, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin stated during the "Supporting the future of Syria and the region" conference in Brussels. The Russian Foreign Ministry published the transcript of his speech on Friday.  According to him, Russia continues to support Damascus in such areas as the recovery of its infrastructure and humanitarian aid delivery. "Since July of last year, 800 education facilities and 150 medical institutions have been constructed, over 1,000 kilometers of roads have been repaired, about 1,000 kilometers of power lines have been built, and 130 water supply facilities have become operational," the senior diplomat noted. "Besides, we have held over 2,000 humanitarian actions, during which we have redistributed 3,300 tonnes of food, water and basic necessities."  "Russian medical professionals have provided help to 105,000 of those in need. We urge all members of the international community to follow our example," Vershinin said.  The diplomat noted that currently, over two million Syrian children do not go to school, while 15.5 mln Syrians have issues with water supply. "It is baffling and concerning why the responsible international community cannot help these people now, without piling on preliminary conditions and artificial demands," the deputy foreign minister stated.  Vershinin reminded that the necessity for humanitarian cooperation was highlighted in the joint statement of the Russian, Turkish, French and German leaders on the outcomes of the Istanbul summit in October 2018.  In other media


tass--2019-07-04--UN envoy hopes Syria will recover its unity

MOSCOW, July 4. /TASS/. UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen hopes that Syria will recover its unity and calls for conscientious advancement of political process, he said in an interview with TASS.  "We all agree that the conflict has lasted too long and that too many civilians have died. But I’m hopeful that it is possible to negotiate an end to this tragedy and that Syria can re-emerge as one country for all its people," the UN envoy stressed.  "As I said in my most recent briefing to the Security Council, a "no-war-no-peace" scenario must be avoided. It is best to freeze the fighting and move the political process in earnest as it is the only way to restore Syria’s sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity in a way that will have broad buy-in and open the path to a restored and a new Syria. Resolution 2254 contains all the elements that are required for this to happen," Pedersen added.  "This obviously would require support from a united international community, and here Russia is key," he concluded.


