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The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54247"><span class="small">Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic</span></a>
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Tuesday, 05 May 2020 08:22 |
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Applebaum writes: "Anybody who knows any history will be aware that propaganda - even the most obvious, most shameless propaganda - sometimes works."
Donald Trump. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump
By Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic
05 May 20
The president created a leadership vacuum. China intends to fill it.
 t looks, at first, like one of a zillion unfunny video clips that now circulate on the internet: “Once Upon a Virus” features cheap animation, cheesy music, and sarcastic dialogue between China—represented by a Lego terra-cotta warrior with a low, masculine voice—and the United States, represented by a Lego Statue of Liberty with a high, squeaky voice. They “speak” in short sentences:
“We discovered a new virus,” says the warrior. “So what?” says the Statue of Liberty.
“It’s dangerous,” says the warrior. “It’s only a flu,” says the Statue of Liberty.
“Wear a mask,” says the warrior. “Don’t wear a mask,” says the Statue of Liberty.
“Stay at home,” says the warrior. “It’s violating human rights,” says the Statue of Liberty
The dialogue goes on like that—“It will go away in April,” the Statue of Liberty says at one point—until it ends, finally, with the statue on an intravenous drip making wild and contradictory statements while the warrior jeers at her.
Although this looks like an I’m-bored-at-home amateur production, it is not: The video was published on April 30 by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. It has since been promoted by Chinese diplomats and watched, as of yesterday afternoon, by more than 1.6 million people around the world.
It has also been mocked and denounced as crude propaganda—which, of course, it is. Crude propaganda is what China’s leaders do, both at home and abroad, and since the pandemic began they have stepped up their efforts. But even those who are mocking should beware: Anybody who knows any history will be aware that propaganda—even the most obvious, most shameless propaganda—sometimes works. And it works not because people necessarily believe that all of it is true, but because they respect the capabilities or fear the power of the people who produced it.
Propaganda also works best in a vacuum, when there are no competing messages, or when the available alternative messengers inspire no trust. Since mid-March, China has been sending messages out into precisely this kind of vacuum: a world that has been profoundly changed not just by the virus, but by the American president’s simultaneously catastrophic and ridiculous failure to cope with it.
The tone of news headlines ranges from straight-faced in Kompas, a major Indonesian news outlet—Trump Usulkan Suntik Disinfektan dan Sinar UV untuk Obati Covid-19, or “Trump Proposes Disinfectant Injection and UV Rays to Treat COVID-19”—to snide, from Le Monde in France—Les élucubrations du « docteur » Trump, or “The Rantings of ‘Doctor’ Trump.” The incredulous first paragraph of an article in Sowetan, from South Africa, declares that “US President Donald Trump has again left people stunned and confused with his bizarre suggestion that disinfectant and ultraviolet light could possibly be used to treat Covid-19.” El Comercio, a distinguished Peruvian newspaper, treated its readers to photographs of Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus-response coordinator, grimacing as the president asked her whether the injection of disinfectant might be a cure.
Quotations from the president’s astonishing April 23 press conference have appeared on every continent, via countless television channels, radio stations, magazines, and websites, in hundreds of thousands of variations and dozens of languages—often accompanied by warnings, in case someone was fooled, not to drink disinfectant or bleach. In years past, many of these outlets presumably published articles critical of this or that aspect of U.S. foreign policy, blaming one U.S. president or another. But the kind of coverage we see now is something new. This time, people are not attacking the president of the United States. They are laughing at him. Beppe Severgnini, one of Italy’s best-known columnists, told me that while Italians feel enormous empathy for Americans who have suffered as they have, they feel differently about Trump: “In this time of darkness and depression, he keeps us entertained.”
But if Trump is ridiculous, his administration is invisible. Carl Bildt—a Swedish prime minister in the 1990s, a United Nations envoy during the Bosnian wars, and a foreign minister for many years after that—told me that, looking back on his 30-year career, he cannot remember a single international crisis in which the United States had no global presence at all. “Normally, when something happens”—a war, an earthquake—“everybody waits to see what the Americans are doing, for better or for worse, and then they calibrate their own response based on that.”
