The other, however, has gone almost unnoticed: the formal ending of a poorly-observed truce in Yemen, and new airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states against Shia rebels known as the Houthis.
Much of the analysis following the events of the weekend has focused on fears that the Saudi-Iranian conflict will derail peace talks on Syria (paywall), where Iran backs president Bashar al-Assad and Saudi Arabia backs opposition rebels. Indeed, the talks planned for later this month may not now happen at all. But the consequences for Yemen are no less dire.
Yemen’s civil war, raging for nearly a year, seems fated to constantly be drowned out by tumult elsewhere in the region. (When it does get some press, headline writers inevitably label it the “forgotten war.”) Nearly 3,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting, the country’s already fragile economy has been shattered, and attempts at negotiated settlement have gone nowhere. The resumption of airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition — which enjoys US support — means the impoverished nation at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula is not likely to find peace anytime soon.[Continue reading…]
Reuters reports: At least two Sunni Muslim mosques have been attacked in Iraq and two people killed in apparent retaliation for the execution of a senior Shi’ite cleric in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, officials and police said on Monday.Iraqi Shi’ites protesting the Jan. 2 execution of Saudi Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr separately marched in Baghdad and in southern cities, calling for a boycott of Saudi products and severing ties with the Sunni-ruled kingdom.Iraq’s Interior Ministry confirmed the attacks on Sunni mosques late Sunday in Hilla, around 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi blamed them on “Daesh (Islamic State) and those who are similar to them,” without further explanation.
He ordered provincial authorities “to chase the criminal gangs” who attacked the mosques. [Continue reading…]
10. The Death of Zahran Alloush.
9. The Failure of the Southern Storm Offensive.
8. Operation Decisive Quagmire.
7. Europe’s Syria Fatigue vs. Assad’s Viability
6. The Vienna Meeting, the ISSG, and Geneva III.
5. The Donald.
4. The Iran Deal.
3. The Continuing Structural Decay of the Syrian Government.
2. The American-Kurdish Alliance.
1. The Russian Intervention. [Continue reading…]
Reuters reports: A new appraisal names the United States as one of the threats to Russia’s national security for the first time, a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years.
The document, “About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation”, was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year’s Eve. It replaces a 2009 version, endorsed by then- President Dmitry Medvedev, the current prime minister, which mentioned neither the United States not NATO.
It says Russia has managed to heighten its role in solving global problems and international conflicts. That heightened role has caused a reaction by the West, it says.
“The strengthening of Russia happens against the background of new threats to the national security, which has complex and interrelated nature,” the document says.
Conducting an independent policy, “both international and domestic” has caused “counteraction from the USA and its allies, which are striving to retain their dominance in global affairs.” [Continue reading…]
The Guardian reports: A British delegation, including an imam from London, have visited Sudan to try to dissuade young British doctors from joining Islamic State (Isis), which has been urgently seeking more foreign medics to help at its hospitals in Syria.
The Foreign Office is coordinating efforts to prevent more Britons travelling from Khartoum’s University of Medical Sciences and Technology (UMST). At least 17 British doctors travelled from there to Syria during 2015 to staff Isis’s health ministry.
It has emerged that a second group of UK doctors who left Sudan for Syria have joined up with members of an earlier group who travelled to join Isis in March. According to family sources, the second group of five Britons, including two brothers from Leicester, are understood to have joined up with 20-year-old Rowan Kamal Zine El Abidine, one of a group of nine British medical staff who journeyed from Khartoum months earlier. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: A group of light armored vehicles skated over the moonscape of the Sahara, part of one of the largest detachments the French military has deployed here since colonial times. Its mission is growing ever more urgent: to cut smuggling routes used by jihadists who have turned this inhospitable terrain into a sprawling security challenge for African and international forces alike.
But, analysts and military officials say, there is also deepening collaboration among groups using modern communications and a sophisticated system of roving trainers to share military tactics, media strategies and ways of transferring money.
Their threat has grown as Libya — with its ungoverned spaces, oil, ports, and proximity to Europe and the Middle East — becomes a budding hub of operations for both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to reach deeper into Africa.