Sisterhood Is Powerful

The coffee was hot and strong, and the sugar-glazed, cream-filled doughnuts were baked that very day aboard the Swedish corvette HMS Visby. But this was no ordinary fika, or coffee break. Several women from the 4th Flotilla of the Swedish Navy were gathered on Sept. 18, 2018, 10 months after the November 2017 launch of the Swedish military’s #MeToo movement—called #givaktochbitihop, which loosely translates to “stand at attention and bite the bullet”—when more than 3,000 incidents of abuse in the armed forces over the past 30 years were detailed on one Facebook page.  Though the military’s top-down response to #givaktochbitihop was perceived as unequivocal—the supreme commander, Air Force Gen. Micael Byden, addressed a harsh video message to perpetrators—true culture change must happen organically. To that end, Swedish troops themselves have also been bringing about change among the rank and file.  A group of about 50 female sailors, out of about 400 total in the 4th Flotilla, have long been one another’s strongest supporters. They formed GRYM, an acronym that in Swedish stands for Community, Recruitment, Career guidance, and Mentorship, but can also translate to “cruel,” “savage,” or “ferocious.” This flotilla’s GRYM chapter was formed four years ago by its former commander Rear Adm. Ewa Skoog Haslum, the first female admiral in the Swedish Navy. The group encourages women to trade career planning advice, information on what to do when you’ve been harassed, and tips for balancing work and family (egalitarian Sweden offers 480 days of family leave per child for all citizens).  GRYM members also act as informal sounding boards for survivors of sexual harassment or assault. This is of particular use to those wary of official reporting. “It’s hard to be anonymous,” said Lt. Mia Rismalm, a member of the group. Nor do all women need the same thing. Skoog Haslum said she herself never needed women’s networks or female role models. Now deputy vice chancellor at the Swedish Defense University, she acknowledged some survivors prefer an empathetic conversation to an incident being brought to trial. Swedish law, she said, mandates investigation of reported incidents but doesn’t dictate how the commander must perform them. Skoog Haslum tries to reassure skittish subordinates that she “will never do something that [a complainant] doesn’t want to do. Never.”  While the responses are remarkable, the stories the women tell echo #MeToo experiences in other parts of the world. Navy Lt. Rebecca Landberg has a wide smile and a neat blonde bun, but these days, she doesn’t even wear skirts to rock concerts. About nine years ago, a drunken senior male colleague mistook her conversational tone for attraction during a talk about relationships at a shipboard Christmas party. Though alcohol wasn’t supposed to be served past midnight, most flaunted that rule. Landberg, sober, left early to prepare for a morning duty shift. When the senior colleague banged on her stateroom door several times that night, she waved him away, chalking it up to his inebriation. Around 3 a.m., she woke to the chilling click of her door locked from the inside. The male officer, completely naked, tried to drag her out of her upper bunk. Fighting to escape, she felt his penis against her back. She persuaded him to leave, saying her male roommate would arrive soon, and locked him out. When her roommate returned, he accompanied her to wake up other sailors and report the incident. Within 12 hours, Landberg was giving testimony to her command.  One junior enlisted sailor, the daughter of a Swedish Navy mine diver who asked to be identified by her first name, Malin, felt obligated to report her assault, a smack on her bottom that happened while she was changing into uniform. After the #givaktochbitihop campaign revealed the number of incidents buried for decades, she wanted to encourage other women who had been harassed to take that step as well and convey the message that reporting was not only okay, but necessary.  But while Sweden has been admirable in its approach, women often face social isolation after they report, as the rumor mill aboard ship speculates about their harassment or assault. Landberg said the colleague who assaulted her “was a good friend of so many.” She feared he’d told a version of his side of the story to everyone else. Further complicating her experience was that her command expected her to be immediately sure of what she wanted to do after she testified, but she was still processing the shock. In the end, the alleged perpetrator, who claimed to have no memory of the incident, was denied higher education. He then left the Navy.  For her part, Malin—who said her commanders were “very supportive”—felt out of the loop as her complaint made its way through Swedish military bureaucracy. Her relationship with colleagues changed, too; in the sailors’ mess, “it would be quiet when I would sit around the table … they wouldn’t want to joke around with me. It was really different,” she said. These dynamics make for a complicated balance between fitting in and speaking up aboard tightknit ships.  While Malin’s emotional support came from her closest female colleague, whom she explained she “really trusted,” no one in Landberg’s all-male crew asked her how she felt. Though their assailants were punished, “There’s one thing I think men don’t understand,” Landberg said, “and that is how you feel afterwards.” She had the sense that the unspoken narrative around her was, “‘Now they have their punishment, they have money taken away, so it’s fine! Now he’s not working here anymore, so get over it!’ But,” she added, she’s still wary, especially when aboard ship with drunk comrades.  It’s not just these women’s own experiences that have left lasting impressions. Malin said that friends’ similar stories have made her “always on guard” when she goes out on the town with colleagues. Though her male crewmates do not share the same fears of sexual trauma, Malin said plenty of them have empathized with her.  The Swedish military’s occupational health service offers counseling services for both survivors and perpetrators, and it can also refer troops to civilian providers. But one further lesson of the #givaktochbitihop outcry is that it’s crucial for all troops to learn basic communication skills. For example, Landberg’s attacker drunkenly assumed a deep discussion about relationships meant she was willing sexual prey. But, of course, just because someone talks about feelings with you doesn’t mean she wants to sleep with you.  All of this was eye-opening for Filippa Gode, a Navy cook who was in boot camp when #givaktochbitihop started (and therefore heard little about it). “I think men support men in Sweden, whatever happens … we [women] have to listen to each other and support each other,” she said.  Even so, that sexual harassment and assault are now discussed openly is a huge change from 15 months ago, before #givaktochbitihop broke the silence and denial that had previously permeated the Swedish Armed Forces. And then there’s that group—GRYM. It provides women—survivor and otherwise—sisterhood and support, coworkers and colleagues, as well as space to speak and learn. It’s not just women supporting women, though. While Malin, a former youth Sea Scout, said she remained in the Navy because of “these fantastic women” she has also seen over the last year a noticeable change in the culture of her male colleagues: In the wake of #givaktochbitihop, both the witness to her assault and the colleague who encouraged her to report it were men.  This work was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.