This time, Americans are doing … nothing. Or to be more specific, because plenty of American governors, mayors, doctors, scientists, and tech companies are doing things, the White House is doing nothing. There is no presidential leadership inside the United States; there is no American leadership in the world. Members of the G7—the U.S. and its six closest allies—did meet to write a joint statement. But even that tepid project ended in ludicrous rancor when the American secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, insisted on using the expression “Wuhan virus” and the others gave up in disgust. Not only is the president talking nonsense, not only is America absent, but the nation’s top diplomat is a caricature of a tough guy—someone who throws around insults in the absence of any capacity to influence events.
Others are drawing even more radical conclusions, and with remarkable speed. The “disinfectant” comments—and the laughter that followed—mark not so much a turning point as an acceleration point, the moment when a transformation that began much earlier suddenly started to seem unstoppable. Although we are still only weeks into this pandemic, although the true scale of the health crisis and the economic catastrophe is still unknown, the outline of a very different, post-American, post-coronavirus world is already taking shape. It’s a world in which American opinions will count less, while the opinions of America’s rivals will count more. And that will change political dynamics in ways that Americans haven’t yet understood.
Look beyond the Lego video at China’s more serious public-relations campaign: the stunts at airports around the world, from Pakistan to Italy to Israel, designed to mark the arrival of Chinese aid—masks, surgical gowns, diagnostic tests, and sometimes doctors. These events all have a similar script: The plane lands; the receiving nation’s dignitaries go out to meet it; the Chinese experts emerge, looking competent in their hazmat gear; and everyone utters words of gratitude and relief. Of course some of this, too, is propaganda.
In reality, some of the equipment billed as aid has been purchased, not donated. Some of it, especially the diagnostic tests, has turned out to be defective. Some of those who receive these goods also know perfectly well that they are designed to silence questions about where the virus came from, why knowledge of it was initially suppressed, and why it was allowed to spread around the world. If, in these circumstances, the propaganda “works,” that’s because those who receive it have made a calculation: Pretending to believe it is a way of acknowledging and accepting Chinese power—and, perhaps, a way of expressing interest in Chinese investment.
In the Western world, this dynamic has played itself out with striking success in Italy. Flattened by the virus and depressed by the lockdown, Italians are deeply divided by years of conspiratorial social-media campaigns, some with Russian backing, that have attacked Italy’s traditional alliances, NATO as well as the European Union. China has added its own unsubtle social-media campaign. Bots have been promoting Chinese-Italian-friendship hashtags (#forzaCinaeItalia) and thank-you-China hashtags (#grazieCina). But there is another, less visible layer of activity, too.
A year ago, Italy became the core European member of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese trade-and-infrastructure project designed to create deeper links across Eurasia and to provide an alternative to the transatlantic and Pacific trade pacts quashed by Trump. Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, until recently the leader of Italy’s anti-EU Five Star Movement, has cultivated links to China too. Chinese investment has gained importance. Already, a Chinese oligarch has bought the Inter Milan soccer club; Chinese banks already own big stakes in Italian companies like Eni and Fiat.
Thanks to the economic havoc created by the coronavirus, China’s efforts in Rome may now bear fruit. Maurizio Molinari, the editor of La Repubblica, told me that Chinese businessmen are right now building on their contacts, looking for companies and properties to buy, scouting out factories that are suddenly bankrupt and entrepreneurs who want to sell out. I asked him what the source of China’s appeal was right now: “Money,” he replied. By contrast, the most conspicuous gesture that the U.S. administration has made in Italy’s direction since the pandemic began was Trump’s abrupt decision to ban flights. Apart from a modest and belated aid package, little in the way of friendship came from the United States.