And as Africa’s jihadists come under the wing of distant and more powerful patrons, officials fear that they are extending their reach and stitching together their ambitions, turning once-local actors into pan-national threats. [Continue reading…]
Michele Dunne and Nik Nevin write: Egypt of December 2015 is looking a lot like Egypt of late 2010 and the final months of Hosni Mubarak‘s three-decade rule. The country’s longtime military president had little political sophistication; then as now, there were struggles between the military and businessmen for economic and political power, human rights abuses, economic woes, and jihadi groups in the Sinai. But today, these things appear more pronounced.
The membership and mission of the recently elected 598-seat House of Representatives bear similarities to the parliament chosen a few months before the January 2011 uprising, but each is more exaggerated. Other developments in Egypt echo the dysfunction of 2010, raising questions about whether another upheaval might be brewing. [Continue reading…]
The Washington Post reports: Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran on Sunday amid the furor that erupted over the execution by the Saudi authorities of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubair told reporters in Riyadh that the Iranian ambassador to Saudi Arabia had been given 48 hours to leave the country, citing concerns that Tehran’s Shiite government was undermining the security of the Sunni kingdom.
Saudi Arabian diplomats had already departed Iran after angry mobs trashed and burned the Saudi embassy in Tehran overnight Saturday, in response to the execution of Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr earlier in the day.
Iran’s Supreme Leader warned on Sunday that there would be divine retribution for Saudi Arabia’s rulers after the execution of a renowned Shiite cleric, sustaining the soaring regional tensions that erupted in the wake of the killing.
The warning came hours after crowds of protesters stormed and torched the Saudi embassy in Tehran to vent their anger at the execution of Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, who was among 47 people put to death in the kingdom on Saturday.
Shiites around the world expressed outrage, potentially complicating a surge of U.S. diplomacy aimed at bringing peace to the region, according to Toby Matthiesen, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the University of Oxford.
“Nimr had become a household name amongst Shiite Muslims around the world. Many had thought his execution would be a red line and would further inflame sectarian tensions,” he said. “So this will complicate a whole range of issues, from the Syrian crisis to Yemen.”
Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing rival sides in Syria’s war, and their enmity risks derailing a diplomatic effort led by the United States and Russia to convene peace talks between the factions in Geneva this month.
The two feuding powers also support opposing sides in the war in Yemen and more broadly find themselves in opposition in the deeply divided politics of the mixed Sunni-Shiite nations of Iraq and Lebanon.
The Obama administration’s hopes that the conclusion last summer of an agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program would help bridge the sectarian divide between Tehran and the United States’ biggest Arab ally were further diminished by the eruption of fury that followed Nimr’s death. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: A few years ago, the hundred or so residents of Paradeshappanamatha, a secluded hamlet in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, gathered along the central pathway between their 22 densely clustered homes, and watched as government workers hoisted a solar-powered streetlamp. As the first display of electricity in the town, it was an object of mild interest, but, being outside, the light didn’t help anyone cook or study, and only attracted moths.
Still, when B. Prasad arrived two years later to encourage people here to abandon kerosene lighting for solar-powered home systems, people had some idea what he was talking about. What sounded preposterous to the village residents was the price. Mr. Prasad, an agent for Solar Electric Light Company, or Selco, was selling a panel and battery that would power three lights and an attached socket for phone charging for approximately 12,800 rupees, or $192.
“There was no way we could afford that,” P. C. Kalayya remembers thinking. He and his neighbors rise early in the morning to walk miles along a nearly impassable dirt road to work on coffee, pepper and betel nut plantations. Mr. Kalayya earns $3 a day — he’d been earning $2.25 until a raise came through this year — and half his wage is withheld by his employer as repayment for various loans.
And yet, despite what seemed on its face an impossibly high cost, Selco agents succeeded in persuading Mr. Kalayya and 10 other village households to make the switch. Now, his wife can better see how much spice she is putting in as she cooks, and Pratima, their 18-year-old daughter, can study long after dark.