newyorker--2019-06-16--The Strange Story of a Secret Literary Fellowship

One afternoon a little over a year ago, I got a brief and mysterious e-mail from a man named Jackson Taylor. It was sent from a personal Gmail account. “I am heading up a new literary fellowship here in New York,” he wrote. “You have been secretly nominated for a spot in the inaugural group—and I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time to speak by phone? The fellowship begins in April but won’t be publicly announced until June.” Before I had a chance to respond, my cell phone rang: it was Jackson. He said he was travelling and sounded out of breath, but I heard something about a “congress of writers” that would teach skills and speak truth to power. If I showed up for twice-weekly sessions for two semesters, I would receive ten thousand dollars. The program’s benefactor, Jackson told me, was the family foundation of Leonard Riggio, the executive chairman of Barnes & Noble. They had “deep pockets,” he said. I had recently moved to New York after five years of reporting, mostly as a freelancer, in Boston and Berlin. I was working a full-time job that I regretted taking, and writing on the side. My apartment had a bedroom too small to fit a desk or even a dresser, and its single window faced an air shaft the color of dryer lint. I was a journalist, not a novelist or a poet, and, in New York, writers seemed to sprout from every sidewalk. I had no idea why Jackson and this foundation had singled me out. I turned to Google. Leonard Riggio, I learned, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars as the man who turned Barnes & Noble—which had one location when he bought the company—into a nationwide chain. His blend of cutthroat competitiveness and generous philanthropy had led New York magazine to call him, in a profile published in 1999, “Barnes & Noble’s Jekyll and Hyde.” I searched for Jackson, too. After scrolling past results about a country singer with the same name, I found a writer who had directed the Prison Writing Program at PEN America, which provides resources and mentorship to incarcerated writers. He had taught at the New School and published a novel, about a white woman in Depression-era Pennsylvania who is arrested for helping a black doctor perform abortions, a story apparently based on the life of his grandmother. It had a 3.8 rating on Goodreads. I replied to Jackson and asked whether he could tell me who the other participants were. He gave me a few names, including those of a début novelist and a poet who had been published in The New Yorker. I noticed that they were all writers of color, which seemed in keeping with the progressive ideals that Jackson had talked about on the phone—speaking truth to power and so on. In his response, Jackson asked me to be discreet, and he mentioned, again, the deep pockets of the Riggios. “In a year or two we aim for this prize to be synonymous with excellence, intellectual rigor, and artfulness... in short—the very best,” he wrote. I accepted the offer.  The first session was on a Wednesday in April, in an old building in Chelsea. I was late because I was riding the subway from work and got off at the wrong stop. When I arrived, overheated from running up Tenth Avenue, I took the elevator to the fifth floor, then wandered a narrow hallway looking for Suite 513. I walked the length of the floor several times before noticing that someone had papered over No. 514 and replaced it with a handwritten “513.” Inside, about a dozen people were sitting on wooden chairs and two uncomfortable couches, writing in red notebooks. They had all written their first names on pieces of white printer paper. Other than the handful of people Jackson had mentioned to me, I didn’t know anyone’s full name. A few days before the session, Jackson had e-mailed the fellows as a group, but he had blind-copied us on the message. There were reasons for this secrecy, he insisted. “We prefer to minimize the social pressure of social media on our congress,” he informed us. “Yes… this is another cryptic email… but one that takes seriously the question of how do we as writers circumvent the fashions of the day… and recast what others tell us is necessary or expected?” Also, because of “copyright diligence,” he was still unable to share the name of the program, he wrote. He did introduce us to two colleagues—Tim, who would lead class sessions on Thursdays, and Antonio, the program’s administrative director. In the far corner of Room 513, or 514, Jackson, a large man with fair skin and a fondness for wearing vests over T-shirts, sat in a leather reading chair. It was hot, and the windows were difficult to open. The air-conditioning unit sputtered too loudly to use during class. Jackson told me to write my first name on a piece of paper, and to complete a writing exercise. I was to create an original fable, complete with talking animals and a moral. After we’d all written our fables, we took turns reading them—but we were only supposed to listen to one another’s pieces, not to comment on them. Jackson called this “the pedagogy.” What it produced was a series of awkward silences. At the end, Jackson launched into a lecture on literary structure. Pausing frequently for effect, he spoke about constructing fables, discerning between the abstract and the concrete, and “kicking the tires of aphoristic writing.” Somewhere in the middle, without any warning, he began to speak angrily about PEN America, its hiring processes, and its executive director. Then he handed out copies of “Springing,” a poem by Marie Ponsot about a leisurely day of boating and swimming. (“Swimming aimlessly is luxury just as walking / loudly up a shallow stream is.”) The poem prompted a debate among the fellows about privilege, which, Jackson said, was an aspect of the poem that he had not considered. He said that the fellowship would likely be called Springing, after the poem. In subsequent sessions with Jackson, we discussed a range of writers and theorists, from Henry David Thoreau to Northrop Frye. Most of the fellows were women, and about half were writers of color. (My mother was born in Singapore, to Chinese parents, and my father is Jewish; I’m often taken for white.) In our discussions of the readings, fellows brought up questions of race and gender, but Jackson said that these subjects were distracting. One fellow suggested that we read “Citizen,” Claudia Rankine’s book of poetry about anti-black racism in American life. A week later, we read a passage from Rankine’s book in which the speaker describes a conversation with the head of an academic department: “He tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having. / Why do you feel comfortable saying this to me?” After the reading, Jackson told us that he had once run into difficulties firing a writer because the writer was black. He looked for excellence rather than diversity, he said, and he lamented the difficulty of recruiting and retaining staff members of color. (Tim and Antonio were both, like Jackson, white men.) He asked a black fellow whether she would want to be hired because of her race. She said no. “Thank you!” he exclaimed.  