Chinese propaganda may find unexpectedly fertile ground elsewhere too. Chinese aid has also been delivered to Japan and South Korea, two U.S. allies who have sought close relationships with Trump and have received, in exchange, demands that they pay more for American bases. As close neighbors and former foes, both countries have many reasons to be wary of China. But now that Trump is a laughingstock, now that America is absent from the game, some in both Tokyo and Seoul may conclude that they should start hedging bets. China has also offered major assistance to Iran, a country that had already been given a major role as a Belt and Road hub. Iranian leaders now have extra reasons to hope they can outlast sanctions if the American president calling for them need not be treated as a serious person.
China’s relationships with the Arab world have also deepened during the pandemic. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait sent aid to Wuhan during the earlier part of the crisis; later, China reciprocated. The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates has described China as the role model to follow in this crisis. On March 8, Chinese medical workers arrived in Baghdad—an advance team, perhaps, poised to take advantage of the inevitable American retreat. In each one of these places, America is absent, distracted, stumbling—and laughable.
To be absolutely crystal clear: I am not praising China’s efforts. I am simply calling attention to the fact that, in a world where people laugh at the American president, they might succeed. Inside the bubble of officials who surround Pompeo, it may well seem very brave and cutting-edge to use the expression “Wuhan virus” or to call for bigger and bolder rhetorical attacks on China. But out there in the real world—out there in the world where Pompeo’s boss is perceived as a sinister clown, and Pompeo himself as just the sinister clown’s lackey—not very many people are listening. Once again: A vacuum has opened up, and the Chinese regime is leading the race to fill it.
Judging from their own recent statements, Trump-administration officials do not yet understand the significance of the chaos they have created in place of what used to be American foreign policy. Pompeo has spent time in recent days trying to organize sanctions on Iran, as if Russia and China or even European allies were still willing to follow his lead. Philip Reeker, assistant secretary of state for Europe (or rather, acting assistant secretary of state for Europe, because the Trump administration is in constant chaos) was recently asked by French journalists whether the coronavirus crisis could repair the poor state of transatlantic relations. His pompous response made him sound like a member of the Soviet nomenklatura at the end of the 1980s: “I don’t agree with the premise of your question,” Reeker said, before claiming that transatlantic engagement, and particularly Franco-American cooperation, is “remarkable.” Yes, it’s remarkable—remarkably invisible.
Even the more learned analyses of U.S.-China relations suddenly look out of sync with reality. It’s all very well for think-piece authors or former Trump-administration officials to suggest that a post-pandemic America must change its relationships with China, rally its allies to defy China, and rewrite the rules of commerce to exclude China. But when Trump seeks to lead the world against China, who will follow? Italy might refuse outright. The European Union could demur. America’s close friends in Asia might feel nervous, and delay making decisions. Africans who are furious about racism in China—African students have been the focus of heavy discrimination in the city of Guangzhou—might well do a quick calculation and seek good relations with both sides.
I wish I could say for certain that a President Joe Biden could turn this all around, but by next year it may be too late. The memories of the prime minister at the airport, welcoming Chinese doctors, will remain. The bleach jokes and memes will still cause the occasional chuckle. Whoever replaces Pompeo will have only four short years to repair the damage, and that might not be enough.
And if Trump wins a second term? Any nation can make a mistake once, elect a bad leader once. But if Americans choose Trump again, that will send a clear message: We are no longer a serious nation. We are as ignorant as our thoughtless, narcissistic, ignorant president. Don’t be surprised if the rest of the world takes note of that, too.
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"It's Like Purgatory": How the US Has Undermined the Promise of Asylum |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=52703"><span class="small">John Washington, The Intercept</span></a>
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Tuesday, 05 May 2020 08:22 |
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Washington writes: "Humans recoil from death as well as from captivity. We want to live and we want to live free. We want both."