The idea behind Selco, and other companies like it, is to create a business model that will help some of the 1.2 billion people in the world who don’t have electricity to leapfrog the coal-dependent grid straight to renewable energy sources.
About a quarter of the world’s off-the-grid people, or 300 million or so, live in India, mostly in remote, rural communities like Paradeshappanamatha, or in informal urban settlements. Hundreds of millions more get electricity for only a few hours a day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to achieve universal electrification in India by the end of 2022. His main effort is adding hundreds of new coal plants, which have contributed to near-apocalyptic pollution levels across large swaths of the country. [Continue reading…]
Rami G Khouri writes: It is useful to spot meaningful patterns that help us make sense of our bewildering world, and to acknowledge positive developments to be continued alongside negative ones to be avoided.
Applying this principle to the last year in the Middle East reveals several troubling trends that have made life difficult for hundreds of millions of people. One in particular stands out, and strikes me as a root cause of many other negative trends that plague our region. This is the tendency of governments to use increasingly harsh measures to restrict the freedoms of their citizens to express themselves and meaningfully to participate politically and hold power accountable.
Several aspects of this behavior make it especially onerous. It is practiced by all states in the region—Arab, Israeli, Iranian, and Turkish—leaving few people in this part of the world who can live as fully free and dignified human beings. It is justified on the basis of existing constitutional powers, so governments can jail tens of thousands of their citizens, rescind their nationality, or torture and kill them in the worst cases, simply because of the views they express, without any recourse to legal or political challenge. It shows no signs of abating, and indeed may be worsening in lands like Egypt, Turkey, and others. And, it is most often practiced as part of a “war on terror” that seeks to quell criminal terror attacks, but in practice achieves the opposite; the curtailment of citizen rights and freedoms exacerbates the indignities and humiliations that citizens feel against their government, which usually amplifies, rather than reduces, the threat of political violence. [Continue reading…]
The Independent reports: Up to 40,000 civilians are slowly starving to death in the Syrian town of Madaya, activists have warned, after six months under a punishing siege.
Encircled by land mines and forces from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, hundreds are suffering from malnutrition. With severe shortages of basic foodstuffs, many have resorted to eating wild plants, insects and even cats.
A media activist in the town, who used the pseudonym Nasir Ibrahim to protect his family, said that on New Year’s Eve he had managed to eat 50g of rice. Today, with snow covering the mountain-top town, he expected to go hungry. “The humanitarian situation is very dangerous,” he told The Independent. “Many have died starving and many more will follow them if no immediate aid is allowed in.”
In recent weeks, photographs of emaciated corpses have begun to emerge from the town, which is high in the mountains a few miles from the border with Lebanon. Around 20 men have so far perished from starvation, according to Mr Ibrahim. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: One Syrian woman who joined the stream of migrants to Germany was forced to pay down her husband’s debt to smugglers by making herself available for sex along the way. Another was beaten unconscious by a Hungarian prison guard after refusing his advances.
A third, a former makeup artist, dressed as a boy and stopped washing to ward off the men in her group of refugees. Now in an emergency shelter in Berlin, she still sleeps in her clothes and, like several women here, pushes a cupboard in front of her door at night.
“There is no lock or key or anything,” said Esraa al-Horani, the makeup artist and one of the few women here not afraid to give her name. She has been lucky, Ms. Horani said: “I’ve only been beaten and robbed.”
War and violence at home, exploitative smugglers and perilous seas along the way, an uncertain welcome and future on a foreign continent — these are some of the risks faced by tens of thousands of migrants who continue to make their way to Europe from the Middle East and beyond. But at each step of the way, the dangers are amplified for women.
Interviews with dozens of migrants, social workers and psychologists caring for traumatized new arrivals across Germany suggest that the current mass migration has been accompanied by a surge of violence against women. From forced marriages and sex trafficking to domestic abuse, women report violence from fellow refugees, smugglers, male family members and even European police officers. There are no reliable statistics for sexual and other abuse of female refugees. [Continue reading…]
Angus McDowall writes: The Al Saud ruling family regard the expansion of Shi’ite Iran’s influence in the Middle East as a threat to their security and to their ambition of playing the leading role among Arab states.