Soon after the sessions began, a few of us started gathering after class, in the hall or in front of the building, to talk about what was going on. The neighborhood was crowded with warehouses that had been converted into art studios; during the day, it was noisy with construction. But by evening it grew quiet, and we lingered on the sidewalk in the dark, talking about how strange everything seemed. Some of us traded phone numbers; a couple of times, we walked to bars in Chelsea, making quips about needing a drink. Many of the fellows were growing frustrated with Jackson and his methods, but there were a handful who defended him from time to time, and two who consistently took his side. Stephanie, a writer in her thirties, often complained when fellows brought up race or gender or privilege. They were interfering with the pedagogy, she said. Tom, the only visual artist in the program, said that we should trust Jackson, that he knew what he was doing. (Both Stephanie and Tom were white.) One evening, walking to the subway after class, one of the fellows, a black poet named Hafizah Geter, told me that she had been searching for details about the others. By this point, all the participants had exchanged e-mail addresses, and Hafizah said that she had come across Stephanie’s maiden name online. It was Riggio. Stephanie, who had been attending the sessions and reciting her work like the rest of us, was the daughter of the fellowship’s funders. That’s odd, I thought. Was this the reason that Jackson had never shared our full names?  At a session in early May, one of the fellows, a black poet, brought in a poem that he had written which alluded to Wallace Stevens’s “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery,” and reflected on Stevens’s use of the racist slur in his poetry. We broke from the pedagogy and took turns talking about the poem. When it was Jackson’s turn, he accused the writer of “baiting” the group, and, in the course of sharing these thoughts, he repeated the slur several times. Another black writer asked him, as calmly as though she were asking for a glass of water, to stop saying the word. Jackson compared her request to censorship—and if the word were off limits, he said, we would also need to ban words that are derogatory to white people, such as “whitey.” Hafizah told Jackson that his desire to use the word as a white man was outrageous. But black people say the word on the street, Jackson replied, using the word several more times as he made his point, and gesturing at Hafizah. Maybe we should disband the fellowship, he said, raising his voice. She told him that the classroom did not feel safe. Stephanie seemed upset. Tom said that we should get back on topic. We took an afternoon break. I joined Hafizah in the hall. Antonio, a short and soft-spoken man in sneakers, came out to talk to us. Quietly, he asked us to e-mail him our concerns, so that he would have them on record. After a moment, Tom came out and invited us back into the class. Hafizah and I decided to leave early. That night, Hafizah texted me a link to Tom’s Web site, which she had found in her continued Internet sleuthing. I clicked on the link, and photographs of Jackson appeared, along with art works that I recognized from the space in Chelsea. “Guess who he is to Jackson,” Hafizah wrote. “His fucking boyfriend.” I eventually learned that the artist’s studio in which we met was in the same building, and on the same floor, as Tom’s previous studio. Jackson had recommended it to the Riggios for the fellowship, and it had been renovated to Tom and Jackson’s specifications. The Riggios approved a lease, and Tom moved his art works into the fellowship space. Later, I talked to Hafizah about that day. We met at her apartment, in Brooklyn, which was stuffed from floor to ceiling with books. “It was a nightmare,” she told me. “You felt trapped, you felt like you were suffocating in all this.” She told me that she went home and cried for a long time. Hafizah is one of the writers Jackson mentioned to me when I first asked him who the other fellows were; she’s won several awards and fellowships for her poetry, which has been published in The New Yorker and Tin House and many other places. Her confrontations with Jackson convinced her that she had been recruited to the program, and then marginalized, for the same reason: that she was a black woman. During the session, she had said to him, “If every person of color left this room and didn’t come back, this room would be irrelevant. It would just be another white room talking about white power.” The day after that session, I e-mailed Antonio to say that I was disturbed by what had happened, and we made plans to talk over coffee. Hafizah e-mailed Jackson to say that she was quitting. She was the second to leave: one of the fellows, who was commuting a long way from out of state, had quit at the end of the first week. “You can’t come back from the N-word,” Hafizah told me. She regarded his use of the word in class, spoken in her direction, as a threat. She was careful, in her e-mail to Jackson, not to say that she had left because of him. She was worried about her career, she said. Could the Riggios, or their employees, hold this against her, she wondered? Would they tell their friends not to hire her, not to publish her? She didn’t know what to think, and she didn’t want to risk it.  