Migrants board a van that will take them to a processing center, on May 16, 2019, in El Paso, Texas. (photo: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images)
"It's Like Purgatory": How the US Has Undermined the Promise of Asylum
By John Washington, The Intercept
05 May 20
The Trump administration has upended the asylum system as we knew it, slashing refugee admissions and placing endless roadblocks in the way of people who arrive at the border to ask for safety. But the promise of asylum has always been political, situated uneasily between human compassion and national interest, as reporter John Washington explains in his book “The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the U.S.-Mexico Border and Beyond,” published this week by Verso. Washington’s book traces the history of the concept of asylum from ancient Greek city-states to today’s militarized borders, telling the story of the asylum-seekers he has met along the way. In this excerpt, Washington explains how the U.S. uses prolonged detention as a way to pressure people to give up their cases and accept deportation.
t’s hard to weigh competing emotions — the current misery of confinement, the fear of future death — as detained asylum-seekers are forced to do. Humans recoil from death as well as from captivity. We want to live and we want to live free. We want both.
Since detention standards were changed in 1996, the U.S. government, in direct refutation to the 1951 Refugee Convention, has locked up hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers who have broken neither domestic nor international law. The idea is to use them as an example of the misery the government is willing to draw on the bodies and minds of those seeking its protection, in order to convince future asylum-seekers from even trying.
When former White House chief of staff John Kelly first introduced the idea of separating migrant families in 2017, he said, “Yes, I’m considering” family separation “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network. I am considering exactly that.” But deterrence — prolonged detention, family separation, or forcing migrants to walk through the remote deserts — doesn’t work. Bertha, for example, a 63-year-old Honduran grandmother fleeing to save her and her granddaughter’s life, came to the United States knowing that they would likely be detained. And they were. Even after Bertha’s granddaughter was released, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Bertha locked up for almost two years.
I met Bertha in a small echoic room in the El Paso Processing Center, in her 18th month of detention. Boggled as to why ICE would detain, for such a long time, a shy grandmother with developing health complications who poses neither flight risk nor security concern, I asked her lawyer, Ed Beckett, if he knew why the government hadn’t released her.
They’re just assholes, Beckett told me. Cruel and unusual punishment, that’s about it. I think she’s a prime example of deterrence.
At her first asylum hearing in the low-ceilinged court inside the El Paso Processing Center, Bertha was denied asylum but was offered protection and relief from deportation through the Convention Against Torture. But then, a few days after the hearing, and before she was released, the judge suddenly changed his mind and reversed his decision. As Beckett helped Bertha appeal, she was kept in detention.
I’ve been in here 18 months, she told me in the spartan interview room. I’m from the department of Cortés. I came to the bridge on November 18. We were in the hielera — an icebox, and the common Spanish name for freezing-cold holding cells — for one day, and then they sent us here. I came … I fled. We came together. My granddaughter was only 14, her name is Yariela. The gangsters wanted her to be their wife. But I couldn’t let that happen. And then they wanted to kill me. They said they were going to kill me. We left the next day. I knew … well, I’m scared to return to my country, that’s what I told them.
I asked her what the security situation was like in her hometown.
I lost my grandson on October 11, 2013. They disappeared him. We don’t know where he is. I raised them both. Their mom was already here, in Houston. And when we had to leave, we just left, without hardly anything. We ran out of money in Guatemala. We had to go asking for money, asking for alms, for food. I was asking God for help. We traveled by bus. I wouldn’t know how to take a train. We were hungry sometimes, but people treated us OK. They gave us food.
They respected me because of my age. An abuelita. A little grandmother.
That’s why we left. Because a gangster was trying to make my granddaughter his wife. I turn to ice when I think about going back there.
I came to ask for protection. I didn’t kill anyone, she says. She began counting on her fingers, starting with her thumb, then index finger. I didn’t rob anyone. I don’t do drugs, don’t have anything to do with drugs. She held up all five fingers to me, and then dropped her hand. I’m clean. A good woman. My daughter is the only one who helps me with some money, for the vending machine, for phone calls, but I can’t stand anything from the vending machines anymore. I can’t stand the soda … I’m just asking God to get me out of here. And my granddaughter. She asks me, she’s so sad, she asks me, Mami, she calls me, why don’t they let you out? And she starts to cry. You raised me. Please come here with me.