Inside the kingdom, however, it is the threat of a rebellion by the majority Sunnis that most alarms a dynasty whose rule is based on conservative support at home and an alliance with the West.
All past threats to the Al Saud, from a 1920s tribal rebellion to riots in the 1960s, a siege at Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979 and protests in the 1990s, were caused by conservative Sunni anger at modernisation or ties with the West.
That was why the al Qaeda uprising that began in 2003, and attacked the Al Saud by turning its own conservative Salafi brand of Sunni Islam against it, was such a danger. It is why the jihadist movement’s latest iteration, Islamic State, is also a problem.
While Islamic State seems to lack real support among Saudis, some may sympathise with its broader goals, approving of its rhetoric against Shi’ites and the West and its criticism of corruption among the Al Saud.
By executing al Qaeda ideologues and attackers, Riyadh was showing its determination to crush support for the militant cause. By also killing four Shi’ites, angering Iran in the process, it was telling conservative Sunnis it was still on their side. [Continue reading…]
David Gauke, financial secretary to the Treasury, became the most senior UK figure to react to the execution, which has led to clashes in Tehran, and prompted widespread denunciation elsewhere. He said al-Nimr’s death was a “worrying development”. The US State Department had said earlier that the move risked “exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced”.
Anger remained palpable on the streets of the Lebanese capital, and in Bahrain and Baghdad, hours after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was torched by protesters angered by the execution of a senior cleric who had been championed by Iranian leaders.
However, in what appeared to be a move to calm tensions, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said the attack on the embassy was unjustifiable, and urged that the perpetrators be dealt with.
“I have no doubt that the Saudi government has damaged its image, more than before, among the countries in the world – in particular (among) Islamic countries – by this un-Islamic act,” Rouhani said.
Taking a cautionary tone, he added: “We will not allow rogue elements” to use the incident and “carry out illegal actions that damage the dignity of the Islamic republic establishment”.
“I call on the interior minister to identify the perpetrators of this attack with firm determination and introduce them to the judiciary … so that there will be an end to such appalling actions once and for all.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on Saudi Arabia’s western backers to directly condemn the execution, which came three years after al-Nimr was arrested following his vocal support for anti-government protests in Bahrain and Riyadh.
“This oppressed cleric did not encourage people to join an armed movement, nor did he engage in secret plotting, and he only voiced public criticism … based on religious fervour,” said Khamenei, who criticised “the silence of the supposed backers of freedom, democracy and human rights” over the execution. [Continue reading…]
The New York Times reports: Sheikh Nimr, said to be in his mid-50s, was from Awamiyah, a poor town surrounded by palm groves in eastern Saudi Arabia and known for opposition to the monarchy.
He studied in Iran and Syria, but rose to prominence for fiery sermons after his return in which he criticized the ruling family and called for Shiite empowerment, even suggesting that Shiites could secede from the kingdom.
This gained him a following mostly among young Shiites who felt discriminated against by Persian Gulf governments. When these young people joined Arab Spring protests in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia in 2011, Sheikh Nimr became a leading figure.
During a sermon in 2012, Sheikh Nimr mocked Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, who had been the Saudi interior minister and had recently died.
“He will be eaten by worms and suffer the torments of hell in the grave,” Sheikh Nimr said. “The man who made us live in fear and terror; shouldn’t we rejoice at his death?”
Prince Nayef’s son, Mohammed bin Nayef, is now the crown prince and runs the Interior Ministry, which carries out death sentences. [Continue reading…]
Bruce Riedel writes: The kingdom announced its new budget Dec. 28 with a record $87 billion deficit. Revenues are projected at $137 billion and spending at $224 billion.
Riyadh’s immediate priority is the war in Yemen. The war costs an estimated $200 million a day, or $6 billion a month. The Saudi coalition and the Houthi rebels both violated the last United Nations-sponsored cease-fire. The Saudis did gain control of the capital of Jawf province along the Saudi border during the supposed truce. The talks in Biel, Switzerland, did not produce a breakthrough, but are to resume Jan. 14.