At his next session, Jackson said that Antonio was no longer working at the Springing Center. (We never did get that coffee.) According to the Springing Center, Jackson fired Antonio without consulting the organization. Antonio told several people that Jackson threatened to keep his work out of Barnes & Noble stores if he made a fuss. Jackson also announced that he was banning class discussion. If we had questions or concerns, we could write them down and save them for the end of each class. Several of us raised objections, saying that restricting conversation would only increase tensions, but we didn’t get anywhere with him. Shortly afterward, another fellow, a woman of color, e-mailed the group to announce that she was quitting, too. A fourth fellow, who was also a woman of color, did the same the next day. I had thought a lot about quitting myself. I had visions of waiting until the official announcement and publicly refusing the award, like a disgruntled actor at the Oscars. I also thought that maybe someone should stay and write about what happened. We had joked to one another while out for drinks in Chelsea that we were all getting a lot of material. I called my editor at The New Yorker. I had already figured out that he was the person who’d suggested me for the fellowship—Antonio and Jackson, it turned out, were former colleagues of his, at PEN America. Antonio had e-mailed him, asking for recommendations, and he’d written a little blurb making the case for my abilities. That was pretty much the extent of the selection process. Now I told him the fellowship might be worth writing about. He seemed skeptical, but said to keep him posted. After the fourth fellow quit, Jackson e-mailed those of us who were left. The week’s sessions had been cancelled due to “an electrical emergency,” he said. Two days later, Tim wrote to explain that Jackson had a family emergency. The remaining spring classes were cancelled, and we were told that we would “regroup in the fall.” Weeks passed without any updates. At last, in June, when the fellowship was supposed to be announced to the world, we received an unsigned e-mail from “Springing accounting.” “Earlier this year, the corporation retained an outside consultant to evaluate the corporation’s mission and programs,” the e-mail read. “The fellowship program is now terminated.” We would receive five thousand dollars. The check arrived a few weeks later, and I felt grimy when I cashed it. “Stay tuned for information about our new programs,” the e-mail concluded. “We wish you a fruitful and fulfilling summer of writing.”  The early years of a writing career are often full of an unsteady kind of optimism. You hope that someone will notice you, or, more grandly, that someone will become a champion of your work. And, particularly if you’re a writer of color, or a queer writer, or a woman, you may learn that entrusting your work to would-be champions is a fraught endeavor. I remember more experienced writers telling me that I should say yes to every opportunity until I had earned the privilege to say no. But hope is both a strength and a weakness; it takes time to learn the difference between those who feed it and those who feed off of it. I wish someone had told me that early-career writers are the cheap gas on which much of the writing business runs. Shortly after the fellowship was discontinued, I returned to Google in earnest, trying to understand what had happened. I was a reporter, after all, and this seemed like a story. I learned from nonprofit filings that, between 2003 and 2011, the Riggio Foundation had donated millions of dollars to the New School and its creative-writing program, where Jackson taught. In 2008, two years after she graduated from college, Stephanie enrolled in the New School’s creative-writing program, and Jackson became her thesis adviser. Later, I learned from Stephanie that, in 2012, after she graduated, Jackson encouraged a friend who worked at St. Joseph’s College, in Brooklyn, to offer her teaching work. Jackson was hired to direct St. Joseph’s creative-writing master’s program shortly afterward. His method drew on the writings of Marie Ponsot, a St. Joseph’s alumna and the author of the “Springing” poem that we had read in class, who is now in her late nineties. Between 2013 and 2016, while Jackson and Stephanie worked at St. Joseph’s, the Riggios donated at least $187,500 to the college. The gifts funded a scholarship that Jackson oversaw, and it also endowed the Marie Ponsot Chair, which was awarded to Jackson. (The Riggio Foundation said it was unaware that he had received the chair.) Tim joined the faculty, and, in 2015, Jackson’s partner, Tom, was, according to his résumé, offered a residency at St. Joseph’s. In 2017, Jackson was abruptly dismissed from his position at the school. Ponsot joined a protest on the sidewalk outside St. Joseph’s. A story about the protest in the Brooklyn Paper referred to Jackson as “the beloved founder and director” of the school’s creative-writing program. The story quoted a school spokesperson, who said that St. Joseph’s had “determined the need for new leadership” after a “thorough assessment process.” One of the organizers of the protest, a second-year student named Alexa Wilding, told the paper, “The value of our degree will go down. In the literary world, it’s who you work with, that’s your value.” That year, the Riggios were not listed as donors to the school. (St. Joseph’s College declined to comment on Jackson’s dismissal or any other aspect of this story. When I e-mailed Wilding, and told her about the Springing Fellowship, she replied, “I have had only positive experiences with Jackson as a teacher.”) Around this time, the Riggios decided to fund a charitable corporation in New York that Stephanie would oversee. I thought about Jackson’s references to the Riggios’ deep pockets. “The resources are vast,” Jackson had written in his third e-mail to me. Since the nineties, the Riggio Foundation has reported donations of more than a hundred million dollars to hundreds of tax-exempt institutions, including public schools, private universities, equestrian organizations, art museums, Italian-American cultural organizations, and religious institutions. Several of the contributions, to institutions such as Spelman College and the National Council of Negro Women, specifically support women of color. The donations often seem scattershot in their aims and amounts: twenty dollars for a breast-cancer nonprofit, five thousand for a dog shelter, a hundred thousand for the Utah Film Center. There is, one imagines, a story behind each of these contributions, though they might be personal or even impulsive. Meanwhile, for those on the receiving end, the money could be life-changing. (Most notably, the Riggio Foundation spent