You can’t make a complaint or go to the police back in Honduras, Bertha told me, because they’ll know. They have a system, they can track you. I was looking for my grandson after he disappeared, but trying not to make too much noise. And we never found him. I imagine that they killed him, dropped him off somewhere, in some ditch, that’s how they do it. You can’t try to talk to the police or they’ll disappear you. If you see something, she said, and then zipped her lips with a finger.
I don’t know why there’s so much violence. I can’t explain it. It started around, around 2000. It wasn’t like this when I was a girl. Everything was much calmer. But it’s so bad now. Everybody, so many people are leaving. They told me they had to separate us, but they didn’t tell me where they were taking her. I was so … I never expected to be here so long.
To kill time I read the Bible. I also like to play Monopoly. I used to play with this other woman, from Honduras. We played a game last night. But she left today.
I asked her who won.
She smiled, embarrassed. I did, she said. I’ll miss her a lot. She went back to Honduras, just today. I lie in bed and read the Bible. The Psalms. My dad died when he was 91 years old, and he told me, hija, for this, your tongue, she said, and stuck out her tongue, they’ll kill you … for talking, for saying what you see. The gangs, they were taking money, war taxes. They charge you for everything. There wasn’t any more money for food.
Here, in detention, we wake up at five, we have breakfast. Lunch at 11. And dinner at 4:30. But sometimes I’m hungry at night. At home we ate at nine. I get hungry at midnight. Sometimes I buy something from the vending machine, but I don’t like those crackers or cookies anymore. I don’t even like soda. I go to bed hungry. Lights out at nine o’clock. There’s count three times a day. At 10 in the morning, at 3:30, and at nine. At count we have to be quiet. We have to lie in our beds and we can’t talk. If we make noise we get in trouble. At night though, it’s hard to sleep. If someone’s snoring, she says, laughing and putting her hands on her cheeks, we have to deal with it. There’s always someone in the barracks with us. One of the guards. They’re not mean, but they talk strong if we’re loud, if someone’s talking during count. She paused to think. Sometimes, to pass the time, I draw. I draw flowers, princesses, little animals, things like that. Curlicues. Just to pass the time.
It’s not good to be in here. This situation … it’s like a purgatory. It’s like we’re never going to leave. I just think I’m never going to leave. If I get out I’m going to do what I always do, follow the right path. Be good. Do right. We’re all the same. You have to treat people nice. I hope, I hope that God forgives the United States. They have no heart. We’re people. We’re old women. We can’t be here. I don’t know why they don’t let us go. I just don’t know why.
Bertha started telling me about her favorite Psalms, but then one of the guards interrupted us. Our time was up. I told her I would read a couple of her recommendations, and, as I scribbled into my notebook and the guard stood watching us, she told me to read Psalms 23, 91, 102, 27, and 71.
It had been a long time since I read any of them, and, at my hostel later that night, as I began to read them on my computer, I wondered at first if all the Psalms referred to danger and searching for refuge in times of trouble and old age, or if she had just selected those that so precisely fit her situation.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress. Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under his wings you shall take refuge. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned like a hearth. My heart is stricken and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread. My bones cling to my skin. I am like a pelican of the wilderness, I am like an owl of the desert. I lie awake, and am like a sparrow alone on the housetop. Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Do not forsake me when my strength fails. You prepare a table before me. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over.
In the summer of 2018, after 20 months of detention, Bertha lost her appeal and was deported alone back to Honduras. When I think of her now, I think of another poem, the line from Keats — “Where but to think is to be full of sorrow” — and of Saint Oscar Romero, who was reading the 23rd Psalm, one of Bertha’s recommendations, during mass on the day he was assassinated in the cathedral in El Salvador’s capital. “May God have mercy on the assassins” were the archbishop’s last words.
Sixteen hours after a Salvadoran army sniper pulled the trigger and killed Romero, on March 24, 1980, the U.S. House Foreign Operations Subcommittee began hearings on the $5.7 million in military aid that the archbishop had begged President Jimmy Carter not to send, which Romero said would “surely increase injustice here and sharpen the repression that has been unleashed.”