The Houthis show no sign of giving up. Their leadership remains hard-line and defiant. The war appears to be a bloody stalemate that has catastrophic humanitarian costs for Yemenis. The outside world pays little if any attention. [Continue reading…]
Simon Tisdall writes: The consequences of Saudi Arabia’s mass execution of 47 people will be felt far beyond its Eastern Province, which was home to Nimr al-Nimr, the leading Shia Muslim cleric who was the most prominent figure among those to die.
His plight reflected the trials and tribulations of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority, which accounts for 15% of the country’s 29 million people and has suffered, historically, from institutionalised discrimination and periodic security crackdowns.
The al-Qatif governorate of Eastern Province, bordering the Gulf, has been the setting for anti-regime agitation since at least 1979, when Saudi Shias demonstrated in support of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose Islamic revolution in Iran that year toppled the shah. Trouble erupted again in 2011-13, triggered by the Arab Spring uprising of the Shia majority in nearby Bahrain and its subsequent brutal, Saudi-assisted suppression. [Continue reading…]
Mark Townsend adds: In October 2014, Saudi Arabia’s specialised criminal court sentenced Nimr to death for seeking ‘foreign meddling’ in the kingdom along with ‘disobeying’ its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces”. His brother, Mohammad al-Nimr, tweeted information about the death sentence and was promptly arrested on the same day.
As news of the sentence travelled, the head of Iran’s armed forces warned Saudi Arabia that it would “pay dearly” if it dared execute the cleric. Powerful and prominent in life, it is the nature of Nimr’s death that could shape his legacy. [Continue reading…]
After a 52-minute video made by al-Kataib, the media outlet of Somalia’s al-Qaeda-affiliate, al-Shabaab, was posted on YouTube yesterday, it was swiftly removed. YouTube has a long-standing policy of banning videos that incite violence.
As the ABC News report above shows, the element in the video which has grabbed the media’s attention is its use of Donald Trump’s recent call for Muslims to be prohibited from entering the United States.
Here’s the part of the video which features Trump — although, by the time you read this post, YouTube will have removed this clip, which is why I’m also posting a transcript:
First we see the American imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, making a prediction about the fate of Muslims who continue living in the U.S. — Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Then comes a clip of Trump and then Awalaki again.
Awlaki, date unknown: Muslims of the West, take heed and learn from the lessons of history. There are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon.
Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching, and Ku Klux Klan. And tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps.
Trump speaking at a campaign rally on December 7: Guys remember this and listen: Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States [cheers] until our country’s representatives can figure out what [expletive bleeped] is going on [cheers and applause].
Awlaki: The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens. Hence, my advice to you is this: You have two choices, either hijra or jihad. You either leave or you fight. You leave and live among Muslims, or you stay behind and follow the example of Nidal Hassan [perpetrator of the Fort Hood mass shooting] and others who fulfilled their duty of fighting for Allah’s cause.
In response to pressure from Western governments, YouTube and other social media channels are becoming increasingly aggressive in blocking the distribution of terrorist propaganda. There is understandable frustration at the fact that the internet is being used to threaten the very societies within which this global communications system was created.
Censorship can easily backfire, however, and this is happening with the removal of clips of the new al-Shabaab video.
After the full-length version had been removed, snippets which just showed the al-Awalaki statement and Trump, have also been removed (as I noted above).
It is clear that these videos are being posted by Trump critics rather than al-Shabaab supporters and their removal is breathing life into a conspiracy theory being propagated by some Trump supporters: that the al-Shabaab video itself is a fabrication created by the Clinton campaign!
It seems likely that there are some Trump supporters who — following the lead of Bashar al-Assad supporters — are using YouTube’s community guidelines in order to silence criticism.
Although in the short clips of the al-Shabaab, Awlaki is indeed inciting violence, the clips themselves are clearly not being posted in order to incite violence — they have been posted to show how Trump’s rhetoric serves as a propaganda gift for jihadists.
By removing these clips, YouTube is playing straight into the hands of conspiracy theorists.