millions building homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, an effort that eventually became a separate nonprofit.) Most of the foundation’s assets originally came in the form of Barnes & Noble stock. This month, after going through four chief executives in a five-year span, Barnes & Noble was sold to the hedge fund Elliott Advisors, for six hundred and thirty-eight million dollars, including debt. Before the sale, the Riggio Foundation reportedly owned 4.3 per cent of the company. Around the time that Stephanie enrolled in Columbia University as an undergraduate, the foundation donated a hundred thousand dollars to the school; after she earned an art-history degree there, the Riggios donated five million dollars to the art-history and archaeology department. (The Riggios are also major art collectors.) Four universities that have received major donations from the Riggio Foundation have awarded Leonard Riggio honorary doctorates. Riggio and his wife have each contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic political candidates; two of the recipients of their generosity, Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, were New York gubernatorial candidates who had previously settled lawsuits against Barnes & Noble while serving as the state’s attorney general. For someone of Leonard Riggio’s personal resources and political commitments—he grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the son of a dressmaker and a boxer who became a taxi-driver, and is a long-standing supporter of liberal causes—none of this is particularly unusual. But it did help me understand how a program like the Springing Fellowship could suddenly materialize, and then vanish, without so much as a public announcement or an explanation for the participants. The Riggios are rich enough to move on to their next philanthropic endeavor without worrying too much. They seem to know the difference between money, which one spends, and wealth, which one wields.  In the fall, after I had decided to write this essay, Stephanie, to my surprise, agreed to a phone interview. “It was horribly uncomfortable, and just offensive in every way,” she said, referring to the fellowship; I had not yet asked any questions. “It was not what I wanted it to be in any way, shape, or form, which is why it is no longer in existence.” The Springing Center was supposed to offer a range of cultural programs, she said, and Jackson only oversaw one part of it. “I’ve been on a lot of boards, I’ve done this work before, so I know what it takes to get a foundation off the ground,” she said. (She previously chaired the board of the Equestrian Aid Foundation, which is funded in part by donations from the Riggio Foundation. Last year, the organization gave Stephanie an award for the work she’s done for it.) The nonprofit was set up in a hurry, without independent oversight, and the board of trustees included five people: Stephanie, Stephanie’s mother, their family lawyer, Antonio, and Jackson. There was no formal selection process for fellows. According to Stephanie, Jackson sent offers to friends and former students before notifying the Riggios, then pressured her to start the program six months earlier than she had planned. He claimed, she said, that one fellow had already left a job, and another had moved from Portugal, in order to accept his offers. Stephanie also blamed Jackson for the decision not to share her identity with participants, and criticized his conduct in class. I pointed out to Stephanie that she was Jackson’s boss. While she was attending the sessions, as though she were a writing fellow, she and her family could have disciplined or overruled him. “It’s true,” she said. “I could have, and I should have, and I didn’t.” She fired Jackson and Tim in late June, she said, and ended the fellowship. Antonio took legal action against the Springing Center. Multiple people told me that he received a settlement that barred him from speaking freely about his employment there. Tom moved his art works into a different studio in the same building, one floor up. I e-mailed Jackson, asking if he would speak with me, but he didn’t reply to that message or another I sent later, following up. Eventually, I sent him detailed questions about the accusations that the Springing Center had made against him, and about things that had happened during the fellowship, and what I had learned since. I repeated my request to speak with him in a text message. He never responded to me, or to a fact checker for this magazine. Tom, too, did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment or to a list of written questions. I talked to people who had worked with Jackson in the past, trying to make sense of his role in everything. The people I spoke to generally reacted with surprise. One former colleague, who requested anonymity for fear of losing a job, noted that he could be capricious, and often seemed to speak without a filter. “He has always viewed himself as the person who speaks truth to power,” the former colleague said, and that attitude persisted, the colleague went on, even in situations where he was the more powerful person. I remembered something Jackson had said in class, about feeling misinterpreted as someone with privilege, when he did not see himself that way. I found an interview that Jackson gave after his novel was published, where he said, of the black doctor at the center of the book, “I didn’t want to appropriate someone else’s history as if I understood it fully, because I don’t. A white person will never know what a black person experiences, despite the empathy they may have.” After speaking to Stephanie, I e-mailed her to ask what kinds of programs the Springing Center might offer in the future. She told me that she was unable to share any details, and that if I had other questions I should direct them to the senior vice-president of communications at Barnes & Noble, Inc. Included in her e-mail was a short mission statement. “At the Springing Center, we believe that there is a way to unlock every door,” the statement read. “The heart of this conviction lies in our unwavering dedication to allowing suppressed voices to be heard, to helping traumatized psyches heal, and to including marginalized voices into the global conversation.” Recently, the Barnes & Noble spokesperson sent an update. Around the time that I talked with Stephanie, she said, the Springing Center closed permanently.