Though the vote was postponed, the military aid was eventually approved.
Joan Didion described the administration’s account of the Salvadoran government’s progress toward human rights, on which the U.S. aid depended, as hallucinatory. The adjective also would apply to ICE’s self-proclaimed compliance with its own standard of guaranteeing “safe, secure, and humane environments” for what it calls “custodial supervision.”
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The Fight Over the Affordable Care Act and Birth Control Is Back at the Supreme Court |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54245"><span class="small">David H. Gans, Slate</span></a>
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Tuesday, 05 May 2020 08:22 |
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Gans writes: "A religiously affiliated employer known as the Little Sisters is urging the Supreme Court to bless the Trump administration's decision to give employers an unconditional religious exemption from the contraceptive coverage requirements of the [ACA] and declare [its] religious accommodation unlawful."
Activists in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. (photo: Getty Images)
The Fight Over the Affordable Care Act and Birth Control Is Back at the Supreme Court
By David H. Gans, Slate
05 May 20
n 1756, the Rev. Francis Alison, a prominent minister from Pennsylvania, urged people in the colonies of all religious persuasions to join together to help win the French and Indian War. In making a point about conscientious objectors, Alison argued that “[a]ll … should have a free use of their religion, but so as not on that score to burden or oppress others.” Alison’s understanding of religious liberty would be reflected in the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, which freed conscientious objectors from having to fight but required them to pay for a substitute.
The story of how conscientious objector laws have safeguarded religious liberty, while also protecting the rights of others—laid out in a brief filed by prominent military historians—should be front and center on Wednesday when the Supreme Court hears Little Sisters v. Pennsylvania and Trump v. Pennsylvania. In those cases, a religiously affiliated employer known as the Little Sisters is urging the Supreme Court to bless the Trump administration’s decision to give employers an unconditional religious exemption from the contraceptive coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act and declare the ACA’s religious accommodation unlawful.
In 2014, a bitterly divided Supreme Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores held that closely held corporations, whose owners had a religious objection to providing contraceptive coverage, were entitled to avail themselves of the religious accommodation contained in the ACA’s regulations. Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, such businesses would be entitled to shift the obligation to provide contraceptive coverage to their insurance companies. For the first time in history the Supreme Court held that some business corporations were entitled to religious accommodations, sending the message that owners of companies could invoke their religious beliefs to skirt the law.
The silver lining in the 5–4 ruling was the majority’s recognition that the ACA’s religious accommodation provided the key to taking account of the rights of all parties. The majority concluded that the accommodation is “an alternative that achieves all of the government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty” and guarantees that “women would still be entitled to FDA-approved contraceptives without cost-sharing.” Now, the Little Sisters and the Trump administration are asking the Supreme Court to shelve that part of the Hobby Lobby ruling and strike down the accommodation.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has been asked to take this step. In 2016, in Zubik v. Burwell, the court heard a set of cases in which employers argued that the accommodation violated RFRA. But an eight-member court failed to resolve the issue. That is unlikely to happen this time around.
In more than two centuries, the Supreme Court has never struck down a religious accommodation on the ground that it substantially burdened the free exercise of religion. The Little Sisters, joined by the Trump administration, is urging the court to take that extreme step for the first time. Even though the ACA’s religious accommodation eliminates any role for the employer in providing contraceptive services and shifts the burden of paying for contraceptive coverage to insurance companies, the Little Sisters argues that the accommodation still tramples on its religious beliefs. In its view, the government may not require it to do anything—even a ministerial task as simple as filling out a piece of paper—if the end result is that even one of its employees could enjoy the access to contraceptive coverage that the ACA requires.
When the Supreme Court hears oral argument on Wednesday—which will be livestreamed for all to hear as part of the court’s social distancing measures taken in response to COVID-19—the questioning is likely to focus on RFRA and the court’s precedent. But the court should not ignore centuries of historical practice that have given meaning to the guarantee of the free exercise of religion.