At the same time, censorship also buttresses the perception among ISIS and al Qaeda supporters, that the West feels threatened by “the truth.”
It’s worth remembering the trajectory Awlaki followed which eventually led to him promoting terrorism from Yemen.
In 2000, he supported George Bush’s campaign to become president and after 9/11 believed his own emerging role must be to serve as bridge between America and all Muslims.
At midnight on Sept. 14, 2001, Awlaki, then a young Yemeni-American imam at the prominent Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., finished a long day by answering an email from his younger brother about the terrorist attacks of a few days before. ‘‘I personally think it was horrible,’’ he wrote to Ammar, a college student in New Mexico at the time. ‘‘I am very upset about it.’’ He added, ‘‘The media are all over us.’’ Anwar was disconcerted, but perhaps also pleased that an onslaught of reporters had turned his Friday prayers, or jummah, into a circus. ‘‘At jummah today we had ABC, NBC, CBS and The Washington Post.’’ He closed on a positive note, hinting at a noble purpose, to be sure, but also displaying a trace of personal ambition: ‘‘I hope we can use this for the good of all of us.’’
Though the country was in mourning, a sense of defiant unity emerged. A non-Muslim neighbor of Dar al-Hijrah organized a candlelight vigil around the building to show solidarity with the mosque. Roughly 80 residents of a nearby apartment building sent over a note saying, ‘‘We want your congregation to know that we welcome you in this community.’’ Journalists, hunting for an authoritative voice from the Muslim community, began to pass regularly under the mosque’s grand marble arches or to gather in Awlaki’s modest family home. He denounced the 9/11 attacks but in the same breath would criticize America’s record in the Middle East. Reporters were impressed. The New York Times wrote that Awlaki, just 30, was being ‘‘held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West.’’ He relished the spotlight. He seemed to be quite self-consciously auditioning for a dual role: explainer of Islam to America and of America to Muslims. ‘‘We came here to build, not to destroy,’’ he declared from his pulpit. ‘‘We are the bridge between America and one billion Muslims worldwide.’’
The challenge presented by ISIS, al Qaeda and other jihadist groups is more than one of security and communications. At its core, this is a moral challenge.
The jihadists present themselves as offering the solution to a moral problem: a way for Muslims to confront the immorality, corruption, and hypocrisy they see in the contemporary Western-dominated world.
An effective counter-jihadist strategy cannot simply brush off this critique of the West. It has to present an alternative solution.
Currently, who has the more credible voice? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Anwar al-Awlaki?
Unfortunately, it’s Awlaki.
As Shane observed:
Awlaki’s pronouncements seem to carry greater authority today than when he was living, because America killed him.
Right now, it’s easy to castigate Trump for providing terrorists with fodder for propaganda, but we mustn’t forget the extent to which the U.S. led by Bush and then Obama, has helped reinforce the jihadists’ narrative — by opening Guantanamo; through the use of torture, rendition and secret prisons; through the disastrous war in Iraq; through drone strikes in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia; through continuing to prop up authoritarian regimes across the Middle East; through allowing the Assad regime to destroy Syria, and through failing to broker an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The real challenge for Western political leaders and whoever becomes the next U.S. president is not whether they can destroy ISIS and effectively tackle global terrorism.
It is this: How can they regain sufficient moral authority that their words carry weight? How can they restore some much-needed respect for democracy?
In a global failure of governance, the Middle East can be viewed as the emergency room, while in the West, governance suffers from chronic illness for which symptom-relief is the only treatment on offer.
It’s time we face up to the fact that terrorism is just a symptom what ails the world. Indeed, much of the time a global obsession with terrorism is having the effect of turning our attention away from broader issues that undermine the health of societies and our ability to survive on this planet.
This isn’t a question of striving for some kind of unattainable and contestable moral purity. No one wants to live under the control of zealots. It’s about trying to create societies in which government is no longer a dirty word, where ordinary citizens receive the respect they deserve, and in which individuals are no longer cynical about the possibilities for securing collective interests.
In a word, it’s about the restoration of honesty in public life.
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