The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a “group of young British painters who banded together in 1848 in reaction against what they conceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy and who purportedly sought to express a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works. They were inspired by Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries, and their adoption of the name Pre-Raphaelite expressed their admiration for what they saw as the direct and uncomplicated depiction of nature typical of Italian painting before the High Renaissance and, particularly, before the time of Raphael. Although the Brotherhood’s active life lasted not quite five years, its influence on painting in Britain, and ultimately on the decorative arts and interior design, was profound.” (Brittanica)  This a short 1970s documentary on the Pre-Raphaelites, “The Pre-Raphaelite Revolt”.  Here are some members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, their associates, or those who were influenced by them.


bbc--2019-11-28--Star Wars: Dying fan to get early screening, Bob Iger confirms

A dying man and his son will be able to watch the new Star Wars film before it goes on general release, Disney's CEO Bob Iger has said.  Rowans Hospice in Waterlooville, Hampshire, sent out a plea on Twitter asking for an early screening of the movie, which is due out on 20 December.  The hospice said: "This is our most desperate hour. Sadly, time is not on his side for 20th Dec."  After receiving confirmation, Rowans said it "cannot thank Disney enough"  The hospice tweeted on Wednesday asking for help for the patient to see the film, attracting hundreds of retweets.  Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamil showed his support by replying to the message wishing the hospice "good luck" with the plea.  In response, Mr Iger said "we will certainly try".  He then tweeted again on Thursday to say: "On this Thanksgiving, we at @Disney are grateful to be able to share #TheRiseOfSkywalker with a patient and his family @RowansHospice. May the force be with you and with us all!"  You may also be interested in: • 'The heartache remains for the rest of your life' • 'At Christmas everyone should have something'  Lisa Davies, a healthcare support worker, who initially brought the patient's wish to the attention of the rest of the staff at Rowans, said she was "utterly speechless" at the news.  "We totally appreciate that Disney have had to move mountains to make this happen," she said.  "The response from everyone, including the Star Wars community, has been absolutely phenomenal over the last few days.  "We also want to thank the media for covering the story and totally respecting the privacy of the family," she added.


breitbart--2019-12-13--'Star Wars' Fans Camp Outside LA Theater Week Before Movie Opens

Los Angeles (AFP) – Obsessed Star Wars fans with sleeping bags and a portable movie projector have started camping outside Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre, more than a week before the blockbuster begins playing.  Roughly 20 sci-fi lovers were in place Thursday, seven days before doors swing open for the first preview screening of the much-hyped, saga-concluding “The Rise of Skywalker.”  Organizers expect that number to swell to 150 in the coming days, with fans of all ages traveling from as far as the United Kingdom and Japan to see the movie first at the iconic venue where the original “Star Wars” premiered in 1977.  “When Star Wars comes, you put everything on hold — it’s like having a baby,” said mega-fan Nicolas Johnson, waiting with his dog Cookie.  “I’m actually lucky that I’m able to work on the line,” added Shing Hwong, a 39-year-old attorney from near San Francisco who has brought her laptop down with her.  “I’m sleeping here overnight and in the evening I just get to hang out with a lot of my friends, and talk and live Star Wars.”  The tight-knit community first began lining up outside Star Wars premieres two decades ago for 1999’s “The Phantom Menace.”  Back then, they waited for 42 days on Hollywood Boulevard. Older and with more commitments now, they decided to trim that down for the latest film — particularly with this premiere taking place in winter.  “I’ve got a sleeping bag, at night I have to crawl in there and stay warm,” said organizer Erik Murillo, a 47-year-old computer technician from Las Vegas. “I tend to try to stay up at night, awake to watch over everyone else, so I sleep during the daytime.”  The group play with board games and LEGO sets, and use their projector to watch the old movies and catch the latest episodes of Star Wars TV series “The Mandalorian.”  Murillo admits he is more excited about lining up than the film itself — he says he has already spoiled its plot by poring over every trailer, interview and fan rumor forum.  “Think of it as a slumber party with friends where everyone has the same interests,” said San Diego fashion photographer Justin Nunez, 31, who is on his first Star Wars line.  Nunez has three pairs of long-johns, four sweaters and a sleeping bag for the chilly Los Angeles winter nights.  He is hoping the group will get some relief on Monday when the glitzy, red-carpet world premiere takes place just yards away — in 2015, Disney invited them in.  “I’m just happy it’s not raining,” he added.