The sweeping arguments for a total religious exemption are profoundly inconsistent with the history of religious accommodation in this country and the backdrop against which the Framers crafted the First Amendment. Throughout American history, religious accommodations that have allowed objectors to opt out and to transfer their legal duties to others have been a crucial means of respecting religious liberty in a nation of diverse faiths.
From 1776 to the present, conscientious objector laws have exempted those with a religious objection to war from combat, while still requiring them to aid the nation during wartime. What the Little Sisters denounces as a violation of their freedom of conscience is what history shows is a common practice: accommodating religious objectors by shifting their obligations to third parties who do not share that objection.
In 1776, the people of Pennsylvania enacted a new Constitution, which relieved conscientious objectors of the duty to fight but required those opposed to war to “pay such equivalent” in order to find a substitute. The Keystone State was not alone in rejecting an unconditional exemption. In numerous states, conscientious objector laws enacted at the time of the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution required individuals objecting to participation in military service on religious grounds to pay for a substitute.
Religious accommodations for military service also figured prominently in debates over the Bill of Rights. During debates in Congress over proposals to include a religious exemption from combat in the Second Amendment, members of the First Congress stressed that conscientious objectors had to do their part to ensure the safety of the nation. A religious exemption from combat would be “unjust, unless the constitution secured an equivalent.” Ultimately, the Second Amendment did not contain a religious accommodation, leaving matters to the states. In many states, a conscientious objector had to pay for a substitute.
Since the Civil War, federal draft laws have accommodated individuals with a religious objection to war, requiring them to perform alternative service. Under these laws, an individual who considers war sinful cannot refuse to participate in the war effort entirely. What is more, a conscientious objector cannot stop a draft in its tracks by insisting that calling up the next draftee makes him or her complicit in sin. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor commented during oral argument in Zubik, the logic of the argument for an unconditional exemption would wreak havoc with federal draft laws. Look for her to press this line of questioning again.
Our Constitution and laws place the highest of values on religious liberty, recognizing the right to practice’s one’s religion as critical to freedom, dignity, and self-definition. But the Affordable Care Act has already accommodated the beliefs of those who have a religious objection to contraception. What the Little Sisters wants—to prevent insurance companies from assuming their legal duty—would pervert our cherished constitutional values of religious liberty. It would allow employers to impose their own religious beliefs on their employees and extinguish important federal rights secured by the Affordable Care Act. Women would be left without access to the most effective forms of contraception.
In Little Sisters and other cases on the docket both this term and next, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is poised to reshape the meaning of religious freedom in America. If the Supreme Court strikes down the ACA’s religious accommodation, it will be casting aside centuries of history. As the history of conscientious objector laws shows, religious accommodations help, not harm, religious liberty. Religious accommodations, like those contained in the Affordable Care Act, ensure, as the Rev. Francis Alison explained more than 250 years ago, that “all should have a free use of their religion, but so as not on that score to burden or oppress others.”
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For Arab Women and Girls, the Crisis Is Just Beginning |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54244"><span class="small">Lina AbiRafeh, Al Jazeera</span></a>
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Tuesday, 05 May 2020 08:22 |
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AbiRafeh writes: "In the Arab region, where I now work, women were vulnerable before the crisis. And their crisis is just beginning."
Women shop at a market wearing protective face masks amid concerns over COVID-19 in Cairo, Egypt, April 12, 2020. (photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)
For Arab Women and Girls, the Crisis Is Just Beginning
By Lina AbiRafeh, Al Jazeera
05 May 20
The coronavirus presents an opportunity to help women overcome daily social injustices, but only if we take it.
 he current pandemic has had an unprecedented global impact - we are all affected by this collective crisis. And yet, the virus and its aftermath will discriminate more strongly against those who were already marginalised, namely women and girls. In the Arab region, where I now work, women were vulnerable before the crisis. And their crisis is just beginning.
I have spent my career as a humanitarian aid worker in insecure environments around the world, supporting women to mitigate the risks they face in those settings - notably as a result of a more hidden global pandemic, violence against women. Everywhere I have worked - from Afghanistan to Mali to Haiti - women and girls suffer more. It does not matter whether this is due to a conflict, a natural disaster or an epidemic.
Already volatile prior to COVID-19 due to socioeconomic instabilities and protracted humanitarian crises, the Arab region is uniquely affected by this global pandemic, with more than 62.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.
In the Arab region, nearly half of the female population of 84 million is not connected to the Internet nor has access to a mobile phone. This, coupled with alarming literacy rates - approximately 67 percent of women and 81 percent of men - means that women are disproportionately unable to access accurate information about the virus to help them prepare, respond and survive.
Amid this crisis, and combined with the continuing conflicts and economic collapse, violence against women is increasing. For many women and girls, being quarantined safely is a luxury. Based on anecdotal evidence and reporting by several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Lebanon, under lockdown the number of reported cases of violence against women rose by 100 percent during the month of March.
Similarly, live-in migrant domestic workers (almost always women) are exposed to unique risks stemming from the nature of their jobs. The travel ban and other restrictions further harm their livelihoods and ability to support family members in their countries of origin. Additionally, they cannot leave the house and are therefore working around the clock often without the right to rest. The abuse they suffer - sexual, physical, psychological, economic - is heightened as a result of the additional stress of deteriorating economic conditions and health risks.
Refugees are another disproportionately affected group. Female refugees, in particular, are no strangers to discrimination. Lack of funding due to the pandemic has compromised their survival. Even more than before, refugees are considered a threat by host communities and are shunned due to fears that the virus will spread through the camps, placing the host country at greater risk.
Women in conflict zones face additional risks during this pandemic. In both Syria and Yemen, the healthcare infrastructure has been decimated by years of armed conflict - with 67 attacks on hospitals in Syria in over a year and constant attacks on health facilities and medical personnel in Yemen.
The informal and community-based nature of women's work in conflict zones also means an inherent lack of financial stability and access to formal, professional roles in society. In Yemen, at least there is momentum and strong organising for feminist peacebuilding and the inclusion of women in official peace talks and conflict mitigation processes.
The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to result in the loss of 1.7 million jobs in the Arab region, including approximately 700,000 jobs held by women. But female participation in the labour market is already weak, with high unemployment among women reaching 19 percent in 2019, compared with 8 percent for men.
Projections indicate that the informal sector will be particularly impacted by the pandemic. In the Arab region, women perform nearly five times as much unpaid care work as men while approximately 61.8 percent of active women work in the informal sector and will, therefore, suffer disproportionately.
Women are the majority of the world's healthcare practitioners and family caretakers, performing unpaid labour and exposing themselves to infection in order to care for a sick child, an elderly family member or a needy member of the community.
In Lebanon, 80 percent of nursing staff are female. More than half of these are now working with reduced salaries and longer hours, rather than being properly compensated and protected. In every emergency I have worked in, women are the ones who know who is in need, what they need and how to get it to them. They are the world's social safety net.
If women are once again left out of leadership roles in the response to the pandemic, the patriarchal consolidation of power in these areas will have devastating effects on women's rights, equality and autonomy. This requires a robust feminist response, guaranteeing women's right to information, to healthcare, to choose. Because when others decide for a woman, she faces discrimination and violence. In short, her own life is at risk.
A feminist response to this pandemic must work to undo rather than magnify oppression and the very systems that place women at higher risks in times of crisis, with the recognition that simply existing as a woman is a form of crisis. Simply, a woman's right to decide must be at the heart of the response to this pandemic.
Life will undoubtedly be different in the aftermath of the pandemic. And, for the majority of women, their challenges do not end when the crisis is resolved. For women and girls, the crisis is just beginning.
In the Arab region, this presents an opportunity to implement feminist policies and ensure that women's rights organisations and feminist activists have the tools and resources they need to advocate and act on behalf of women and girls.
Centring women in the response will enable the region to better withstand future shocks. In short, when women lead, we all benefit.
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