newyorkpost--2019-11-12--Diehard ‘Star Wars’ fans will love ‘The Mandalorian’

Disney+ is finally here to shake up the streaming wars...


thechaser--2019-12-19--Best Drama of 2019 awarded to Star Wars fanbase

The Academy Awards have this week pre-emptively announced the nominations for Best Drama after what they say is an almost unbeatable offering from the creators of Star Wars ‘Episode 9’. “Fans have spoken,” said the academy today, “and I think we can all agree that the meltdown currently happening in the Star Wars fanbase is probably the most entertaining drama we’ve seen all year. We haven’t been able to put the popcorn down.”  “Admittedly there’s a lot of competition,” explained the head of the academy John Felch, “from the great drama House of Cards trying to complete the final series without mentioning the main character, to the amazing work of the Game of Thrones creators when they managed to piss off every fan by making Bran the king, there’s been some amazing drama from so many fanbases, but none have come even close to the level of hot mess served up by the creators of the latest Star Wars trilogy with their attempt to remake Episode Six and pass it off as a new movie to one of the most detail oriented fan-bases in the history of cinema, that is some master-level pot stirring.”  “I can barely even put into words how expert the level of drama creation here is,” read one review from Time magazine. “We thought we were good at creating drama by naming Greta Thunberg person of the year, but not even we could top the genius of using two completely different writers with two completely different visions to tell a story over the span of three films, but to not have any pre-planned overarching story before you start actually shooting. I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of mastery at creating drama in a fanbase since Ghostbusters decided to cast three confident women in a movie franchise exclusively enjoyed by undersexed film nerds. Five stars.”  Praise has also been heaped on director J.J. Abrams, who has consistently managed to churn out the same quality of film again and again, almost to the point where they can’t be distinguished from their predecessors. “It takes a lot of skill to be so predictable,” said one fan exiting the cinema today. “One or two movies we could put down to luck, but clearly this is a skill he’s had to work on very hard. Well, just hard enough to be passable at least.”  Asked how they could ever hope to follow up such a successful dramatic masterpiece, Disney said they have no plans for any future Star Wars movies, and filming starts on the next movie tomorrow.


thesun--2019-02-02--Star Wars fans use lightsabers to battle stress and the Dark Side in latest mindfulness craze

Star Wars fans use lightsabers to battle stress and the ‘Dark Side’ in latest mindfulness craze

STAR Wars fans are battling it out with lightsabers in the latest mindfulness craze — to stop stressed wannabe Jedis going over to the Dark Side.  Martial arts expert Dave Holden, 45, believes his school is the first combat class of its kind, and it's attracting dozens of devotees.  He spends his Wednesday nights teaching his “padawans” and says the discipline is “akin to dance”.  Each Sabre Masters Combat class starts with a mindfulness session to help the students relax  to help them cope with the stresses of modern life.  Jedi wannabes then duel with the weapons — made from polycarbonate tubes with a light inside — in a hall in Sileby, Leics.  “You’re spending the time thinking about yourself and relaxing mind and body.  “It’s all about control of your mind — just like a Jedi would. It can be quite a spectacle.”


sputnik--2019-07-27--Star Trek Cosplay Costume With Hijab Splits Fandom

Star Trek fan and historian Blair Imani has given a cosplay tribute to Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge — the character played by LeVar Burton on Star Trek: The Next Generation , but what made her different was the hijab that she covered her head with in line with her Muslim faith.  Imani shared a picture of the final result with Burton’s blind Enterprise-D engineer on Twitter, and she says it was noticed. Despite the storm of negative comments she received on the social media over the costume, which she donned at the San Diego Comic-Con 2019, some appreciated the move, hailing “diversity” in the Star Fleet’s ranks.  Burton even referred to it as “the best cosplay of Geordi, EVER”. Imani shared with Today that she had also received a thumbs-up from fellow Next Generation stars Wil Wheaton and Brent Spiner, lauding her extravagant outfit.  However, many called the costume inventor out, arguing that the hijab is counter to the Star Trek canon, sparking a debate about religious agnosticism and scepticism, as well as about Starfleet dress codes.  A few appear to have pointed to the obvious fact that Burton’s character is actually male in the film: